Guest Review at Film Walrus: The Faint - "Agenda Suicide" Video

I know I've been quite inactive over the past few months, which is quite a shame. Schoolwork has been heavy, but I only have three weeks left in the semester, at which point I'll have a more relaxed summer to return to writing reviews (even though I'll be in Germany for most of it).

In the meantime, my brother offered me the opportunity to review a music video for his animated shorts series on his film review blog. I reviewed The Faint's "Agenda Suicide" video (from 2002). Here's the link:

http://filmwalrus.blogspot.com/2008/04/poor-little-animated-shorts-guest.html

Thanks again to the Film Walrus for the opportunity.

Video Games Live - 2008.01.26 The Fox, St. Louis, Missouri

A long time ago I used to be a mildly passionate video gamer. There was a fairly direct conversion from my interest in video games into my interest in music, although I can't really explain why. I still like video games a lot, and I have fun playing them (I just recently played Portal and loved it, and I plan on covering "Still Alive", the credits song), but I just don't do it often at all. So when my brother proposed seeing Video Games Live, a performance of video game music by a 27-piece orchestra and 21-person choir with video accompaniment, I was down. We went with two other friends, one of which is an old Kansas City friend of ours who will probably write his own review. (If he does, I'll post a link to it.)

Event: Video Games Live
Venue: The Fox
City: St. Louis, Missouri
Date: 26 January 2008

I can't remember the precise setlist, and I don't know the actual names of most of the pieces, but I'll try to give a general idea:
Classic Arcade medley
Metal Gear Solid medley
God of War
Space Invaders interactive segment
Kingdom Hearts
Myst medley
Medal of Honor
Tron
Super Mario Bros. piano solo by Martin Leung
Civilization IV
Sonic the Hedgehog medley
Frogger interactive segment
World of Warcraft
Starcraft II
Super Mario medley
The Legend of Zelda medley
Final Fantasy piano solo medley by Martin Leung
Halo medley
One-Winged Angel (from Final Fantasy VII)

The choice of material was fairly all-encompassing, spanning a number of popular franchises and big-name developers (and composers). The opening medley of classic arcade music was great – the accompanying video followed the selected games, each of which went by fairly quickly. It started hilariously: the video displayed Pong and was performed by imitating the sound effects of the bouncing ball. Some of the games were ones I've never really played and thus didn't connect much with (Medal of Honor, God of War) but others were excellent fond remembrances for me (Zelda, Sonic the Hedgehog, Super Mario Bros.).

One of my biggest complaints was the reliance on newer material. Some the games they chose were the latest in a long series, but even when they did medleys, the video footage tended to favor the newest versions (which I realize makes sense since they have the best graphics, but the older games are still worth noting). I loved the original Civilization (and what I'd played of II and III were great), but I'd never even seen the fourth, which is the one they showed. The same story goes for Warcraft and Myst (which, as my brother pointed out, they cheated on, since the footage from the original Myst was taken from the real-time 3D-rendered Real Myst instead of the still-frame original release). Also unfortunate is that Square refuses to lease their footage and thus the Kingdom Hearts segment merely featured Disney animated classics (and the Final Fantasy medley just showed real-time footage of the performer).

The video that was used alternated between gameplay footage and rendered sequences from the games, which was completely fine in concept, but had one problem: the gameplay footage was surprisingly bad. I don't mean poor quality; I mean that whoever was playing when they recorded it wasn't very good, or the editor was just mean and choose to use dozens of sequences of Sonic and other playable characters getting hit by the enemies or suffering environmental damage.

The biggest surprise of the evening was the presence of Martin Leung, the "Video Game Pianist", known for his internet video of playing the Super Mario Bros. theme on the piano blindfolded. He came out twice during the night, although I think I'm confusing what all he played. I know he repeated his Super Mario Bros. blindfold performance (which was completely spot-on) and I believe he did a Final Fantasy medley and something else that I'm forgetting. He's incredible.

The low point was probably the host, Tommy Tallarico. He acted as if everyone in the world knew who he was, and although much of the audience apparently did, I did not. He fulfilled his required part of announcing song titles fine, but his attitude was a bit much for me. When he came out with a guitar for the Halo theme, I was prepared to be unimpressed, but he performed fine albeit at a relatively low volume, a trend that was repeated for the closer, "One-Winged Angel". I was amused by his reference to each piece as a "song", something a classical composer or music theorist would run screaming at.

There were a couple other fun bits thrown in, like a costume contest that preceded the performance. More significant were the interactive bits. First, a gamer was chosen to come on stage and play Space Invaders for a chance to win a mutli-game arcade machine. He was given a controller to shoot but had to move his body to move his in-game ship. The orchestra handled the music in tandem. He was give two minutes and nearly had it but failed. I blame a fairly poor movement response on his ship getting hit so many times. Later in the evening a woman and an older man were chosen to each play Frogger for 90 seconds, which the orchestra again accompanied (and changed parts in real-time). The man went first and played absolutely horribly (Tallarico made quite a bit of fun at his expense), but the woman played fairly well and won the challenge.

It's worth noting that the orchestra and choir were local St. Louis residents, which is rather cool. I don't know how much rehearsal time they had, but I didn't catch any wrong notes: their performances were solid. (I did spend the whole night trying to figure out who was triggering the backing percussion tracks and why they didn't just hire a third percussionist to handle the parts instead of preprogramming.) I also wonder who did the arrangements; Tallarico and the conductor, Jack Wall, both had composed some of the selections, but the majority had to be rearranged by someone. (My guess is Wall, who also doubled as a part time host when Tallarico wasn't to be found. I liked his personality much better.)

I didn't come in with any specific expectations, and in fact I didn't really know what to expect, but the two hours of entertainment were well worth the cost. I did have the unfortunate "pleasure" of sitting quite near the loudest punters in the house, which was kind of funny, but I could have done without the semi-drunken shouts. It made for a fun night and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Having some knowledge about video games is probably a prerequisite for similar such enjoyment, but since the theater was entirely filled, they have quite an audience. Power to them, I think.

Score: B+

P.S. I apologize for not posting for a month. I'm working on it.

Alex Green - The Stone Roses (2006)

I'm again going to do something a little different for this review. You may be familiar with the 33⅓ series of books about albums. The albums reviewed range from classic 60s albums to a few more recent releases already hailed as classics. I don't know how authors or albums are selected, but their choices are usually very good. I've read several, including ones on Radiohead's OK Computer, The Kinks' The Village Green Preservation Society, and the Velvet Underground's The Velvet Underground & Nico. I have to say, the series is very inconsistent (in terms of quality and style), which is natural due to each book being written by a different author. Therefore, that isn't necessarily a bad thing.

I found the Village Green and Unknown Pleasures books to be incredible descriptions of the albums as whole units and as collections of the individual songs, additionally including thorough historical background and information on outtakes and contemporaneous singles, television appearances, and so on. I found the OK Computer book to be a bit tangentially distracted (too much discussion of "keeping songs alive" and on mathematical analysis of song length with no actual discussion of the relevance), but the worst so far was the one for the Smiths' Meat Is Murder. Instead of a biography of the band or a contextual essay, the book was a fictional account in which the characters adore the album. This was far from enlightening, and the countless overuse of clichés made it a tedious chore to finish the book.

I just finished reading a book on The Stone Roses' self-titled debut album, written by Alex Green. The album was originally released in 1989 and the book was published in 2006. I admit that I don't quite know how to structure this review, since it will be impossible to discuss the book without discussing the album. I think I'll give some background first.

Title: The Stone Roses
Author: Alex Green
Publisher: Continuum
Year: 2006
Series: 33⅓ #33

The Stone Roses is a fantastic album, often hailed as the best British album or just the best album ever. The band preceded the album with three singles: the gothy "So Young" in 1985, the shimmering "Sally Cinnamon" in 1987, and the funky "Elephant Stone" in 1988. "Elephant Stone" was included on US releases of the album (but not in the UK). After two album tracks were released as singles ("Made of Stone" and "She Bangs the Drums"), two non-album singles were released ("Fools Gold"/"What the World Is Waiting For" and "One Love") followed by three more album track singles ("I Wanna Be Adored", "Waterfall", and "I Am the Resurrection"). Then the band tried to jump their label, fought a long legal battle, eventually won, and released a mediocre album in 1994 before losing members one after the other and breaking up in 1996. A sad tale of lost potential.

The album itself is a work of art (literally, in the sense that the cover is a Jackson Pollock-inspired piece by guitarist John Squire, but more so just because of how good it is). The production and general sound is somehow simultaneously rooted in 60s pop, enmeshed as a definite product of the 80s, and yet different from almost anything else. It's a guitar album, but the vocals and drumwork are wonderfully done. The lyrics are slightly difficult to make sense of, but the possible interpretations are a pleasure to ponder. Perhaps the best part is the general sense of grandiosity offered by beginning the album in a long fade-in build-up of effects followed eventually by bass and then the rest of the instrumentation while singing "I Wanna Be Adored" (whose lyrics don't get much more complex than that) and then ending the album with a song like "I Am the Resurrection", replete with complex drumming, a great bassline, and two great and different choruses, one being a harsh indictment ("Don't waste your words / I don't need anything from you / I don't care where you've been / Or what you plan to do") and the other a more bombastic approach to a similar theme, but not without religious imagery ("I am the resurrection and I am the light / I couldn't ever bring myself / To hate you as I'd like"), before ending the song with a four-minute overdub-happy jam session that actually works really well. I apologize for the long sentence, but honestly, you think that last song is done, but the bass just doesn't quite want to stop and suddenly the drums and guitar are like "oh wait, we're not done yet" and then the awesome workout begins.

So the book. Green goes through the album one song at a time (like the majority of authors in the 33⅓ series) and discusses some aspect of the band or their environment at the time of recording and then briefly discusses the song. The unfortunate part of this is that there are really only a small number of pages devoted to each song (usually two or three), but we do learn a lot about the era and the scene. This is arguably extraneous, but if it had been included alongside a more thorough analysis of the actual songs, I would have been more appreciative. There's a lot of information about ecstacy and Margaret Thatcher (which is more or less appropriate considering the drug culture of the time and the clear fact that "Elizabeth My Dear" is about assassinating the Queen) but only only a limited demonstration of the connectivity of the discussed topics to the band itself and a mere small dose of information about the band's public appearances and activities.

When Green does analyze the actual musical material, he's usually good, but he seems to leave things out and keep his discussion brief. Given the space of an entire book, he has the space to say so much, yet he doesn't dig all that deep. Each song has its lyrics painted in one particular color, sometimes in a bit of a stretch to interpret the words, but also sometimes quite insightful. I think "Made of Stone" is more about an outsider gleefully observing a scene of destruction than about a drug trip, like Green suspects, and I really don't think "She Bangs the Drums" is in the slightest bit political, but "Elephant Stone" probably is about drugs and "This Is the One" is probably about a lopsided view about a relationship that's about to change.

Green also talks about some of the production values, most especially the reverse-track with overdubs that sums up "Don't Stop", but he doesn't even mention the envelope effect at the end of "This Is the One" or the multiple guitar overdubs used nearly every track. One of the best things about this album is the guitarwork, and not even mentioning overdub misses out on so much of the story. John Squire is a great guitarist, but he layered things up wonderfully. (Also funny is that Green writes a lot about how the Stone Roses are so different than the Smiths, but both bands loved their countless guitar overdubs done by a single guitarist.) Many songs are built around two clearly different guitar tones, both very effects-laden, often to the point of sounding like chimes or a piano. (How this was adapted to the live environment is a mystery to me, and Green doesn't seem to notice.)

Green also gets distracted by a lot of personal anecdotes and footnotes, often combining the two. I don't really mind all that much, but it doesn't really add anything. Furthermore, Green never speaks ill of any particular song – either himself or a quote by another musician or magazine is used to effectively say that every song on the album is either the best or at least utterly great. There is no negativity; this is pure worship. There are a lot of quotes in here, and most of them are pretty reputable – Alan McGee, founder of Creation Records; Dave Newton, guitarist of The Mighty Lemon Drops; the band themselves, and so on. Presumably, if all these other bands speak so highly of the band, and the press was similarly positive, maybe worship isn't the wrong choice.

Although I have been picking apart the book and focusing only on criticisms, the book is fairly well done. The analysis that is present is well done, and some of the background and whatnot is really good, but there is so much in the book that didn't need to be there compared to what could have been there that I would say it failed to live up to its potential. It's not a bad read, though. One last weird thing, though. The book has twelve chapters... one for each song on the first US album release. Every single other release of the album either has eleven (the European and Asian releases) or thirteen (every US pressing after the first) tracks, so the choice of twelve seems uninspired to me. (The first US version added "Elephant Stone", later versions also added the "Fools Gold" single.)

Scores:
The book: C+
The album: A

Metropolis - The Moroder Version (1927/1984)

This post will be a little bit different from some previous ones. I'm going to discuss the soundtrack to a movie. (I apologize for the lack of posts as of late; I've had finals and holidays and whatnot. Now I have no responsibilities for a few weeks... expect more posts.)

You may remember Metropolis, one of the most expensive movies at for its time (1927). Metropolis was directed by Fritz Lang and released as a 153-minute futuristic epic in Germany, only to be severely edited for release in America. All further releases have been edits of some form (usually around 90 minutes), and when a team tried to reassemble the best possible version for a new restored release in 2001, they only managed to restore the film to 124 minutes. Before that, and unlike any other previous release, there is one special version that deserves special note, most especially in this music-themed blog of mine. I speak of the Moroder version, an 80-minute semi-colorized edit released in 1984 with an 80s-tastic rock soundtrack coordinated and composed by Giorgio Moroder, an Italian disco producer-king.

I noticed that my college library happened to have five copies of Metropolis, one of which being this unique edit. So, this is a brief review of this particular edit (not of the movie as a whole, which I really, really like) and the accompanying soundtrack. The edit was done acceptably; it's quite short but most of plot essentials remain. It makes sense, although it is clear that there is plenty of backstory missing and events just plain left untold. That eerie feeling that something is missing is bothersome, and the end seems to come almost too fast. On the whole, it does work. The colorization is unnecessary but an interesting touch; all it is is just tints over the print itself to add some mood to different scenes. It works well enough, I'd say.

As might be predictable, my main interest in this version was the soundtrack. Moroder's touch is clear. The sound is really more pop than rock, and when I mean pop, I mean really cheesy, big-synthy over-the-top production value pop. While watching the film, I had a really hard time picking out which pieces were which (as in, what audio corresponded to which song title and artist). Moroder did a few instrumental pieces on his own, but Freddie Mercury, Pat Benatar, Loverboy, Adam Ant, and a few others appear as co-composers of their own pieces. I had only passing familiarity with each of these people except Adam Ant, and even his song wasn't memorable to any degree. Since I don't have the soundtrack or my own copy of the film, I haven't had the chance to re-listen to the songs, and I can only go off of what I remember from memory.

What I remember isn't particularly positive. It's pretty bad, and way too 80s. (As should be obvious, I love a lot of 80s music, but there was also a lot of excess and mediocrity in those years. Those adjectives apply here appropriately.) These soaring ballads with horribly typical guitar solos and synth washes could be applied to any movie. Something like Metropolis deserves more, and a lot more at that. Something unique, and something that fits with a futuristic movie made in black and white 80 years ago and that somehow balances a contemporary sound with the historical/futuristic setting. The songs and production style sound awfully dated and completely inappropriate for a 20s movie or a futuristic movie. I admit that a few songs (mostly the Moroder solo bits) fit into the movie well enough, but the sounds just didn't work so hot.

Much as I would want to, I just plain can't recommend this version. I just can't. It isn't good. Watch the restored 2001 version and buy a different Moroder album. (He's done some perfectly fine disco in other outlets.)

Scores:
Metropolis, as a movie in general: A
The "Moroder version" in general: C
Moroder's soundtrack: D

[Edit 2008.12.13: If you haven't heard, an uncut copy of the film has been found and is currently undergoing restoration work. I assume a DVD release is inevitable.]

[Edit 2010.03.01: Again, if you haven't heard, the almost-entirely-restored version premiered in Frankfurt and Berlin two weeks ago. I failed to attend, but screenings appear to be continuing and a DVD release is apparently planned for April.]

[Edit 2010.11.22: I caught the 2010 restoration at Webster University in St. Louis a month or two ago. It's awesome and big step over the previous restoration. Go find it.]

[Edit 2019.02.24: I can't stop thinking and writing about this movie, apparently. I saw the 2010 version again, but this time with live musical accompaniment. It was great.]

John Lennon - Walls and Bridges (1974/2005)

John Lennon is one of my favorite figures in rock and roll. I love the Beatles (mostly once they started to get away from their beginning straightforward sound, but even their early pop material is good), and John Lennon always wrote the songs I liked best, and although he was fairly extreme in his politics, I love his radicalism and his attempts to make a change. (Posting giant posters in eleven cities reading "War is over if you want it" is pretty great.) It's a serious pity that his solo career is fairly hit-and-miss, and, of course, that he was murdered in 1980 with much of his life left to lead.

In the twelve years John made solo albums (or duet albums with Yoko Ono), he covered a lot of ground. He started with three highly experimental albums with Ono (released while still a Beatle) which are of somewhat limited interest. Then came Plastic Ono Band and Imagine, two fairly different albums but easily his two best – and two of my favorite albums. Then came the political Some Time in New York, the decent Mind Games, the mediocre Walls and Bridges, the predictable covers album Rock 'n' Roll, and, after a five year break, the decent Double Fantasy and the posthumous Milk and Honey. I could write reviews for most of these albums (and some day probably will), but for now I'd like to discuss the last Lennon album I purchased (with good reason). This also works out since I haven't really written a single negative review yet.

Artist: John Lennon (with the Plastic Ono Nuclear Band, Little Big Horns, and the Philharmonic Orchestrange)
Album: Walls and Bridges
Released: 4 October 1974 (reissued 2005)
Label: Apple/EMI
Producer: John Lennon

Tracklist:
01. Going Down on Love
02. Whatever Gets You Thru the Night
03. Old Dirt Road
04. What You Got
05. Bless You
06. Scared
07. #9 Dream
08. Surprise, Surprise (Sweet Bird of Paradox)
09. Steel and Glass
10. Beef Jerky
11. Nobody Loves You (When You're Down and Out)
12. Ya Ya [Lee Dorsey cover]

Reissue bonus tracks:
13. Whatever Gets You Thru the Night [Live 1974.11.28 in New York City with the Elton John band]
14. Nobody Loves You (When You're Down and Out) [Alternate acoustic version]
15. Interview with Bob Mercer

Walls and Bridges was written and recorded during Lennon's "lost weekend", an 18-month block of time in which he separated from Yoko. This shows significantly, since it is one of the few Lennon releases without any input from Yoko, and some of the songs are clearly about missing her. In Yoko's absence, though, are Harry Nilsson, who cowrote "Old Dirt Road", and Elton John, who plays the piano and sings harmony on "Whatever Gets You Thru the Night", Lennon's only #1 single (during his lifetime). The former isn't really all that of a great song, unfortunately, and the former is good but just feels so hedonistic.

I think a big problem with the album is that it sounds so wrapped up in a stereotypical 70s pop sound. Many of the same elements can be heard in other Lennon albums, but it is rarely so bland, obvious, and uninteresting as it is here. The structures are too easy, very little of the material rocks, the sweet strings and horns are fairly clichéd, and the musicianship isn't really outstanding. I do like Klaus Voorman's basslines in many places, and Elton's piano work is great, but beyond that, talent is lacking. Most of the arrangements are just too predictable, too: too many (like "Old Dirt Road" and "Surprise, Surprise") just use the same guitar, piano, string, and horn sounds to get obvious pop material. The drums are always really straightforward and largely go unnoticed.

It's easy to see how this album was recorded during a "lost weekend" – it lacks direction and feels like no one was there to tell Lennon that some of his ideas needed work. "What You Got" rocks okay, but the screamed vocal seems kind of weird for him. "Bless You" is incredibly slow and spaced out, and it just doesn't work. It sounds like bad elevator music – nothing stands out at all. "Beef Jerky", Lennon's only instrumental release, isn't anything that great, and the short cover of "Ya Ya" with off-beat drums by his son Julian is at best cute, but ultimately just not good. (The complete, actually produced version on Rock 'n' Roll is still not that great, but maybe I just don't like the song.)

I should, however, admit that I do really like two of the songs: "#9 Dream" and "Nobody Loves You (When You're Down and Out)". "#9 Dream" is a very dream-like, strings-laden song, but I really like it – maybe because it is so ethereal yet still moves along, unlike the horribly downtempo "Bless You". The lyrics parallel the music – the chorus uses made-up words and the rest is about dreaming, magic, and spirit dances. "Nobody Loves You" is a mostly acoustic song that's fairly simple but gets across a dark theme of selfishness (although there's still a few lines about love slipped in). As the song progresses, the arrangement widens to include a full band, but the instrumentation is appropriate and works. It's a fairly dramatic song, but something about it makes it work and stand above the rest. (Apparently the album was originally envisioned as something more of a Dylanesque acoustic album, but things changed for the worse, especially considering how much the folkier Rubber Soul rules.)

There's also "Scared", which is also a somewhat harrowing song, but the arrangement works against it in some ways. The lyrics are pretty rough: "Every day of my life / I just manage to survive". (Oddly, it ends in a Dylan reference: "No place to call my own / Like a rollin' stone".) Most of the album seems to balance frustrations with life against a frustration with love. "Going Down on Love" does just that, while "Bless You" is clearly a statement of eternal love for Yoko, and "Surprise, Surprise" seems to be about his temporary lover in Yoko's absence, May Pang. "Whatever Gets You Thru the Night" seems on the other side of the scale, trading off lines like "Whatever gets you through your life / it's alright, it's alright" with "Don't need a sword to cut through flowers / oh no, oh no".

The bonus tracks aren't anything revelatory. The live version of "Whatever Gets You Thru the Night" by Lennon and the Elton John band is interesting by nature but not much different than the studio version. It was Lennon's last public performance, which makes it special, but it would have been nice to have included the other two songs performed that night with that line-up ("Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and "I Saw Her Standing There"), although neither of those renditions are all that great either. The alternate acoustic version of "Nobody Love You" is also basically the same, but unadorned by other instruments. The interview at the end is just Lennon saying that EMI should promote the album because it's good. Considering that other material exists (like the (posthumous outtakes compilation) Menlove Ave. songs "Here We Go Again" and "Rock & Roll People") there should be no reason to include the fairly boring interview. (The reissue does have good sound and liner notes, but they changed the cover... weird.)

When it comes down to it, this album can only stand as a disappointment. There are a few good cuts, but much of the album is just plain not good. I'm sure no one ever really knew what to expect with Lennon, but there could be so much more here – the potential is mind-blowing, and it's largely wasted. Truly sad.

Score: D (convenient: "D" for "disappointment".)

Postscript: It's a pity that the recent Lennon reissue campaign has left several songs in limbo: "Instant Karma!", "Cold Turkey", and "Give Peace a Chance" (three of his biggest and best singles!) are not found on any album and are only available on compilations. (I firmly believe that reissue campaigns should strive to have an organized way of including all the released (and the best unreleased) material by an artist or band without the overlap caused by best-of/singles compilations.) "Move over Ms. L.", the b-side to "Stand by Me", is also unavailable except on one of the compilations. On the other hand, if you want only the good songs from this album, you're out of luck, since "Nobody Loves You" is only available here and nowhere else.

The Modern Lovers - The Modern Lovers (1976/2007)

The Modern Lovers have a bigger name than an actual recorded history. I knew about them because countless other great bands had covered them: Siouxsie & the Banshees, John Cale, Echo & the Bunnymen, etc., and the band shared a keyboardist with Talking Heads (Jerry Harrison). However, the Modern Lovers never recorded an album during their short early 70s lifetime and broke up with nothing but some demos to show for it. As singer/songwriter/guitarist Jonathan Richman began rounding up a second set of Modern Lovers in 1976 (but this time explicitly labeled as his backing band), Beserkley Records compiled some of the demos the original band recorded (mostly produced by John Cale) and released the album years after the recording process. The album has been reissued a few times and now boasts a host of bonus tracks from the various demo sessions.

Artist: The Modern Lovers
Album: The Modern Lovers
Released: 1976, reissued 2007
Recorded: 1971-1973
Label: Beserkley, reissued on Castle/Sanctuary
Produced by: John Cale, Kim Fowley

Tracklist:
01. Roadrunner
02. Astral Plane
03. Old World
04. Pablo Picasso
05. She Cracked
06. Hospital
07. Someone I Care About
08. Girlfriend
09. Modern World

Reissue (2007) bonus tracks, all of which are just outtakes:
10. Dignified and Old
11. I'm Straight
12. Government Center
13. I Wanna Sleep in Your Arms
14. Dance with Me
15. Someone I Care About [Alternative Version]
16. Modern World [Alternative Version]
17. Roadrunner [Alternative Version]

In some ways, I think the Modern Lovers wished they were the Velvet Underground. Richman is known to have hung around the band band in the day, and the band frequently covered "Foggy Notion" and perhaps a few other Velvets songs live. The band line-up is total rock-'n'-roll: guitar, bass, drums, keyboard, nerdy singer. The band is called proto-punk, and for a reason. The musical structure is ridiculously simple (anyone can play it); almost every song is a two- or three-chord rocker. "Pablo Picasso" is one riff based around one chord, and the slower songs don't get very complex either. In addition to the accessible and fairly traditional structures, the sound is usually a bit loud and distorted, and the various instruments use a fair amount of improvisation within the chord changes. The lyrics show a stand against what seemed like the dominant cultural hegemony of stadium rock and hippyism.

The music here has such a great sound to it, but what really makes the Modern Lovers a winning band is their lyrics. Richman sounds like a young, naïve, nervous and weird man who just wants friendship and love. Many of his songs are about romance, but his approach is very un-rock-'n'-roll; it seems that his obtuse nerdiness is his main impediment to love, and instead of the same old "let me hold your hand" sort of business (sorry, Beatles), he sings things like, "I don't want just a girl to fool around with / I don't want just a girl to ball / What I want is a girl that I care about" in "Someone I Care About". It's so plain and straightforward, so simplistic and innocent. However, it is very self-aware, and it's not like Richman doesn't know about the rest of the world. He just wants his good old way.

In "I'm Straight", Richman shows his awkwardness and dislike of drug and hippie culture: "I saw you thought today walk by with hippie Johnny / I had to call up and say how I want to take his place / ... / See he's stoned, he's never straight". In "She Cracked", Richman again expresses his style of conservatism: "She'd self destroy, necessary to self enjoy / I self develop, necessary to self help", "She'd eat garbage, eat shit, get stoned / I stay alone, eat health food at home". That one cracks me up a lot. He gets things pretty clear in "Old World" when he sings, "Well the old world might be dead / Our parents can't understand / But I still love my parents / And I still love the old world". He's aware that times have changed, though, and he's willing to accept that; he finishes the song with, "Alright, now we say bye-bye old world / Gotta help the new world". He even acknowledges that the old world isn't perfect: "I see a '50s apartment house / It's bleak in the 1970s sun".

On the whole, the lyrics are genius. I love the mild awkwardness, the desperate search for affection, the glorification and appreciation of a mix of traditional and modern values, and the somewhat subtle humor. "Astral Plane" is about a sort of imaginative dream-world where Richman can picture himself with his love, and "Roadrunner" is an absolute declaration of love of the highway and AM radio. Richman loves his old world and health food but simultaneously declares, "And me in love with modern moonlight / Me in love with modern rock-'n'-roll / Modern girls and modern rock-'n'-roll / Don't feel so alone, got the radio on". "Modern World" similarly expresses his unsubtle modern love: "I'm in love with the USA now / I'm in love with the modern world now". I greatly appreciate Richman's sort of postmodern attempt to appreciate both the past and present and try to get the best out of both world. Like me, Richman prefers things like music, love, health food, and the imagination instead of drugs and unnecessarily destructive behavior.

I have been focusing on the words a lot, but I do greatly appreciate the music, too. (However, I suspect Richman must have shared my priorities here, since in concert he would apparently stop the music and recite the words if he thought the audience wasn't paying enough attention). "Roadrunner" is glorious two-chord rock-'n'-roll (although admittedly a third chord crops up a few times). That song starts the album to a great start and sets the scene. The drums thump along in a simple, steady, upbeat rhythm, the guitar chugs along, Lou Reed style (a la "What Goes On" or something), the bass follows with a few flourishes, and the keyboard flows around the scale. It's great. Throughout the songs, the keyboard and guitar both get a few solos here and there, but nothing too dramatic or superfluous. Rhythm and tempo remain mostly consistent except for "She Cracked", an already great song (with its quick chugging, distorted guitar, dark keyboard, and simple but great melody) which slowly begins getting dissonant and messy before suddenly running right back into the chorus without missing a beat.

"Pablo Picasso", a witty song about the artist (sort of: "Well some people try to pick up girls / And get called assholes / This never happened to Pablo Picasso / ... / Pablo Picasso never got called an asshole / Not like you") that sort of points out the power of fame over ordinary life, has what is probably the most blatant guitar solo, but even here the solo is fraught with what could be considered mistakes (sort of like Neil Young's "Like a Hurricane" solo with all the thuds of trying and failing to hit artificial harmonics). The best is when part of the solo is just Richman turning his distortion pedal on and off.

"Hospital" is a slow, longer song that sort of cracks me up: "When you get out of the hospital / Let me back into your life / ... / And when you get out of the dating bar / I'll be here to get back into your life", "I go to bakeries all day long / There's a lack of sweetness in my life". He sounds so down and self-deprecating when awkwardly mumbles, "And when I walk down your street / Probably be tears in my eyes". I guess I can't stop talking about the lyrics, so here's one more: "Girlfriend" opens with a reference to being in the Museum of Fine Arts of Boston (a city which he mentions in several songs) but declares he'd pretty much rather have a girlfriend, which he then proceeds to spell out, only he spells it quite clearly wrong: "g-i-r-l-f-r-e-n". Who knows. The song has a great walking bassline under the somewhat slow and sparse feel of it all. At one point the drums even break the beat and hold the snare crack back a beat.

It's a sad fact that the Modern Lovers were so short-lived. Some of Richman's later work with different sets of Modern Lovers might be interesting, but after this outfit, he mostly traded his distortion and electric guitar for an acoustic guitar. The core set of songs here is incredibly well-written, and for demos, the recordings are of good quality and the performances are great. It's not quite right to say Richman was ahead of his time, but he certainly didn't fit in with his own. He wouldn't quite have fit in with the late 70s punks, but it probably would have been less awkward than the early 70s types. At least they had the sympathetic John Cale on their side.

This is a great album. The last five bonus tracks are of lower quality (in terms of both performance and recording) and not as essential. Find the album on cheap vinyl, or find an older CD reissue with just the first few bonus tracks, or go all out, but this is a great album, and it clearly meant a lot to plenty of other musicians.

Score: A+

Control (2007)

This past week Control made its premiere in St. Louis, showing on one screen at one theater. I went and saw it with a couple friends and my brother, and although I have no desire to usurp my brother's venture of reviewing films, I would like to review this movie on the grounds that it is quite clearly about music. Specifically, Control is about Joy Division, one of the most hailed post-punk bands of the late 70s, and their lead singer, Ian Curtis, who committed suicide right as the band was getting serious recognition.

The film is sort of based off of Touching from a Distance, a memoir about Ian by his wife Deborah Curtis, but is supplanted by plenty of other sources. (If you are concerned about the accuracy of the depicted events, the surviving members of Joy Division have approved the content of the film.) Unlike some biographies of Ian and the band, Control tries to combine the personal aspects of Ian's life with the story of the band, and since the two do go hand in hand, it works out well. It was directed by Anton Corbijn, who might not be a big name, but he has been a longtime photographer (taking pictures of Joy Division when they existed 27+ years ago) and music video director (known for doing Depeche Mode's "Personal Jesus" and Joy Division's posthumous "Atmosphere" videos), and this is his first film, a fairly appropriate choice considering his history.

I don't want to detail all of Joy Division's history, so if you don't know it but want to, see the movie or read it on Allmusic or something. The movie chronicles Ian's first encounters with Deborah (followed by their very young marriage and childbirth) and the rest of the band (at an infamous Sex Pistols concert), then shows the growth of the band (becoming managed by Rob Gretton, playing on TV by Tony Wilson, recording the first album and singles with Martin Hannett, etc.), and then shows the troubling aspects of Ian's life and their toll on the band (namely marriage problems and epilepsy).

Fans of the band or scene might remember 24 Hour Party People, which focuses mostly on Tony Wilson, the co-owner/manager of Factory Records, but depicts some of the same events. Whereas that movie makes no attempt to separate fact from fiction (explicitly stating that the myths make better stories anyway), Control is more focused and aims to set the record straight. (My one question is the validity of the scene in which Joy Division signs to Factory: supposedly Wilson wrote the contract in his own blood, but I've heard conflicting reports to the truth of that. Beyond that one scene, every other event depicted appeared legitimate to me.)

Control isn't just an accurate biography; it's also a well-made film. The acting is solid, the visuals are good, and the soundtrack is great. The film alternates between black-and-white and sepia tones, which usually swap unnoticed. After Ian's first seizure, the film jarring switches from a dark outdoor sepia scene to a bright, indoor black-and-white scene that will nearly blind you, and although it's a bit annoying, it sure does serve as a wake-up call that something's not right. Ian was never fond of his hometown of Macclesfield, and the monochrome suits the bleakness of the area (and matches most of the historical photography of the band).

The real winning touch, though, is the soundtrack. It combines music from the era that influenced the band (Velvet Underground, David Bowie, Kraftwerk), original recordings by the band, new soundtrack recordings by the surviving members of Joy Division, and live material recorded by the cast for the concert scenes. The thing is, you wouldn't know that the concerts aren't actual Joy Division recordings – the cast does a really good job of accurately covering the material, affecting the band's demeanor, and actually sounding like the real thing. One of my favorite scenes merely traces Ian's walk to his boring job at the employment agency, but it's set to the early Joy Division song "No Love Lost". The song has a great bassline and a solid drumbeat that starts right as Ian starts walking and follows his pace. When we see the backside of Curtis, his jacket has the word "hate" scrawled on it.

The movie gets fairly intense in the latter half as the line between Ian's onstage dancing and seizures becomes more and more blurry and his affections shift from his wife to a Belgian journalist. The band keeps writing, recording, and performing, but Curtis' condition becomes worse and worse until he simply cannot take it anymore. The juxtaposition of the Joy Division songs that the band is shown recording or performing with the events going on make evident a connection that I never thought much about before. The band is shown working with songs in mostly the chronological order they were originally written, and the lyrics of each song seem to correspond eerily close to real life. The (real) band and other involved people have said before that the warning signs of Curtis' suicide were all there in his lyrics, but even I never credited his lyrics as actually applying the real life very well. After seeing an epileptic girl at the employment agency, Curtis sings "She's Lost Control", which lends the film's title and serves as a foreshadowing of Curtis' own problems. Later, after a troubling scene with Deborah, the band is shown recording the music video for "Love Will Tear Us Apart", a song whose lyrics strike a deep chord in response to the Curtis' relationship. Other songs throughout the movie similarly reflect real events (albeit perhaps less obviously).

Everything about this movie comes together well: the music goes with the visuals quite well. One could complain that the last third seems to move at a slower pace, but the movie does manage to pack a lot into just two hours without leaving much out. Many scenes make reference to events that a non-fan might not catch, which could make much of the movie alienating, but for those that know the story, it all comes together in a sort of "wait a minute, that crazy producer dude is Martin Hannett!" sort of way. Not to spoil the ending (although it is history anyway), but after Curtis' death the rest of the band sits at a table looking sombre, and drummer Stephen Morris has brought his girlfriend, Gillian Gilbert, along. Although she isn't named and no words are spoken, this clearly alludes to the dawn of New Order (which consists of the three remaining members of Joy Division plus Gilbert). Actually, the whole set of scenes in the last few minutes made a big emotional impact on me: there's the drama of everything falling apart, and it's all set to the Joy Division single "Atmosphere", which is already a haunting, moving piece.

I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. If it plays in your city and you know anything about the band, go see it.

Score: A