music
A Jewel in the Crowd
by Josh K-sky on Jul.15, 2010, under music
“If I was not who I say I am, I could have easily overpowered you already. You have just seen how I willingly gave the Ring back to your master. In fact, if I wanted to kill you all, I could do it — NOW!”
He stood up, and suddenly seemed to grow taller and well-muscled. In his eyes gleamed a light, keen and feral. Throwing back his cloak, he laid his hand on the hilt of a long sword that had hung concealed by his side. Sam stared at it, horrified.
“But I am the real Strider, fortunately,” he said, looking down at them with a suddenly kinder eye. He smiled. “I am already betrothed to an elf-maid, and I have no need for the power of the Ring. I am Aragon son of Arathon; and if I can save you from your own stupid mistakes, then I will.”
There was a long silence. Pipsqueak and Morrie stared at Strider with new-found respect at this revelation of his state.
–The Fellowship of The Ring, J.R.R. Tolkein
In this Funny or Die video, Jewel dresses up as a Woman in a Grey Flannel Suit named Karen and, shyly persuaded to sing by her fellow “conventioneers” (“She only sings at the Christmas party”), blows the crowd away with a couple of Jewel songs.
She then comes back out and does an encore as herself.
This is terrible. Karaoke is the exact wrong place to stage what tvtropes.com calls a King Incognito moment. That works in two situations: where the king needs information that he won’t get if he asks people who know who he is (consider Henry V walking among his troops on the eve of the attack, or, for a variation, Zeus rewarding mortals who treat him kindly not knowing his identity), or when, as in the excerpt above, the king must travel for his own safety.
Karaoke has an exact opposite mythopoetic gesture. We’ve all been to the bar where amid the drunk jocks and party girls (bless them) moaning through “Light My Fire” or “Lady Marmalade” there’s a shy, old man, talking to no one, who reveals as golden a throat as ever ran with the Rat Pack. Karaoke is a scene where an ordinary person can reveal talent that only celebrities are suspected to have.
By mixing with the rabble and then revealing her powers, Jewel sucks the fun out of karaoke. The message of this video is that, actually, most people can’t do the things celebrities do, that privilege follows a natural order, and there’s no point in trying to join the elect if you’re not already in it.
Jewel’s own life story is one of rags to riches. What an awful revision this gives it.
I Am Trying To Break Your Soul
by Josh K-sky on May.08, 2010, under music
FB coughed up this retro-soul version of Wilco’s “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart” by J.C. Brooks & the Uptown Sound. Watch & let’s discuss:
I Left the House
by Joshua Malbin on Mar.22, 2010, under music
Girlfriend’s out of town, which tends to mean I get off my ass and go do things. Last night I went to see these guys for a really fun, upbeat, dancy show.
They’re playing the 9 pm show Sunday night at Nublu the next few weeks. Recommended.
Best Of The Decade; or, The Imperfect Transition
by Josh K-sky on Mar.05, 2010, under music
Over at Come In Threes, America’s Favorite Kiwi B-Diddy Disco passed on a request from the Dan Schwartz Blog for contributors’ favorite albums of the decade.
I peered into my iTunes stats, wandered over to my CD shelves in the other room, and put together this list:
Karaoke Favorites
by Joshua Malbin on Jan.04, 2010, under Uncategorized, music
The video in Josh K-sky’s post below has the Carpenters’ “Superstar” as its soundtrack. That’s not only my favorite Carpenters song, it’s one of my favorite karaoke standbys. Others include:
David Bowie, “Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide” or “Life on Mars,” usually not both on the same night
Bruce Springsteen, “Thunder Road”
Dr. Dre, “Forgot About Dre”
LL Cool J, “Momma Said Knock You Out”
Merle Haggard, “Carolyn”
Digital Underground, “The Humpty Dance”
Eminem, “The Real Slim Shady” (Admittedly I haven’t yet sung this one in public. I’m itching to, though.)
The list reflects the implicit karaoke philosophy of the group I usually sing with: pick songs that are actually fun to perform rather than the usual 80s hair-band anthems with high kitsch value. That usually means songs that are in some way challenging to pull off. Also, always spring for the private room.
I’ll probably add more titles as I remember them. Yours?
Good Christmas Albums
by Josh K-sky on Dec.07, 2009, under music
Christmas Songs by Diana Krall. Her interpretation of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”, no matter how sultry it gets, rises and falls on the brittle truth in the song: Next year our troubles will be miles away, but we can hardly think about anything else tonight.
The Raveonettes released Wishing You A Rave Christmas this time last year. I heard Come On Santa last year along with their The Christmas Song, but the one that’s really got me is the Phil Spector classic Christmas (Baby Please Come Home), also done by Death Cab for Cutie.
Low’s Christmas album turns 10 years old this year. Like all things Low, it drowns in slow sadness here and there, but Just Like Christmas is a fantastic track — a jingle bell Scandinavian road movie that clips along on big drums and seasonal warmth with just a hint of melancholy.
Glee Episode 7: “Throwdown”
by Josh K-sky on Nov.28, 2009, under music, television
I’m still getting caught up on Glee. Episode 7, while entertaining enough, has a number of flaws that highlight what the show does so well.
1: You can have too much of a good thing. Jane Lynch is one of the best things about the show. But her over-the-top villainy plays better as a force of nature than in sustained interactions with other characters. An episode like Preggers, where the Glee club’s success threatens Sue’s television perch, uses her centrally without overdoing it, but Throwdown puts her and Mr. Shuster in continuous battle, which taxes the necessary suspension of disbelief. In general, the adult world outside of Will Shuster is so absurd that it needs to be secondary to the fortunes of the Glee club, and the show works best when it uses the adult world as the B plot or makes Will overwhelmingly central.
2. Narrow your focus. Sue’s exploitation of the minority students’ alienation was tonally inconsistent. The satire of “minority status” was too absurd in its broadness to be pointed, and came off as mushy and hesitant. Glee hasn’t entirely found its voice with regards to satire; this is most clearly found in the attempts to soften Terri even as she moves forward her fabricated pregnancy and baby-switching plot. With Terri, I’m glad to see that the show doesn’t want to treat her as an outright villain, unsympathetically desperate in her baby-madness; with a one-episode theme, however, it’s better to stake out your target more clearly.
2. Glee it up. Too many of the songs in this episode were solo numbers with only incidental choral touches. Consider “Hate On Me”:
There’s no doubt that Amber Riley’s Mercedes can deliver the goods, but solo performances weaken the show. We’ve already seen her do “Bust Your Windows” on her own. The show does a good job of pairing pop songs with the characters’ emotional states, but it only soars when they get their peers to join them in their heightened, musical state. To me, that’s the central proposition of Glee, the truth of which Rachel tries to persuade Quinn in this episode: we all know how much it hurts; you’re not alone.
Things That Look Like Other Things III
by Josh K-sky on Nov.02, 2009, under music
Actually, this will be a thing that sounds like a thing.
Thank you for joining us for Lady Gaga day on Joshua Malbin dot com.
Download a Philip Glass sampler for free on Amazon.
This Must Be The Place
by Josh K-sky on Oct.30, 2009, under Movies, music
I’ve been watching the video for Miles Fisher’s cover of Talking Heads’ 1983 song This Must Be The Place:
In the video, Fisher plays Patrick Bateman and restages several scenes from American Psycho. (Fisher also does a mean Tom Cruise and appeared as Paul Kinsey’s Princeton classmate and dope dealer in Mad Men.) The prostitute sequence in American Psycho was originally set to Phil Collins’ Sussudio (1985); I don’t think Fisher’s use of American Psycho to hold his song is arbitrary.
Home is where I want to be
Pick me up and turn me round
I feel numb – born with a weak heart
I guess I must be having fun
I saw American Psycho in the theatre in 2000, when it came out. It resonated with me deeply, not so much for the yuppie satire or the narratively suspect rampage of misogynistic violence, but for this seeming truth: this was the story of a man who hates his job. His life, really, but it’s life in an all-encompassing job, a job of a life.
To me, the song, sung from alienation yearning towards warm oblivion, feels exactly like what Bateman’s character seemed to me to feel. Who do I have to murder to get fired around here?
Miles Fisher EP for free download at Amie Street. The other songs are good too.
UPDATE: I should note that I found this via Jim Emerson, who has other connections to make.
Hip-Hop Is Long Dead
by Joshua Malbin on Oct.25, 2009, under music
The stodgiest magazine in America has declared hip-hop dead. Therefore, it died many years ago. QED.