Loquacious Music

My hypotheticals to David Pogue made it to the top of his “Pogue’s Posts” blog.  He didn’t refer to me by name, but that’s still pretty cool.

So I switched the living room around.  Do you like?

I just wanted to remind you that these videos are out there:

I’ve received three gifts in the last few days. They’re all Rhino Records box sets:

The Brit Box: U.K. Indie, Shoegaze, and Brit-Pop Gems of the Last Millenium
What It Is! Funky Soul and Rare Groves, 1967-1977
No Thanks! The ’70s Punk Rebellion

After the jump, I’ve listed every single song…in alphabetical order. Of course, I have some of these songs in other ways (original albums, downloads, etc.) Still, I can’t imagine being any happier about anything. (Bev, can you imagine? 300 SONGS?!)

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Download some songs for the holidays! As always, they’re free!

Just click on the “Music” link above (or right here).  Lots of great stuff is coming in 2008 including Bloom, the new album.

And, as always, here’s a link to Cocteau Twins covering “Frosty the Snowman” — my favourite rendition of the song ever.

I don’t know if I feel demonized or just depressed.  Or disgusted.

“Non-believing US voters feel demonized”
Dec 18 10:56 PM EST

One presidential hopeful is a preacher, another proudly Mormon, and most openly tout their Christianity. In an arena where faith can make or break a politician, the one in 10 Americans who profess no religion feel left in the cold. “They’re very disconcerted,” said Darren Sherkat, an atheist sociology professor specializing in religion at Southern Illinois University.

“They’re horrified by both the Democratic and Republican rhetoric surrounding religion — that people who are not religious … are immoral, that they’re not qualified to serve in public office,” he said.

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A colleague and I went to see August Rush last night.

I was disappointed.

The film, which stars Freddie Highmore as a musical prodigy whose innate ability “links” him to his estranged parents (a beautiful Keri Russell and a really toothy Jonathan Rhys Myers), is cute. Highmore is a terrific actor, able to sell an absolutely bogus bill of goods. (He had similar success in Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and in Finding Neverland.) I was also very happy to see Terrence Howard in a big supporting role. Robin Williams was also in a big supporting role, but he was absolute crap, and his part — a homeless ex-musician who creepily takes a bunch of homeless kids under his wing (and on his back) so he can exploit them — was a complete waste of time.

But the acting was, actually, the only redeeming quality of the movie. You can imagine how the story goes: “Evan,” a towheaded orphan, runs away from a boys’ home in New York state to “follow” the music that he “hears” so that he can be “reunited” with his “parents.” (Russell’s character is a concert cellist; Rhys Myers plays guitar in a serviceable indie rock band.) The beginning of the film flashes back to the night they meet, become obsessed with each other, and conceive Evan, all to the strains of the Robin Williams character playing “Moondance,” my second least-favorite song ever, on a HARMONICA. (Note to the filmmakers: no one has sex while listening to some homeless dude playing the harmonica.) Russell is hit by a car (!) after arguing with her dad; the baby is saved but dad sends him away; blah blah blah blah blah.

Anyway, once Evan arrives in NYC, we soon discover that he possesses a “gift.” What is his gift, you ask? Well, apparently, he can play a guitar that is open-tuned to “E” by slapping the strings. Now, don’t get me wrong: the first time we hear Evan play, we are actually hearing Kaki King play, and she’s quite good. But guitar harmonics does not a prodigy make. Hell, it does not even Leo Kottke make.

So blah, blah, blah, creepy Robin Williams, Evan runs away to a church, learns how to play a piano, blah. Meanwhile, Keri Russell discovers that her son is not, in fact, dead, and sets off to blah blah blah. And Jonathan Rhys Myers’s teeth.

Finally, Evan — who was renamed “August Rush” by Robin Williams in one of the creepiest scenes in modern cinema — gets into Juilliard. (Yeah, I know. Bear with me.) While he is supposed to be taking notes on major chord progressions, he instead writes a “Rhapsody in C Major.” Here’s where the movie finally gives up its last breath and dies.

Remember Mr. Holland’s Opus? The movie with Richard Dreyfuss where he plays a music teacher who everybody loves, but then he retires or something, and then, at the end, all of his former students get together to play his “opus” and it’s the biggest deal in the world? I never liked Mr. Holland’s Opus because I felt like the opus itself (which was actually written by Michael Kamen) was just a great piece of film score writing — no more, no less. The payoff of that film never felt like much of a payoff to me.

Then, a few years ago, I was talking with my friend Bev about the opus, and she made a great point. “You know,” she said, “Mr. Holland’s opus wasn’t supposed to be any good. That was the point.” Bev said that it was supposed to be a mediocre piece of music that rose above its mediocrity because it was being performed by people who loved Mr. Holland. It didn’t matter that his opus wasn’t any good; it mattered that he was good.

Such is not the case with “August’s Rhapsody in C Major.” These Juilliard people are practically crapping themselves with wonder and amazement. “THE IMPORTANT PREMIERE OF A NEW MAJOR WORK!!!!” say the banners. But this piece of music is, like Mr. Holland’s opus, just a great piece of film scoring (this time by Mark Mancina). Not only is it not unbelievable, the filmmakers actually had the audacity to treat the “Rhapsody” as a piece of the score. When “August’s Rhapsody in C Major” went all quiet and lovey-like is when Russell and Rhys Myers noticed one another across the crowd. When it went all fireworky is when the lights went crazy. When it got slow and pensive is when Terrence Howard got slow and pensive. It was a cheap and uninteresting shot — like saying that a kid is a prodigy because he can play a guitar that is tuned to “E.”

When I left this movie, I didn’t harbor this much animus toward it. But the more I think about it, the more I didn’t like it. I had the same problem with August Rush that I had with Good Will Hunting: Hollywood sucks at defining genius. In Good Will Hunting, Matt Damon’s character was a “prodigy” because why exactly? He could spout a lot of useless facts to guys at a Dorcester bar? Why is knowing a lot of useless facts a sign of genius? And why is playing a guitar like Leo Kottke a sign of genius? (I mean, unless you’re Leo Kottke, who truly is a genius.) My biggest question about August Rush was this: so what? August has a great career in film scoring ahead of him? I don’t buy it.

How could the movie have been better? Simple: someone could have taken the risk and made Freddie Highmore’s character an actual idiot savant (which is now, according to Wikipedia, called an “autistic savant.”) That would’ve been interesting. True, Highmore did give us some tics that we associate with autism and Asperger’s — namely, the constant conducting of nothing and the difficulty making connections with other people. But all of the boys at the boys’ home just called him a “freak,” and we were left to figure that, okay, I guess he is. If he were, in fact, presented as autistic, more of the pieces would fit into place. As it was, nada. (And what boys’ home, no matter how terrible, doesn’t even have an out-of-tune piano? Give me a break. And the kid doesn’t learn to whistle until he’s 11? Please.)

All in all, August Rush was a disappointment because it was not what it claimed to be. It was not a portrait of a genius, nor was it a necessarily well-made film. (The dubbing of the musical pieces was horrendous; at one point, a closeup of August’s hands show the fingers moving up the scale while the music moves down.) But more than that, it was a film that took itself too seriously. August was no genius, and his “Rhapsody” was nothing new. If you want to hear people using found instruments in music, how about listening to “Blood Makes Noise” by Suzanne Vega or anything off Elvis Costello’s “Brutal Youth” album? Steve Reich’s “Come Out” (1966) is, of course, the best example of the use of tape loop ever recorded; all three movements of The Desert Music are also worthwhile. And how about hip hop? All the crowd noise in, for example, “911 is a Joke” is sampled, as are the calls (”Somebody call an ambulance!” “Don’t worry!”) at the end of the song.

And if you’d like to watch a worthwhile movie about a genius savant? Amadeus. But stay away from August Rush.

The next song from Bloom is, in fact, the final song on the album.  Since M-Audio hasn’t made Leopard drivers available for my keyboard, I have to do the totally acoustic stuff now (because I have no choice!)

Appropriately, the last song is entitled “The Last Song.”  I wrote most of it in Boothbay Harbor a few years ago, but I abandoned it.  Now, just like most songs, it’s come back for another go ’round.

“The Last Song” (4.2 MB, MP3)

In honor of the first anniversary of the “Live from the iSight Studio” series, I present my cover of Cathy Dennis’s “Toxic.”  Oh yeah — it was recorded by some trashy skank.  You might know it.  Sing along!

…this is what I want for Christmas.