Decade: 2001

Winter:

In the cold January of 2001, what does one do with the balance left on his record store gift certificate? If you’re me, you get obscure depression era folk music – to cheer yourself up.

Okay, so maybe it's not party music, but I found great comfort in Harry Smith’s Anthology of Folk Music. This six CD set covers the odd - sometimes very odd - folk songs that floated around this great country of ours during the twenties and thirties. It kicks off with a singer who makes Grandpa Jones sound like Tom Jones. Of course, it’s about the perfidy of wimmin. From there, we get to thwarted love, misunderstood outlaws, murder and fiddles, in various combinations. The cast of characters includes Stagerlee, Frankie and Johnny, President Roosevelt (the second one), John Henry, King Kong and God. How do you feel about old people singing? I ask because everyone here sounds old. But I'll bet none of them were over twenty five at the time. And every once in a while, there’s the odd lyric you could swear you’ve heard before. And you did, because Bob Dylan “borrowed” it.

Valentine’s Day:

I somehow rated a present that year, and got Ken Burns’s Jazz – Charlie Parker. It’s easy to go wrong when trying to get a good compilation of a major jazz artist, but this single CD sounds fine to me. Parker was a brilliant improviser, with major chops, who, along with Dizzy Gillespie, revolutionized jazz. How did they even think of songs like “Koko” and “Salt Peanuts”, let alone play them?
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Now playing: Charlie Parker - Salt Peanuts
via FoxyTunes

Take This Job and Shove It:

Around this time I changed jobs, and decided to stamp this major life event with new music. (I did something similar when I tried my first slice of anchovie pizza, and got Beethoven’s Nine Symphonies.)

Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew had been calling out to me since it came out in 1970. I held off because I suspected that it would be one of those albums whose reputation was greater than the actual music. Overrated, for short. I can’t possibly appreciate it for what it represents in the evolution of jazz. It’s kind of like trying to appreciate sound pictures when you didn’t live through the silent era. So, yes, to my ears it’s overrated, and you can get a shorter, sharper sampling of similar music on the great A Tribute to Jack Johnson.

Then there was the Fugees’ The Score, which was a bit out of my reach at the time. Stressful times call out for soothing, familiar music. The Fugees were neither, and so I put it aside. Now, eight years later I’m hearing it more, but neither cover (“No Woman No Cry”, “Killing Me Softly”) sounds different enough from the originals for me to care much. Good, not great.

Earth Wind and Fire’s Greatest Hits - If you asked me what type of music I didn’t like in the 70s, this would be it. Rhythm, horns, a male vocalist singing in a high register, style, commercial appeal, etc. - all no-nos for an awkward teenager like me. But this isn’t bad at all, their version of “Got To Get You Into My Life” notwithstanding. “September” is simply undeniable. If you don’t like it, check your pulse. And the rest is much better than I ever realized.

Father’s Day:

I invoked the rule “have someone else buy something for you that you may never get around to getting on your own”. This resulted in Nirvana’s “Unplugged”, which is a good record with some great moments, but only “On a Plane” offers something different from the original version. “Where Did You Sleep?” is the grim highlight at the end. Miss you, Kurt.

The Rolling Stones “Sticky Fingers” held up very well, even if I didn’t need to hear “Brown Sugar” or “Bitch” ever again. “Sway” and “Dead Flowers” are great, “Moonlight Mile” is a classic, and “Wild Horses” just never seems to tire out.

The Calm at Labor Day:

So there I am in my favorite downtown record store, only up to the B’s when a bunch of firemen burst in. Oh no, I’m thinking, how hot and smoky would it have to get before I aborted? It turned out to be a smoke condition down the block, so I got back to my obsession.

Two weeks later, these very same firemen would get a call that would be anything but routine. Did even one of them make it out alive, I wonder? But in the meantime, I, not knowing what was about to come, really enjoyed playing the CDs I got.

Like the gentle folk and noisy guitar extremes of Yo La Tengo’s “Electro Pura”, which is almost as good as their masterpiece “I Hear the Heart Beat As One”.
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Now playing: Yo La Tengo - Tom Courtenay
via FoxyTunes

Then there was David Bowie’s “Hunky Dory” (link) a pop record from before his stateside fame.

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Now playing: David Bowie - Life on Mars
via FoxyTunes

Van Morrison’s “Bang Masters” is okay, but it’s really just an awkward stepping stone between Them and “Astral Weeks” (which I’m still waiting to be remastered).

And although I don’t think you can ever have too much noisy guitar, Archer’s of Loafs’s “Vee Vee” and Sleater Kinney’s “Dig Me Out” made me rethink my position. While both are good, neither could quite win me over. The latter was a particular disappointment since I’m a big fan of their previous one “Call the Doctor”.

Massive Attack’s “Protection” opens with the fantastic title song, but the rest of the record just can’t keep up. It averages out to pretty good, but the strings bug me. Better was Tricky’s subsequent soundscape “Maxinquay”, which offers no hint of salvation.

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Now playing: Massive Attack - Protection
via FoxyTunes

Thelonius Monk’s “Brilliant Corners” is considered the one to get by him. It’s very good, but I have several others records by him that I like even more. (Misterioso!)

But the one that got me through the time after those first two weeks was the wonderful, spacey voice and chimy guitars of Luna’s “Penthouse”. (link) What was pretty before 9/11, also seemed regretful and resigned after it. Perfect for 9/12. And I wouldn’t be able to listen to anything else for a while. (Hell, I heard a guy blasting Enya out of his car that week. Even I couldn’t blame him.)

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Now playing: Luna - Moon Palace
via FoxyTunes

Embers:

It took a pre 9/11 BMG order, arriving in late September for me to finally get a CD that came out this decade – Outkast’s “Stankonia”, which is a perfect example of music that isn’t in my favorite genre (hip hop) but that even I can tell is great. This fast, funny, wordy and often thoughtful CD is what I put on when I’m in the mood to take on a difficult book. (link BOB, Ms. Jackson)

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Now playing: OutKast - Ms. Jackson
via FoxyTunes

My wife had to console herself with Andrea Bocelli, and if you have to as well, please get Sogno, and not that power ballad collection disguised as Euro-sophistication Romanza. Christ.

Thanksgiving:

John Coltrane’s Blue Train was a disappointment at first because the title track turned out to not be that amazing song I heard on the radio twenty years ago (which I’m still trying to track down). But I’m past it now, and this is a very good record - as good a place to start getting into Coltrane as “My Favorite Things” which I got at the end of the year. Some day I’ll find that song…

Then there was Iris Dement’s “My Life”, which my family can’t stand because of Iris’s country vibrato and the traditional-type melodies that scare off the city folk. Otherwise, it’spractically flawless. But it takes an effort, and I’ve got enough to do around the holidays. But if you're feeling like you don't matter in this world, listen to the title song.

Christmas:

So I retreated to comfort music, and replaced some vinyl, by getting the Velvet Underground’s “Peel Slowly and See” and Citizen Steely Dan for Christmas.

The surprising thing is that I gravitated to Steely Dan, instead of the Velvets. Considering that the former set had virtually no new music on it, you'd think I would have tired of it quickly. But it was the latter, with the extra, and often unnecessary, new stuff that put me off. And how could they leave off the official live double album, and "She's My Best Friend", one of their greatest songs? And did we really need a whole CD of demos of five songs? On the other hand, the remainder is some of the greatest rock and roll ever made.

I guess I was priding myself that my black-as-ink outlook would enable me to handle the infamous subject matter of both bands. Not so. Steely Dan was practically sweet in comparison. And as much as I wouldn’t admit it, I needed sweet.

The Best:

• Anthology of Folk Music
• Luna - Penthouse
• Yo La Tengo-Electro Pura
• Charlie Parker
  

Two years into Our Decade and I’ve only gotten one record – Outkast - actually released in it. And I admire that record more than I love it. I guess there were worse things at the time, like the f’ing world coming to an end.

Decade: 2000

Winter Draught / Spring Awakening:

For some reason, I just wasn’t getting any new music for the first few months of 2000. This was probably due to and end of decade record buying binge that then caused me to swear off of them for a while. It wasn’t until the Memorial Day that I felt like picking anything up. Mmm, where to start? How about a couple of Village Voice Pazz and Jop winners for 1999?

Belatedly starting the musical decade off with a bang, The Magnetic Fields three disc set “69 Love Songs” completely monopolized my CD player for the entire month of June. And not just because there was a lot of it. It was so good I had no desire to hear anything else.
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Now playing: The Magnetic Fields - All My Little Words
via FoxyTunes

Poor Moby, who’s “Play” just wasn’t for that month. And yet, by the time I got around to it, I found it to be, if anything, even more remarkably consistent than 69. You’ve definitely heard some of this, even if only on commercials.

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Now playing: Moby - Porcelain
via FoxyTunes

Around the same time, my wife wanted to play her students an example of scat singing. So, what would be better than Ella Fitzgerald’s “75^th Birthday Celebration”? That lesson lasted one day but we’ve still got this wonderful two disc set. It’s not for every occasion, but it is just exotic enough to pull you out of an otherwise ordinary day.

Summer:

Later that summer, we caught Blue Man Group, and picked up their first record, “Audio”. If you haven’t seen BMG yet, you should check them out. They’re a lot of fun, and the record stands quite well on its own.

Then came my annual birthday run, which is kind of like an orgy, except that instead of women, there are CDs. (Hey, the first step is knowing you have a problem.) This time around, I got a little too ambitious.

I figured Hole’s “Live Through This” would be my ace in the hole, but it didn’t quite meet my expectations. It turned out to be a typical “record that everyone liked, and even you liked what you heard on the radio, but once you bought it you thought it was really not such a big deal”. It’s quite good, just not great. Courtney can scream really great, though.

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Now playing: Hole - Rock Star
via FoxyTunes

Then there was jazz, like Cecil Taylor’s “Unit Structures” which is the type of record I buy when I’m in the grip of one of my “I can listen to any kind of music no matter what” delusions. It is surely one of the wildest records I’ve ever gotten. It’s like being locked in a room with a band that happens to be high, and mad as hell. I put it on when I feel that my soul has been crushed and I need something that will scatter all the pieces, or on beautiful summer days when I’m just not with the program. Another “put it on to get rid of the company” record.

When trying to decide on which Charles Mingus record to start with, I choose “Mingus Ah Um” - the one with the pretty cover. At first, it was just a bit out of reach at the time – despite the so infectious I can’t believe I’m hearing it “Better Get Hit in Your Soul” - but over the years, it’s grown on me, and is now one of my favorite jazz records.
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Now playing: Charles Mingus - Better Get Hit in Your Soul
via FoxyTunes

Aphex Twin’s, ambient, well “Selected Ambient Works, Volume II” was the polar opposite of Cecil Taylor, and as such is the type of record that – when company is over – is likely to elicit remarks like “one of your speakers must be out”. It’s similar to one of my all time favorite records – Eno’s “Another Green World”, but way drier. For devotees of sensory deprivation, which is what I must have needed in 2005, because I played it a lot at the time.

Somewhat similar (but boy does that somewhat make a difference!) is Kraftwerk’s “Trans Europe Express”. Leave it to the Germans to come up with something robotic, yet catchy.

See if you can spot the song that became a hip hop cornerstone.
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Now playing: Kraftwerk - Trans Europe Express
via FoxyTunes

And how could I leave out world music? I traveled to Africa (well, that section of the record store, anyway) for Mzaki Mbili’s “Resistance is Defense”. There’s a great sounding guitar throughout the album, but that’s part of the problem. The whole album sounds like one catchy song. Good, but too repetitive.

Next time I have to remember to balance things out a bit more. But, hey, I figured that I had the law of averages working for me.

Thanksgiving:

Leave it to my Thanksgiving run to save the day. I had been flirting with the local used CD store for a while, but feared that I’d get burned. But this time I took the plunge and came up with one great, and one worthwhile, record.

First, there was Randy Newman’s brilliant, hilarious, dark, profane “Faust”. Musically, it was perfect for the holiday season. Thematically, it couldn’t have been more perverse. This is the only context where I can accept James Taylor as God. Randy’s the devil, of course. Bonnie Raitt does the great “Feels Like Home” and Linda Ronstadt doesn’t annoy me.
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Now playing: Bonnie Raitt - Feels Like Home
via FoxyTunes

I remember putting Robin Holcomb’s first record on repeat one late night at work. It played about six times before I left. It’s quiet, slow and jazzy, and maybe a little too much of all of these things. But good to listen to when miserable, which I am from time to time.

Christmas:

And finally, when I got a gift certification to my favorite record store I thought I died and went to heaven. It was time for a major plunge into something new (by which I mean old), and this time I chose Louis Armstrong. I found his “Complete Hot Fives and Sevens” and the more wide ranging “Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man”. Both are 4 CD box sets. I went deep with the former, because the box was smaller! This music is now 80 years old, and I still can only wonder what it sounded like to people at the time. It must have been comparable to heavy metal in its shear size. I love to just take one of the CDs at random and plop it into the player. I’ll probably never get to the bottom of it all.

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Now playing: Louis Armstrong - Potato head blues
via FoxyTunes

The Tally:

The great records that I have an immediate love for - as opposed to an appreciation - were:

• 69 Love Songs
• Faust
• Play

None of these records was released in 2000. So far, My Decades is pretty good. Ours hasn’t started yet.

My Decade, Your Decade - Whatever

Okay, summer’s kinda over. Time for me to get off my ass and take a look at this musical decade. You know, to avoid the Christmas rush.

Be a stickler if you like, and tell me it won’t be over until the end of 2010, but I’m not buying it. For me, it’s 2000 through 2009, so if you disagree, let’s just agree that you’re wrong. Hey, I need the extra time, since I’m, almost by definition, at least a year behind, and many dollars short.

I guess there’ll be a My Decade aspect to this, which covers the CDs I got this decade, regardless of when they came out, and an Our Decade, which is limited to what was released this decade, at least the miniscule portion I heard. Who cares, you ask? Good question. It would be miraculous if either My or Ours bore any relation to Yours.

Now if you have no life and take an unwarranted interest in my opinion, please don’t write me an outraged email about how I’m a socialist because I didn’t mention your favorite album. I probably didn’t even hear it. And if I did, and just didn’t get it, who cares?

But if you want to tell me about a great album that I missed, fine. I’m showing you mine - you might as well show me yours. I can always add it to my amazon.com wish list, and my wife’ll get it for me for Christmas. (Because it’s all about me, you see.) But keep in mind what kinds of music I seem to like (to your right) and not like. Metal, for instance. I don’t get metal. I don’t like metal. Unless it’s a quintessential “metal album that non-metal heads will love”, don’t bother.

By the way, if you have a suggestion about what to call this decade, I’m all ears. I still don’t know. (The Aughts? The Oughts?)

And the more I look at it, I may in fact be at least a decade, and perhaps a century, behind, since I seemed to have spent the earlier part of this one catching up with the latter part of the last one. I suspect I’ll continue along this way, catching up with the last century whenever possible. Which pretty much means jazz, which ended in 1965 by the way. (Just kidding.) I had been getting into classical music but I kept getting beat up by the other kids. Now that I’m bigger, I’ll try again.

Coming up next, My 2000.

Let's Keep it That Way, or, Harry Knows the Words, or The Evil That Men Do, Part Four

While in the shower, or alone in the car, you may briefly persuade yourself that, hey, you really can sing. But then you try to hit that high note, and someone offers to call an ambulance. You’re brought back to earth, and decide not to call the record company after all. Alas, some of us remain blissfully ignorant of such limitations.

Have you ever been stuck in a car with someone, like on a family trip or carjacking, who sings along to the radio, but is just not even coming close to the tune? They just keep on going anyway, like they’re under no obligation to get it even half-right? You might even conclude that, in a manner similar to farting, they simply forgot that you were there, and went ahead with it.

Or, god bless them, they may think they’re nailing it, and for your pleasure, they’re saying let me lay my “stylings” on you. Let's call it the Fourth Deadly Sin.

You've seen the episode of “Family Guy” (you don't watch “Family Guy”? You can stop reading now. Well, okay, keep reading, but then go see it, okay?) when Brian starts to hum "Country Road"? :

Stewie: Who sings that song?

Brian: James Taylor.

Stewie: Yeah, let's keep it that way.

I had a friend who would whistle along to songs in a…well, the term “complete monotone” barely conveys his utter disregard for the melody. His standard of excellence was to more or less keep up with the song. His technique was not quite on the level of, oh let’s say Bing Crosby. It was more like calling-the-dog or rooting-for-the-team-at-the-stadium. Well, the dog’s dead, the home team lost, and the song – Led Zeppelin notwithstanding – didn’t remain the same.

And then there are your drunken friends. (And don't tell me you didn't have drunk friends. You either had them or you were them.) Way back when, I attended a Harry Chapin concert with some friends who were big fans of his. I thought he was pretty good, too. It was an outdoor show, with general admission seating, so you had to get there six hours early with a cooler full of beer. I worked that day, and didn’t have to do all the work. They accepted my gratitude by drinking most of the beers. Fair enough.

When I finally got there I tried to get into the spirit of things, but was always at least six beers behind, so, like most of the other five thousand people there, I still wanted to hear, you know, Harry Chapin. But alcohol tends to decrease your musical abilities, while, in an interesting paradox, increasing your estimation of them. By the time the show started, my friends had decided to play the “let’s all sing along at the top of our lungs” game. This game is more popular at bars at 3am, but my brave friends would not let a different setting deter them.

It would be fair to say that I always had a narrow comfort zone at concerts. There were a number of things that could potentially ruin a show for me:

• Bad sound
• Bad seats
• A very tall person sitting in front of me.
• A person of any height standing up to dance/clap, etc. in front of me. (It appears I’ve been outvoted on this one, and I’ve since relented.)
• A short show (anything less than three hours)
• People sitting next to me who sing along

And I’m one of those oddballs who assumes that the band made the record the way they wanted it to be heard – that they didn’t spend hundreds of painstaking hours in the studio, only to say "And here is where I really need some tuneless whistling ". And that their rehearsal strategy isn’t "And if I forget my part, or just don’t feel like singing, an impromptu drunk chorus would really help." However, my friends and I hadn’t the opportunity to discuss my philosophy ahead of time.

So, that night’s version of “Cats in the Cradle” invited a literal and tragic interpretation. And “Taxi” convinced me that she was right in dumping that loser. After about an hour of this, I got fed up, turned to my friends and said with mock reassurance: "Hey guys, Harry knows the words."

I've apparently gone down in "friend history" for this. My behind-my-back-nickname has been "Mother Superior" ever since. They should have called me Stewie.

But on reflection, maybe I haven’t given my friends their due. Maybe they weren’t being drunken louts after all! You know how an Indian shaman would take peyote and see visions? My friends were taking Budweiser and looking ten years into the future: a future without Harry, but with karaoke machines. Somebody would have to sing those songs, they figured.

And then there’s Harry Chapin himself, dying a suspiciously short time after the show. Car accident, you say? Here’s my theory: He’s driving home and pops in a tape he made of that concert, and, well… wouldn’t you?

To this day, when I hear “Well, it was raining hard in Frisco” it’s in friend Tom’s voice, not Harry Chapin’s. Oh, I hear, Harry, too – turning over in his grave.
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Now playing: Harry Chapin - Taxi
via FoxyTunes

The Other JB, But not James - or Jackson - Brown(e)

My childhood friend Mike always got to see the movies I couldn't go to. He'd tell me the next day about "Planet of the Apes", "Easy Rider", "The Godfather" or whatever. Whatever, though, was usually the latest James Bond movie.

I remember "Goldfinger", or rather Mike's retelling of it, most clearly. Something about a naked woman painted gold. Now, there were at least two things in that sentence that I'd never seen before. And the promise of vastly more.

One aspect of my childhood, and maybe yours, was that, as much as we had, there always seemed to be something else a little out of reach. Back before VCRs and DVD players, you either caught a movie in the theater or, if you were lucky, a mangled version of it on TV years later. Some obstacles to luck were the movie being on too late, your parents still not letting you see it, or your siblings wanting to watch something else. (I dimly recall such a conflict. I don't remember what everybody else wanted to see, but my choice was "I Dream of Jeannie". "Well, you can dream of her later" mom said. Dream I did, and more.) So by the time you got to see it - whatever the damned thing was - you were older, and wondered what all the fuss was about. One exception was "Night of the Living Dead", which held up to expectations once it came on late night TV, thankfully not too long after some friends raved about it.

But certain TV series, or movies that were part of a series, always fascinated me. Did you know anyone who went in at 8pm on Saturday night to watch "The Prisoner"? Well, now you do. (I still managed to miss the last episode, though.) Whenever there was more than one part to something, I became fascinated in finding all of them. "Origin" stories were of particular interest. And back then, the chances of seeing all of them were close to nil.

Such fascination recently drove me to renting the first (but only the first) "Lost in Space" DVD. I had been told about it numerous times by friends who had seen it and then gotten on with their lives. Not me. But now Netflix would be my salvation once again! But, you know, it kind of sucked. Big surprise. Well, I'm finally past it. And how.

As an avid comic reader, I was always missing one of the parts of a series (Damn you, Marvel! At least your lame competitor DC kept the stories to a single issue.) I would address this in a manner much too embarrassing to detail even here. But that's the story of my life – always missing a piece, always obsessed with finding it.

Then there were the trading cards which basically canonized a movie or TV show. Besides JB, there was "Planet of the Apes", "The Monkees" and, oh yeah, baseball. The JB cards even had trivia questions on the back.

Question: How did Goldfinger die?

Answer, from full-of-crap friend: "He swallowed a jet"

"Swallowed A JET?" I asked. "Yeah, it's a small pill that...blah, blah, blah." No wonder I was obsessed.

So, for me, James Bond was special. There was all that sex (or, to my eight year old mind, all that being cool around girls) and violence. And the fact that James did a lot of his secret agenting while wearing a suit. This gave us something fun to do on Sundays after Mass, since our parents made us stay dressed up. We could play James Bond (or Man from UNCLE)! I wonder how many father's hats were ruined by a kid who borrowed it to play "Oddjob"?

Apparently I was not alone in feeling this way. I just finished reading "The Man Who Saved Britain", by Simon Winder, which is about one (other) man's ridiculous obsession with the whole James Bond phenomenon. He, being about ten years younger than me, got sucked in by "Live and Let Die". While I find that hard to believe, I'm the last one who should talk. It's an hilarious confession, and an fascinating history of post war Britain. It goes a long way to explain JB's popularity then.

If not the abberrant behavior I'd occasionally display. Like ten years ago, back before Netflix, when one of the cable channels, as a Thanksgiving treat, ran "all" of the James Bond movies back to back. Now, I'm not a complete idiot. I wasn't expecting "Citizen Kane", but I did see this as a great opportunity to tape them and then, finally, watch and savor(?) them one by one at my leisure. This would resolve all the mysteries, fill in all the blanks, put all the puzzle pieces in place. My life would be officially complete, what with the wife and kid thing already checked off.

So I set up the basement VCR, and kicked it off at 8pm that night. Unbeknownst to me, at about 8:02pm my then six year old son Michael went down to the basement and changed the channel. Luckily(?) for me, at 8:03,he came up and asked if I was taping anything (What a great kid, huh?) But it was too late. Now my anticipated 8 or 16 hours of pure JB had been irretrievably ruined by this precious minute of over-taping. How would I even follow the plot now? What deep insights did this one minute at the start of "Dr No" hold that would strengthen my appreciation of the subsequent sixteen hour's worth of movies? IT WAS ALL…TOTALLY…RUINED!

So I might have overreacted a little.

I yelled a bit, and Michael got upset (Sorry, Mikey!). He drew a heartbreaking picture of him leaving home "so that all the problems would go away". This picture is still kept and treasured, and continues to remind me that even if Mikey were to mug an old lady or set our house on fire - with me in it - I can't yell at him.

My wife told me that I came thiiiis close to getting the "Complete James Bond" Movie Collection that Christmas - which I must tell you I definitely DID NOT want. Why not, you might ask? Well, as I explained to my wife at the time, I wasn't watching these movies to enjoy them so much as I was trying to satisfy my curiosity. By the way, I never got past "Goldfinger".

Even I began to figure out that the things that fascinate you as a kid don't hold up very well later. (Exception: Little Rascals. But I will now try to determine if there is anything here to warrant such fascination.

Let's try the movies:

Dr No

A friend from Jamaica told me that he was living there when they were filming this, and actually met Sean Connery. He described the pre-SNL Connery as "nice and friendly". Aside from the scenery, the only thing here is the basic formula: mad scientist, beautiful woman, dying minority henchmen.

From Russia With Love

If memory serves, this ended up on a double bill with Dr. No when the Goldfinger hoopla was dying down. This one holds up the best, which, sadly, isn't saying much now. It also marks the first of many occasions when JB turns a bad girl good. (How, I wondered?) And there I was wasting time trying to turn the good ones bad. It has a plot, a few henchmen and some gadgets. The latter would get totally out of hand later.

Goldfinger:

Well, there's no getting around it. This is the grail. The lodestone. The source of all the allure and mystery. The Daily News, even years later, would call it "smashing entertainment", and, okay, it's not too bad. It's also unfair of me to expect it to be much better. I'm more of a John le Carre type, so there's only so much I can like this stuff,

But to hell with it. Here goes: First, there are all the self sacrificing, yet incompetent henchmen (the benefits must have been great) another bad (and butch) girl turned good (and less butch), the numerous gadget's that are introduced and methodically checked off as the movie progresses. Really, Goldfinger couldn't have been more accommodating. And who knew there was such a large population of Asians in Virginia? Oddjob was pretty cool, though.

Overall, a prime example of the movie in my head being better than the one on the screen.

Thunderball:

This is the first one that I got to see IN THE THEATER WHEN IT WAS FIRST RELEASED. I proceeded to brag about it for weeks afterward at school. I haven't seen it in a while, and all I can remember is a lot of water. Occasionally it shows up on cable, but one look at Donald Pleasance in scuba gear is enough to make me turn this one off immediately.

You Only Live Twice

Ah cruel fate! I was home in my room when I heard my brother and friends calling me from downstairs. I decided to play hide and seek with them. So I hid, but unfortunately, no one seeked. It turned out that they were calling me because they were going to see YOLT, which they made sure to tell me "was great". And of course, the same full-of-crap friend was there later to tell me how James Bond dies in it. At the beginning. ("Dies?" "Yeah. Really!" followed by some utter nonsense I believed, and thus, became re-obsessed over. Really, he should have been a writer.)

It all starts to get hazy now. I haven't seen "On Her Majesty's Secret Service", and it may never make it to the top of my Netflix queue. "Diamonds are Forever" had the requisite explosions and Jill St. John, so it "was great".

The only thing I remember about "Live and Let Die" is how bad the grammar is in the title song ("In this ever changing world in which we live in..." Really Paul? That's the best you could do?) I tried numerous times to watch Roger Moore but just never get beyond the first five minutes. Ditto the rest of them.

Until Daniel Craig did such a great job in "Casino Royale".

This, of course, threatened to wake the monster again, and I did end up reading the book, which is the first of the JB novels. It wasn't bad, so I went onto the second book, "Live and Let Die" which was pretty good, too. But not good enough to keep me going.

I'm a mature adult now, so I think it's time to stop this nonsense and move onto something more grown up.

Like "McHale's Navy".

Bound to a Chair and Forced to Watch

Unlike a lot of high falutin' critics who like to appear above it all, and who are, after all, paid to criticize, I'm just a fan, and so don't think there's a lot of bad art out there.  I do think that there is a lot of "good but not quite compelling" art.  You might be tempted to call it "worthwhile", but I have a lot less "while" left than I used to, and it's worth more to me now than it used to be.  So please don't think me a snob for passing on almost everything that's out there.

 
I'm a bell curve kind of guy, and figure that about 5% of stuff is great, another 5% totally sucks, and the rest is in that middle range that I call Movies (or whatever) I might enjoy if you tied me to a chair, put a gun to my head and forced me to watch (Or MIMEIYTMTACPAGTMHAFMTW, for short).

 
But the principal is especially applicable to watching TV, since it's right there in your house waiting for you. There may not be a gun to your head, unless you count the spouse who thinks you should be spending more time together. It's just too easy to sit down and find something "good" to watch. But I'll bet it's something already seen. And before you know it, 30 or 60 minutes of your life are gone. And for what? A rerun? Okay, "Family Guy", maybe.

 
Friends and family will swear by any number of shows, and the movie section of the Sunday Times would have you believe that we're going through a sort of movie renaissance. Nonetheless, the latest landmark-in -cinema/change-your-life TV show will have to just sit there at the end of my Netflix queue. Tempted to pick up that $15 copy of Rush Hour II at Costco? Jeez, it's probably on cable right now.


 
I've put in too many hours on things that were…good. And good just isn't good
enough anymore. Certainly not for an hour a week. So I guess I miss out on the water cooler conversation. I'm sort of anti-social anyway.

 
The last time I was tied up with a gun to my head was at my in-laws, who were watching "16 Blocks" (Bruce Willis, Mos Def, etc.). It wasn't bad exactly, but I'd sure like those two hours back now, thank you very much. I could have been reading a book or something. Which is an odd sentiment, given how a book will take up far more of my time than a movie. And I'm a slow reader, too, with the attention span of...whatever.

 
Theoretically, one of the good things about music, is that you can do other things while listening to it. So even if you don't love it, you've not completely wasted your time. Which is why, when I'm a captive audience, I have to do something, or that bell curve just doesn't apply, and the "suck" percentage goes way up. So when I'm over at someone's house for dinner, the host gets the impression that I'm trying to be a helpful guest, when in fact I'm just trying to avoid completely wasting my time. And who knows? Maybe I'll be able to make my way over to the stereo.

 
But even when the laundry is getting folded, I'm stingy with my music listening time, and consider it a particular imposition when someone thrusts their music upon me. It's too much like how I thrust mine upon them.

 
But marriage forces some compromises, and I do make an effort for my wife if she really likes something. Back in the Eighties, she loved Men at Work. I thought they were…good, but I wasn't going to expend a lot of my limited listening time to them. I did break down and give them a try on a Walkman while taking the train to work. For some reason - standing uncomfortably in a crowded smelly train? the screeching brakes not quite drowned out by the headphones that wouldn't stay on? Reading my book? - this didn't help much.

 
Why am I like this? It probably stems from an incident when co-worker Joe, insisting that I hear this great new song, practically duct taped his headphones on me, only to subject me to Chris Rhea's "Lady in Red". I had to sit there, grinning at him as my ears and brain were ground to dust.

 
So, no thanks, Joe.
I'll see you in hell, Chris.
Good, but not great, Men at Work.

 
Next.

Stupid Moments in Rock History, Part 1:

Well, there was the time I overheard a guy in a record store asking the clerk if he knew the song about "summertime" and "rain on my face".

I kinda thought I knew that it was the Alarm, but I didn't say anything. I still wonder why. I think I just didn't want to come across as a know-it-all, which is a first. So even though it would have helped the guy out, I didn't do anything. Maybe I didn't want to be responsible for more Alarm fans in the world.

But now I feel like Peter Parker when he found out what happened to his Uncle Ben, except for the Uncle Ben part. I just kinda feel bad about it. I hope the guy found it. It was back in the day when you couldn't just look it up on allmusic.com.

So, if you're out there, reading this, it's called "Rain in the Summertime" and it appears on Eye of the Hurricane and The Best of the Alarm. It's not such a bad song. It's just that they were so obviously trying to sound like U2. You know, like Coldplay now.

My apologies for being stupid while trying to avoid being a jerk.
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Now playing: The Alarm - Rain in the Summertime
via FoxyTunes