April 2003

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DVD commentary classics, Part 1

Filed under: Imported

From McSweeney's, a piece of satire that would have been funny if Noam Chomsky ever in a million years used the phrase "privileged by this narrative." (Thanks to Fimoculous for the link, tho.)

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at April 30, 2003 7:29 PM

 

Low to tour with Radiohead

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Turns out that not long after bassist Zak Sally left Low (see below), the band got a call from Radiohead: Now the great Duluth band is joining the great British band on a European tour in July.

"It's kind of ironic that he's only been out of the band for two weeks and then this dream came true," says Sparhawk. "Now I feel bad that I told you this."

Sparhawk said that a couple days ago, actually: I waited to report it until he talked to Sally. The newer news is that Karla Schickele, of the New York band Ida, will fill in on the tour. Among those not completely alienated by "Classical Music Is Fascist" below, Schickele's name might be familiar: She's the daughter of composer and classical music parodist Peter Schickele, of P.D.Q. Bach fame. (All-time favorite P.D.Q. Bach moment: Beethoven's Fifth called like a football game--Schickele even sounds like John Madden!)

Meanwhile, a paired-down Low plays an early 18+ show with Haley Bonar (fresh off a breakthough Kitty Cat Klub performance last weekend) and others tomorrow (Thursday, May 1) at Fitger�s Spirit of the North Theatre in Duluth. The show is part of the massive weekend Homegrown Festival just two hours to our north--check out these summaries of all the participating bands in today's Ripsaw).

Between that, Cinco de Mayo, and the May Day festival, the first weekend of May is its traditional insane self...

FOR AN UPDATE, SEE: "UM, HE'S BACK IN THE BAND"

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at April 30, 2003 3:32 PM

 

Exchange with my younger brother Ben

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At the Even Further rave in rural Wisconsin, 2000, 3:45 a.m., me on Ecstasy, sitting in his car, going on about my anxieties. Pete: [long pause] Ben, what have I been talking about for the last half hour? Ben: Who cares. Let's dance.

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at April 30, 2003 3:58 AM

 

Classical music is fascist

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Every day I wake up to Classical 89.3 FM, "Music and Ideas," and most of the time, I only half comprehend what the voice on the air is talking about. This morning I was sleeping late, finger-humping the snooze button until a few minutes after 9, when the soothing patter of Melissa Ousley came on (she also hosts Music from Minnesota on Saturdays), and she said something that struck me as completely hilarious.

I'm paraphrasing from memory, but it went something like: "Here are four short Brahms pieces for piano. Just to warn you ahead of time, they finish quite a bit louder and faster than they start."

I appreciated this caveate. The purpose of morning classical radio is hardly to startle the half awake. That's why Ousley and her colleagues spew nonstop white-mouth-noise on the air, never failing to sound less than surreal. They're informative, too, like a radio equivalent of Classical Music For Beginners, the book I picked up recently in hopes of reanimating what education I have on the subject (especially now that I, you know, write about music for a living).

All this is just set-up to say that I've made a routine of dreaming with classical music on. But it wasn't until last week that I had my first classical-music nightmare. After staying up all night on Thursday, and taking a catnap on Friday evening, I didn't stir when violins began pouring out of my clock radio.

Instead, I imagined the competing melodies were swords on a Tolkien battlefield, warriors dueling to the death. The more I listened, the more the music became a justification for this arrangement, a musical dramatization of the philosophy that might makes right and may the best man win--with sex tips from Straw Dogs, decor by Leni Riefenstahl Living, a will to power from the ages and a national slogan of "don't hate me because I'm beautiful," plus the general ranking of humanity, the belief in race, and whatever else you want to call it.

I sat up, and the words came to my lips: "Classical music is fascist."

Did I really believe this? Did I hate classical music? Did classical music hate the weak?

Now, in this life, it's important to grapple with why, exactly, you're not a fascist. Being anti-Nazi isn't enough. That's just a stance, or worse, a pose. When self-congratulating protesters shout down Ku Klux Klan members outside the state capitol, I'm not convinced that's anti-fascism at all. To be thoroughly and viscerally anti-fascist, you've got to reject in your viscera the very impulses of what you're "fighting." Which doesn't mean becoming a pacifist, necessarily, it just means never making peace with the rule of smallness.

People who are peaceful by nature might be luckier on this score, but I doubt it. Part of me thinks audiences find The Pianist so unspeakably moving because they don't know quite how to feel about the passively brave title character. The movie doesn't judge Wladyslaw Szpilman for his need to hide, any more than it judges his comrades in the Warsaw ghetto for their need to fight. Instead, it looks at history and violence from the point of view of a hiding place, and imagines music as its own kind of hiding place.

So now I wonder: Why didn't the movie's music move me more? Adrien Brody could make a Baathist sob over Szpilman's plight (I loved the Saturday Night Live sketch with Tracy Morgan and Bernie Mac bawling over it). But the effectiveness of his performance makes me painfully aware of how little Chopin had to do with it...

I'm not sure I can't educate myself out of this response. But I hope to. Loving music is a way of living, and to love well, you love more widely. If anything, I think the dream was less about my dislike of classical music than about my fear that some things are just beyond me. Maybe I'm not smart enough to figure out how to be happy. Maybe I mistrust things that are good. Maybe I'm worried that deep down, I have my own cruelty, my own fascist streak, and that classical music just opened up one subconscious hiding place for it...

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at April 30, 2003 12:01 AM

 

The Laffer Curve: It is to laugh

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Now that the war's over, let's talk about something we can all agree on: the need to lower taxes for wealthy stockholders.

Peter Ritter on the president's moumou economics:  "Say it again with me: 'There's no such thing as double-taxation on dividends.'"

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at April 29, 2003 2:24 AM

 

Reaction to the news about Low:

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"They should raffle off their drink tickets before shows now." More responses at I Love Music.

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at April 28, 2003 11:27 PM

 

Scorned by Scorned in Atomic

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From Atomic #2, the new local punk zine:

Kris Kersten (interviewer): One last thing--a recent City Pages article proclaimed punk dead in the Twin Cities.

Joe (drummer): Ha! Fuck that. It's more alive now than it has been in the last five years.

Kerry (guitarist): I don't think it ever was alive in their eyes. Well, they interviewed people that don't go to shows.

Joe: Not to mention, I don't think they would know punk if it went and slapped them across the face.

Send $15 for a three-issue subscription to Atomic Zine, P.O. Box 50113, Minneapolis, MN 55405

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at April 28, 2003 10:56 PM

 

Orchestra Baobab and Bembeya Jazz: the rock&roll clash of civilizations

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Maybe it's the romance I once had with the lush, royal Africa of Jean De Brunhoff's imperialist Babar books. Maybe it was the more contemporary images of musical Africa on Sesame Street when I was a kid. Maybe it was the way the music on Syliphone Discotheque 71 Guinee seemed as lost and pacific as the imaginary Africa of my childhood, which I remembered when I heard the reissue a couple years ago--some old, forgotten intersection of Islam and Chuck Berry, Cuba and Conakry, Spanish guitar and the Incredible Bongo Band.

All I know is that this amalgam recently became my favorite rock&roll. And by happy coincidence, both Guinea's Bembeya Jazz and Senegal's Orchestra Baobab (pictured)--two Cuban-influenced, West African "national" orchestras from the same period--reunited for tours at around the same time as I was discovering them. Baobab played Northrop Plaza last summer, and I paid tribute to them in City Pages, before and after. Sadly, Bembeya didn't make it to the U.S. last year, and now their first North American tour stops short of Minnesota, in Chicago on August 28 (I might make the drive).

Both acts are anachronisms in the "clash of civilizations," a conflict that isn't necessarily (or even) international or military. Mostly, this clash comes down to what the Clash sang about in "Rock the Casbah": a local hubbub over some sexy new dance in Mali, say (one that actually turns out to be a sexy old dance in Mali: See the 2002 documentary Bamako Sigi Kan). "The West," "Islam," "tradition"--these things overlap wildly over stretches of time. Only ideologues can pick them apart cleanly.

It's a point made flesh in Baobab, who still sound like nothing else, and who return to Minneapolis this summer fresh off a recent Buena Vista Social Club-style comeback album (which I named my CD of the year, over the Streets, in 2002). Tell everyone you know to see them at First Avenue on Friday, June 30 .

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at April 28, 2003 9:30 PM

 

Sage Francis at the Cabooze, Afro Preachah at the Red Sea

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For college-age hip-hop fans (or fans of college-age hip-hop fans), don't miss the "underground" event of week: Atmosphere cohort Sage Francis appears at the recurring Minneapolis party Mission Control on Wednesday, April 30, at the Cabooze. Openers include Carnage (with Mr. Booker), P.O.S. & Cecil Otter, and DJ King Otto. Tickets are $8 for 18+/$6 for 21+.

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at April 28, 2003 7:50 PM

 

The RAVE Act: subliminal politics

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We have now entered the Kevin Nealon "Subliminal Man" era of lawmaking, in which controversial bills are routinely snuck onto the back of otherwise benign legislation. Take the so-called RAVE Act (which holds property owners and promoters liable for illegal drug use on their property, even if they took steps to prevent it, and which may effectively kill most music festivals, forget about raves). A version of this act was attached to the AMBER Alert bill, which creates a new media-based system of response to child kidnappings. AMBER passed the House and Senate earlier this month without arousing much debate.

To translate into Nealonspeak: "We've finally found a model for protecting our children (Footloose), and for allowing the media to get all the information they need (smoked-filled room)..."

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at April 28, 2003 5:40 PM

 

Bring your own horsewhip

Filed under: Imported

A friend says she attended a going-away party for a Ground Zero Bondage A-Go-Go dominatrix a few days ago. It was held in somebody's basement and vigorous whipping was involved.

Sometimes I feel like Woody Allen in Stardust Memories, looking out of my train car at another, faster car filled with people having a much better time...

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at April 28, 2003 4:37 PM

 

Zak Sally leaves Low

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Minneapolis bassist, comic book artist, and City Pages contributor Zak Sally (pictured on the right) has left Low, according to the band. "It was never necessarily an artistic difference, and we weren't necessarily fighting, he just didn't want to do this forever," says guitarist Alan Sparhawk. Sally is currently filling in on tour with the Dirty Three and couldn't be reached for comment.

Though the Minnesota trio's core songwriting team has always consisted of Sparhawk and Mimi Parker (who are married and live in Duluth), Sally's subtle yet monumental bass lines became a key part of the band's chemistry and sound after he replaced bassist John Nichols and appeared on the 1995 sophomore album, Long Division.

Sparhawk says he and Parker will keep the band name (they'll be playing Thursday at this week's Homegrown Music Festival), but he doesn't yet know whether they'll seek a replacement, or whom that person might be if they do.

More to come.

FOR AN UPDATE, SEE: "UM, HE'S BACK IN THE BAND"

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at April 28, 2003 2:46 PM

 

William Upski Wimsatt: Wigger, please!

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A graffiti writer before, and an educator after, Upski's most convulsive cultural impact came with 1994's Bomb the Suburbs, a book that spoke so frankly about race and violence (and at a time of nationally encoded politeness and reaction) that you'd have to reach for Nas, Nathan McCall, or Quentin Tarantino for comparisons. Yet the grownup white Chicago hip-hop kid is more civil rights activist than celebrity liberal: He humbly immerses himself in whatever he's into (the new new urbanism, philanthropy, anti-prison activism) even as people seek him out for his unique voice.

He'll be at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis for free this Thursday, May, for a talk about hip hop, teen politics, whatever, presented in conjunction with the May Day! May Day! Youth Arts and Activism Gathering.

Is he little wide-eyed? Most optimists are. I wish he had read Jennifer Vogel's City Pages expose of poverty deconcentration before he gave Minnesota State Representative Myron Orfield such an uncritical hearing in No More Prisons (both books are available at Arise! Bookstore and Resource Center in Minneapolis).

That said, I'd rather argue with him than with radicals more concerned with being right than doing right. For anybody planning to protest the local appearance of Henry A. Kissinger the same evening (or attend the Arc Hennepin-Carver dinner), Upski will return to the Walker on May 15, and will stick around town doing workshops in between. Somebody invite him to the May Day parade and De La Soul show on Sunday.

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at April 28, 2003 1:25 PM

 

At 2 Tickets 2 Paradise last night...

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Shellie goes: "Are you going to blog about this, because now I'm worried you're just doing stuff to blog about it." It was a reunion party for fans and Shellie's friends. She and I danced to "Margaritaville," sigh. I think we've done that seven times, and I don't enjoy it any less or like the song any more. Then, before closing with the customary "Star-Spangled Banner," the singer, Mike, practically gave a political speech about... hmmm, something about how the direction the country scares him. Made me proud to embrace the song, for once, which I still think is the best national anthem. If you have your own favorite alternatives, send 'em before the Fourth of July and I'll post 'em.

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at April 26, 2003 4:06 PM

 

De La Soul on the rocks?

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It was over a few stressful minutes last summer that I rediscovered my love for De La Soul. I was getting ready for my brother's wedding, tying my tie in the hotel mirror. Shellie must have seen the vertigo in my face, and she suggested I take a break. I put on "Trying People," the last track on the last De La Soul album, and sat down, just listening and breathing. The song is about facing the rest of your life, and it's by guys clearly not ready for the rest of their lives.

Got fans around the world, but my girl's not one of 'em
And my relationship's a big question
Cuz my career's a clear hindrance to her progression
Said she needs a man and our kids need a father
I'm not at all ready to hear her say don't bother

For people who have grown up listening to them, and listened to them grow up, De La Soul remain among the few groups of any genre who consistently matter. Which isn't to downplay the fun they have, or the fun we have. Watching Mase bear his shining Buddha belly at First Avenue a couple years ago remains one of the happiest spectacles in my live rap memory.

What I'm trying to say is this: It was a loss to more than De La Soul when the mass audience overlooked 2001's AOI: Bionix. And now I wonder whether we'll lose De La Soul themselves...

A month ago, I called Sequence Records/Ultra Records in New York to find out what was keeping the new De La Soul album. The release date for SFS: Spit Flows & Safety (It Ain't Safe in the Water) had been pushed back for months, to April 3. A world tour was set to kick off March 25, and I hoped to hear an advance copy of the album before then.

Turns out SFS had been dropped from the label's schedule altogether. Why? Apparently, De La Soul weren't getting along, couldn't even stand being in the same studio together.

This rumor struck me as odd: First of all, SFS required only a few tracks from them--the album has been advertised as a compilation, with classics from Nas, GZA, Large Professor, and many others. Besides, at least two De La Soul tracks were already in the can: The group performed "Much More" (the b-side of their promotional single with dancehall don Sean Paul, "Shoomp") in a video that aired earlier this month on (Dave) Chappelle's Show. (The short shows the trio sharing close quarters inside a bus.)

What's more, the tour is going ahead on schedule: De La Soul received good notices for a performance at the We the Planet Festival in San Francisco on Easter Sunday. They have two concerts in Minnesota next week: at Carleton College on May 3, and at First Avenue on May 4. (Side note: Opener Brother Ali's own new album sounds great, though I've only heard selections on 2 The Break-A-Dawn).

Anyway, I'd be happy for De La Soul to dispel these rumors, if they ever get around to doing interviews. But in the meantime, I can't help noticing the obvious: It's been a tough year for De La Soul.

Back in March of 2002, when the album was going to be the third in a planned Art Official Intelligence trilogy, De La Soul's label of 13 years, Tommy Boy, sold off its hip-hop assets to Warner Music Group. The transaction resulted in the trio being stranded on Elektra (a Warner subsidiary) for the millisecond that it took Elektra to size up De La Soul's sales figures and summarily drop them.

The music industry is imploding, sure, and life sucks. But De La Soul are considered one of the most consistently great hip-hop groups of all time. When Tommy Boy reissued the 1989 debut last fall, with a bonus disc of single mixes and rare tracks, it only framed and focused what admirers from the start felt peripherally: that pop music, never mind hip hop, would be still catching up for decades. (A singles collection is due out on Rhino this spring.) Now many are coming around to the idea that De La Soul have yet to release an album that isn't "classic."

Contrary to fashionable opinion, corporate synergy and promotional payola really do buy something. And they really do take away something from those who aren't buying. Still, De La Soul are buying what they can afford these days: Upon closer examination, the Dave Chappelle opportunity looks like the usual confluence of business interests: Corey Smyth, the show's musical director and talent booker, also happens to be CEO of Black Smyth Management, which promotes De La Soul.

The group is on Sequence, an admirable but small indie specializing in hip-hop compilations. There's no shame in De La Soul making (or breaking) their home there, of course: I love Sequence CDs. But it's still hard not to feel as if De La Soul got lost somewhere in a shuffle that's bigger than them, bigger than hip hop, and way smaller than music.

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at April 25, 2003 10:37 AM

 

complicatedfun.com wishes to thank: no one

Filed under: Imported

Mike Skinner (The Streets) in Nerve on the flatulent thank-you lists accompanying every album these days:

"When you get a carpenter to make you a closet, he doesn't walk out the house saying, 'I just want to thank my mum for raising me.'"

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at April 25, 2003 12:45 AM

 

I missed a Peter Anderson drum solo!

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If you're like me, you get depressed sometimes and stay home, which is fine, but what about all the shows you're missing? For that, we have David de Young's How Was the Show?, a Minneapolis/St. Paul concert review site so rigorous, de Young actually went to de trouble of reviewing last Saturday's Mallman show after I complained that it wasn't on his page. (Frankly, I'm flattered he reads this.) The site also contains a review of the Funk Brothers show, which reminds me: I was especially happy to bring my girlfriend's parents, since I'm still eating their Easter chocolate right now.

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at April 24, 2003 3:56 AM

 

Hey, can you read this?

Filed under: Imported

Is the lettering too small or too big? And what about the margin? It looks different to me at home and at work ("There go my plans for tonight" looks perfect on my PC, small on my iMac). Let me know what you think at pscholtes@citypages.com And while I'm soliciting advice, please send any and all links, especially Minnesota music or band links, to the same address. Alright, back to work...

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at April 23, 2003 1:12 PM

 

Makes me wanna holler

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Jeffrey writes (via Cecile Cloutier) to say that Bob Babbitt, my favorite Funk Brother (as I was saying), played the bass lines to "Mercy Mercy Me" and "Inner City Blues." The latter is one of the great bass lines of all time, and on a song so synonymous with black despair in the 1970s that some must assume the bassist is black.

(Whether or not he wrote it is a question pending on this discussion page with the man himself.)

Jeffrey goes on to list "some other fine ones that he can claim as his":

R. Dean Taylor, "Indiana Wants Me" (1968)

Barry Manilow, "Somewhere in the Night," "Copacabana"

Englebert Humperdink, "After the Lovin'"

Tim Curry, "Read My Lips," "Fearless"

Alice Cooper, "Alice Cooper Goes to Hell" (1976), "Lace and Whiskey" (1977), "You and Me."

Holla...

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at April 23, 2003 11:53 AM

 

Kissinger is coming!

Filed under: Imported

On Thursday May 1, I'll be watching WCCO News anchor Don Shelby deliver the keynote speech at Arc Hennepin-Carver's annual dinner. The same night, Henry A. Kissinger will deliver his own keynote address at the Center of the American Experiment's annual dinner.

Arc folks will be talking about the triumphs and struggles of people with developmental disabilities. American Experiment folks will be talking about the triumphs and struggles of people who might retain the services of Kissinger and Associates, Inc.

Our dinner is $20 a plate. Their dinner is $150 a plate.

Our speaker is a journalist. Their speaker is a liar and a war criminal.

If you'd like to join the protests against Kissinger's welcome, contact Arise! Bookstore and Resource Center; 612.871.7110.

 

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at April 23, 2003 4:06 AM

 

Home is where the good articles are...

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I'm loving the City Pages music section this week--and I had no part in it, so ease off, bucko:

Greil Marcus quotes Cecily Marcus in his new column for the paper: "Not even Reese Witherspoon is allowed to be as good as Reese Witherspoon was in Freeway."

Erin Anderson perfectly captures what's so mysterious and podunk about Haley Bonar (pronounced "honor," you horndogs). I highly recommend Bonar's gig Saturday with Alan Sparhawk and If Thousands at the Kitty Cat Klub in Dinkytown.

Elsewhere in Duluth, Paul Demko spends way too much time with the White Iron Band:

"Pudas is slamming beers with what he dubs the band's 'security patrol'--three six-foot-plus groupies from Blaine. One of them is actually wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the words 'White Iron Band Security.' They're 'caramelizing' their beers, which involves literally sticking a red-hot poker from the fire into the brew, causing it to foam up and overflow. It also leaves ashes in the beer. Every time someone gets their beer caramelized, Pudas and the security crew chant, 'caramel, caramel, caramel.'"

And Dylan Hicks earns my eternal wrath for dissing the White Stripes' better half:

"Speaking of sheep, there are loads of prog-rock dweebs and girls-can't-play pigs out there who think Meg White is a sucky drummer. They're right."

 

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at April 23, 2003 3:51 AM

 

Well there go my plans for tonight...

Filed under: Imported

From the Josh Hartnett Meetup Minneapolis, MN  site (concerning the "International Josh Hartnett Meetup Day" to be held Wednesday, April 23 at 8:00 p.m.):

"Not enough Josh Hartnett Fans near Minneapolis, MN can make it, so this month's Meetup is cancelled."

 

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at April 23, 2003 1:25 AM

 

Matos on the Ego Trip table at EMP:

Filed under: Imported

"How many white people in here say the word 'nigga' when they sing along with rap lyrics?" they asked; a smattering of hands went up, including mine. "Stop!"

Check out Michaelangelo Matos's full account (scroll down) of the EMP Pop Music Studies Conference, a.k.a. Rockcriticspalooza.

(Random thought: Somewhere in rural Wisconsin there's a white guy with a Julia Sweeney "It's Pat" accent saying to his buddies, in all seriousness, "Nigger, please!")

 

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at April 22, 2003 11:14 PM

 

Eating Crowe

Filed under: Imported

In his Basement Gloss column in last week's Ripsaw (look under Columns), Mark Lindquist identifies perhaps the worst rock lyric ever penned:

'Swallow My Gift'

by Russell Crowe

How you want to see this situation
Straight down the barrel of from some other location
Running up the hills never been my vocation
It�s my punishment
For drinking my frustration
Big Wide World
Why don�t you swallow my gift?
I�m ragged and I�m ready to grift
Big Wide World
Swallow my gift
You follow me
I�ll haunt you
Don�t bite baby
It�s more than you can chew.

 

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at April 22, 2003 9:01 PM

 

Swallow these lyrics

Filed under: Stories

SWALLOW MY GIFT
(Crowe)

How you want to see this situation
Straight down the barrel or from some other location
Running up hills never been my vocation
It's my punishment
For drinking my frustration

Big wide world
Why don't you swallow my gift
I'm ragged up and ready to grift
Big wide world
Swallow my gift

Say a little something at the dinner table
Raise up your glasses if your eyesight's feeble
Try and see the target is the barn not the stable
Giving into comfort
You won't be able

Big wide world
Why don't you swallow my gift
I'm ragged up and ready to grift
Big wide world
Swallow my gift

You follow me
I'll haunt you
Don't bite baby
It's more than you can chew

So being this way says I'm in that way
Says I live the way You'll complain about 'til death
'Til you're smelling heaven's breath
Then you might just realize
Nasty little fuckers
Just don't win the prize

Big wide world
Why don't you swallow my gift
I'm revved up and ready to grift
Big wide world
Swallow my gift

Big wide world
Why don't you swallow my gift
I'm ragged up and ready to grift
Big wide world
Swallow my gift

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at April 22, 2003 8:51 PM

 

Hey, I remember making out to this web log...

Filed under: Imported

A longtime (and utterly dumbfounding) fixation of TCPunk, giant squids have found warm embrace on City Pages writer Peter Ritter's Inablogadavida. Enjoy.

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at April 22, 2003 8:28 PM

 

Run, Hitchens, Run!

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The overlap between readers of Christopher Hitchens and fans of the unreleased Mr. Show movie Run Ronnie Run might not be huge, but it apparently includes the Onion. I'm also willing to bet the five people who click on Complicatedfun.com every day fall within said overlap...

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at April 22, 2003 8:04 PM

 

Okay, here's the real X2 review

Filed under: Imported

First the complaints: Berry's hair, which I mentioned below. Plus the film is now supposedly called X2: X-Men United. How lame is that?

And the ending is about as inspired as Die Hard With a Vengeance (no, I won't fucking link that), with a climax somehow involving an exploding dam (shades of Superman) and a key character's demise (shades of Superman). I know I went way too easy on Daredevil, and slightly easy on Spider-Man, both of which turned sour and violent in the end (a formula that worked in Superman II, but that was the best superhero film of all time.) Thing is, I can remember what happened in those pictures--and I didn't just see them 6 hours ago.

Throat-clearing aside, though, X2 is fun. X2 is cool. X2 is tens times the movie X-Men was. I also like saying X2 more than T2. I also liked seeing X2 more than T2.

Of course the movie endlessly contrives to place helpless children in Wolverine's saving hands, to place fleshy Jean Grey in Wolverine's lusty hands, to place Wolverine fans in multiplexes' butt-hungry seats. Whatever. Catering to fans is a given in the era of Fox/Marvel Enterprises (an entity that marks not only the comeback of comicbook pictures, but also the return of studio auteurism).

As I wrote about the last X-Men movie, comic book fans are flattered to be noticed at all, much less treated as a demographic. And fandom can inspire great pieces of junk, which is exactly what this movie is. (Maybe they should have called it X-Men 2: The Geekquel.)

X2 aims to please, and aims way too high, striving to grab your attention during absolutely every last second of screen time. There are action/FX wonders galore (at least enough to make me use the word "galore"). There are a hundred sweaty and emotive close-ups. There are vatfuls of romantic tension thrust into every last possible plot crevice. There are inventive scenarios for customary brutality. There's a good 20-minute lull in the first third for backstory. And there's even an amusing scene involving a young mutant who comes out to his parents ("Bobby, have you tried not being a mutant?").

Ian McKellen's Magneto is funnier, his relationship to Patrick Stewart's Professor X more poignant. Anna Paquin is Anna Paquin two years older (I won't belabor this point). Hugh Jackman is Hugh Jackman in less clothing. Halle Berry (hair and all) is Halle Berry with a new foil, Alan Cumming's Nightcrawler. Nightcrawler's explosive teleporting competes with Wolverine's claws for cool points. And hey, there's even Kitty Pryde walking through walls, and Colossus going all metallic--names that will mean nothing to anyone but fans, but they mean a lot to us.

So let us rejoice, geeks. Parents, accept your mutant children. Writers, pat yourselves on the back for a plot well done. You kept my attention through thick- and thin-headed twists. If I were in a worse mood, I might have pointed out that giving Professor X the ability to stop time and instantly teleport his whole team into the White House at the end of the movie sort of negates the whole story that came before. 

But I'm not in a worse mood, thanks to you. No, I'll just praise the punched up sex quotient, the more imaginative action, Wolverine's swear word, and (in advance) the much better ending you'll put on X-Men 3: God Bless the X-Men, or Whatever.

 

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at April 22, 2003 7:38 PM

 

Second initial review of X2

Filed under: Imported

Love Alan Cumming's Nightcrawler. But what's with Halle Berry's hair? Even in the '80s, Storm didn't have '80s hair.

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at April 22, 2003 5:17 PM

 

Okay, here's my initial review of X2

Filed under: Imported

Poing! Kerplunk, plunk, plunk, rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrllll. [sound of my eyeballs popping out of their sockets and bouncing across the floor of the Block E 15 movie theater]

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at April 22, 2003 5:09 PM

 

Time to get a bike

Filed under: Imported

If you're in Minneapolis, you can rent a recumbent at Calhoun Cycle, 10 a.m.-7:00 p.m. Don't be put off by Mr. Show's brilliant skewering of a corporate dweeb who rides one. These bikes are cool. Just try one.

Note to lowrider enthusiasts: How long before you embrace this technology?

 

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at April 22, 2003 5:05 PM

 

Gogol Bordello has cancelled again...

Filed under: Imported

Great band, but are they going for the Lyricist Lounge record?

 

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at April 22, 2003 4:14 PM

 

Hobo to train: "That's my mama calling"

Filed under: Imported

The smell of crusty punks at last night's screening of Long Gone brought it all back:

Five years ago I was working at the Arise! Bookstore and Resource Center when three young punkers walked in. They were 16 or 17, two girls and a boy, funny, attractive, smelly, innocent. They said they were getting ready to hop a train out of town, hobo style, and planned to end up in New Orleans. We got to talking, and soon they asked me if I'd like to come with.

Let's see: On the one hand, bills and work and stress and rent. On the other, the open expanse of America, without the security of knowing where your next meal will come from. But the idea of just skipping out on life has every kind of appeal...

I thanked them and said no, and they left me with a farewell that amounted to something like: "You don't know what you're missing!"

But now, having seen Long Gone, I'm not sure I made the wrong choice. The filmmakers shot the documentary over a period of seven years, and its obvious that everyone onscreen is a matter of intense personal concern to them (ominously, one of the dogs belonging to a tramp in the movie showed up at the screening with the director last night). Still, the film never romanticizes its subjects, never sensationalizes or sentimentalizes their lives.

The movie made me cry, right down to the Tom Waits soundtrack. And it made me wonder why the urge to escape the world, Waiting for Lefty-style, is so powerful in people who want to change it...

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at April 22, 2003 4:06 PM

 

The night the lights went out in Georgia

Filed under: Imported

Anyone who can't quite empathize with Iraqis protesting over electricity should track down Paul Devlin's highly entertaining documentary Power Trip for background. I watched it last night at the Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival and was struck by how much the director assumes your intelligence and doesn't beat you over the head with his ideas. Michael Tortorello's recommendation:

"The subject is the power grid in the former Soviet republic of Georgia and its purchase by a huge American corporation--not a promising subject, perhaps, thus my original lack of enthusiasm. But I can report having seen it that it's the best movie on globalization you're likely to encounter. Far from being preachy, it comically and sympathetically exposes the basic disconnect between market capitalism and an impoverished crony economy. This involves some of the scariest-looking home electrical jobs you've ever imagined--one jerry rigged transformer station inexplicably has a rock hanging from a wire--and some impressive non-cooperation with bill collectors. (Ninety percent of customers in the capital Tbilisi don't pay for service.)"

 

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at April 22, 2003 3:52 PM

 

Signs that no one is reading #1

Filed under: Imported

Blatant factual errors left uncorrected by emailers:

-- the statement that Muddy Waters is turning into a biker bar (I meant the Mud Pie)

-- a report that the governor is turning the Minnesota Children's Museum into Tim Pawlenty's Temple of Doom, complete with live heart-removal/child sacrifice (I made this up)

-- a mention of my hot tub party last night with the staff of Fox 9 News, Carissa from Heads & Bodies, my newly adopted ward Anna Paquin, the entire grad student faculty of American University, and Jennifer the Watson's pool girl (day dream)

 

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at April 22, 2003 2:02 PM

 

Nina Simone R.I.P.

Filed under: Imported

One measure of a song's greatness is how successfully it translates across styles and keeps its chill. Listen to "To Be Young, Gifted and Black" by Nina Simone, then check out the Marcia Griffiths and Bob Andy's early reggae cover of the song, as haunted by its youth as Simone ever was...

 

 

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at April 21, 2003 6:57 PM

 

Less complicated, more fun...

Filed under: Imported

If you forget the babelogue.citypages.com address, or just want to look up this page more easily in the future, type in complicatedfun.com

Speaking of "Complicated Fun," Chris Osgood tells me there's a new Suicide Commandos reissue on the way. I'll review that and the Spectors CD here soon...

 

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at April 21, 2003 6:45 PM

 

We are all Funk Brothers

Filed under: Imported

At one point during the Funk Brothers show last night, Bootsy Collins came out on the floor and led everyone in a chant of "funk the inside out," or something like that, while the band ran through the changes of "Cool Jerk."

Bootsy was sparkling bright in his star shades, gold sequin outfit, and wide, metallic smile. He handed the microphone to people's faces so they could sing the "funk" line. When he got to me and Shellie, we yelled cheek to cheek, Soul Asylum-style. Then Bootsy turned to a graying white guy behind us, and instead of repeating the line, the man just wailed the high note for what seemed like minutes.

Everybody went nuts. Even Bootsy looked amazed.

Later on, I asked the guy, "Hey, are you a singer?"

"No, I'm a lawyer."

 

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at April 21, 2003 6:26 PM

 

Blond Playboy bunnies

Filed under: Imported

Speaking of Legally Blonde, I just watched Bridget Jones's Diary again this weekend, and was wondering how two romantic comedies could both include scenes in which the main character, because of some misunderstanding or deceit, turns up at a party in a Playboy bunny outfit, with nobody else in costume.

Is this a classic female nightmare? Or a classic male fantasy? Or both? Or neither?

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at April 21, 2003 5:30 PM

 

The future of live music is hydrotechnics

Filed under: Imported

Okay, we ended up going to Fischerspooner Saturday. We missed Mallman (hey, where's David de Young when you need him?), but I heard the show was sub-par, anyway (too bad, 'cause he recorded it for a possible live album).

I love J. Niimi's summary of Fischerspooner as "a cosmopolitan version of Insane Clown Posse" in City Pages, but I found them more persuasively hilarious. They even got away with playing the hit twice (something I hadn't seen since the Sundays did �Here�s Where The Story Ends� twice at the Barrymore 13 years ago after an acoustic warm-up set by Yo La Tengo).

For the group's second go at lip-synching (they're also a cosmopolitan version of Milli Vanilli), all the dancers and "singers" dressed up in red, white, and blue, and exploded enough confetti and water to make you stop worrying about the death of stage pyrotechnics. (If this show was any indication, the future is hydrotechnics.)

The after-party was held above a sleazily mysterious old "sauna" on Washington Avenue, decadent but genuinely friendly. I met journalist Rex Sorgatz and another old pal of Chuck Klosterman, this one a woman as tall as Chuck Klosterman (my apologies to her now: I'm criminally bad with names). When we danced, I suddenly found myself surrounded by other tall women, a disco hobbit among ents. Hey, all heights and sizes work for me, but the experience seemed worth mentioning...

I know I'm name-dropping like a guy talking his way into a party here (which is what happened, actually), but the writers linked above are all worth reading...

Now I've got to go hit up my good friend Josh Hartnett...

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at April 21, 2003 5:06 PM

 

Joe Golden is my favorite City Pages funk brother

Filed under: Imported

Soon to be a permanent link on this page, here's the Joseph Golden archive, a collection of hilarious short movie reviews that are otherwise unsearchable in the City Pages archive.

Golden's take on Godzilla could describe the baffling support enjoyed by dictators in other countries against invading forces:

"Would someone please clue me in on Godzilla's complicated affair with the good people of Tokyo? Does he love them? Do they hate him? Why are they always trying to destroy the scaly beast until a demonstrably more horrible creature comes along--at which point they inevitably beg for the big guy's protection?"

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at April 21, 2003 3:36 PM

 

Joseph Golden archive

Filed under: Stories

Yeah, this page is under construction, but look for an expanded web site soon...

Special to ComplicatedFun.com:

 Joseph Golden: Best Writer at City Pages  He puts a cover story's worth of thought into everything he writes; trouble is, he only writes 200-word movie reviews.