Modern Times

It’s been 5 years since our pal Bob put out the wonderful Love and Theft (itself a sequel to the Grammy-winning, and equally engaging, Time Out of Mind) but it was worth the wait. Modern Times is a delightful little jewel of a record that should touch the hearts of Dylan fans young and old (yeah that’s me enthusiastically waving my hand…)

Some of the early praise for this collection has been effusive (Rolling Stone, not surprisingly given its worshipful regard for Dylan over the years, waxed rapturously about it in a 5-star review) and just a bit excessive. Look, me and Bob go way back…his songs are often insightful and sometimes downright magical and his voice (definitely an acquired taste) is a ragged, expressive wonder that I’ve come to appreciate enormously over the decades…but I think it piles too much baggage on Modern Times…a sweet (“Beyond the Horizon” is an unabashed love song so warm that you just know that other people are going to be climbing over each other to cover it), witty (Alicia Keys is name-checked to cheeky effect on the jaunty opener “Thunder on the Mountain”), often fun, occasionally haunting (the loping rewrite of the old blues chestnut “The Levee’s Gonna Break” invokes last year’s Gulf Coast disaster to fine effect…and the closing “Ain’t Talkin’” is filled with palpable menace, mystery, and rueful dark humor), relaxed and unassuming record…to act like it’s the second coming of Blonde on Blonde or some such.

Modern Times is a laidback…but never dull…record that Dylan produced (using the pseudonym of Jack Frost) using only his crack touring band as his support musicians (a grand idea…the players all compliment each other beautifully) and it feels lived-in and familiar (in a very good way) from the very first listen.

Survivor: Cook Islands

Sight unseen, I know that somewhere out there in cyberspace some wag has already dubbed the upcoming season of the show Survivor: Jim Crow Islands.

Both the producer and the host of the show call the twist…segregating the new cast (see above) by ethnicity (four teams: one white, one black, one Latino, and one Asian-American)…a bold “social experiment” (they’ve started seasons with teams separated by gender and by age so why not race?)

A more cynical soul (such as yours truly) might call it an incredibly cynical and manipulative stunt designed to pump up the slowly-fading ratings of what used to be the most popular “reality” TV show (American Idol has seized that particular crown and seems unlikely to give it back anytime soon.)

But, that said, the publicity stunt is also, to be fair, actually quite brilliant. Survivor is getting more press and attention than it has in a long while (some civic officials in New York have already weighed in to express their outrage and, this being an election year…and the media always being a handy target…I’m sure other politicians will jump on the bandwagon before all is said and done) and chances are that all of that will turn into killer ratings…at least for the first few episodes of the new season…as people tune in to see what’s going to happen (and maybe root for their favorite ethnic group.)

Perhaps my misgivings about the concept are misplaced and Survivor: Cook Islands will turn out to be compelling, enlightening television and that give us all new insights on race and interpersonal relationships while at the same time being smart, sparkling entertainment….I’m not holding my breath on that but hey could happen, couldn’t it? Yeah, I didn’t think so either…

Heart of Mine: Love Songs of Bob Dylan

In the mid-Seventies, Maria Muldaur had a fluke top 40 hit with the charming novelty song “Midnight at the Oasis”; as far as I can remember she never hit the top 40 again. But during the ensuing years she has made a good number of wonderful albums...including great discs celebrating the blues, the music of Louisiana, and the immortal Miss Peggy Lee...combining the blues, folk, soul, gospel, and rock & roll into a tasty musical gumbo all her own.

This notion of combining Muldaur’s smoky… sweet, husky, and downright sexy….pipes with Bob Dylan’s poignant, poetic, heartfelt love songs was an inspired one (her record label’s president suggested a collection of Dylan songs after seeing a documentary on the man and Maria came up with the idea of doing Dylan love songs) and it pays off grandly on this delightful little collection.

With the able backing of a crack band, Muldaur puts a bluesy spin on Dylan tunes from different eras…some (a softly-sassy reading of “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight”, a sultry “Lay Lady Lay” [recast here as “Lay Baby Lay”], a soulful twist on the oft-covered “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go”) perhaps a bit more familiar than others (“Golden Loom”, “To Be Alone with You”)…and makes them smolder, sizzle, lope, swing, and soar with masterful aplomb.

When the celebratory “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere”…with Muldaur playing some tasty fiddle…ends you’re surprised at how quickly 49 minutes have passed. Heart of Mine is a very worthy addition to the expansive body of Bob Dylan covers that have been recorded over the years.

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip

Aaron Sorkin…the creator of the criminally-underappreciated Sports Night and the acclaimed The West Wing… is a man with an ear for clever dialogue, a knack for developing interesting characters who interact in sometimes mundane situations, and decidedly liberal political point of view. All of these things are showcased in the pilot episode of his new NBC series, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.

The dialogue in Studio 60…which is set behind-the-scenes of a Saturday Night Live type show… is, almost as a matter of course with Sorkin’s work (which also includes the scripts for the movies A Few Good Men and The American President), whip-smart and intricately paced and the cast is stellar.

Matthew Perry and Bradley Whitford (Josh from The West Wing) are the leads (though they don’t show onscreen until almost 20 minutes into the pilot) with Perry playing a slightly ditzy writer and Whitford playing his more stable (relatively speaking) director friend. The chemistry between the two is, at first blush, quite effective and both actors are in fine form. Amanda Peet brings sparkling and impish wit to her role as the newly-hired president of the network (NBS – the National Broadcasting System) and Steven Weber (probably best known for his role in the old sitcom Wings) has the thankless task of being a priggish network executive.

The rest of the main cast…including D.L. Hughley, Sarah Paulson, and Nathan Corddry as the lead stars in the show-within-a-show and Timothy Busfield as the director of the show…are sketched out a bit in the pilot but, with such a large ensemble, it will take a while to get a handle on all of the characters.

Sorkin, as I said before, has an unabashed point of view (and, apparently, a chip on his shoulder) and his script doesn’t shy away from lambasting President Bush’s intelligence or from flat out calling Pat Robertson a bigot. Guest star Judd Hirsch, playing the executive producer of the show, is given a fiery monologue cribbed straight from Paddy Chayefsky’s “I’m mad as hell” rant from Sidney Lumet’s classic 70’s movie Network (a fact duly noted in the script) that rips on network television (including, in a cheeky “biting the hand that feeds you” riff, taking potshots at NBC offerings such as The Apprentice and Fear Factor) with special venom.

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, judging by this introductory episode, has the potential to be a challenging, entertaining, wickedly subversive show…presuming it finds enough of an audience (one of those deplorable network practices is the fact that good shows are often not allowed the time it takes to find an audience) to reach that potential.

NBC released DVDs of the pilot through Netflix (which is how I saw it, of course), which is an interesting way of promoting the new show. (The DVD also included the pilot of Kidnapped, a mildy-interesting crime serial, and 5-minute previews of Heroes and Friday Night Lights.)

Back to Basics

Christina Aguilera never met a one-syllable word that she couldn’t stretch to five or six unnecessary syllables and she’s never come across a musical space she couldn’t fill with wailing, soaring, nearly-operatic vocal runs and fills (whether the space needed them or not)…but, all that said, I have to give proper credit to the lady for this record. The best of this two-disc collection is a sparkling pop confection that solidifies her position as one of the most talented vocalists of her generation of pop singers (and this coming from someone is who not really a fan of most of her previous offerings.)

And this indeed a pop record…some of the early rumors about Back to Basics suggested that it was going to be some of kind of honest-to-Billie jazz, torch song, or classic R&B album and there are touches of all those (and shout outs to folks like John Coltrane, Etta James, Donny Hathaway, Aretha Franklin, and others) on the first disc (produced by D.J. Premier) and more than touches on the second disc (produced by Linda Perry) …but this is, despite any affectations to the contrary, a pop record from start to finish (and that’s all to the good.)

Despite the self-conscious (and quite unconvincing) boasts of the track “Still Dirrty” (and the clumsy come-ons of “Naughty Nasty Boy” on the second disc…about which more later), Ms. Aguilera has toned down the sex kitten act and embraced a more adult perspective in her music on the first disc of Back to Basics with defiant self-affirmations like the quietly funky “Here to Stay”, sweet, gentle paeans like the lilting “Oh Mother”, and playful struts like the smokin’ hot tribute to her husband “Ain’t No Other Man”.

When Aguilera puts her powerful pipes to the gospel soul of “Makes Me Wanna Pray” (featuring some righteous keyboard work by Steve Winwood), you want to be in the choir that backs her up and sing “Hallelujah!”

(Okay, she could have left off the ego-stroking “Thank You” which is filled with snippets of fawning “Christina, you’re so wonderful and inspirational” messages from fans…but I guess I can give her a pass on that.)

If the first disc is filled with hip hop flavored beats and tasty pop, the second disc is more jazz and blues flavored and it’s just a little bit problematic for that.

“Candyman”, is a blatant, though admittedly still sassy, rewrite of the Andrews Sisters’ classic “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” but it is still a lot of swinging fun just the same.

There are more stumbles on the second disc than on the first…the salacious, brassy ballad “Nasty Naughty Boy”, for example, is much more embarrassing (for Xtina and, especially, for listeners) than it is sexy (which she was apparently going for.)

“I Got Trouble” is a stab at singing honky-tonk blues that doesn’t work because Aguilera, for all of her talent, just doesn’t have the credible blues chops to pull it off.

“Hurt”, on the other hand, is a big, string-laden pop-rock ballad that is elevated above its clichéd lyrics by her powerful and multi-faceted vocals (expect to hear this on pop radio a lot in the very near future.) The gospel confession of “Mercy on Me” soars so powerfully that you want her to have the forgiveness she pleads for in the song.

The acoustic (accompanied by a guitar and an unobtrusive string section) “Save Me from Myself” features some of Christina’s most subdued, and effective, vocals ever.

The strings are brought to the fore on “The Right Man”, the melodramatic tribute to her husband and her wedding that brings the disc to a close on an unfortunately overblown and sappy (if probably very heartfelt) note.

There are very few two-disc CD sets that wouldn’t have been more punchy and powerful if edited down to one disc…and Back to Basics is certainly no exception to that rule…but overall I have to give Ms. Aguilera (and her producers) kudos for putting together a double-disc collection with many more highlights than disappointments.

Testimony: Volume 1, Life and Relationship

India Arie is arguably the most positive person in pop music…and that’s an incredibly cool thing indeed. Even when she’s singing about heartbreak and ended relationships…as on the jaunty “Wings of Forgiveness”, the reflective “These Eyes”, and her shimmering cover of Don Henley’s “The Heart of the Matter”… she does so with an unshakeable emphasis on forgiveness and positive lessons learned.

Testimony: Volume 1, Life and Relationship is filled with songs of faith and empowerment…songs of self-awareness and hope for humankind…songs that could be insufferably cloying were it not for India’s sweetly earnest outlook that colors each of them. She also paints her songs from a rich, warm and welcoming sonic pallet (rich keyboards, warm guitars, gentle beats) that draws the listener in and holds them fast (and totally engaged) from beginning to end.

From the self-affirmations of “I Am Not My Hair” (this mix featuring rapper Akon…though I actually preferred the rap-free version of the song that was released as a single a few months back) and the gospel-flavored “I Choose” (featuring some tasty guitar by Bonnie Raitt) and “Good Morning” to tributes to the better angels of human nature like the sunny “There’s Hope” and the optimistic “Better People”, India is unflaggingly upbeat and it never seems forced or affected.

Along the way she name checks some of her heroes…Jesus, Gandhi, Nelson Mandela…and on “Private Party”, she slips in a sly quote from a song by her mentor and inspiration, Stevie Wonder…and it all flows smoothly without coming off as too precious or too naive.

Testimony (which was India’s first #1 album on the Billboard chart) is a sweet, uplifting, entertaining journey…a journey I will continue to take happily for some time to come.

The 50 Greatest Pop Culture Sidekicks

Entertainment Weekly loves to make lists…which is cool with me because, for some reason, I’ve had a fondness for making lists since I was a child (I used to make my own weekly Top 40 list of singles and then tape a show counting them down like I was some half-baked Casey Kasem…it’s a good thing those tapes are long lost…)

Their current list, like all of the others, is subject to debate…which is a big part of the fun, of course. Their current list is “The 50 Greatest Pop Culture Sidekicks of All Time”. The top 10:

1) Ed McMahon (Johnny Carson’s jovial yes man on The Tonight Show)

2)

Robin the Boy Wonder (Batman’s partner-in-crimefighting)

3)

George Constanza (Jerry’s conniving, sadsack best guy pal on Seinfeld)

4) Chewbacca (Han Solo’s beastly best bud)

5) Ethel Mertz (Lucy Ricardo’s best friend and partner-in-crime)

6) Dr. Watson (Sherlock Holmes’ able friend and assistant)

7) Samwise Gamgee (Frodo Baggins’ faithful fellow adventurer in The Lord of the Rings)

8) Ed Norton (Ralph Kramden’s affably ditzy best friend on The Honeymooners)

9) Tattoo (Mr. Roarke’s plane-spotting major domo on Fantasy Island)

10) Dwight Schrute (Michael Scott’s craven sycophant on The Office)

Others who show up on the list are Donkey (Shrek), Robin Quivers (The Howard Stern Show), Gromit (Wallace’s long-suffering partner), Keith Richards (who would probably balk at being called Mick Jagger’s sidekick), Silent Bob, Barney Rubble, Superman’s pal Jimmy Olsen, and Don Quixote’s faithful aide Sancho Panza.

The list gives no love at all to worthy sidekicks like my main man Tonto (who saved the Lone Ranger’s ass more than once), Public Enemy’s irrepressible Flavor Flav (below- and yes his reality shows are embarrassing to all involved but that doesn’t detract from the…well…flavor…he brought to PE’s best records and live shows), and Pinky (The Brain’s delightfully daffy cohort in repeated attempts to take over the world…Pinky and The Brain are finally coming out with a long-overdue DVD set later this month…yay!!)

Superman Returns

Okay, it was probably about 20-30 minutes too long (the denouement dragged on and on) and Lex Luthor’s master plan was a bit too, you’ll pardon the expression, “comic book-y” (but since he’s comic book super-villain I guess we should cut him a bit of slack on that one…) but, all in all, it was fun.

Superman Returns wasn’t quite the triumphant return to the movie theaters that Batman Begins was last year…but it had some spectacular effects (the bit with the plane was VERY cool), a fair amount of interesting character interaction (though the chemistry between Brandon Routh’s Superman and Kate Bosworth’s Lois Lane wasn’t nearly as compelling as that between Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder back in the day), and a charming sense of wonder (especially to folks like me who’ve been Superman fans since childhood.)

I could have done without the Christ analogies (overblown in the first movie…the ghost of Marlon Brando sonorously intoning about sending Earth his only son here as back then) but they’re ignored easily enough.

Kevin Spacey brought a sense of menace and malevolent whimsy to Luthor (Gene Hackman went for camp back in the original movies) and made for a reasonably credible opponent for the Man of Steel. Routh and Bosworth were fine…a bit bland but fine (though it was bit disconcerting that this movie takes place 5 years after the events of Superman II and yet both of them look much younger than the actors who played their characters in the earlier film)…but veterans Frank Langella, as Daily Planet editor Perry White, and Eva Marie Saint, as Superman’s mom Martha, was woefully underused (though Langella did get to use White’s catchphrase…”Great Caesar’s Ghost”…which tickled the fanboy in me anyway.)

Special kudos for dedicating the movie to Christopher and Dana Reeve. Very classy and appropriate.

A solid effort…I wasn’t completely blown away but I was entertained (and left with real hope and anticipation for a sequel.)

Piece by Piece

This disc starts off with a grand one-two punch…the silky, jazzy “Shy Boy” and the wistful, engaging “Nine Million Bicycles” (with lilting “ethnic flute” accents)…both of which were written by the collection’s producer/arranger/pianist Mike Batt. And though the rest of the set doesn’t match those highpoints there is much to enjoy and appreciate here.

Melua and Batt co-wrote the jaunty “Halfway Up the Hindu Kush” (no, I don’t know what that means.) Navel-gazing, naïve, high school poetry-like lyrics bog down some of the songs that Melua wrote by herself (“Spider's Web”, for example, asks “If a black man is a racist, is it okay?/If it’s a white man’s racism that made him that way?”…which I guess must have sounded profound when she wrote it…)

But the disc is enlivened with a handful of eclectic, nice-arranged covers: Johnny Mercer’s classic “Blues in the Night” (delivered with just enough soulful conviction to make it work), an interesting, low-key take on Canned Heat’s “On the Road Again”, and a sweetly earnest version of The Cure’s “Just Like Heaven”.

Melua also shines on “I Do Believe in Love”, the lovely closing song, which she wrote and which features just her lovely voice and her piano (this is the only cut on which Batt did not play piano.)

This is not a perfect CD by any means but the best parts of it are soothing, inviting, and even downright wonderful.

KatieMelua.com

Treasure Hunters

What a disappointment. The promos for this thing made it look like it would be smart, challenging, fun, intriguing, and involving (a combination, perhaps, of the globetrotting adventure of The Amazing Race and the on-the-fly puzzle solving of The DaVinci Code.)

But after watching the first two hours, Treasure Hunters turns out to be none of those things. It’s silly, poorly-edited, stuffed to the gills with intrusive product placements and, perhaps worst of all, just plain boring.

And, of course, a show like this rises and falls on the strength of its casting and none of the Treasure hunters made a positive impression on me (special kudos going to the pastor who freely admits to being ready to lie to win and who actually wrestles a clue out of the hand of a woman who found it first…and to the “geniuses” [as their team are labeled and a description they are more than happy to claim every time they're on camera] who come off as pretty clueless through the hunt so far.) And with no one to root for it’s hard to care about the show.

Maybe things will pick up as the field of contestants narrows (there are 30 players…in 1o teams of 3...in the first two hours and that's a lot of folks to try to keep sorted out) but I’m not going to bet on that.

The Most Controversial Movies of All Time

Entertainment Weekly, one of the many magazines that love to make all kinds of lists, has released their ranking of the "25 Most Controversial Movies of All Time". Their Top 10:

1) The Passion of the Christ (2004-directed by Mel Gibson)

2) A Clockwork Orange (1971-directed by Stanley Kubrick)

3) Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004-directed by Michael Moore)

4) Deep Throat (1972-directed by Gerard Damiano)

5) JFK (1991-directed by Oliver Stone)

6) The Last Temptation of Christ (1988-directed by Martin Scorsese)

7) The Birth of a Nation (1915-directed by D.W. Griffith)

8) Natural Born Killers (1994-directed by Oliver Stone)

9) Last Tango in Paris (1972-directed by Bernardo Bertolucci)

10) Baby Doll (1956-directed by Elia Kazan; written by Tennessee Williams)

2006 supplied two films to the list: The Da Vinci Code ranked at #13 and United 93 at #16.

Among the other rabble-rousing movies on the list are: Leni Riefenstahl’s infamous pro-Nazi documentary Triumph of the Will (1935) at #15, Paul Verhoeven’s lurid Basic Instinct (1992) at #19, Spike Lee’s incendiary Do the Right Thing (1989) #22, Larry Clark’s harrowing Kids (1995), and Disney’s (?!?!) Aladdin (1992), which drew fire over its Arabian stereotypes, at #25.

Oliver Stone, who has two films in the top 10, may have a shot at placing another film on a future list with his film World Trade Center due to be released in August. And Jesus, the subject of two of the top 10, may join him when Nativity, a biography of the Virgin Mary that features Jesus’ birth at his climax, comes out in December.

Taking the Long Way

The Dixie Chicks have come back after all of the controversy (following lead singer Natalie Maines’ disparaging remarks about President Bush and the war in Iraq) unapologetically loaded for bear and, with the help of super producer Rick Rubin and some other famous friends (including Bonnie Raitt, John Mayer, and Mike Campbell), they’ve delivered a very solid, feisty and tender and enormously entertaining, disc.

Country radio is shying away…especially with the soaring, defiant “Not Ready to Make Nice” having been released as the first single…but that didn’t stop Taking the Long Way from debuting at the top of both the pop and country charts with more than an half-million copies sold in the first week (nowadays radio is not nearly as important in generating CD sales as it used to be, of course.)

The twang in Maines’ voice is still unmistakable and the country flavor is still very apparent but this disc has more of a pop sheen than their earlier collections…and that’s not a bad thing. The Chicks co-wrote all 14 songs on the collection (Sheryl Crow and Keb’ Mo’ being included among the co-writers) and they deliver a nice set of songs. Maines is in fine voice both on upbeat tunes like the title track and the driving “Lubbock or Leave It” as well as lovely ballads like “Easy Silence”. There are some amazing harmony vocals as well…especially on the delicate, stunning “Lullaby”.

The disc ends with a fine new version of “I Hope”, the gospel-inflected song the Chicks co-wrote with Keb’ Mo’ and performed during a benefit for Hurricane relief last year.

The only drawback…and it’s a minor quibble…is that Rubin and the Chicks succumbed to the tendency to want to fill up the space on the CD by stretching songs to 4 or 5 minutes when some of them would have been just fine at 3 and ½ minutes or so. (But a lot of performers have done that since the compact disc became the dominant recording format and they will continue to do so.)

Taking the Long Way is a shining return to form after the mixed results of their last studio disc (2000’s Home) and it’s lovely to have the Dixie Chicks back.

The Da Vinci Code

All things considered, they probably did as well as they could in telescoping an expansive novel into a feature film (always a tricky and mostly thankless task…one wonders how the massive Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is going to fare next year.) It’s certainly not a great movie…neither director Ron Howard nor star Tom Hanks need to clear any space on their awards shelves for their work here…but, if you just suspend disbelief and go with it, it’s a somewhat entertaining (if sometimes poorly paced) movie.

That said, one of the drawbacks of the movie is that it lacks the energy and sense of wonder and discovery of Dan Brown’s novel. The book is, at its core, a combination of a potboiler thriller and a detective story that keeps you reading despite some occasionally mundane prose and some preposterous suppositions. The movie’s characters spend an inordinate amount of time pulling answers out of thin air and ponderously explaining plot points (though, to be fair, some of the flashbacks accompanying some of these soliloquies are stylishly filmed.)

The movie touches on most of the book’s major plot points…rewriting some stuff (because that’s what Hollywood guys do) for reasons that escape me…but it sacrifices character development (and some continuity rhythm) to do so. People who’ve read the book can fill in the blanks when it comes to character motivations. People who haven’t can enjoy it as a mildly engaging treasure hunt of a film. In fact it might be a more satisfying movie going experience for those who haven’t read the book since some of the big “reveals” might actually surprise them rather than coloring the way they look at characters as soon as they appear on screen.

Howard tried to walk the fine line between telling the story and skirting the controversy of its main plot points…near the end Hanks is twice given lines aimed at the audience saying, truthfully enough I suppose, that what’s important is “what you believe”…and more or less (and for better or for worse) he succeeds in that.

A Random Pop Culture List

The 50 Best Film Adaptation of Books...

...at least as chosen by Great Britain’s Book Marketing Society (personally I would have included Truman Capote's In Cold Blood and Richard Condon's The Manchurian Candidate...but that's just me.) The best film adaptation will be chosen by a poll of British book buyers online and in bookstores and announced in June.

The English Patient Michael Ondaatje
Goodfellas Nicholas Pileggi
The Vanishing Tim Krabbe
Lord Of The Flies William Golding
Remains Of The Day Kazuo Ishiguro
Close Range (Brokeback Mountain) Annie Proulx
Empire Of The Sun JG Ballard
Schindler's Ark (filmed as Schindler's List) Thomas Keneally
The Spy Who Came In From The Cold John le Carré
Different Seasons (Shawshank Redemption) Stephen King
American Psycho Bret Easton Ellis
Jaws Peter Benchley
Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? (filmed as Blade Runner) Philip K Dick
The Maltese Falcon Dashiell Hammett
The Hound Of The Baskervilles Arthur Conan Doyle
Heart Of Darkness (filmed as Apocalypse Now) Joseph Conrad
Oliver Twist Charles Dickens
Pride And Prejudice Jane Austen
Tess Of The D'Urbervilles Thomas Hardy
The Jungle Book Rudyard Kipling
Les Liaisons Dangereuses (filmed as Dangerous Liaisons) Choderlos de Laclos
1984 George Orwell
Alice In Wonderland Lewis Carroll
A Clockwork Orange Anthony Burgess
A Kestrel For A Knave (filmed as Kes) Barry Hines
Breakfast At Tiffany's Truman Capote
Get Shorty Elmore Leonard
Goldfinger Ian Fleming
Lolita Vladimir Nabokov
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest Ken Kesey
Day Of The Triffids John Wyndham
The Outsiders S E Hinton
The Railway Children E Nesbit
Watership Down Richard Adams
Charlie And The Chocolate Factory Roald Dahl
Orlando Virginia Woolf
The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie Muriel Spark
Brighton Rock Graham Greene
Catch-22 Joseph Heller
Doctor Zhivago Boris Pasternak
Fight Club Chuck Palahniuk
The French Lieutenant's Woman John Fowles
LA Confidential James Ellroy
The Godfather Mario Puzo
The Talented Mr Ripley Patricia Highsmith
To Kill A Mockingbird Harper Lee
Trainspotting Irvine Welsh
Sin City Frank Miller
Rebecca Daphne Du Maurier
Devil In A Blue Dress Walter Mosley

Surprise

Paul Simon’s last couple of studio CDs…Songs from the Capeman and You’re the One…were decidedly uneven affairs…certainly not on a par with great Simon collections like Graceland and Still Crazy After All These Years. Surprise doesn’t belong in that lofty company either…but it is a step in the right direction.

Simon is in fine voice and some of the tunes…especially the gently-acerbic post 9-11 rumination “How Can You Live in the Northeast?”, the gospel-tinged “Wartime Prayers” (featuring piano by Herbie Hancock and backing vocals by the Jessy Dixon Singers), the jaunty and witty “Outrageous”, and the lilting parental ode “Fathers and Daughters” awkward.

And Simon’s distinctive style is cushioned here by lush electronica touches by Brian Eno (who is credited with creating the “sonic landscape” and with playing “electronics”.) Simon hasn’t turned in a Talking Heads album or anything like that…most of Eno’s touches are back in the mix beneath the guitars, drums, and basses…but there is a pleasing lushness to the proceedings.

Surprise is not a great album but it is a good one and for longtime Simon fans like myself it’s a nice little addition to his catalog…one that will probably grow more even pleasing with repeated listenings.

NBC Fall Schedule

NBC is the first network to announce their schedule for the 2006-07 season. Among the shows not returning from the current season are The West Wing, Will & Grace, Joey, Surface, Teachers, Conviction, E-Ring, and Four Kings.

Mondays will kick off with the hit game show Deal or No Deal. Following at 9 will be Heroes, a sprawling new series about a genetics professor investigating the fact that people with superhuman abilities live among us, with Medium returning in the 10 PM slot.

Tuesdays begins with Friday Night Lights, a family drama based on the book about High School football of the same name. Then comes Kidnapped (among those in the large ensemble cast are Jeremy Sisto, Delroy Lindo, Dana Delany, and Timothy Hutton), a serial thriller revolving around the kidnapping of the son of a wealthy New York couple followed by the returning Law & Order: SVU.

Wednesday is bracketed by two returning shows: The Biggest Loser at 8 and the long-running Law & Order (with “exciting” cast changes) at 10. In between will be two new sitcoms: 20 Good Years, an Odd Couple-type show revolving around two aging men who come to realize that life doesn’t last forever (leaving them…wait for it…about 20 good years) starring the potentially grand team of John (3^rd Rock from the Sun) Lithgow and Jeffrey (Arrested Development) Tambor…and 30 Rock, one of two NBC shows revolving behind the behind-the-scenes action at a late night comedy/variety show with Saturday Night Live vets Tina Fey and Tracy Morgan along with Alec Baldwin.

NBC’s once powerhouse “Must See TV” Thursday tries to get back up to speed with yet another revamp. The first hour will showcase the comedies My Name is Earl and The Office. At 9, the other show about the behind-the-scenes goings on at a late night comedy, West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin’s Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, will do battle with CBS’ might CSI. The hour-long drama will feature an ensemble cast led by Matthew (Friends) Perry and Bradley (West Wing) Whitford. ER will anchor the 10 PM spot with new shows through a December cliffhanger when it will give way to The Black Donnelleys, a crime drama about four Irish brothers in organized crime. ER will return after The Black Donnelleys finishes its run.

Friday will start with a second edition of Deal or No Deal followed by Las Vegas and, relocating from Sundays, Law & Order: Criminal Intent.

Saturday will begin with the newsmagazine Dateline and then continue with rebroadcasts of episodes of drama series at 9 and 10.

Sundays will feature the new Sunday Night Football primetime game anchored by Al Michaels and John Madden. The games will be preceded by Football Night in America, a studio pre-game show featuring Bob Costas, Cris Collingsworth, and Jerome Bettis. After the football season is over, Simon Cowell’s America’s Got Talent (hosted by Regis Philbin) will take over the 8 PM slot followed by The Apprentice (with Donald Trump taking his new search to Los Angeles) and Raines, a quirky police drama starring Jeff Goldblum.

Scrubs and Crossing Jordan have also been renewed and will be plugged into the schedule as other series fail.

Best and Worst Autograph Givers

According its 14th annual survey, Autograph Collector magazine (who knew such a thing existed? But then I don't care about autographs so I'm not part of their target audience:-) named Johnny Depp (above) is the most accommodating celebrity when it comes to signing autographs (Depp led the 2005 list as well.) Cameron Diaz (below) is, according to them, the worst in that regard (instead of just saying "no" supposedly Ms. Diaz lectures autograph hounds about how dumb trying to collect autographs is.)

Following Depp on the list of the 10 best autograph signers of '06 are: George Clooney, Matt Damon, Al Pacino, Tom Cruise, Angelina Jolie, Elijah Wood, Brittany Murphy, Jack Nicholson, and Clint Eastwood.

Joining Diaz on the autograph Scrooge list are: Bruce Willis, Demi Moore, Tobey Maguire, Alan Alda, Halle Berry, Winona Ryder, Teri Hatcher, Joaquin Phoenix, and Russell Crowe. (And they are all, of course, completely free not to sign their names over and over if they don't wish to.)

The complete list will appear in the June issue of Autograph Collector.

Pop Culture News and Notes

A British court ruled against The Beatles in their suit against Apple Computer (which they filed to prevent Apple from using the apple-shaped logo on their iTunes site; the Beatles contend that they had a 1991 agreement with Apple that prevented the computer giant from using the logo, which they claim was too similar to the Beatles’ own Apple Records logo, on music-related enterprises.) Apple Corps…which was founded by the Beatles in 1968 and which is still owned by Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, John Lennon’s widow Yoko Ono, and the estate of George Harrison…is most likely going to appeal. For its part, Apple Computer hopes to reach some kind of amicable accommodation with the Beatles that might include iTunes finally having the music of the Fab Four, which is not legally available as online downloads, for sale.

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Mission: Impossible 3 opened with comparatively soft numbers despite (or maybe because of) the incessant promo tour Mr. Cruise and his big wide grin embarked on last week. $48 million in domestic box office is still a lot of money but it probably disappoints the producers and the studio anyway since that is about $10 million less than Mission: Impossible 2 did during its opening weekend back in 2000. It gets worse when you factor in rising ticket prices between 2000 and now because the estimated number of people who went to see MI3 during its first weekend was more than 3 million less than those who queued up for MI2’s debut. There’s no reason to cry for Tom or the studio since it’s likely that MI3’s overseas take (where couch jumping and wild-eyed rants about postpartum depression may not have the same impact) will help them all make mountains of dough just the same.

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Axl Rose has reportedly said that the oft-delayed new Guns ‘n’ Roses disc, Chinese Democracy, will be released sometime this fall. The record has been talked about for just about a decade now so Axl will just have to forgive us if we don’t hold our breath in anticipation that this thing will actually drop this year…

Living with War

I'm living with war in my heart
I'm living with war in my heart and my mind
I'm living with war right now

Don't take no tidal wave
Don't take no mass grave
Don't take no smokin' gun
To show how the west was won
But when the curtain falls, I pray for peace
Try to remember peace

There’s nothing ambiguous about Neil Young’s feelings about the war in Iraq, the Bush Administration, and the United States…he hates the first, he deplores the second, and he loves the third but thinks it (that is to say, we) could do better than we’re doing when it comes to decrying the first two.

Living with War (as of this writing, it’s only available for streaming from the major online services) is a nakedly political, scathing firebomb thrown into the mix of the ongoing discussion about the war and its consequences. This is a record designed to incite passions all along the political spectrum.

Musically, this 10-track set…recorded quickly and very recently (the first session was in late March)…is a great rock and roll record. In places it flat out rocks with the grunge-y kick of some of Young’s better electric records (as opposed to the somber mood of records like last year’s Prairie Wind.) The sound is created by a compelling combination of guitar, bass, and drums along with trumpet and a 100-voice choir.

The title song has lovely choral vocals over a solid mid-tempo rocker (featuring some grand fuzzy guitar licks.) “Shock and Awe”, which features both a solid guitar riff and some sterling trumpet solos, feels like an acerbic companion piece to “Rockin’ in the Free World”, Young’s fierce broadside against the first President Bush back in the late 80’s while the compact “Families” hits the ground running and never lets up. The current President Bush is taken to task in the less-than-subtle “Let’s Impeach the President” (which features sound clips of the President talking about war, Saddam Hussein, the Patriot Act, WMDs, and other things Young labels as “lies”):

Let’s impeach the president for lying
And leading our country into war
Abusing all the power that we gave him
And shipping all our money out the door

He’s the man who hired all the criminals
The White House shadows who hide behind closed doors
And bend the facts to fit with their new stories
Of why we have to send our men to war

The President is targeted less directly on “Looking for a Leader”, which talks about looking for someone to “re-unite the red, white, and blue before it turns to stone” (Young wonders if that new leader might be a woman or a black man…name-checking Barack Obama and Colin Powell along the way as possible candidates.)

“Flags of Freedom” is a clever, audacious update of Bob Dylan’s “Chimes of Freedom” (Dylan is name-checked in the lyrics) with an insistent backbeat and a tasty harmonica solo.

The set ends with the choir offering up a gorgeous, wistful, un-ironic version of “America the Beautiful” as its shimmering grace note.

This is a passionate, heartfelt, angry, hopeful, defiant record and that remains true whether you agree with Young’s politics or not.

“Living with War” and “Let’s Impeach the President”
words and music by Neil Young
©2006 Silver Fiddle Music (ASCAP)

We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions

I have to admit that when I heard that Bruce was making an album of folk song covers my first reaction was that we were in for something along the somber lines of the wondrous Nebraska or the less-enthralling The Ghost of Tom Joad. But Springsteen and his cohorts on We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions are not in a somber mood…quite the contrary they are in a mood to make a joyful noise and by golly that’s exactly what they do.

For the most part, Springsteen eschews the political songs associated with Pete Seeger (the anti-war track “Mrs. McGrath” being an exception) in favor of engaging, high-steppin’ versions of some of the folk songs Seeger recorded over the year…including traditional chestnuts such as the classic “John Henry”, the charming “Froggie Went A-Courtin’”, the inspirational “Eyes on the Prize”, “Jesse James”, and the rollicking gospel burner “O Mary Don’t You Weep”.

Springsteen (who brings a playful, almost Tom Waits-like growl to some of the tunes) sounds like he’s having a ball as he leads a crack band of 13 players (on violins, horns, guitars, keyboards, and vocals) through 13 songs associated with Seeger. The only members of the E Street Band involved here are violinist Soozie Terrell (who plays on all cuts) and Patti Scialfa (who sings background vocals on 9 tracks.)

The album was recorded “live” during three one-day sessions with no rehearsals (Bruce can be heard calling out changes and solos throughout the record); they worked out the arrangements as they played and the music sounds vital and all the more compelling for that off-the-cuff energy. The title track was recorded in 1997 for a Seeger tribute album, the others were recorded in 2005 and 2oo6.

This is an enormously entertaining disc that will set your toes to tappin' and your soul to hummin'…or as Bruce himself says in the liner notes, “turn it up, put on your dancin’ and singin’ shoes, and have fun”. ‘Nuff said.