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allthemusic · 1 year

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Week ending: 11 December 1952

Well, we are getting towards Christmas. Will we see Christmas music? Will we heck. Apparently that is not yet how we roll in 1952. Not for another week. That said, the first song (of only two) is good solid party banger.

Come A-Long A-Love - Kay Starr (Peaked at No 1)

I already knew this song, I already like it, but re-listening in the context of all of last week's soupy ballads really gives this a special something. It's fast! It's catchy! It's got metaphors, but they're actually good!

Kay Starr also has some serious pipes. I love her voice here, there are so many little technical things that are good about it, from the slight growl on some of the "Comes along a love" refrain, to the vibrato on the penultimate words of some lines, to the way she drops down onto some of the notes. Somebody who properly does singing could probably tell you more technically what those are - I just enjoy it.

Her voice isn't quite like the other female voices we've heard. It's not trained like Vera Lynn's, and it's not got that restrained, sexy smoulder of Jo Stafford. Doris Day maybe comes closest, but it's not the same thing. She's almost giving Al Martino a run for his money, but it's better - more lively, more vibrant, more tongue in cheek.

It's a song about the feeling of being in love, sung from Kay Starr to some man, so it's distanced from having to be about her being in love, and I think that makes it work? If she was singing about herself, she couldn't be as eloquent, or she'd have to be sappier, but this can be her observing the effects of love on a third party, and it lets her get specific about it without falling into cliché or lameness.

At the same time, it's just super jazzy - the excitement of falling in love is tangible in the music itself, with these brassy stabs at the end of lines, and a bassline that doesn't let up underpinning it all.

And - contrary to almost every other romantic song yet - the description of being in love is neither cliché nor lame! It's apparently by Al Sherman, a Tin Pan Alley songwriter, and to be fair, I could see this doing well on broadway. It's also got a tune stolen from Rossini. A fine pedigree.

I want to quote half of this song. I love the catalogue of effects, how when you're in love "every dream you had becomes ignited", "though you never sang you're always singing", "chimes you never heard began a-ringing", "you sparkle and you bubble, see each bluebird double", "petty things no longer phase you", "you discover things that just amaze you". It's a fabulous description of feeling on top of the world in ways you haven't felt before.

The best and quirkiest effect, though? "Night and day your heart is highland flinging". Such a clever, fun line!

And then the line that sums all of them up: "You just began to live". Which is what all that is, isn't it?

And Kay just sounds so cheeky on the "look out, you gotta whole lotta trouble" line. Like, yes, love is great, but this man is in over his head.

It doesn't overstay its welcome or slow down at the end either. Instead, we get two lines that change the rhythm and speed into an ending that actually makes me think of Bobby Darin's Mack the Knife. I'm not sure if that stands up to musical scrutiny, but in terms of vibe, at least.

Strongly recommend everybody to listen to this one. Catchy, likeable, stylish, kind of cute.

Zing a Little Zong - Bing Crosby and Jane Wyman (10)

Will I write an essay on this one, too? No, but it's cute, still.

The title already tells you that it's going to be cutesy and probably a bit novelty. In fact, it's our first novelty number. It makes them sound like they're from Somerset, but no, they're just Americans being silly (zilly?)

It starts with a spoken countdown, which is always good in my book. "A-one, a-two" and then some scatting - you can't do much better than that.

Basically, he loves her and she makes him want to sing - and then the song metaphor gets pushed and pushed and pushed, with her suggesting that they could get up side by side and "we could a very clever bit of close harmony", which is an oblique double entendre, but it is definitely suggesting... something.

Some unexpected lyrics, probably to keep the Z quirk alive. I don't think anybody predicted that the lyric "We're not by the Zuider Zee" was coming. This, combined with the mentions of Wiener Schnitzel and noodles and strudel and "let's dutch it up a little" made me think this would be from a film about Europe, but apparently not?

It is from a film, but it's a musical comedy about a vaudeville performer from New York. It's called Just for You, and it involves Bing's screen son falling for Bing's girlfriend (Jane Wyman) while his daughter ends up in night court with their governess and then goes to finishing school (?). Films from this period are clearly just built different.

Both performers are good, and have understood the assignment, peppering the song with little "ooh"s and "oh no"s and phrases like "you're a dolly and a dilly". It's quirky and cute, and doesn't outstay its welcome, or drag. It has charmed me more than I thought it would, in a harmless old-fashioned way. It feels like something my grandad would sing around his house.

Just two songs today, and they were both great! I think I much prefer faster songs. They're just a lot more forgiving - a bad fast song is at least over fast, a bad slow song really drags. And neither of these were bad songs, either, which is a win. Give either a listen, and you will probably not be disappointed!

Favourite song of the bunch: Comes A-Long A-Love

#uk charts #1952 #kay starr #bing crosby #jane wyman

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auditionsuggestions · 4 years

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Show Breakdowns - Anastasia

Here’s the next one! We’re doing Anastasia :)

Below the Cut for Length

Anya/Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanov

Playing age: 26

Lead role. Star Vehicle.

Range: G3-F5, Belt to D5. Disney-esque Soprano or Mezzo

Dance Requirement: Some movement

Anya is brave, fiery, witty, and above all determined. With no memory of her life before age 17 and having lived through the horrors of the Russian Revolution, Anya jumps at the sound of gunshots and is mistrustful of strangers, but there is steel hiding just beneath the surface. Anya is strong-willed and compassionate. Her mantra, “Home, love, family” is her goal. All she knows is her family is in Paris and she will find them however she can.

Suggested Songs:

Uptempo: Beyond My Wildest Dreams, The Little Mermaid; Times are Hard for Dreamers, Amelie;

Midtempo: When the Music Played, Dr. Zhivago; The Life I Never Led, Sister Act

Ballad: A Change in Me, Beauty and the Beast; God Help the Outcasts, The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Dmitry Sudayev

Playing age: 28

Lead role

Range: A2-G4. “Baritenor”

Dance Requirement: Some Movement

Dmitry is a scoundrel with a heart of gold. A street rat who grew into a conman, Dima does all he does to get out of poverty and is not above lying, cheating, and stealing to do so--that is until he meets Anya. What starts as just another scheme (albeit much bigger than anything he’s tried to pull off before) turns into the adventure of a life time that requires Dimitry to look inward and figure out how to put the one he loves before himself.

Suggested Songs:

Uptempo:Top of the World, Tuck Everlasting (duet, but can be arranged); My Manhattan, Daddy Long Legs;

Midtempo: I Stand Alone, Quest for Camelot; When the Booth Goes Bright; Amelie

Ballad: The Man I’ll Never Be, Daddy Long Legs; Proud of Your Boy, Aladdin

Vladimir “Vlad” Popov

Playing age: Mid 40s-Early 50s (No age really specified)

Supporting Lead role

Range: A2-F4. Comic Baritone

Dance Requirement: Strong mover

Vlad is Dmitry’s partner in crime (literally) and surrogate father. Before the revolution he scammed his way through society pretending to be a count. Vlad is dramatic, crafty, and a big softie at heart. While he, like Dmitry, is not above lying, cheating, and stealing, he cares greatly for his loved ones and is generally affable, though he can be calculating when he needs to be.

Suggested Songs: Komorovsky's Toast, Dr. Zhivago; When I’m Not Near the Girl I Love, Finian’s Rainbow; The Bottom Line, Newsies; She Loves Me, She Loves Me (?), Wonderful, Wicked; All I Care About, Chicago

Deputy Comissioner Gleb Vaganov

Playing age: Mid 30s

Supporting Lead role

Range: A2-Gb4. Baritone with a strong upper extension.

Dance Requirement: None.

Gleb is the villain of the show, though not a bad person. He fully believes in the Communist ideals he follows. Loyal, honest, and hard working, Gleb almost has the potential to be a hero (he’s very much the hero of his own story). A deeply conflicted person, Gleb’s infatuation (and borderline obsession) with Anya leads to his battle with the idea of doing one’s duty vs. doing what is right.

Suggested Songs: If I Can’t Love Her, Beauty and the Beast; ; Where’s the Girl, The Scarlet Pimpernel; The Longer I Live, Dracula; What is it About Her, The Wild Party

Countess Lily Malevsky-Malevitch

Playing age: ~40 (She’s based on Lili Dehn- a real life Russian countess who was a familiy friend of the Romanovs- so I based her age around how old Dehn would’ve been in 1927/28)

Supporting role

Range: G3-C5 (Breifly sings a B5 at the end of Land of Yesterday, but the rest of the role is very Mezzo) Jazzy Mezzo with an upper extension.

Dance Requirement: Dancer (Ideally a strong dancer)

Lily is the lady in waiting to the Dowager Empress. She has been by the Dowager’s side since before the revolution. Lily is clever, dutiful, and above all fun (when not working for the Dowager). She deals with her exile from Russia with a sort of resigned dark humor...and a LOT of vodka. She and Vlad were once an item (unbeknownst to her oblivious husband) and re-kindle their romance upon re-uniting.

Suggested Songs: You Gotta Get a Gimmick, Gypsy; Here I Am, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels; As We Stumble Along, The Drowsy Chaperone; Raise the Roof, The Wild Party (Lippa); Cabaret, Cabaret; All Falls Down, Chaplin

Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna Romanov

Playing age: 80

Supporting role

Range: F3-Bb4. A regal Mezzo

Dance Requirement: None

The Dowager Empress has lost everything she once held dear and must now put up with imposter upon imposter never allowing her to grieve in peace. She is icy, proud, and regal (not to mention intimidating) to all but her family. Though, she does have a very shrap wit. She is especially warm with Anastasia both when a child and after it’s revealed that Anya really is the princess. She commands authority and attention the minute she enters a room.

Suggested Songs: Days of Plenty, Little Women; When There’s No One, Carrie; Here Alone, Little Women

Young Anastasia/Alexei (Doubles in Ensemble as well)

Playing age: ~5 for Young Anastasia, (cast with an older child, normally between 9 and 14), 13 for Alexei

Featured role

Range: C4-C5, a sweet child soprano

Dance Requirement: Very little.

Young Anastasia is the willful, brave, proud, and precocious youngest daughter of the Tsar. She has a special bond with her grandmother (whom she calls Nana). Alexei was the Tsarevich (Heir to the throne) and only boy of the Romanov siblings. He suffered from debilitating hemophelia that often left him bed-ridden. Anya mentions that he was her best friend.

Suggested Songs: Forgiveness, Jane Eyre; Whistle Down the Wind, Whistle Down the Wind

Ensemble

The Ensemble has a TON to do in this show and plays a vast array of featured characters (Tracks listed below). I will not be suggesting songs for most of these as any of the above would be appropriate.

All of the Ensemble plays Townsfolk, Royal Servants, Bolshevik Officers and Soldiers, Parisians, Reporters, and Aristocrats

Featured Character Tracks:

Olga, Tatiana, Mariya (the other Romanov Sisters)/ Paulina, Dunya, Marfa (three prostitutes who audition for the Fake-Anastasia scheme)/Odette and Swans (Dancers in the ballet)

These tracks require dancing en pointe

Olga track also dances Odette and requires strong ballet ability

Teen Anya

A featured dance role in the opening sequence

May also be one of the prostitutes and ballet dancers (I’m not 100% sure with this track)

Understudies Anya/Anastasia

Comissioner Gorlinsky/Count Leopold/Drunkard 4

Understudies Vlad

Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna/Female Reporter/Countess Gregory

Understudies Lily, but sings high soprano in Ensemble numbers

Tsar Nicholas II Romanov/Count Ipolitov/Drunkard 3

Understudies Gleb

Siegfriend (in Swan Lake sequence)/ Drunkard 1/Sergei the Doorman (?)

Understudies Dmitry

Von Rothbart (in Swan Lake sequence)/Drunkard 2/Sergei the Doorman (?)

#Anastasia #Audition Suggestions #Anastasia musical #anastasia broadway #Musical Theatre #Broadway #Show Breakdowns

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grimelords · 5 years

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October Playlist

My October playlist is finished and it’s complete from Rico Nasty to Rachmaninoff. I absolutely guarantee there’s something you’ll love in this 3 and a half hours of music, and probably something you’ll hate too! Something for everyone!

If you’d like to have these playlists delivered to your inbox instead of having them randomly appear on your dash, please subscribe to my tinyletter here.

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Santeria - Pusha T: In anticipation of Jesus Is King I relistened to the entire Wyoming Sessions project a few times, and a year removed from all the hype and controversy here's the thing: it's fucking great. The individual albums ranged pretty widely in quality and felt slightly unfinished for how short they were sometimes, but taking the project as a whole 5-album 120 minute playlist it turns out it's a masterpiece. My personal tracklist goes Ye/Daytona/Nasir/KTSE/Kids See Ghosts, which isn't release order but I think makes it flow the best - both Kanye albums bookending it and the less impactful Nas and Teyana Taylor albums buried a bit further in where you can appreciate them now that you're deep in the mindset of the whole thing rather than alone on their own.

Puppets (Succession Remix) - Pusha T & Nicholas Brittel: This remix is such a perfect match: Pusha T’s corporate villainy finally given a context and prestige it deserves. It’s also short enough that it could feasible be the actual theme song next season, which would be a marked improvement imo.

Use This Gospel - Kanye West, Clipse & Kenny G: I am and remain a Kanye stan, even after everything. It’s nice to see him going back to the extremely uneven mastering of MBDTF era, it’s a sound that is uniquely his and it’s fun to see him revisit it. The thick vocoder harmony is so soupy you get lost in it, and the way it opens up to include the full choir in the No Malice verse is beautiful. Kanye reunited Clipse through Christ and we have Him to thank for that at least. The Kenny G break is great, and the grain and dirt on the whole track when the beat kicks in is so gritty you can feel it.

Man Of The Year - Schoolboy Q: I didn't love the Chromatics album they surprise released but it did thankfully remind me of the time Schoolboy Q sampled Cherry for Man Of The Year. Taken exclusively on lyrics, Man Of The Year is a triumph: he's the man of the year and it's all worked out but the sample and the beat underscores the dead eyed melancholy that runs through the whole of Oxymoron of never winning even when you've won.

Cold - Rico Nasty: This song fucking tears your face off. Imagine STARTING your album at this level of intensity. She just goes straight to 100 and burns the house down. Outside of Lil John so few rappers can get away with just straight up screaming in the adlibs but the way she just lung tearingly screams GOOOO through this is fucking sick.

Fake ID - Riton & Kah-Lo: TikTok songs are becoming their own genre, but it’s a very nebulous sort of a mood encompassing everything from aughts pop punk hooks to skipping rope raps like this. It’s a strange new way for songs to blow up that everyone seems compelled to write articles about but my take on it is it’s exactly the same as ads were in the old days. Remember how many songs did absolute numbers because someone put it in a Motorola ad? Same thing except you’re not being sold a phone this time, so in some ways it’s better. Anyway, this song bangs. The spirit of 212 era Azealia Banks lives on even if she’s doing her best ever since then to kill it.

Doctor Pressure - MYLO & Miami Sound Machine: There was a very good era in the mid-2000s where you could just put mashups out as singles and they’d chart, it was sick. My only two examples are this and Destination Calabria but I’m sure there’s more. Drop The Pressure is a masterpiece but as an alternate version this mashup is equally masterful.

If You’re Tarzan, I’m Jane - Martika: Martika is unfortunately best known for the 1989 one hit wonder Toy Soldiers, a sort of boring overdramatic ballad which is best known for being sampled by Eminem in 2004 in his quite bad super duper serious song Like Toy Soldiers. I say unfortunately because every other song on her first album is great, it’s all hypercolour 80s synthpop and I love this song especially because it is so completely stuffed with activity it becomes dizzying. It gets so lost in itself that they completely abandon the dramatic pause before “I’m Jane” for some reason toward the end and instead just layer three different tracks of vocal adlibs. Every part of this song is great, the weird ‘o we o we o’ chant before the second verse? The neighing horse guitar before the bridge? The musical tour of the world IN the bridge? The part where she says ‘I want to swing on your vine?’. This song has everything.

You Got Me Into This - Martika: Every part of the instrumentation in this is amazing. The bass sound, the main synth, the extremely athletic brass, the wonderful echoing 80s snare that’s as big as a house. I just love it. She also does some really intriguing slurs on the word ‘love’ all the way through, just moving it around absolutely anywhere.

Space Time Motion - Jennifer Vanilla: I love when someone has such a clearly defined aesthetic and mission from the very beginning. Jennifer Vanilla is the alter ego of Becca Kaufmann from Ava Luna who I've had in this playlist before but never competely investigated. Jennifer Vanilla feels like an episode of Sex And The City where Samantha gets really into Laurie Anderson and she is incredible. This video is the best mission statement I’ve ever seen and is currently criminally underviewed so please do your part and support the Jennifer cause by watching these two videos.

So Hot You’re Hurting My Feelings - Caroline Polachek: Caroline Polachek said watch me write a Haim song and did it. Apparently the very early versions of this album started when she was in writing sessions for Katy Perry, but then it started to turn into something else and she took it for herself, and I think you can hear that. With more normal production and a little faster this is a hundred percent a Katy Perry song, but instead it’s completely uniquely Caroline Polachek and it’s all the better for it. And also Katy Perry must be furious because her new songs are simply not good at all.

Electric Blue - Arcade Fire: I just love the obsession of this song in the outro, chanting over and over and over “Cover my eyes electric blue, every single night I dream about you”

Promiscuous - Nelly Furtado and Timbaland: I got a youtube ad for one of those Masterclass videos the other day and it was Timbaland teaching production. This ad went for five minutes for some reason and I watched the whole thing and it made me admire Timbaland even more. He’s demonstrating his compositional technique which is basically to just beatbox, and then loop it, and then add some extra percussion layers with more beatboxing and hand percussion, then loop that and add a little melody by singing or humming. ‘It’s that simple’ he says. Then later he goes back in and puts in actual drums or synths or whatever. I was stunned because suddenly a lot of his music makes sense. Without the barrier of instrument or timbre to get hung up on it allows him to write from this instantly head-nodding place of just making up a little beat you can sing and dance to immediately. Listening to a lot of his music now you can hear the bones underneath everything so clearly, all his beats are supremely beatboxable and all his melodies are very hummable, they’ve never overcomplicated by instrumental skill or habits, they just exist to serve the song.

Serpent - TNGHT: TNGHT are back baby and this song is like nothing I’ve ever heard before. It feels like afrofuturist footwork from another dimension, the mbira sounding lead against the oil drum percussion in this cacophony of yelps and screams that just builds to an irrepressible energy without a bassline in sight.

Ghosts Of My Life - Rufige Kru: I'm reading Mark Fisher's Ghosts Of My Life right now and some good person has put together a spotify playlist of all the songs he mentions. He has a whole essay about why this song is sick so I’m not going to go into it here but it’s interesting to hear about someone growing up with jungle when it’s a genre that has always felt very niche to me. I guess partly as a result of it never really making it mainstream as a genre here, and also me being a little too young for it.

Renegade Snares - Omni Trio: My biggest introduction to drum and bass comes from the game Midnight Club 3: Dub Edition and this really great song from the soundtrack that is finally on spotify after a very long absence. At almost the exact same time as I discovered this song with its spacious piano and repitched snares, I discovered Venetian Snares and breakcore in general. Having no particular frame of reference for breakcore as an offshoot of drum and bass only amplified its appeal to me as a completely alien genre that sounded like nothing else I’d ever heard, and so my personal history with drum and bass is a story of walking backwards into it after the fact which is interesting if not helpful.

Punching In A Dream - The Naked And Famous: The Mark Fisher book also mentions the Tricky song which I’ve never heard from which The Naked And Famous got their name and I thought ‘man remember The Naked And Famous, they were sick?’. The sort of harder edged Passion Pit instrumentation mixed with pop punk, a winning combination.

Vegas - Polica: My favourite part of this song is the unexpected blastbeats after the chorus, using their two drummers to their full advantage and just shaking the song by its foundations every now and then lest you get too comfortable.

Right Words - Cults: I’m beginning to suspect I may be the last surviving Cults stan but if this be my lot I’ll gladly do it

Running From The Sun - Chromatics: The new Chromatics album got me to relisten to their definitive document Kill For Love, and something new I appreciated this time about an album I love a lot is its length. Kill For Love is almost 80 minutes long and it luxuriates in that length. It’s sequenced perfectly so it never feels like it’s long for no reason, but large chunks just completely space out and go out of focus in the soft neon light and the second half of this song is a good example. The whole thing just evaporates into smoke and it feels perfect. If this were a shorter and more concise song that had a proper ending it wouldn’t feel right, this whole album has no straight edges at all and it’s all the better for it.

Chance - Angel Olsen: I cannot belive this song. This feels like she wrote her own version of My Way looking forward instead of back. Instead of the ruefully triumphant "I've lived a life that's full / I've traveled each and every highway" it's “I don't want it all / I've had enough / I don't want it all / I've had a love." before the turn from the future to the present at the end, where she gives up on a forever love in exchange for right now. I love how raw this vocal take feels. It's not her best voice but it feels very very honest as a result. She's just singing her heart out in this huge showstopping closer. In an interview she said "I didn’t love the recording of it very much, and now I just feel in love with it as a closing statement, because it’s a way of saying, ‘Look, I have hope for the next thing in my life.’ I’m not going to anticipate negativity or hate or an end. But instead of us looking towards forever, why don’t we just work on right now?"

Something To Believe - Weyes Blood: This album just keeps paying dividends. I’m systematically going through long obsessive periods with every single song on it and now it’s Something To Believe’s turn.

Don’t Shut Me Up (Politely) - Brigid Mae Power: Without meaning to, Brigid Mae Power seems to have created some incredible fusion of folk music and stoner metal. The way this song absolutely sits unmoving on one deep and resonant chord for so long is amazing. When it does change chords it feels like a full body effort to get up and shift. She has a similar feeling to Emma Ruth Rundle, who more explicitly wears her metal influences, but Brigid Mae Powers' strength is in how much it resembles the traditional folk side of the spectrum. Her voice is also amazing, with the huge effortless runs she goes on about halfway through just coming unmoored from the song completely and floating off into space.

Sweetheart I Ain’t Your Christ - Josh T. Pearson: I had a real problem with Josh T. Pearson for a long time because of how he presents as so authentic on this album, and as I’ve previously discussed in these playlists the concept of authenticity in country music is a source of neverending anguish for me. But his newest album The Straight Hits! has largely cured that for me because it’s not good at all, is extremely contrived (all the song titles have the word ‘hit’ in them) and he’s shaved his beard and replaced it with one of the worst irony moustaches I’ve ever seen. So now I’m free to enjoy The Last Of The Country Gentlemen as a character construction, which allows me a far deeper and truer engagement than the idea of a man actually living and thinking like this which is frankly a little embarrassing.

Codeine Dream - Colter Wall: I love this song, it has that feeling that great folk songs do of feeling like you’ve always known it. The strongest moments on this Colter Wall album to me are in songs like this that chase this particular feeling of morose isolation, and where he leans away from storytelling like his biggest hit Kate McCannon - a kind of cliche country murder ballad. This song is fantastic because of the way it wallows in this black depression not as a low point, but as a reprieve from the lower previous point. Things are as bad as they get now, and they’re always going to be like this, but at least I don’t dream of you anymore.

Motorcycle - Colter Wall: I only just found out about Colter Wall this month and have been listening to this album over and over. When I first heard him I though it was strange I'd never heard of him before because he's obviously some old country veteran based off his voice, but it turns out he's 24 and this is his first album he just sings like he ate a cigar. I love this song especially because it's so straighforward. It's a simple and supremely relatable mood: what if I bought a motorbike and fucking died.

Who By Fire - Leonard Cohen: I watched American Animals a couple of weeks ago and it’s a great movie, highly recommended. This song plays near the end and I waited for the credits to find out what this great song was, and like a rube found out it’s only one of the most celebrated songwriters of all time. I’ve never had much of a Leonard Cohen phase, somehow. In my mind I always get him mixed up with Lou Reed, which I’m learning is actually way off. I love the harmony vocals in this, and the way they move around into the shadows in the ‘who shall I say is calling’ parts.

Words From The Executioner To Alexander Pearce - The Drones: Alexander Pearce was a convict who escaped Sarah Island’s penal settlement in Tasmania with seven other convicts in 1822. He was recaptured two months later alone. In 1823 he re-escaped with a fellow convict, Thomas Cox and again was returned alone.He was executed by hanging later having eaten six men during his escape attempts.

It Ain’t All Flowers - Sturgill Simpson: I found this album going through the Pichfork 200 albums of the decade list and I feel like a fool for not having heard it sooner because now I am completely obsessed. Sturgill Simpson is doing the very best work in country music right now because he's looking backwards with one eye and forwards with the other and this song is a great illustration: a perfect Hank Williams Jr type country song with big voiced hollers that morphs into a surprise psych freakout for the whole second half.

Desolation Row (Take 1, Alternate Take) - Bob Dylan: I’ve always liked Desolation Row a lot as a song but the acoustic guitar on the album version is simply not good, it's just kind of mindlessly playing this long directionless solo the whole time and over the course of a song this long it really adds up to just being annoying. Luckily because it’s a Bob Dylan song there’s a whole universe of alternate takes and mixes and this is a great pared down version I found without it. The best kind of Bob Dylan songs are the ones where he just makes an endless stream of allusions and bizzare imagery, and this and Bob Dylan's 115th Dream are my favourite examples of it.

Living On Credit Blues - El Ten Eleven: This is a groove I get stuck in my head a lot, and this is also a song I think would work well as a theme for a tv show. I've been meaning to do a 30 second edit of it just for my own amusement, maybe I'll do that soon. El Ten Eleven are a duo where one guy plays drums and one guys plays a double necked guitar/bass and looping pedals and somehow against all the odds of that description they manage to make emotional, driving instrumental music of very deep feeling, like this song which is one of my all time favourites.

Dusty Flourescent/Wooden Shelves - Talkdemonic: This is sort of a companion Living On Credit Blues, and Talkdemonic are similarly an instrumental duo with good drums. This entire album from 2005 is highly recommended, it's a sort of halfway between the post rock of the time and a kind of acoustic hiphop instrumentals that ends up sounding very rustic and homemade, like a soudtrack for a winter cabin.

Turnstile Blues - Autolux: This is a perfect song, built around a perfect beat. Every part just fits perfectly.

Fort Greene Park - Battles: The new Battles album is finally out and I absolutely love it. I cannot think of another band that has shed members in the same way as Battles; originally a quartet on their first album, then a trio for their second and third and now down to a duo for their fourth album - and somehow still performing material from their first album live. The paring down has seemingly only servers to focus them and the new album sounds fresh but still distinctively Battles, with no sense of anything lost or missing. This song is my standout so far, and the guitar line in particular is so good and interesting to me because I don’t think I’ve ever heard Ian Williams play something so distinctly guitar-y in his whole career. This is a straight up pentatonic riff with bends and everything. Filtered through his usual chopped and looped oddness it feels like he’s almost gone all the back around the guitar continuum and is this close to just doing power chords next album. And I’ll support him!

Diane Young - Vampire Weekend: I've listened to this song a lot in my life and I only looked up the lyrics the other day to find out that the opening line is 'you torched a SAAB like a pile of leaves' which I somehow never noticed. What a power phrase. There's also this very good quote from Ezra about it: "I had this feeling that the world doesn’t want a song called ‘Dying Young’,“ says Koenig, "it just sounded so heavy and self-serious, whereas ‘Diane Young’ sounded like a nice person’s name.”" and he was right to do it. This song is 100 times better because he’s saying Diane Young than it would be if he was saying ‘Dying Young’. That’s a songwriting tip for you.

Monster Mash - Bootsy Collins & Buckethead: Hey did you hear Bootsy Collins and Buckethead did a cover of the monster mash? Thank god for freaks.

The Dark Sentencer - Coheed And Cambria: There's not that many bands that I absolutely loved as a teenager that I've completely abandoned. I've moved on from a lot but I'll still keep up with them if they have a new album or something. Coheed And Cambria are one that I've almost completely turned my back on. They've had 3 apparently pretty patchy albums since I stopped listening after Year Of The Black Rainbow, which was extremely bad and really taught me what people mean when they say an album is 'overproduced'. On a whim I decided to see what they're up to now and listened to their album from last year and guess what: it rocks. It's got everything you'd expect from them: big riffs, bad and confusing lyrics, his weird high voice, overwrought and overlong songwriting, cheesy muscleman solos. Everything about this band is sort of cheesy and embarrassing and takes itself way too seriously, but I'm discovering slowly that that's what's so good about it. The weird pulp sci-fi story and mindset that underpins this whole band is ridiculous and overwrought and as a result it gives the music a reason to exist the way it does. It’s so big and dumb because the story it serves is so big and dumb. It feels exactly like reading Perry Rhodan or some increidibly long and dense but not especially good series like that, it’s pulp music and that’s what I love about it.

Romance In A (6 Hands) - Sergei Rachmaninoff: Piano works for 4 hands (where two guys sit next to each other on the same piano) have always seemed to tend towards the realm of the gimmick or party trick, and works for 6 hands (where three guys do it) even more so - but this Rachmaninoff piece is just beautiful and I can’t believe I haven’t heard of it before this month. It doesn’t overload everyone with a million things to do, it just builds this very wide harmonic bed for the simple melody to swim in - then the way the melody transfers over to the middle register is just magical before the tension of the final section takes over and builds.

Love's Theme - The Love Unlimited Orchestra: I’m so glad I got to learn about the Love Unlimited Orchestra this month. Aside from having one of the best names in music, they were Barry White’s backing band and had their own solo instrumental records too. Here’s a fun aside: Kenny G was a member when he was 17 and still in high school. This is a genre of music that has seemed to totally disappear into the realm of parody and farce only which is sort of a shame because it is unironically very beautiful and dense in its own way.

Dancing In The Moonlight - Liza Minelli: Can you believe I thought Dancing In The Moonlight by Toploader was an original until the other day when my girlfriend played this Liza Minelli version that predates it by several decades? This also isn’t the original! It was written by a band named King Harvest in 1972, with this version AND a version by Young Generation both coming out in 73 and a whole bunch of others in between (including a Baha Men version in 94) before Toploader finally had a proper hit with it in 2000. Truly the world works in mysterious ways. This version is the finest I think, it just goes and goes, frenetically unwinding at a breakneck pace before opening up into a flute solo of all things and then winding up again even and finishing in a kick line breakdown. Absolutely no limits.

Girls - Royal Headache: The sheer amount of power and melody that this song manages to pack into a minute and a half is incredible, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard a more instantly relatable opening lyric than “Girl! Think they’re to fine for me! Oh girls! And I’m inclined to agree!”

Pov Piti - Matana Roberts: In anticipation of Matana Roberts new volume of her Coin Coin album series that just came out I relistened through the three previous albums and they are even more powerful than I remembered. This song serves as a pretty good mission statement for the whole project, and the heartrending tortured screams that open it set the tone for the rest of it. Matana Roberts sings the injustices of slavery into being, and her sing-song delivery highlights the trauma - her indifferent delivery mirroring the indifference of the world at large. The way she rattles off this story like she’s gone over it a million times and grown numb to the facts only accentuates the pain in the telling, a pain that rises to the surface in the screams of her instrument and herself.

Kingdoms (G) - Sunn 0))): This new Sun 0))) album is one of my favourites they’ve ever done because it’s so straightforward and back to basics. Every song is just ten minutes of straight up no-nonsense, big, rich, drone. They even put the notes in the track names so you can drone along if you like.

listen here

#playlists

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schmergo · 5 years

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Informal (and sorry, very long) review of ASSASSINS at Signature Theatre

ASSASSINS is famous for its provocative concept—telling the story of nine people who assassinated or attempted to assassinate US Presidents in a series of songs and vignettes—and it feels even more daring when staged only 15 minutes from the White House. But this musical isn’t a tasteless exercise in shock value for the sake of shock, nor is it a misguided attempt to portray assassins as ‘just misunderstood.’ These nine central figures are alternately pathetic, disturbing, funny, repulsive, charming, and eerie. Some are clearly delusional, others simply disillusioned. But together, they represent the dark side of the American Dream.

Americans are raised with a sense of exceptionalism, a belief that we deserve everything we want simply because we’re Americans. At some point, we realize that only a few people have the luck, money, skills, and connections to achieve their dreams. Most of us accept that it’s not really true that “anyone can become the President.” But some troubled people throughout the country’s history cling to a distorted corruption of this dream: anyone can kill a President.

That doesn’t mean we should agree with their horrifying choices. But it does let us examine what aspects of life in America make some people so desperate to be seen and remembered, by any means necessary. “Where’s my prize?” is the childish refrain these assassins sing over and over again as they wander through the grey purgatory they’ve been consigned to.

Historically, productions of ASSASSINS are set in a ghastly carnival where contestants are encouraged to ‘step right up’ and shoot a president! A wonderful community production at Dominion Stage created a masterpiece of vivid Americana in which an electric chair or hangman’s noose were reimagined as theme park rides. This production took the opposite route by setting the action in a grimy, industrialized, empty stage in which pieces of furniture like a bench, the steps to a gallows, or a sofa float on and off like ghosts. Through this strange empty world, assassins interact unbounded by time or space, cursed to constantly repeat their most famous actions and relive their frustrations. Garfield assassin Charles J. Guiteau instructs would-be Ford assassin Sara Jane Moore in the finer points of shooting. McKinley assassin Leon Czolgosz reprimands attempted Reagan assassin John Hinckley for carelessly breaking a bottle.

The only set piece that remains throughout the show is a weathered and ghostly replica of the Presidential box at Ford’s Theatre, plunked onto the stage as though fallen from the sky. Here, the brooding spectre of John Wilkes Booth sits and watches the show unfold—and yes, he recreates his famous jump from the box. He serves as a kind of ringleader to the assassins, weaving through crowds, advising that everyone try their hand at assassination as a cure for all of their ills—even chronic stomach pain. After all, he was the first to pull off the historic act. We even see him convincing Lee Harvey Oswald to change the course of history by bringing assassination into the age of television.

As Booth, there’s a whiff of the rock star about Vincent Kempski—fitting, because Booth was a celebrity and even heartthrob in his day even before shooting Abraham Lincoln. Most of the time, he seems at ease, in control, erudite—we might even be seduced by his words until he explodes in fits of rage and reminds us how twisted and monstrous his views really are. Kempski only occasionally unleashes the full power of his singing voice, and when he does, it feels like a punch in the gut.

One minor gripe with his performance, though not limited to Kempski’s portrayal alone: his Booth, like most I’ve seen, delivers his lines with a thick Southern drawl. Not only did that occasionally make it difficult to understand his words, I doubt the real John Wilkes Booth would have spoken with such a heavy accent. For one, although he supported the Confederacy, he was from Maryland. For another, his father was British. And most importantly, he was a professional stage actor before the era of microphones and would have been well-trained in diction. Still, his charisma was palpable throughout the show. The moment he set foot on stage, a chill ran down my spine: it really was like seeing a ghost.

Lawrence Redmond plays the disgruntled worker Leon Czolgozs with gravitas and stoic desperation. He is perhaps the most sympathetic—or pathetic—of the assassins, and he gives us a sense of the loss of human potential. As the crass Sam Byck, attempted assassin of Richard Nixon, Christopher Bloch is horribly funny, spouting commercial catchphrases and leaving professional advice to Leonard Bernstein on an audiotape recording.

Some of the most enjoyable scenes of the evening were those between the two attempted assassins of Gerald Ford, Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme (Rachel Zampelli) and Sara Jane Moore (Tracy Lynn Olivera). These are two deeply kooky women—a ditzy Manson groupie and a frumpy mom who’s been married five times and is endlessly losing items in her oversized bag. Together, they shoot at a bucket of fried chicken and bond over an unexpected shared acquaintance in Manson himself.

Zampelli may not be the childlike pixie we’d expect as Squeaky Fromme, but she totally inhabits the character of a lost soul, a flower child whose brains, if she ever had them, are long-since fried and warped. Her voice isn’t a high-pitched girlish squeak but has a distinctive creaky vocal fry to it that makes her sound utterly deranged. She’s so intense in her devotion to Manson that she ranks among the most unsettling characters on the stage. She also shares a strangely beautiful duet, “Unworthy of Your Love,” with sad sack John Hinckley (Evan Casey), a failed songwriter who’s obsessed with Jodie Foster.

As Sara Jane Moore, Olivera is absolutely hysterical in both senses of the word. A chatty, scatterbrained housewife, she seems to represent the mundane and trivial compared to Squeaky’s revolutionary furor— but she can also burst into tears or pull a gun on you at any second. Her utter lack of self-awareness and deadpan one-liners like “I couldn’t hit William Howard Taft if he was sitting on my lap” made her an audience favorite. Ms. Olivera has a special talent for making dialogue sound totally natural, as if everything she says is an ad-lib. I’ll jump at the chance to see any show she’s in because she makes every character completely her own.

But the performer who truly stole the show, and my other favorite local actor, is Bobby Smith, as the lifelong loser, Charles Guiteau. Guiteau is a comically tragic figure, a man who failed at everything he did and still retained the grandiose belief that his actions were divinely inspired. He was so consumed with his delusional belief that President Garfield would make him the Ambassador to France that he shot him. As Guiteau, Smith does a jaunty dance up and down the steps of the gallows before he is to be hanged, singing a refrain of “Look on the bright side!”

Guiteau is a man of extremes, euphoric and despondent at the drop of a hat. Smith, whose appeal as a performer often lies in his unassuming, everyman demeanor, gives amazing nuance to those abrupt transitions. We see real tears shining in his eyes beyond his too-wide smile, a tremble of the lip or shaking of the hands that betray his instability. He’s incredibly entertaining to watch every moment he’s onstage, yet you’re always simultaneously concerned for and creeped out by him. There’s something so obviously ‘not right’ with Guiteau. The last character to make me feel that way was Gollum.

Tying the whole story together is Sam Ludwig as the Balladeer, who serves as a cheery narrator for the show, delivering songs that span the gamut of American music styles. These are some of the most toe-tapping tunes in Sondheim’s catalog, contrasted sharply with the discordant numbers that run between them. Ludwig also inhabits a second role, which may come as a surprise (and isn’t listed in the program). He embodies the saccharine spirit of an American narrative that sees assassination attempts as isolated incidents rather than a symptom of a deeper illness. I occasionally found his piercing tenor voice a little grating to my ears, but it suited his character well—and I was sitting very close to the stage. An increasingly mangled rendition of ‘Hail To The Chief’ ties the musical numbers together.

This show runs almost two hours with no intermission. It’s so immersive that it gives you the curious sense of waking up from a vivid dream as you leave the theatre. You almost feel that the assassins linger behind you, reliving their crimes and failures in the abandoned theatre once you’ve gone home to bed.

Assassins plays through September 29. Don’t miss this show. You’ll find yourself laughing at the most unexpected lines and thinking about the most minor moments long after the curtain call.

#assassins #musicals #musical theatre #sondheim #dc theatre #dc metro #signature theatre #sigassassins #informal review

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purplesurveys · 5 years

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467

-- List 8 Friends of Either Gender -- 1. Angela 2. Gabie 3. Jo 4. Kate 5. JM 6. Hannah 7. Luisa 8. Jane

Questions About These Friends Does number 4 have a driver’s license? No, she doesn’t know how to drive. She told me her parents were gonna give her a car as a graduation gift, but I don’t know how that’ll work because she’s to scared to learn. Can number 7 speak another language? Yes. Filipino and English, like me. I’m just not sure if she can also understand other languages as well. Does 2 know your parents well? Well she kinda has to, if she wants to continue dating me hah. Have 3 and 5 been in the same room together? Pretty often. The three of us were executive board members in our organization, so we worked together a lot.

Does 1 have similar music tastes to you? Not really. It overlaps sometimes but at the end of the day, hers is still distinct from mine. Has 6 ever stayed at your house? Nah, she’s never visited.

When did 3 last text you? A little more than a month ago when we were planning out to go to the launch of Popeye’s in the country hahaha. Does 5 have any pets? If so, what do they have? Yesssss. He has Alley the golden retriever, and Alley recently gave birth to pups too. They sold several ones but they kept two named Mika and Theo. Does 7 live in the same town/city as you? Oh no not at all. She lives in Sta. Rosa, Laguna - a good hour and a half away from where I’m from. Have you ever lent something important to 8? Yes. I lent her all my Audrey Hepburn DVDs when I found out she was also a fan, but she’s since returned them to me. Can number 1 sing well? She’s okay. Does 2 have any siblings? Yes, two amazing and the most charming little sisters. If 4 called you at 2 AM, what would your reaction be? My first thought would definitely be that she did something stupid haha. She’s a good friend though, so I’d pick up the phone for her. Who is 8′s best friend? Mmm I’m just not sure. We’re from different friend groups so I don’t know who she’s closest with. From the org, it’s probably Tina or Ed. I’m just not aware of other close friends she has. Does 6 have a favourite tv show? If so, what is it? She probably has, but I just don’t know which one. Who out of 5 and 7 knows you the best? Maybe JM. Luisa graduated a year ago so she’s not really caught up with my life as of late. Does 4 have a boyfriend/girlfriend? Yep, she’s going out with Edi but she also feels like she jumped in to the relationship too soon and is now having doubts about it. Does 2 have a career/knows what they want to be? She wants to work in film and TV production. Have you ever kissed 1? No. Does 3 have or want children? I don’t...think she actively wants children? We’ve talked about how we would raise our kids if ever the opportunity comes, but she’s not crazy about wanting to have them. Does 6 have any piercings or tattoos? She might have ear piercings, but I’m not sure. I know for sure she doesn’t have tattos and piercings anywhere else. Do your parents know 8? Not really. My mom has always been more familiar with my high school friends. Which Number...

Have you had romantic feelings for? 2 Have you told a secret to? I dunno, all of them? I trust all my friends. Have you shared a bed with? 1, 2 Have you watched a movie with? 1, 2 Have you seen cry? 1, 2, 3, 4, 8 Have seen you cry? 1, 2 Have cooked you something? 1 Have a boyfriend/girlfriend? 1, 2, 3, 4 Have met your parents? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8 Have been to the same school/college as you? All of them. Angela and I are both AA-UP, Gabie’s from AA, the rest are from UP. About Number One: Angela What age are they? She’s 20, but she’s turning 21 in September.

Have you met their parents? Of course! I’m very close with them, and I’ve known them since I was 7. Have you ever been in a relationship with them? Nah, she’s straight as a stick and I’ve always seen her as my sister, anyway. Do they like most of your other friends? We came from the same group in high school so we have the same friends on one end. But she’s never met my org friends because our schedules make it impossible to band them all together. How often do you two meet up and/or talk? We talk 1-2 times a week but we see each other much less. We’re always busy doing our own thing, but she’s my best friend and we’re always able to catch up and I’m grateful for that. When did you last argue? God, probably when we were 11. We’ve never argued except for petty grade school shit. What is their favourite food? I’ve known her for 14 years and I have no idea what her favorite food is. Where is their favourite place to be? Wherever Hans is, I’m guessing. How many close friends do they have? Around 4-5, I’m guessing. Number Two: Gabie What colour is their eyes? Dark brown, almost black. Have they known you the longest? No, that achievement belongs to Angela. I’ve only known Gabie for 7 years. Where were they born? I think she was born in Manila too, I’m just not sure where. Why are they your number 2? I didn’t want to make her #1 cos that would be too predictable haha. Do they like children? She used not to; I think I changed her mind about it. She still has reservations, but she’s been more receptive in the last few years. Would they beat you in a race? Probably. She never loses. When did you last spend time alone together? Yesterday morning. I slept over Friday night and left the next morning. We went to our high school and had a peaceful walk there :3 Do they have a pet peeve? What is it? Irresponsible co-workers. Number Three: Jo What is their hair colour? Black. She’s dyed it so many times before though; she just stopped recently. What is their job, if they have one? She doesn’t have one, she’s a full-time student.

Do they have their own place? No. She does stay at a dorm for the duration of the school year because she lives all the way in Pateros, which is too far from UP. How many brothers or sisters do they have? She’s an only child. Have you ever done something illegal with them? I don’t know haha – I don’t think so. Jo’s too goody goody to do anything bad. How old were you when you met each other? I was 19. I met her when we were both applying for our current college org. Are they more sporty, arty or academic? She’s a mix of artsy and academic, definitely. She write poems, but she’s also really good in all her classes. Have you ever travelled out of country with this person? Nah. Person Four: Kate Do they have a favourite musician? Yeah. She’s expressed her love multiple times for LANY, HONNE, and Lauv. Have you drank alcohol with this person? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA too many times. Are their parents together? Yes. What do you enjoy doing with them? Gossiping and ranting, hahaha. She’s an easy person to talk to and she knows so much insider stuff, which is always fun. When is their birthday? January 1, 1999. Do they have long or short hair? Short. It used to be long but she had it cut dramatically a couple of months ago. Have you been to a concert with this person? No. We have different music interests so I dunno if I’ll ever find myself in a concert with her. If you asked them to describe you, what do you think they would say? Mature, maybe? I’m always the one telling her off if she’s being too petty. Person Five: JM Where did you two meet? He was my classmate in my introductory journalism class when I was a freshie. He was a sophomore and had just shifted from Biology back then. How long ago did they phone you? Like, call me? He doesn’t really do that. Do they have a certain sport they play? No. He’s more of a musical instrument kind of guy. What about them annoys you sometimes? He’s a little pessimistic and aloof sometimes, which can be strange for me. He’s still my favorite dude, though. Are they ruled by their head or their heart? Head, definitely. He’s very realistic. Are they male or female? Male. In what ways are they the opposite of you? I’m super clingy and can be really friendly and affectionate. He’s none of those as he’s very chill. How many rooms do they have in their house? I’m not sure; I’ve never been to the second floor of their house. His house is huge, though. Person Six: Hannah Can they play an instrument? She can play a little piano, but she mainly sings. Are they close with their mother? I’m sure she doesn’t have any issues with her mom but I don’t know if they’re close. Do you know any of their siblings well? Not really. I just know her sister is 21 and already married. How many times have you visited their house? I’ve never been. When did you last go out to eat together? Several months ago. We had dinner at Pancake House after an org meeting. Do they own a bike? I’m not sure. Maybe she does? Do they have a sweet, sour or salty tooth? I don’t really know what kind of food she’s into. What music genre do they listen to most? She’s into pop songs and ballads. She also has a huge crush on David Archuleta. Person Seven: Luisa Would you ever consider dating this person? Not really. I was already with Gabie when I first met her so I never entertained the thought. Do they prefer cats or dogs? Dogs. Are they or do they plan to go to college? To study what? She did go to college – that’s where I met her. She took up journalism. If they did something illegal, what would it be? HAHAHA I’m just not sure how far she’s willing to go. Have you ever shared a sundae with this person? I don’t think so, no. is their hair dyed or natural? Natural. Is this peson sarcastic? She can be, but it’s not really her go-to humor.

Is this person more likely to party or sit in and read a book? Read a book, I think. Person Eight: Jane Have you ever lied to this person? Only about deadlines, and if I’m done with my deliverables haha. I don’t let it go too far because I respect her too much to betray her. Do you know where this person was born? I don’t. Do you know their middle name and do they know yours? Her second name is Caroline, but I’m not sharing her maiden name. She knows my whole name too. Do they have any special talents? As far as I know, no. What is their starsign? She’s a Virgo. I know this only because she shares her birthday with Beyonce lmaaaaaao. What is the first thing you notice about this person? Her mood for the day. She can sometimes be super pissed at the world so I always have to watch out for that. Have you ever had a big row with this person? Never. Do you like the same types of movies as this person? Well, we both love Audrey Hepburn so there’s that. Random Stuff Which of these friends would you say you are the closest to? Gabie and Angela, as I always say. Can you remember all of their birthdays? Yep. I was the VP for Internal Affairs so I know everyone’s birthday, hahaha. Is there anything you regret saying to any of them? Maybe stuff I’ve said in anger to Gabie. I’ve never lost my temper with everyone else. Which one of these has been there for you the most? Angela. Which one have you known the longest and the shortest amount of time? I’ve technically known Gabie for 17 years, but I’ve been friends with Angela for 14 years. I knew everyone else in 2017, when I joined my org. If you needed a laugh, you'd call... Kate. If you needed advice, you'd call... Gabie and Angela. Which one does your parents like the most? Also Gab and Angela. Is there any of these your parents dislike? I don’t think so. They aren’t too familiar with the rest. Do any of them share the same initials? Jo and JM are both JCs. You can invite one with you for a once in a lifetime trip, which one? Gabie! Something you'd like to say to one of them: You deserve the world and more.

#survey #surveys

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audreysmusicaljourney · 3 years

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Album #18: Bob Dylan “Highway 61 Revisited” (1965)

I have heard of this album before, but I don’t know that I have ever listened to it in its entirety. I definitely know a few songs from it though.

The album begins with “Like a Rolling Stone.” This is a classic rock song. Who knew such an incredible sound could be created from an electric guitar, piano, organ, and Bob Dylan? I love the use of the harmonica on this track, although I personally believe it could use more. Dylan utilizes a lot of unique rhymes within the lyrics of this track. “Tombstone Blues” has a faster tempo as Dylan sings of re-imagined versions of different characters. This is definitely rooted in blues but has more of a rock sound to it. The track “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry” is a piano-based blues ballad. I love the harmonica solo on this track. “From a Buick 6″ has a faster, more upbeat tempo. It also features a nice harmonica solo. The track “Ballad of a Thin Man” has a spooky vibe to it; it almost sounds like a song for Halloween. I think it is the organ that gives it a spooky sound. The bass also gives it a darker tone. The sound grew on my by the end of the track.

“Queen Jane Approximately” does have a sound comparable to “Like a Rolling Stone.” If it works, why change it? 😉You can hear some classic guitar riffs on this track though. There is an interesting sound with the piano under the harmonica break of this track. The title track begins with some crazy whistle sounds before Dylan joins in with narrative vocals. It is an upbeat blues jam. I like it. “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” is a track without a chorus. It’s a narrative woven through Dylan’s vocals on just verses. The instrumentation moves along at a nice pace. I, of course, appreciate the harmonica break on this track. “Desolation Row” features the acoustic sound of a Spanish guitar. Dylan’s vocals sound good as he weaves a fairly complex narrative featuring a lot of familiar characters. This is a nice return to the country-folk-blues style I often associate with Dylan. I especially like the closing with the harmonica solo. I am and forever will be a sucker for the harmonica.

Rating: 9/10

How I Listened: Vinyl

Takeaway: This is a really good album. It is easy to listen to as Dylan has a nice tone throughout the tracks. I need to get better about listening to the lyrics of his songs as he is known to be quite the poet. I’ll do that on the next pass through this track.

#rs500albums #nowspinning #nowstreaming

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bpdjennamaroney · 7 years

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how would you direct assassins

OK I don’t actually know the first thing about directing or theatre but that doesn’t mean I can’t have Ideas:

The Proprietor and Balladeer are played by the same person. They’re both charismatic all-American charmers who are, fundamentally, idealists selling falsehoods. I don’t love obvious color symbolism of black and white clothing but. IDK. The Proprietor will be dressed like a businessman, a young Wall Street Guy stopping just short of Pat Bateman. Balladeer would probably be dressed in preppy pastels–the Wall Street guy golfing at the country club.

And yes the Propalladeer would turn into LHO–this pretty boy actor’s gonna earn his paycheck. You hear me, Nic Rouleau?

The Proprietor and Booth are very chummy and they act like equals–the Proprietor lets Booth think they’re equals–but the Proprietor knows better

Ballad of Booth: JWB works his way to the front of the stage greeting adoring fans while the Balladeer sings the opening stanza.

I want this Booth’s anger issues to be apparent. I want to show the sharp contrast between his public celebrity status and inner dark side.

When he sings “Brutus slew the tyrant,” that’s the first time his facade has a major crack. It takes him a bit to recover his poise; he loses it again at the “union can never recover.”

By “Damn my soul if you must,” his steely resolve has returned, stronger than it’s ever been. Maybe he realizes he might have made a mistake; maybe be realizes, deep down, the futility of his actions; but one thing he knows for sure: he’s going to die for it, this will be the mark leaves on history, his personal sacrifice, and he embraces it. That’s the moment he loses his personhood and gives himself to history instead

How I Saved Roosevelt:Zangara shoves his way past the crowd throughout most of the song, but then they shove him in the electric chair and strap him in. Also they’re all taking selfies and making duckfaces while he’s been electrocuted just kiddingMaybe the Balladeer is conducting the Sousa march? Occasional firework sounds and maybe projections, ending with the sounds of electrocution

What Does a Man Do/Gun Song/Ballad of CzolgoszProjections of famous communists during Emma Goldman’s speech, I guess. Also, this Czolgosz is *shifty.* Like, fidgety and kind of suspect. IRL, Czolgosz was so awkward and so obvious that when he tried to join anarchist groups, they put out a notice on him because they (the anarchists) thought he was a spy. A bad spy. So yeah this Czolgosz isn’t just mournful and brooding.

During the Gun Song, Guiteau makes eyes at Sara Jane Moore and keeps trying to catch her attention. Booth and Czolgosz are second hand embarrassed at best and quietly seething from her antics at worst.

Booth sings his first part to himself primarily, enticing Czolgosz is almost secondary.

Ballad of Czolgosz, the people surrounding him are dressed in bright, colorful, Sunday Clothes decadence and he stands in the middle, destitute and sullen

Charles Guiteau/Ballad of GuiteauGuiteau is slightly manic, always the hero of the show in his mind and deep down he knows the others need convincing. Deep down he knows he’s falling short and is frantically beating his wings against his obvious failure. Throughout the song, he winds up near the noose at the end of each verse and finds theatrical ways to move away from it. Toward the end of the song the Swedish production had him put his head in the noose and then take it out to say “Yes I am!” each time until he couldn’t avoid his fate anymore, which I really liked. He becomes increasingly frenetic throughout the song and by the end he is utterly desperate, a cornered animal trying to maintain his delusion to the end. The stage goes dark and silent for an uncomfortably long time after he’s hanged–and then the jaunty music picks up again

Squeaky/Unworthy of Your Love

Squeaky speaks about Charlie with evangelical fervor but when she’s not talking about him, she’s visibly sad and pensive and lost.

During Unworthy of Your Love the Proprietor is watching in the background, smirking. While John is singing his part, Squeaky takes a huge hit of the reefer.

Another National Anthem

JWB takes over the Proprietor’s part. He’s now more symbol/mythic figure than person, anyway.

IDK maybe at the climax of the song the assassins point their guns at the Balladeer, trapping him, and when he tries to escape, the noose descends above him, and the electric chair appears and the set goes black

Something Just Broke/Everybody’s Got the Right

I’m Keeping Something Just Broke and every time an assassin makes an entrance in Everybody’s Got the Right, one of the normal folks walks offstage until it’s just the assassins

#assassins

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rkxangel · 7 years

Photo

REACH FOR YOUR DREAMS; ROYAL SURVIVAL INTERVIEW!

interviewee: jung soojung / krystal valentine jung episode: 1

soojung knows where she stands but mentally noting to herself that she could’ve done better than belt out notes, she feels like she’s being undermined on her talents. then again, this is a reality show. nothing’s too shocking to her after being on the mgas last year, there’s also the critics that are her sphere coaches for the evaluations, and above all, herself.

she’s well-aware of her capabilities and weaknesses because she’s taught herself so much ( prior to being signed ), that affinity for music since young has made her experienced. from vocalisation to instruments, that’s her forte. not to mention, song-writing and composition. maybe she should’ve shown an original piece instead of singing a beyonce, typical ballad song. too late to go back on it now, it’s already done.

so when she heard jisub’s harsh words, she didn’t think it was that harsh. because at the end of the day, she’s experienced worse critics. sometimes, criticism ( as bad as it sounds ) is actually advice for improvement. she does have more potential than to hit those high notes. she must show the audience and jisub what she’s made of. leaving sphere, she wonders if she regrets it but she can’t disappoint baek jiyoung more than she already has. she misses sehun, minhee, and the others but right now, she should focus on improvising herself for the upcoming episode.

honestly, the thought of making new friends trembles the ice princess because she doesn’t do too well at it. for many reasons—such as being socially awkward and quiet. she can’t seem like that in front of camera because who knows what those damn netizens say? oh yeah jung soojung? she shouldn’t be on the show. she doesn’t say shit. blah blah. people always run their mouths no matter what.

in this interview, she doesn't seem as a nerve-wreck compared to last year. the camera is recording, she's got to say the right thing and not slip up. but that doesn't mean forget herself, always be yourself. the ice princess is expecting similar questions from last year but in regards to the survival show and the girls, or about herself.

the first question is about the dorms.

how was it like for you to see the dormitories for the first time? how do you feel about the living conditions?

this reminds her of the time that she was residing in those shitty conditions under her step mother’s care, who also treated her like crap. “ah, i don’t mind it for sure! i think it’s exciting having to room with someone because i’ve never had that kind of experience before.” such a positive response from her but she’s trying to be a better person and be in the optimistic mindset than pessimistic. “seeing it for the first time made me wonder how i’ll get adjusted to this kind of course—you know like, i’m an ice princess.. or what everyone says, but i was excited because everything felt new to me.”

the next question, what do you think about the other girls? do you see them as potential friends or rivals?

soojung isn’t the kind of person to care much about people in general, unfortunately. but she’s been pushing herself far to be a kind-hearted girl ( to those that she isn’t close with, she’s been more considerate ). she does know a few of the girls like seolhyun, elly ( who she’s recently worked with ), eunae, and a few others. not everyone though. “ah i got to work with elly, i love her and i think she’s really pretty. same with seolhyun unnie. i haven’t gotten much of an interaction with soohyun but she’s a cheery girl, in terms of vocals—i can see myself rivaling her with ability-wise but other than that, i’d love to dote on her and be her friend! eunae is a sweetheart, she made me feel really comfortable because of our great interactions. jihyun and yubin.. they’re kind of scary because they’re trainees for so long! i also know chaeyoung, i called her rose though. we used to go to the same school together. seoyoung is my friend for sure, i’ve met her before she got in the show. i look forward to creating bonds with the girls.”

was this going to be the last question? probably not. maybe a few more, it isn’t that bad.

how did you react being assigned to the minor team? do you think this was a reasonable choice for you?

inside her heart, she was slightly disappointed that she couldn’t be placed in the major team instead. But she shouldn’t point fingers on jisub for whatever his decision was and what impacted it. the contributions must’ve been her lack of stage presence, soojung doesn’t excel at charisma—which she acknowledges. “originally, i wanted to be placed in the major team but i can’t complain because there’s a reason why i’m in the minor. the others deserve the best and if being in the major team is it—then i’d let it be. i’ll find my way being around minor, there’s a reason why i’m here. if i can’t find out just why right now, i’ll know why later on anyways.”

godbless, this was going to be the last question. she can’t let out a sigh of relief because that would seem rude in front of the public, she holds back and puts a smile on her face, show it off as a sign that she’s almost done! yay!

how will you improve your position in the show from now on?

a hard question but she should be careful what to say because she doesn’t want to spoil the details. she can’t just be a plain jane and say oh i’m going to work hard but give a better response. “i’m going to improve by showing sides of me that i don’t think the world has seen. there’s more to me than the hard-working ice princess that the public sees. i think even ice princesses have their flaws, you guys might see that there.” she let out a little laughter, “also try to put more energetic vibes and my vibe out on the stage? who knows? you guys will find out!”

with the end of the interview, soojung bows her head and thanks those who are watching the show and supporting her. at the end of the day, she’s going to gain wisdom and insight from this opportunity to be on the royal survival show.

make use of what you got.

show the world what you truly are.

#;sl #;p #kv;royalsurvivaldreams #royalsurvival1 #( mention of:#ellyrk #rkrose #rkeunae #seolhyunrk #rksoohyun #rkqri #rkseoyoung #yubinrk #( wc: 1100 #oops i died

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paradiseforlana · 7 years

Conversation

Lana Del Rey’s interview for Dazed Magazine:

Courtney Love: Is this the mysterious Lana Del Rey?

Lana Del Rey: Is this the one and only Courtney Love?

Lana Del Rey: So, we could just talk about whatever... Like those burning palm trees that you had in the ‘Malibu’ video. I didn’t think they were real!

Courtney Love: Back when rock’n’roll had budget, you mean? Oh my God, Lana, setting palm trees on fire was so fun. You thought they were CGI?

LDR: Yeah.

CL: God, you’re so young. I burned down palm trees. In my day, darling, you used to have to walk to school in the snow. So, since I toured with you, I got kind of obsessed and went down this Lana rabbit hole and became – not like I’m wearing a flower crown, Lana, don’t get ideas – but I absolutely love it. I love it as much as I love PJ Harvey.

LDR: That’s amazing because, maybe it’s slightly well documented, but I love everything you do, everything you have done – I couldn’t believe that you came on the tour with me.

CL: I read that you spend a lot of time mastering and mixing. Is that true on this new record?

LDR: Oh my God, yeah, it’s killing me. It’s because I spend so much time with the engineers working on the reverb. Because I actually don’t love a glossy production. If I want a bit of that retro feel, like that spring reverb or that Elvis slap, sometimes if you send it to an outside mixer they might try and dry things up a bit and push them really hard on top of the mix so it sounds really pop. And Born to Die did have a slickness to it, but, in general, I have an aversion to things that sound glossy all over – you have to pick and choose. And some people say, ‘It’s not radio-ready if it isn’t super-shiny from top to bottom.’ But you know this. Whoever mixed your stuff is a genius. Who did it?

CL: Chris Lord-Alge and Tom Lord-Alge. Kurt was really big on mastering. He sat in every mastering session like a fiend. I never was big on mastering because it’s such a pain in the butt.

LDR: It is a pain in the ass.

CL: I think my very, very favourite song of yours – you’re not gonna like this because it’s early – is ‘Blue Jeans’. I mean, ‘You’re so fresh to death and sick as ca-cancer’? Who does that?

LDR: I have to say, that track has this guy (Del Rey collaborator) Emile Haynie all over it. I remember ‘Blue Jeans’ was more of a Chris Isaak ballad and then I went in with him and it came out sounding the way it does now. I was like, ‘That’s the power of additional production.’ The song was on the radio in the UK, on Radio 1, and I remember thinking, ‘Fuck, that started off as a classical composition riff that I got from my composer friend, Dan Heath.’ It was, like, six chords that I started singing on.

CL: You have that lyric (on the song), ‘You were sorta punk rock, I grew up on hip hop.’ Did you really grow up on hip hop?

LDR: I didn’t find any good music until I was right out of high school, and I think that was just because, coming from the north country, we got country, we got NPR, and we got MTV.

CL: What I hear in your music is that you’ve created a world, you’ve created a persona, and you’ve created this kind of enigma that I never created but if I could go back I would create.

LDR: Are you even being serious right now? I don’t even know if your legacy could get any bigger. You’re one of the only people I know whose legacy precedes them. Just the name ‘Courtney Love’ is… You’re big, honey. You’re Hollywood. (laughs) Touring with Courtney Love (was), like, an Elizabeth Taylor diamond (for me).

CL: You know, I met Elizabeth Taylor. I was with Carrie Fisher at (Taylor’s) Easter party and she was taking six hours to come downstairs.

LDR: I love it.

CL: I looked at Carrie and I said, ‘This is not worth it,’ and Carrie said, ‘Oh, yes it is.’ So we snuck upstairs and, Lana, when you go past the Warhol of Elizabeth Taylor as you’re sneaking up the stairs and it says ‘001’, you start getting goosebumps. And then you see her room and it’s all lavender, like her eyes. And she’s in the bathroom getting her hair done by this guy named José Eber who wears a cowboy hat and has long hair, and I’m like, ‘What am I doing here? I’m not Hollywood royalty.’ And the first words out of her mouth are, like, ‘Fuck you, Carrie, how ya doin’?’ She was so salty but such a goddess at the same time.

LDR: She was so salty. The fact that she married Richard Burton twice – and all the stories you hear about those famous, crazy, public brawls – she was just up for it. Up for the trouble.

“What I hear in your music is that you’ve created a world, you’ve created a persona, and you’ve created this kind of enigma that I never did’’ — Courtney Love to Lana Del Rey

Tweet this quote

CL: You know what, darling? I started real early. I started stalking Andy Warhol before I could even think about it. And you kind of did the same, from my understanding. That ‘I want to make it’ thing. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

LDR: No, there’s not. There’s nothing wrong with it when you do the rest of it for the right reasons. If music is really in your blood and you don’t want to do anything else and you don’t really care about the money until later. It’s also about the vibe, not to be cliched. And the people. I think we had that in common. It was about wanting to go to shows, wanting to have your own show – living, breathing, eating, all of it.

CL: Can I ask you about your time in New Jersey? Was that a soul-searching time?

LDR: Oh, I don’t even know if I should have said to anyone that I was living in that trailer in New Jersey but, stupidly, I did this interview from the trailer, in 2008.

CL: I saw it!

LDR: It’s cringey, it’s cringey. (laughs)

CL: You look so cute, though.

LDR: I thought I was rockabilly. I was platinum. I thought I had made it in my own way.

CL: I understand completely.

LDR: The one thing I wish I’d done was go to LA instead of New York. I had been playing around for maybe four years, just open mics, and I got a contract with this indie label called 5 Points Records in 2007. They gave me $10,000 and I found this trailer in New Jersey, across the Hudson - Bergen Light Rail. So, I moved there, I finished school and I made that record (Lana Del Ray a.k.a. Lizzy Grant), which was shelved for two and a half years, and then came out for, like, three months. But I was proud of myself. I felt like I had arrived, in my own way. I had my own thought and it was kind of kitschy and I knew it was going to sort of influence what I was doing next. It was definitely a phase. (laughs)

CL: But you have records about being a ‘Brooklyn Baby’. You can write about New York adeptly and I cannot. I tried to write a song about a tragic girl in New York, going down Bleecker Street – this girl couldn’t afford Bleecker Street, so the song made no sense, right? (laughs) I did my time there, but it chased me away. I couldn’t do it because I wouldn’t go solo. I had to have a band.

LDR: I wanted a band so badly. I feel like I wouldn’t have had some of the stage fright I had when I started playing bigger shows if (I had) a real group and we were in it together. I really wanted that camaraderie. I actually didn’t even find that until a couple of years ago, I would say. I’ve been with my band for six years and they’re great, but I wished I had people – I fantasised about Laurel Canyon.

CL: I wanted the camaraderie. The alternative bands in my neighbourhood were the (Red Hot Chili) Peppers and Jane’s (Addiction). I knew Perry (Farrell, Jane’s Addiction frontman) and I went to high school for, like, ten seconds with two Peppers and a guy named Romeo Blue who became Lenny Kravitz. I remember being an extra in a Ramones video and he stopped by, when he was dating Lisa Bonet from The Cosby Show and it was a big deal.

LDR: See? You didn’t really see that in New York. When I got there, The Strokes had had a moment, but that was kind of it. LA has always been the epicentre of music, I feel.

CL: LA is easier. People have garages. And then as you go up the coast, in Washington and Oregon people have bigger houses and bigger garages, and people have parents. I didn’t have parents, and you – well, you had parents, but you were on your own.

LDR: Yeah. You know that song of yours (‘Awful’) that says, ‘(Just shut up,) you’re only 16’? I think there are different types of people. There are people who heard, ‘What do you know? You’re just a kid,’ and then there are people who got a lot of support (from the line), like, ‘Go for it, go for your dreams.’ (laughs) And I think when you don’t have that, you get kind of stuck at a certain age. Randomly, in the last few years, I feel like I’ve grown up. Maybe I’ve just had time to think about everything, process everything. I’ve gotten to move on and think about how it feels now, singing songs I wrote ten years ago. It does feel different. I was almost reliving those feelings on stage until recently. It’s weird listening back to my stuff. Today, I was watching some of your old videos and this footage of you playing a big festival. The crowd was just girls – just young girls for rows and rows. I was reminded of how vast that influence was on teenagers. And – going back to enigma and fame and legacy – you know, those girls who have grown up and girls who are 16 now, they relate to you in the exact same way as they did right when you started. And that’s the power of your craft. You’re one of my favourite writers.

CL: You’re one of mine, so, checkmate. (laughs)

LDR: What you did was the epitome of cool. And there’s a lot of different music going on, but adolescents still know when something comes authentically from somebody’s heart. It might not be the song that sells the most, but when people hear it, they know it. Are you a John Lennon fan?

CL: When I hear ‘Working Class Hero’, it’s a song I wish to God I could write. I wouldn’t ever cover it. I mean, Marianne Faithfull covered it beautifully, but I would never cover it because I think Marianne did a great job and that’s all that needs to be said.

LDR: I felt that way when I covered ‘Chelsea Hotel (#2)’, the Leonard Cohen song, but when I was doing more acoustic shows, I couldn’t not do it.

CL: I don’t have your range. I’ve tried to sing along to ‘Brooklyn Baby’ and ‘Dark Paradise’ and this new one, ‘Love’. You go high, baby.

LDR: I’ve got some good low ones for you. You know what would be good, is that song, ‘Ride’. I don’t sing it in its right octave during the shows because it’s too low for me. But I’ve been thinking about doing something with you for a little while now. Then after we did the Endless Summer tour, we were thinking we should at least write, or we should just do whatever and maybe you could come down to the studio and just see what came out.

CL: When we were on tour, our pre-show chats were very productive for me.

LDR: Me too. That was a real moment of me counting my blessings. I just wanted to stay in every single moment and remember all of it, because it was so amazing.

CL: Likewise. It was really fun coming into your room. My favourite part of the tour was in Portland, getting you vinyl that I felt you needed. (laughs)

LDR: When you left the room, I was just running my hand over all the vinyl like little gems, like, ‘I can’t believe I have these (records) that Courtney gave to me, it’s so fucking amazing.’ And we were in Portland, too. It felt surreal.

CL: Yeah, I don’t like going there much but I went there with you. We have this in common, too: we both ran away to Britain. If I could live anywhere in the world, I’d live in London.

LDR: If I could live anywhere in the world other than LA, I’d live in London. In the back of my mind, I always feel like I could maybe end up there.

CL: I know I’m going to end up there. I know what neighbourhood I’m going to end up in, and I know that I want to be on the Thames. I subscribe to this magazine called Country Life which is just real-estate porn and fox hunting. It’s amazing. OK, so, if you weren’t doing you, what would you do?

LDR: You take ‘red’. I’ll trade for ‘whore’. I’m so lucky.

CL: I love this new song (‘Love’).

LDR: Thank you. I love the new song, too. I’m glad it’s the first thing out. It doesn’t sound that retro, but I was listening to a lot of Shangri-Las and wanted to go back to a bigger, more mid-tempo, single-y sound. The last 16 months, things were kind of crazy in the US, and in London when I was there. I was just feeling like I wanted a song that made me feel a little more positive when I sang it. And there’s an album that’s gonna come out in the spring called Lust for Life. I did something I haven’t ever done, which is not that big of a deal, but I have a couple of collabs on this record. Speaking of John Lennon, I have a song with Sean Lennon. Do you know him?

CL: I do, I like him.

LDR: It’s called ‘Tomorrow Never Came’. I don’t know if you’ve ever felt this way, but when I wrote it I felt like it wasn’t really for me. I kept on thinking about who this song was for or who could do it with me, and then I realised that he would be a good person. I didn’t know if I should ask him because I actually have a line in it where I say, ‘I wish we could go back to your country house and put on the radio and listen to our favourite song by Lennon and Yoko.’ I didn’t want him to think I was asking him because I was namechecking them. Actually, I had listened to his records over the years and I did think it was his vibe, so I played it for him and he liked it. He rewrote his verse and had extensive notes, down to the mix. And that was the last thing I did, decision-wise. I haven’t mixed the record, but the fact that ‘Love’ just came out and Sean kind of finished up the record, it felt very meant-to-be. Because that whole concept of peace and love really is in his veins and in his family. Then, I also have Abel (Tesfaye), The Weeknd. He is actually on the title track of the record, ‘Lust for Life’. Maybe that’s kind of weird to have a feature on the title track, but I really love that song and we had said for a while that we were gonna do something; I did stuff on his last two records.

CL: Do you have a singular producer or several producers?

LDR: Rick Nowels. He actually did stuff with Stevie Nicks a while ago. He works really well with women. I did the last few records with him. Even with Ultraviolence which I did with Dan (Auerbach), I did the record first with Rick, and then I went to Nashville and reworked the sound with Dan. So, yeah, Rick Nowels is amazing, and these two engineers – with all the records that I’ve worked on with Rick, they did a lot of the production as well. You would love these two guys. They’re just super-innovative. I wanted a bit of a sci-fi f lair for some of the stuff and they had some really cool production ideas. But yeah, that’s pretty much it. I mean, Max Martin –

CL: Wait, you wrote with Max Martin? You went to the compound?

LDR: Have you been there?

CL: No. I’ve always wanted to work with Max Martin.

LDR: So basically, ‘Lust for Life’ was the first song I wrote for the record, but it was kind of a Rubik’s Cube. I felt like it was a big song but... it wasn’t right. I don’t usually go back and re-edit things that much, because the songs end up sort of being what they are, but this one song I kept going back to. I really liked the title. I liked the verse. John Janick was like, ‘Why don’t we just go over and see what Max Martin thinks?’ So, I flew to Sweden and showed him the song. He said that he felt really strongly that the best part was the verse and that he wanted to hear it more than once, so I should think about making it the chorus. So I went back to Rick Nowels’ place the next day and I was like, ‘Let’s try and make the verse the chorus,’ and we did, and it sounded perfect. That’s when I felt like I really wanted to hear Abel sing the chorus, so he came down and rewrote a little bit of it. But then I was feeling like it was missing a little bit of the Shangri-Las element, so I went back for a fourth time and layered it up with harmonies. Now I’m finally happy with it. (laughs) But we should do something. Like, soon.

CL: I would like that. That would be awesome.

Lust for Life is out this spring.

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wacco-archive · 7 years

Text

Full Transcription: Lana and Courtney Dazed Interview

LDR: So, we could talk just talk about whatever...like those burning palm trees that you had in the 'Malibu' video. I didn't think they were real!

CL: Back when rock'n'roll has a budget, you mean? oh my God, Lana, setting palm trees on fire was so fun. You thought they were CGI?

LDR: Yeah.

CL: God you're so young. I burned down palm trees. In my day darling you used to have to walk to school in the snow. So since I toured with you I kind of got obsessed and went down this Lana rabbit hole and became - not like I'm wearing a flower crown, Lana don't get me wrong - but I absolutely love it. I love it as much as I love PJ Harvey.

LDR: That's amazing because maybe it's slightly well documented but I love everything you do, everything you have done - I couldn't believe that you came on tour with me.

CL: I read that you spend a lot of time mastering and mixing - is this true on the new record? LDR: Oh my god yeah, it's killing me. It's because I spend so much time with the engineers working on the reverb. I actually don't love a glossy production. If I want a bit of that retro feel, like that spring reverb or that Elvis slap, sometimes if you send it to an outside mixer they might try and dry things up a bit and push them really hard on top of the mix so it sounds really pop. And Born to Die did have a slickness to it but in general I have an aversion to things that sound glossy all over - you have to pick and choose. And some people say 'it's not radio ready if it isn't super shiny from top to bottom'. But you know this. Whoever mixed your stuff is a genius. Who did it? CL: Chris Lord-Alge and Tom Lord-Alge. Kurt was really big on mastering. He sat in every mastering session like a fiend. I never was big on mastering because it's such a pain in the butt.

LDR: It is a pain in the ass.

CL: I think my very very favourite song of yours - you're not gonna like this because it's early - is 'Blue Jeans'. I mean 'You're so fresh to death and sick as ca-cancer?' Who does that? LDR: I have to say that track has this guy (Del Rey Collaborater) Emile Haynie all over it. I remember 'Blue Jeans' was more of a Chris Isaak ballad and then I went in with him and it came out sounding the way it does now. I was like 'that's the power of production.' The song was in the radio in the UK on Radio 1 and I remember thinking 'F*ck, that started off as a classical composition riff that I got from my composer friend Dan Heath.' It was like six chords that I started singing on.

CL: You have that lyric 'You were sorta punk rock, I grew up on hip-hop.' DId you really grow up on hip-hop?

LDR: I didn't find any good music until I was right out of high school, coming from the north country, we got country, we got NPR and we got MTV. So Eminem was my version of hip-hop until I was 18. Then mayb I found A Tribe Called Quest.

CL: Have you met Marshall Mathers? LDR: No. Sometimes he namechecks me in his songs. I called the head of my label (Interscope CEO) John Janick and I was like 'OK in this last song (Big Sean's "No Favors") when Eminem says 'I'm about to run over a chick, Del Rey CD in". Did he mean he wanted to run me over or was he listening to me while he ran someone over?'. And John was like, 'No, no he was listening to you while he ran someone over' and I was 'Ok, cool.'

CL: You got namechecked by Eminem? oh my god that is a jewel in the crown.

LDR: Just a little ruby.

CL: Yeah, it's not really a diamond, but it's a ruby.

LDR: Not like touring with Courtney Love. That's like an Elizabeth Taylor diamond.

CL: You know, I met Elizabeth Taylor. I was with Carrie FIsher at Taylor's easter party and she was taking six hours to come downstairs.

LDR: I love it.

CL: I looked at Carrie and said 'This is not worth it,' and Carrie said, 'Oh yes it is.' So we snuck upstairs and, Lana, when you go past the Warhol of Elizabeth Taylor as you're sneaking up the stairs and it says '001' you start getting goosebumps. And then you see her room and it's all lavender like her eyes. And she's in the bathroom getting her hair done by this guy named Jose Eber who wears a cowboy hat and has long hair and I'm like 'What am I doing here? I'm not Hollywood royalty. And the first words out of her mouth are like, 'F*ck you, Carrie, how ya doin'?' She was so salty but such a goddess at the same time.

LDR: She was so salty. The fact that she married Richard Burton twice - and all the stories you heart about those famous, crazy, public brawls - she was just up for it. Up for the trouble.

CL: So back to you. What I hear in your music is that you've created a world, you've created a persona, and you've created this kind of enigma that I never created but if I could so back I would create.

LDR: Are you even being serious right now? I don't even know if your legacy could get any bigger. You're one of the only people I know whose legacy precedes them. Just the name Courtney Love is...You're big honey. You're Hollywood (laughs).

CL: You know what darling? I started real early. I started stalking Andy Warhol before I could even think about it. And you kind of did the same, from my understanding. That 'I want to make it' thing. And there's nothing wrong with that.

LDR: No. there's not. There's nothing wrong with it when you do it for the right reasons. If music is really in your blood and you don't want to do anything else and you dont really care about the money until later. It's also about the vibe, not tobe cliched. And the people. I think we had that in common. It was about wanting to go to shows, wanting to have your own show - living, breathing, eating, all of it.

CL: Can I ask you about your time in New York? Was that a soul searching time? LDR: Oh I don't even know if I should have said to anyone that I was living in a trailer in New Jersey but stupidly, I did this interview from the trailer, in 2008.

CL: I saw it! LDR: It's cringey, it's cringey (laughs).

CL: You look so cute though.

LDR: I thought I was a rockabilly. I was platinum. I thought I had made it in my own way.

CL: I understand completely.

LDR: The one thing I wish I'd done was go to LA instead of New York. I had been playing around for maybe 4 years, just open mics, and I got a contract with this indie label called 5 Points Records in 2007. They gave me 10,000 dollars & I found this trailer in New Jersey, across the Hudson-Begren Light Rail. So I moved there, I finished school and I made that record (LDR AKA Lizzy Grant) which was shelved for 2 and a half years and then came out for like 3 months. But I was proud of myself. I felt like I had arrived, in my own way. I had my own thought and it was kind of kitschy and I knew it was going to sort of influence what I was doing next. It was definitely a phase (laughs).

CL: But you have records about being a Brooklyn Baby. You can write about New York adeptly and I cannot. I tried to write a song about a tragic girl in New York going down Bleecker Street - this girl couldn't afford Bleecker Street so the song made no sense, right? (laughs) I did my time there, but it chased me away. I couldn't do it because I wouldn't go solo, I had to have a band.

LDR: I wanted a band so badly. I feel I wouldn't have had some of the stage fright I had when I started playing bigger shows if I had a real group and we were in it together. I really wanted that camaraderie. I actually didn't even find that until a couple of years ago, I would say. I've been with my band for 6 years and they're great, but I wished I had people - I fantasised about Laurel Canyon.

CL: I wanted the camraderie. The alternative bands in my neighborhood were the Red Hot Chilli Peppers and Jane's Addiction. I knew Perry (Farrel, Janes Addiction) and I went to high school for like, ten seconds with two Peppers and a guy named Romeo Blue who became Lenny Kravitz. I remember being an extra in a Ramones video and he stopped by, when he was dating Lisa Bonet from The Cosby Show and it was a big deal.

LDR: See? You didn't really see that in New York. When I got there, The Strokes had had a moment, but that was kind of it. LA had always been the epicentre of music, I feel.

CL: LA is easier. People have garages. And then as you go up the coast, in Washington and Oregon people have bigger houses and bigger garages and people have parents. I didn't have parents. and well, you had parents, but you were on your own.

LDR: Yeah. You know that song of yours (Awful) that says, '(Just shut up) you're only 16'? I think there are different types of people. There are people who head 'What do you know, you're just a kid?' and then there are people who got a lot of support (from the line) like 'Go for it, go for your dreams.' (laughs) And I think, when you don't have that, you get kind of stuck at a certain age. Randomly, in the last few years, I feel like I've grown up. Maybe I've just had time to think about everything. I've gotten to move on and think about how it feels now, singing songs I wrote ten years ago. It does feel different. I was almost reliving those feelings on stage until recently. It's weird listening back to my stuff. Today I was watching some of your old videos and the footage of you playing a big festival. The crowd was just girls - just young girls, for rows and rows. I was reminded of how vast that influence was on teenagers. And - going back to enigma and fame and legacy - you know, those girls who have grown up and girls who are 16 now, they relate to you in the exact same way as they did right when you started. And that's the power of your craft. You're one of my favourite writers.

CL: You're one of mine, so, checkmate (laughs).

LDR: What you did was the epitome of cool. And there's lots of different music going on but adolescents still know when something comes authentically from somebody's heart. It might not be the song that sells the most, but when people hear it, they know it. Are you a John Lennon fan? CL: When I hear 'Working Class Hero' it's a song I wish to God I could write. I wouldn't ever cover it. I mean, Marianne Faithfull covered it beautifully, but I would never cover it because I think Marianne did a great job and that's all that needs to be said.

LDR: I felt that way when I covered Chelsea Hotel No2, the Leonard Cohen song, but when I was doing more acoustic shows, I couldn't not do it.

CL: I don't have your range. I've tried to sing along to Brooklyn Baby and Dark Paradise, and this new one, Love. You go high, baby.

LDR: I've got some good low ones for you. You know what would be good, is that song, Ride. I don't sing it in its right octave during the shows because it's two low for me. But I've been thinking about doing something with you for a little while now. Then after we did the Endless Summer tour, we were thinking we should at least write, or we should just do whatever and maybe you could come to the studio and just see what came out.

CL: When we were on tour, our pre-show chats were very productive for me.

LDR: Me too. That was a real moment of counting my blessings. I just wanted to stay in every single moment and remember all of it, because it was so amazing.

CL: Likewise. It was really fun coming into your room. My favourite part of the tour was in Portland, getting you vinyl that I felt you needed. (laughs)

LDR: When you left the room, I was just running my hand all over the vinyl like little gems, like 'I can't believe that I have these (records) that Courtney Love gave to me, it's so f*cking amazing.' And we were in Portland too. It felt surreal.

CL: Yeah, I don't like going there much but I went there with you. We have this in common, too: we both ran away to Britain. If I could live anywhere in the world, I'd live in London.

LDR: If I could live anywhere in the world other than LA, I'd live in London. In the back of my mind, I always feel like I could maybe end up there.

CL: I know I'm going to end up there. I know what neighborhood I'm going to end up in, and I know that I want to be on the Thames. I subscribe to this magazine called 'Country Life' which is just real estate porn and fox hunting. It's amazing. OK so, if you weren't doing you, what would you do?

LDR: Do you have a really clear answer for this, yourself? CL: Yeah, I would work with teenage girls. Girls that are in halfway houses.

LDR: That's got you all over it. I'm selfish. I would do something that would put me by the beach. I would be like, a bad lifeguard (laughs). I'd come help you on the weekends though.

CL: Do you like being in Malibu better than being in town? LDR: I like the idea of it. People don't always go out to visit you in Malibu. So there's a lot of alone time, which is kind of like, hmmm. I'm not in (indie rock enclave) Silver Lake but I love all the stuff that's going on around there. I guess I'd have to say I prefer town, but I've got my half time Malibu fantasy.

CL: The only bad thing that can happen in Malibu really is getting on Etsy and overspending.

LDR: Oh my God, woman...(laughs) Tell me about it. Late night sleepless Etsy binges.

CL: Regretsy binges. Ok, so lyrically, you have some tropes and themes and one of them is the colour red. Red dresses, scarlet, nail polish...I kind of want to steal that.

LDR: You need to take over that, because I think I've got to relinquish the red.

CL: Well, I overuse the word "wh*re".

LDR: You take red, I'll trade for wh*re. I'm so lucky.

CL: I love this new song (Love).

LDR: Thank you. I love the new song too. I'm glad it's the first thing out. It doesn't sound that retro, but I was listening to a lot of Shangri-Las and wanted to go back to a bigger more mid-tempo, single-y sound. The last 16 months, things were kind of crazy in the US, and in London, when I was there. I was just feeling like I wanted a song that made me feel a little more positive when I sang it. And there's an album that's gonna come out in the spring called Lust for Life. I did something I haven't ever done, which is not that big of a deal, but I have a couple of collabs. Speaking of John Lennon, I have a song with Sean Lennon. Do you know him? CL: I do. I like him

LDR: It's called Tomorrow Never Came. I don't know if you've ever felt this way, but when I wrote it I felt like it wasn't really for me. I kept on thinking about who this song was for or who could do it with me and then I realised that he would be a good person. I didn't know if I should ask him because actually I have a line in it where I say "I wish we could go back to your country house and put on the radio and listen to our favourite song by Lennon and Yoko". I didn't want him to think I was asking him because I was namechecking them. Actually, I had listened to his records over the years and I did think it was his vibe, so I played it for him and he liked it. He rewrote his verse and had extensive notes, down to the mix. And that was the last thing I did, decision wise. I haven't mixed the record, but that fact that Love just came out and Sean kind of finished up the record, it felt very meant to be. Because that whole concept of peace and love really is in his veins and in his family. Then I also have Abel (Tesfaye), the Weeknd. He is actually on the title track of the record, Lust for Life. Maybe that's kind of weird to have a feature on the title track, but I really love that song and we had said for a while that we where gonna do something; I did stuff on his last two records.

CL: Do you have a singular producer or several producers?

LDR: Rick Nowels. He actually did stuff with Stevie Nicks a while ago. He works really well with women. I did the last few records with him. Even with Ultraviolence, which I did with Dan (Auerbach) I did the record first with Nick, and then I went to Nashville and reworked the sound with Dan. So yeah, Rick Nowels is amazing and these two engineers - with all the records that I've worked on with Rick, they did a lot of the production as well. You would love these two guys. They're just super innovative. I wanted a bit of a sci-fi flair for some of the stuff and they had some really cool production ideas. But yeah, that's pretty much it. I mean, Max Martin -

CL: Wait, you wrote with Max Martin? You went to the compound?

LDR: Have you been there? CL: No. I've always wanted to work with Max Martin.

LDR: So basically, Lust for Life was the first song that I wrote for the record but it was kind of like a Rubik's Cube. I felt like it was a big song but....it wasn't right. I don't usually do back and re-edit things that musch, because the songs end up sort of being what they are, but this one song I kept going back to. I really liked the title. I liked the verse. John Janick was like, 'Why don't we just go over and see what Max Martin thinks?' So I flew to Sweden and showed him the song. He said that he felt really strongly that the best part was the verse and that he wanted to hear it more than once, so I should think about making it the chorus. So I went back to Rick Nowels place the next day and I was like, 'Let's try and make the verse the chorus' and we did, and it sounded perfect. That's when I felt like I really wanted to hear Abel sing the chorus, so he came down and rewrote a little bit of it. But then I was feeling like it was missing a little bit of the Shangri-La element, so I went back for a fourth time and layered it up with harmonies. Now I'm finally happy with it (laughs). But we should do something. Like, soon.

CL: I would like that. That would be awesome.

Lust for Life is out this spring.

#lana del rey #courtney love #dazed and confused

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mrmichaelchadler · 6 years

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Thumbnails 8/28/18

Thumbnails is a roundup of brief excerpts to introduce you to articles from other websites that we found interesting and exciting. We provide links to the original sources for you to read in their entirety.—Chaz Ebert

"Miranda Harcourt on 'The Changeover' and Whānau Values in New Zealand": At Indie Outlook, I interview the acclaimed actress and acting coach about her terrific new feature that she directed with her husband, Stuart McKenzie. We also discuss her ingenious coaching techniques, clients such as Melanie Lynskey and Nicole Kidman, and her daughter, "Leave No Trace" star Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie.

“I was coaching a few actors via Skype for the role that Thomasin ended up playing in ‘Consent,’ and she was reading a book while listening to our session. After I hung up, Thomasin said in her little voice, ‘I’d like to audition for that role,’ and I went, ‘What? But you hate acting.’ She replied, ‘No, it sounds like a really great story to tell,’ so we did a little read-through of the script right here, exactly where I am sitting right now. I was like, ‘Oh my god, you are amazing.’ It was a great performance, and when she went in for the audition, she got the role. The film was directed by Robert Sarkies, who also made another great New Zealand movie, ‘Out of the Blue.’ Even now, I don’t think Thomasin has seen all of ‘Consent,’ because she wasn’t even allowed to see the bits that she was in. She’s only in the first 17 minutes, but it’s a very intense journey. It took a lot of courage for her to portray a girl who is raped. Francis Biggs, one of my students I taught at Toi Whakaari: New Zealand Drama School, portrayed the rapist with whom Thomasin had to play that scene in ‘Consent.’ We’re both really grateful to Francis because he and Thomasin did ‘hug to connect’ before they played that scene. It enabled Francis and Thomasin to play quite an intense rape scene together so that they are in the flow of telling that story together. They weren’t in opposition, which would’ve been very psychologically damaging, not only to Thomasin, who was 13 at the time, but also to poor old Francis, because it was not a happy job for him. I’ve got a collection of great photographs chronicling the interactions that Thomasin and Francis had in order to build that relationship over a couple of weeks while preparing for the scene. Over the couple of weeks after they did that scene, Thomasin would consistently check in with him and say, ‘Hey Francis! I’m really proud of the work we did together, and I hope you feel good about it too. Just remember—it’s only acting!’”

"Call it a Comeback: The Inside Story of Elvis Presley's Iconic 1968 Special": As remembered by our contributor Donald Liebenson at Vanity Fair.

“Elvis looms large in the singer’s legend. The live-wire special is featured prominently in two 2018 documentaries, Eugene Jarecki’s ‘The King’ (now in theaters) and Thom Zimny’s ‘The Searcher’ (on HBO). It capped a decade in which Elvis could mostly be seen only in the movies, and, increasingly, not very good movies at that. Taped in June and broadcast on December 3, 1968, it was his first television appearance since 1960, when he guest-starred on ‘Frank Sinatra’s Welcome Home Party for Elvis.’ At the time, he hadn’t performed in front of a live audience in seven years. But Presley and Binder’s creative team delivered. [Steve] Binder, a self-professed ‘West Coast guy into surf music,’ finished the special feeling in awe of Presley. ‘For me, the ‘68 special is seeing a man re-discover himself,’ Binder said. ‘I saw it on his face and in his body language as we progressed.’ Susan Doll, author of Elvis for Dummies, agreed. ‘I think it’s the peak of his career,’ she said. Col. Tom Parker, Presley’s infamously controlling manager, had promised NBC a one-hour special if the network financed Presley’s next film—‘Change of Habit,’ Presley’s screen swan song, released in 1969. He never told Presley about the deal, with good reason: ‘Elvis didn’t want to do television,’ Binder said. ‘He felt he had been burned by it.’ Even Steve Allen, the talk-show host hip enough to give Lenny Bruce a shot on prime time, forced cheese on Presley, putting him in a tuxedo to sing ‘Hound Dog’ to an actual hound dog.”

"'It Was No Gang, It Was One Guy, And He Wasn't Really a Killer': Producer and Star Edward James Olmos on 'The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez": In conversation with Jim Hemphill of Filmmaker Magazine.

“When Bob [Young] agreed to do the picture and rewrite the screenplay from scratch, he and I went to the real locations where it all happened. We went to Gonzales, Texas, where they captured and imprisoned Gregorio Cortez, and we found the exact prison. We found his cell. The jail and the courthouse were exactly how they were in 1901, it gave us an authenticity unlike anything I had ever experienced before in film. We had to talk the district court judge in Gonzales into letting us use the courthouse, and when he asked us what kind of movie we were doing, Bob kept speaking in general terms of how important our subject was to Mexican-American people and to the Latino culture, but he wouldn’t say the name because at that time no one knew who Gregorio Cortez was. The judge kept asking, ‘What’s his name?’ and finally Bob says, ‘His name is Gregorio Cortez, but he’s a really important—‘ and this guy says, ‘Stop, stop. I’ve been waiting for you guys for 35 years.’ He opens his filing cabinets, and in these cabinets is every single piece of testimony and every single newspaper article from around the country related to the trial. This judge was the foremost authority on the case in the world, bar none. He felt it was one of the most important cases in U.S. history because it was the first time a Latino had been tried in an American court of law, and with an interpreter, which was unheard of in 1901. This guy had filing cabinets filled with material, because the case was followed all over the country – it involved something like 600 Texas Rangers in hot pursuit of what they thought was a Mexican gang of killers. And it was no gang, it was one guy, and he wasn’t really a killer – it was self-defense. Anyway, discovering all that material was just unbelievable. It was magical. And it allowed us to make what the United States Historical Society claimed to be the most authentic Western ever made in American film, ever.”

"John McCain, War Hero, Senator, Presidential Contender, Dies at 81": Robert D. McFadden of The New York Times reflects on the honorable legacy of the late politician.

“In a 2018 memoir, ‘The Restless Wave: Good Times, Just Causes, Great Fights and Other Appreciations,’ he defended Ms. Palin’s campaign performance, but expressed regret that he had not instead chosen Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, a Democrat-turned-independent. At some McCain rallies, vitriolic crowds disparaged black people and Muslims, and when a woman said she did not trust Mr. Obama because ‘he’s an Arab,’ Mr. McCain, in one of the most lauded moments of his campaign, replied: ‘No, ma’am. He’s a decent family man, a citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues.’ Analysts later said that Mr. Obama had engineered a nearly perfect campaign. And Mr. McCain confronted a hostile political environment for Republicans, who were dragged down by President George W. Bush’s dismal approval ratings amid the economic crisis and an unpopular war in Iraq. On Election Day, Mr. McCain lost most of the battleground states and some that were traditionally Republican. Mr. Obama won with 53 percent of the popular vote to Mr. McCain’s 46 percent, and 365 Electoral College votes to Mr. McCain’s 173. ‘Few of us have been tested the way John once was, or required to show the kind of courage that he did,’ Mr. Obama said Saturday. ‘But all of us can aspire to the courage to put the greater good above our own. At John’s best, he showed us what that means.’”

"Inside Patricia Clarkson's brutal 'Sharp Objects' performance: 'It's dark and nasty and twisted and beautiful'": The actress chats with The Washington Post's Jessica M. Goldstein about her role in HBO's excellent miniseries.

“In Wind Gap, poison is poured down the throats of unsuspecting children. Baby teeth are pried from little girls’ gums, and skin is sliced until it scars. Yet the most transgressive act of violence in town is the low, almost-whispered delivery of four small words. Over a drink, by candlelight, a mother tells her daughter: ‘I never loved you.’ There’s no shortage of cruelty in ‘Sharp Objects,’ the eight-part HBO miniseries based on Gillian Flynn’s 2006 debut novel, whose women pass trauma from generation to generation like a haunted heirloom. But no one cuts quite like Adora, played by Patricia Clarkson. She’s a matriarch [...] who coolly tells her wayward eldest daughter, Camille (Amy Adams), that she feels nothing for her, save for disappointment and disgust. Clarkson, the 58-year-old New Orleanian actress who sees glimmers of her own grandmother in the best parts of Adora, knows these scenes appear brutal. ‘But I think why they have the impact they do is that I don’t think Adora ever thinks of them as brutal,’ she said by phone from her apartment in New York. ‘I think that was what was essential. When I tell her I never loved her, I think it’s just Adora feeling connected to her for a moment to be as honest as she can be. … Sometimes she was just openly cruel. But other times, I think, when she speaks, she’s actually revealing the truth.’ ‘This is the most violent line in the series,’ said director Jean-Marc Vallée. ‘It’s not something you say to your child. … You just destroyed her! And she’s not realizing that. Or maybe she does, and she’s that cruel, that evil. But we’re not sure. And that’s what’s great about the character: that you try to understand, and you’re not sure.’”

Image of the Day

Robert Redford and Jane Fonda starred in "Barefoot in the Park," the 1967 screen adaptation of the 1963 play, one of four works by the late Neil Simon selected by Vox's Aja Romano to illustrate why he was one of America's greatest playwrights.

Video of the Day

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Stella McCartney's profile of David Lynch is a stirring ode to the role intuition plays in one's creative process. Look for cameos by "Moonlight"'s Ashton Sanders and "American Honey"'s Sasha Lane.

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