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Friday, September 22, 2000

i knew jesus christ...and you, miss, are no jesus christ:

i have to vent: every morning, when i come into work, i see a large replication of this cover in the window of the coconuts adjoined to our building. it offends me verily -- in a religious sense? no, not at all. it just offends me in the way that, i don't know, barbra streisand offends me. it offends my sensibilities, i suppose. the easy comparison would be the virgin mary, but the floral ring around her head , and far less painful, approximation of the crown of thorns worn by my Lord and Saviour, jesus christ. oh, and the look on her face! looking down at the world, from her cloud or whatever, with a countenance of such rueful remorse, like she feels so bad for all of us because we're all so mortal and therefore so full of shortcomings. FUCK YOU!
-fred solinger | steal this link!

high fidelity: over on nylpm, i wrote a response to tom's article on high fidelity, having just seen the film last night. don't ask me why i didn't put it up here; i saw that tom is going to be out of town until sunday, so i thought i'd do my part in keeping nylpm up.
-fred solinger | steal this link!

Thursday, September 21, 2000

SPICE GIRLS - "HOLLER/LET LOVE LEAD THE WAY"
"i want to make you holler," begins the new spice girls single. and i'll be damned if they don't make you do just that. holler to stop? holler to call it a career? yes. holler for more? oh, no. i do believe the less said about this half of the single, the better, so i'll try to keep it brief.

the spice girls have decided to step out a bit and go for a bit of r&b flavor, calling in producer rodney jerkins. it's a good match, in a way, because jerkins is nearly as played-out as the spice girls themselves. when he first broke onto the scene, he appeared to be an exciting young producer, creating hits for a number of artists, each with their own unique sound. but beginning with the mega-success of "the boy is mine," jerkins seemed to discover what sound "worked," at least in a commercial sense, and stuck with it. i didn't like that song and i haven't liked anything he's produced since then, but even dreck like "if you had my love" is favorable to "holler."

if there's any group less "urban" than the spice girls, i demand that someone bring them to my attention. the thing is, even if you named me a group, i'd bet that said group wouldn't make some half-assed attempt to become "urban" or "street" or whatever word you want to use. their voices are definitely not equipped for the sound -- melanie c., or adequate spice or sometimes on-key spice, has developed into an atrocious singer, while emma, EMMA!, of all people has gotten halfway decent -- and jerkins does them no favors with the dull, lifeless tune and beats he provides them with (sure sign that a producer has lost all sense of judgement: copious voiceovers). they truly picked the wrong one-word title for this single; if i had to pick one word to describe it, it'd be "SUCK."

meanwhile, on the aa side, there's "let love lead the way." and is there a more spice girls title out there? they must feel at ease now what with celine dion in retirement: that bitch probably kept stealing all of their song names. the spice girls, despite all indications to the contrary, are not stupid. they realize that their experiment, "holler," might not take off, so they pad it with the spice-by-numbers "llltw."

there are many questions surrounding the spice girls at this stage in their career. all of that uncertainty manifests itself in the opening minute of "let love lead the way," in which 8 questions are asked. what we can gather from those questions is that the spice girls are unhappy with the state of the world. they're answer: just let love lead the way. it's as simple as that.

the spice girls have never been philosophers despite their girl power doctrine, so i'm not going to judge them on lyrical content. the song is melodic and has "chart hit" written all over it. the production is very tasteful -- take that as you will -- with a rich keyboard line on the chorus and some interesting drum programming closing the song. so what i'm saying is that there'll be no new converts, but the faithful should enjoy at least half of the single, though if you're still "faithful" to the spice girls, you'll probably like both halves. rephrase: if, in the past, you enjoyed a spice girls single or two, you may like half of this single.

here's the problem with the spice girls, as i see it: they were never great singers or anything like that; in fact, the reason that they had a handful of enjoyable songs was due largely in part to their unprofessional nature. they were sometimes endearingly guileless (that is, until the apotheosis of their caricatures in spice world) but now they're just trying so hard to be mature and adult. perhaps it can be traced to geri's leaving or the changes their lives have gone through -- babies, marriages, divorces, etc. the new album is called forever which is an awful sign , an album title usually reserved for artists obviously at the end of their career or for artists who never really had a career. for example, artists who've used the album title forever: john stamos, jimmy ruffin, kool & the gang, kiss, lisa lisa, night ranger, and puff daddy, and that's just j-p! to avoid a similar fate, i leave a parting piece of advice to the girls: it's okay to grow up, just don't grow old
-fred solinger | steal this link!

MASSIVE UPDATE!: hi. i realize i've been derelict in updating archives and stuff like that. so, added to the reviews archive, my reviews of radiohead's kid a, bjork's selmasongs ep, madonna's music and the 6ths' hyacinths & thistles. also, reviews of new singles by u2 and marilyn manson and a review of almost famous. all of these are only available in the reviews archive, so go there. TODAY!!
-fred solinger | steal this link!

act of contrition:

"On the assumption that "Nobody's Perfect" lifts its title from Some Like It Hot's famous closing line, I've gone ahead and conceptualized the video: Madonna (who was at her best on SNL singing "Happy Birthday" to Phil Hartman's Clinton) as Marilyn, Kevin Spacey and Vince Vaughn in drag, meticulous shot-for-shot re-creation from Spike Jonze."

taken from phil dellio's excellent review of the new madonna album in the village voice. it's a shame, though, how he worships "beautiful stranger."
-fred solinger | steal this link!

Tuesday, September 19, 2000

another thank you: and this one goes out to dan aka dex! who purchased catcher in the rye for me off my amazon.com wishlist (see left). i'd like to say thanks to him and to all of you who've purchased things for me. just because my birthday has passed doesn't mean that you have to stop buying me things, you know. ;)
-fred solinger | steal this link!

Monday, September 18, 2000

ALMOST FAMOUS - dir. cameron crowe
i spent two hours in new york with cameron crowe's up-and-coming new film, almost famous...and NEARLY DIED!

almost famous is hardly as bad as all that; in fact, it's entertaining and amusing -- if i had to pick one word to describe it, it'd be "affable." lester bangs (played to perfection here by philip seymour hoffman) warned that this film would try to become my friend, and that i need to be honest and merciful when reviewing it, and so i shall be.

when roger ebert begins his review of a film with the line, "oh, what a lovely film. i was almost hugging myself while I watched it," that's a red herring. all of the reviews i'd read before seeing the film were almost too positive. when i got home, i read j. hoberman's review in the village voice. i was first surprised by the fact that the very review i was to write was already on that page, but mostly i was amazed to find myself agreeing with hoberman, whose indier-than-thou schtick is very off-putting, but how can you hate a guy who liked x-men? despite this, i shall write a review anyway.

the movie, if you don't know, is cameron crowe's semi-autobiographical tale of a 15 year-old hoodwinking rolling stone into giving him an assignment to cover up-and-coming rock band, stillwater. stillwater is distrustful of the kid, one william miller (patrick fugit), but eventually realize that he could make them look good. the creative axis of stillwater is made up of guitarist russell hammond (billy crudup) and singer jeff bebe (jason lee, making the most of a shallow role). accompanying the band is a handful of group-...i mean, "band aids," led by penny lane (kate hudson) -- they differ from groupies in that they're with the band for the music and not to be near famous people, though we never quite see proof of this.

mike called this, "the first rockcrit movie ever." oh, that it were! if you're the sort of person who not only knows the name "lester bangs," but also have read his reviews, you're bound to be disappointed by this film. you will, however, be blown away by philip seymour hofmann as bangs, in his limited screen time: as with most of his films, hoffman is in a league all his own; he's the one person in the movie who makes you feel like he didn't need to do any research at all, that he came into the film knowing full well who bangs was and what he believed in. watching him, you'll wish that the film was a bangs bipoic, but that's not the kind of picture that makes money.

crowe calls this film his "love letter to rock & roll." the problem, then, is that i wouldn't have too hard of a time seeing young william as a cub reporter for sports illustrated, trying to get an interview with an athlete on the rise, so tangential music often is in this film. there's one scene on the tour bus where this isn't the case: everyone eventually starts to sing along with elton john's "tiny dancer." sure, in a way, it's a hokey scene where everyone is finally on the same page, but it's imbued with such sincerity and it's possibly the only instance in the film where music comes to fore. the use of music in the film, for the most part, is similar to the way scorsese or tarantino use it: as irony or as a means of furthering the plot or as a way to show you how obscure, how diverse, and most importantly, how much better than your own the director's taste is. what the movie really seems to be about is how cool it is to be young and hanging out with rock stars, which is more than slightly grating because it starts to come across, as mike says, as crowe's homage to himself.

besides that, the main flaw is the lack of character development. the characters, by and large, are a hazy, poorly fleshed-out group. crudup and hudson are defined more by their expressions and gestures than by the lines they're given; lee is your stereotypical lead singer; fugit bugs out his eyes a lot and gets indignant often; frances mcdormand, as fugit's mother, is ridiculously rigid. crowe seems to suffer some sort of perspective-bias: he lived all of this so the characters are vivid in his mind and so he doesn't bother filling them out for the rest of us who weren't there.

despite all of this, i did enjoy the film, just like the young protagonist who comes out liking the band, despite all of the shit they put him through. the dialogue was often sharp and the film was well-paced. if you enjoyed jerry maguire, i can't see you not also enjoying this film and, come oscar time, i'm sure it will get its share of nominations. most people aren't music obsessives, after all. however, crowe professes to be one; it's the reason he ended up at rolling stone in the first place. no one, though, really comes out and says why they love music (bangs excepted) until the last line of the film when crudup's character finally gives fugit an interview.

"music is everything," he says. i can't disagree with that assessment, but through this film, crowe does. the love of music is implicit rather than explicit. we're to assume that, because he owns records, fugit is the kind of dedicated kid who would drop out of school to fly across the country covering a subpar rock band. the next night, we watched tim burton's ed wood which, through the telling of wood's life story, i think is burton's ode to his craft. i don't believe that wood every reallys says why he loves making movies, but in every scene of that film, you at least feel that love. and that is why almost famous is just almost good. almost.
-fred solinger | steal this link!