Archive for December, 2011

Best of 2011

Saturday, December 31st, 2011

It’s been a great year, time to show the greatest hits of the year.

The year 2012 was a very special one for me. Besides spending lots of time with my family, I published my second book in 2012 (it’s called Banks at Risk, I visited Bahrain for the first time (it was also my first time back in the Middle East for quite a few years) and I also went back to Canada for the first time since 2002 (and my first time back to Toronto since 1999). Wow! Well, a picture tells a thousand words, so rather than me writing 35,000 words (and you reading them all), here is the story in 35 pictures:

Star Wars toys for Christmas 2010!!

Star Wars toys for Christmas 2010!!

Lovely holiday dinner with Oma and Opa

Lovely holiday dinner with Oma and Opa

Zen's softball team got a trophy!!

Zen's softball team got a trophy!!

Peter in Bahrain

Peter in Bahrain

We are Supertzar!!

We are Supertzar!!

Hey, Langkawi baby!

Hey, Langkawi baby!

Look out - behind you!!

Look out - behind you!!

Langkawi Sunset

Langkawi Sunset

We're going on a monkey hunt...

We're going on a monkey hunt...

Find the hidden monitor lizard (hint - it's mud-coloured)

Find the hidden monitor lizard (hint - it's mud-coloured)

We three resort-dwellers...

We three resort-dwellers...

Peter 'n' Zen, father and son

Peter 'n' Zen, father and son

Sittin' in a tree

Sittin' in a tree

I published a book!  Banks At Risk is the title...

I published a book! Banks At Risk is the title...

At Shosha-zan monastery

At Shosha-zan monastery

At Shosha-zan monastery

At Shosha-zan monastery

Zen arrives back in Canada (with his Canada cap on)

Zen arrives back in Canada (with his Canada cap on)

Opa's birthday at home in Canada.

Opa's birthday at home in Canada.

Fishing in Canada

Fishing in Canada

Zen at the foot of Yonge Street, the longest street in the world

Zen at the foot of Yonge Street, the longest street in the world

Toronto harbour, with Opa and Zen

Toronto harbour, with Opa and Zen

Heading down the log flume at Centreville

Heading down the log flume at Centreville

Thumbs up!  There's Oma and Opa in the background.

Thumbs up! There's Oma and Opa in the background.

Looking out on Lake Ontario

Looking out on Lake Ontario

Dawn skyline from the west end

Dawn skyline from the west end

Hanging out with David Miller

Hanging out with David Miller

Mystic rhythms

Mystic rhythms

Peter, Zen, Gibson SG

Peter, Zen, Gibson SG

Captain Zen

Captain Zen

Opa in command

Opa in command

Zen and his new friend...

Zen and his new friend...

Zen's birthday cake

Zen's birthday cake

Zen's birthday - at Universal Studios!

Zen's birthday - at Universal Studios!

It's... A Sushi!!

It's... A Sushi!!

What I did during the holidays (work in progress)

Saturday, December 31st, 2011

I had 10 days off at the end of the year. What did I do?

- sets of 60 push-ups and 200 sit-ups; one day I did 1,000 push-ups and 2,000 sit-ups
- jogging at the crack of dawn
- applied for a new passport
- Christmas shopping
- presents wrapping
- develop photos and put them in an album
- played a gig at the Crazy Elephant
- practiced guitar (and took a video of me practicing guitar…)
- lost four kilograms
- picked mum and dad up from the airport
- set up the Christmas tree
- went swimming
- wrote and put together a picture book
- send New Year’s greetings emails to my friends
- ordered cool stuff online
- drank gin ‘n’ tonics
- went to Ten Years After to check out EDDIE!!!

Books read:

Madman and the Atomics
The Son of Neptune
The Absolute Sandman Volume One
Conan – Rogues In The House
Conan – The Hall Of The Dead
Conan – The Barry Windsor-Smith Archives, Volume 1
Conan – The Barry Windsor-Smith Archives, Volume 2
Ronnie
Faithfull
The Rolling Stones Unseen Archives
According To The Rolling Stones

DVDs watched:

This Is Spinal Tap (special edition)
The Best of Black Sabbath
Cream Farewell Concert
Cream Reunion Concert
Catch-22
The Miles David Story
Snakes On A Plane
The Good, The Bad, The Weird
Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby
Jimi Hendrix
Rush Replay x 3
The Omega Man
Coming Home
Three Women
The Man With The Golden Arm
Five Ashore In Singapore

Jimi Hendrix DVD (deluxe edition)

Friday, December 30th, 2011

JH(DU)

JH(DU)


Jimi Hendrix DVD (deluxe edition) – This DVD has a combination of live cuts and interviews, all filmed before 1973. Neither is really satisfying, because the interview clips don’t form a story (although on their own they are often notable, whether they are from people who knew him before he got famous, or if they are people who knew him when he was famous – people such as Eric Clapton and Pete Townsend), and the live clips go on for too long, as they are usually the fill clip (and thus feel like filler) and are mainly from shows that we’ve all seen before anyway.

The disc starts off well, with a long quote from Pete Townsend, ow he couldn’t believe what he was doing. Then Eric Clapton talks about ho he had missed Hendrix lighting his guitar on fire, “must ahve been fantastic.” Townsend tells an anecdote – Janis Joplin, Brian JOnes, Eric Clapton were all there, Jimi got up on a chair and played an amazing guitar bit, he said “If I’m gonna go on after you, I’m gonna pull out all the stops.” On Dick Cavett show he comes out in a kimono. Little Richard goes crazy. Fayne Pridgeon, one of his first girlfriends, calls him a “cutie-pie with a guitar, the in thing at the time.” Arthur and Albert Allen, twins, “Ghetto fighters”, talk about knowing him at the time, but we don’t know who they are, or why they’re significant, except that Fayne mentioned them once. In music segments, all cameras are focussed on Jimi. Long, incomprehensible interviews. Jimi with no moustache at one point. Long interviews with the scrumptious, high class Linda Keith (I’d read about her in bios of the Rolling Stones – she had been Keith Richards’ girlfriend, then also Brian Jones’ – what a babe). She introduced him to her manager, former Animals bassist Chas Chandler. Interviews with Mick Jagger, he’s suffering from bad bed head as he notes that when Jimi showed up in London “we just adopted him.” Jimi idolised Bob Dylan. When he first started this crazy, he brought a Dylan LP home, played it for Fayne, she said Bob who?” Jeff Beck told Pete Townsend that there’s some guy called Jimi Hendrix who was ripping off his moves. Townsend watched Hendrix, but not in contempt but in awe – like he was way better than Townsend. At that time, he also got a call from Eric Clapton, who’d never spoken with Townsend before; they went to a French movie, and at one point talked about Hendrix, agreeing that they liked him, but they were threatened by him. Jenifer Dean interview. A chat with a very young-looking Lou Reed. “He played 24 hours a day.” Smokin’ a joint in the limo. Clapton saw Jimi as pulled every which way, gullible, preyed-upon, so many hangers-on. Mitch Mitchell: Jimi knew what he was in for, he was not naive. Isle of Wight “Red Rooster” psychedelic blues on a flying V.

I think, in many respects, he changed the sound of rock far more than the Beatles. They brought some variety to rock ‘n’ roll, but Jimi changed the sound of the guitar. He turned it into an instrument, which – all right, people like Buddy Cline, Chuck Berry, T-Bone Walker had done previous to that, but none of them had brought it out and sold it to the public, and sold it to people like me, who believe in it as an instrument. People like Clapton were too ethnic, they kept themselves to a fixed groove, but Jimi unashamedly wanted to reach as many people as possible.

Extra feature “From the Ukulele to the Strat” is pure uncut interviews, including all of the same names from the film, plus a few more. Al Hendrix, Billy Cox, Fayne tells her kitty on the subway anecdote. Jimi idolised Elmore James’ songs “The Sky Is Cryina”, “It Hurts Me Too”, “Cryin’ Heart”. Fayne notes how he changed 180 degrees after London. Buddy Miles tells a story about how, after the Monterey Pop Festival, he and Jimi and Stephen Stills, David Crosby, Bruce Palmer and Neil Young
went to jam together for 36 hours. Linda Keith talks about how she first met Jimi. They played him Dylan, he said that if Dylan can form a band and sing and do it on his own, so could he. But he was not confident about his creativity. He dressed and looked like Dylan, they all did. Clapton notes that the firs time he saw Jimi, he was wearing a suit. Clapton gushes. Pete Townsend: “Eric was much closer to Jimi than I was.” Jimi had the edge on Clapton, but couldn’t figure Townsend out. Eddie Kramer of Electric Lady Studios talks about recording the Experience. Jimi had heard a phaser sound in a dream, they re-created it for him. Kramer describes how he’d mix songs for 10-14 hours a day. He also tells of the genesis of the Electric Lady studios in New York, how they’d wanted to create a studio/nightclub, so that Jimi could record by day, then move over and play by night, but they saw the space and realised it could only be a studio.

The DVD also contains an interview of Eddie Kramer, explaining the multiple tracks (including boot kicks) of “Dolly Dagger”, as well as a clip of “Stone Free”.

Rush Replay x 3

Friday, December 30th, 2011

RRx3

RRx3


Rush Replay x 3 – This set of DVDs (and one CD), released in 2006, contains concert videos released over the years, with the sound remixed, along with one of the concerts’ soundtracks (the other two had been available already as audio versions). They are “Exit Stage Left” (1982) from the Moving Pictures tour, “Grace Under Pressure Tour” (1985) from the Grace Under Pressure tour, and “A Show Of Hands” (1989) from the Hold Your Fire tour; “Exit…” and “A Show…” had both come out as CDs previously, the “Grace Under Pressure Tour” CD is included. The set list for all three shows can be found here.

“Exit Stage Left” starts off with wonky mock-documentary feel with commentaries from the band, it’s hard to understand. Opener is “Limelight”, the solo is great, but Alex lets the sustain carry on too long (actually, for a band that is known for note-perfect reproductions of their studio albums, there are a lot of screw-ups to be noticed on these videos – and that’s actually a good thing… it shows that they’re human after all). Weird computer graphics between songs. Some of the shots are too great – was this filmed on a soundstage, or did they take a few shots with the full cranes and onstage cameramen before the concert? Crowd noise sustained throughout, a bit fake-sounding. “Rush – The Best Band In The Galaxy” is the banner in the audience. “The Trees” blends in with “Xanadu”, with Alex sporting a double-neck Gibson (6-string guitar and 12-string guitar) and Geddy a double-neck Rickenbacker (bass guitar and 6-string electric guitar) and dry ice and Neil’s shimmering chimes. Alex’s foot pedal is e-bow-sounding. At 22:00, Neil does a perfect drumstick toss (there’s another good one at 31:20). The boys are pretty rock here, with Alex Lifeson sorta Brian Jones look. Geddy’s looking cool… except for his white sneakers. Alex has a full head of hair (and no rat tail…).

The film is full of ponderous quotes, usually from Neil:

Well, it seems true that the car has been one of the standard metaphors, and volumes have been written about the sociological and cultural impact of the car and what it represents. But is also has a very fundamentally sensual appeal and it’s a metaphor for sexuality and for freedom.

I think there’s a very strong relationship – it’s maybe generally not recognised – between drums and between words. Just the rhythmic structure and the phrasing and the rhythm of verse especially. It’s strongly rooted in the same syncopation that drums are, and the same patterns of thinking overall work for me for words as much as they do for drum beats.”

At the end of “Xanadu” we can’t really see what Geddy’s doing with his six-string, can only listen and try to figure it out. Cheap road driving graphics. At the end of “Closer To The Heart”, Alex brushes Geddy’s hair from his ear, pretty weird… “By-Tor and the Snow Dog” drums at 50:00 amaze!! At 56:00 there’s the floating pentagram. “Thank you very much, Montreal, GOOD NIGHT!!!” YYZ over end credits.

The CD and the DVD of this concert are pretty different: the DVD lacks “The Spirit of the Radio”, “A Passage To Bangkok”, “Beneath, Between and Behind”, “Jacob’s Ladder”, “Broon’s Band” and “La Villa Strangiata” (all favourites), but it does include “Limelight” and a medley of “By-Tor and the Snow Dog”/”In The End”/”In The Mood”/”2112 Finale” (all five of which are great Rush classics – and “In The Mood” is the final song for all three concerts in this set, by the way…

“Grace Under Pressure Tour” Opens with spooky darkness, the US and R-US-H words looming in from behind camera, then crowd and Three Stooges theme music (three blind mice, etc), then “The Spirit of the Radio”, with a sea of skinny arms rising out of the front section of the crowd in front of the stage, each belonging to a young male air drummer. New wave haircuts on all the guys – Neil with a rat tail, Geddy Lee with a weird, bushy mullet, and Alex with a mock Flock of Seagulls sweep.

Lasers in the Fear Trilogy, thin sound, glowing keyboards. Count Floyd introduces “The Weapon”, recommends the 3-D glasses, Alex pretends he’s ROFL, Neal dons red baseball cap and huge earmuffs. Alex plays weird solo and sound effects. Incorporate crowd into “Witch Hunt” intro – with video. At 20:30, Neil’s drumstick throw and catch earns huge applause. Alex plays bass pedals too. “He’s not concerned with yesterday, he knows constant change is here to stay.” “Closer To The Heart” seems to have plenty of edited-in scenes and funky new jam-out at the end. In “YYZ”, a shot of a hot chick dancing. Yes, you read that correctly – a hot chick… at a Rush concert… dancing. For the second half, Geddy removes his ugly jacket, and we get to see his skinny arms. “Thank you very much, we’ll come and see you again some time. Thank you. BYE-BYE!”

“A Show of Hands”, groovy opening animation, shows kid arriving at a Rush show, recreates arrival of band onstage, then they hit the opening chords of “Big Money”. Geddy one-leg skips around the stage (a sort of upright duck walk). Cheap road animation. Power Windows kid in video. Alex does backup vocals! Geddy playing real bass again – ends with an “Earache My Eye” riff. “Marathon” is a real anthem, great to hear it again after maybe 25 years. There’s some cooooool Hey Good Looking lips animation. “Closer To The Hear”, another track that’s in all three concerts. There’s a funky bass jam. Neil Peart’s tinny drum pads sound like crap. “Red Sector A” keyboards sound horrible. Great lighting, each musician in his own “light island”. “Mission” is a rousing song, weird jazzy mid section with Neil on the electro xylo-pads, great end solo. “YYZ” unlisted after “Territories”, and Geddy steps out from behind the keyboards for once. The crowd digs the xylo-pads during Neil’s solo, though, not too bad… There’s a cool “Escape from Moving Pictures” video that recreates the Moving Pictures cover and does some mischief to it, drawing out a sexy girl (crowd applause), and then “Tom Sawyer” as the “last” song. There’s an encore medley with a “Temples of Syrinx” lead-in that has the crowd HEY-ing, Alex and Geddy sway like Judas Priest, then ham it up totally. “La Villa Strangiata” comes at the end with a wild laser roof. “In The Mood” balloons fall down, they do a jazz boogie, and then the “Earache My Eye” last blast. Groovy!

The band was doing something, uh, pretty weird during “La Villa Strangiata”, not really sure what was going on there. Alex was singing?!?! Check it out…

This is what we see during the start of "La Villa Strangiata" This is what we see during the start of "La Villa Strangiata"

The Absolute Sandman, Volume 1

Thursday, December 29th, 2011

TAS1

TAS1


The Absolute Sandman, Volume 1 – This is probably the biggest, heaviest graphic novel I’ve ever read. Before I started to read The Absolute Sandman Volume 1, which collects the first 20 issues of the series in a gigantic hardcover tome (and there are four more massive volumes like it), I knew nothing about Neil Gaiman’s series, except that it was critically acclaimed, and that it was full of comic characters modelled after rock stars (Robert Smith, David Bowie, Sting, etc). Wow, I’m glad I am finally hip to what Sandman is all about.

It is very gothic, and is about elder gods, so it is very Kirbian, without the manic goofiness, replacing it with dark pretentiousness and careful storytelling, as well as wildly painted, arty pages.

The story begins with the tale of how the Sandman was captured for 70 years by a mad magus – a cohort of Aleister Crowley – who wanted to trap Death, but only got Dream. But the ageless are the only ones who need not fear the passing of time, and with days and years and decades Dream regains his freedom, and the following adventures are about his recovery from a trapped state, which means rebuilding his kingdom, re-establishing his authority, recovering his tools, and restoring a proper dream state for humanity. Dream is joined in some adventures by Death, and briefly also by Desire, but mostly he is on his own, interacting with humans, villains, archetypes, demons and nightmares. After he recovers from his absence, Gaiman struggles perhaps to find stories to involve Dream in, but he does a few clever things. It’s a stupendous story. At the end there is the original treatment Gaiman sent to his editors at DC, as well as some essays, and Gaiman’s notes for the script for Issue 19, which recounts one of the Sandman’s many interactions with William Shakespeare, in this case the enactment of A Midsummer Night’s Dream for an audience of faeries, which is one of the great classic comic books, often cited for its clever incorporation of real-world literature. A full set of directions that Gaiman had sent to his artist is illuminating as it gives us a look into the creative process. Magnificent. The layout of the pages is inventive, playing with jagged edges between panels, full-page stuff, photos incorporated into the artwork, and so many other things. One-off stories are inventive and wonderful. Sometimes familiar characters seep into the stories, like Kane and Abel, as well as the three weird sisters (one hag, one matriarch, one babe – the Hecataea) that we’ve seen from old DC horror tales, and Gaiman is playful with these at times.

The story of the sleepy sickness, brought on when Dream was captured, is interesting, and it works its way through many of the later stories in the book. Dream meets John Constantine (Hellblazer), who helps him recover his bag of sand. Recovering his helmet is more difficult – he needs to travel to Hell, where he needs to bargain with Lucifer (who looks like David Bowie) and the lords of the underworld. It’s a very clever story, and full of yucky, creepy landscapes and horribly souls in torment. Dream meets Etrigan, runs into an old friend of 10,000 years ago, Kai’ckul, who Dream had imprisoned there, and whom he still hasn’t forgiven; then there’s Lucifer, the lord of the flies Beelzebub (and he is a fly), along with Azazel, and Choronzon, one of Beelzebub’s gang. Recovering his third symbol is more difficult – he needs to chase Doctor Destiny, who has altered his ruby, sending him off to a final encounter in dream world. Here we see the first instance of Sandman being indifferent to a killer’s crimes. The death diner with Doctor Dee (or Doctor Destiny) story is a classic, as it truly probes the histories of six people, one by one, and the incident ties in to something that we learn about connections with characters we haven’t met yet. There are freaky interludes, passages to Granny Goodness’ orphanage in Jack Kirby’s tales of the New Gods, an encounter with the Martian Manhunter, a glimps at Lord L’Zoril, and then a long interlude as we get to learn about the characters in the death diner one by one, and the strange truths (or un-truths?) tha come out of them as a night of madness progresses. Doctor Dee is truly insane, and eventually confronts Dream on Dream’s own turf. Not a good idea for this sad little man. “The Sound Of Her Wings” is a tale of Dream’s sister, Death, a cute goth who wears an ankh on a chain around her neck, visiting people in their final minutes. One guy tries to hit on her, she says “see you later”… and she does. The tale has no action or confrontation, just Death trying to cheer up Dream, who doesn’t know where his life is heading now that he’s recovered his liberty and his three prized possessions. “Tales in the Sand” is one of those where Dream takes another shape – a Masai warrior takes his son into the desert and tells him a tale that is only told once in a man’s life, it is about Nada, the queen of her city, who fell in love with Dream.. or maybe it’s Kai’ckul and not Dream. “The Doll’s House” is the start of a long story arc – it introduces us to Desire, who has her plans, and re-introduces us to the family of Unity Kincaid, who was raped while she was in the long sleep and gave birth to a child, who was put up for adoption, who had two children of their own. Their story is long and strange, and after Unity wakes up, she meets her daughter and grand-daughter; the grand-son is with the estranged husband’s family (trouble there). We follow Rose Kincaid, we see her vertical dreams, we see Kane and Abel, we find out that Dream’s lost four of his minions, and these cause trouble by manipulating dreams, or at least that was something that they could do while Dream was away. Dream eventually rounds all of them up, and they all have something to do with the Kincaids. Rose moves into a strange house with strange neighbours Ken and Barbie, and the spider sisters Zelda and Chantal, who only wear wedding gowns, their faces shielded by a bridal veil. There’s the tale of the other Sandman, the fake superhero that Dream’s escaped minions create in order to torture a little boy. THen there’s the Corinthian, who becomes a serial killer, and inspires the dreams of other serial killers (who call themselves “collectors”, perhaps after the film), especially when they come together in Texas for a “cereal convention”, ha ha. “Men of Good Fortune” is an interlue, and here we meet Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe (with a broken leg), and where Dream befriends a man who refuses to die. They catch up every 100 years and become… friends. It’s a great, beautiful, clever journey that is full of history and great moods (and a meeting with Johanna Constantine, perhaps an ancestor of John Constantine? Have to look that up…). Rose becomes the vortex, and the book explores the dreams of the eccentrics who live in their house, and Dream realises that he may need to kill her to save the universe. Ulp! No reason given, but Rose is saved in the end in a way that… sorta makes sense. A strange story about a depraved novelist, who has writers block after penning a best-selling debut The Cabaret of Dr Caligari (ha ha) who buys the kidnapped Calliope from an aging author, very strange. Dream is her ex-boyfriend, they fathered Orpheus together, but she betrayed him. He helps her, a bit. “A Dream of a Thousand Cats” is another strange story about the cats dreaming of the old world, where they had been kings. The second-last story is the re-telling (or imagining) of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream for real Oberon and Titania and their faerie hordes. It’s highly literary, somewhat nonsensical, and exquisitely drawn and very beautiful. The faeries are very beautiful. The final tale is about the death of Element Girl, tormented by her powers and unable to kill herself.

Snakes On A Plane (SOAP)

Wednesday, December 28th, 2011

SOAP

SOAP


Snakes On A Plane – The film is one hour and forty five minutes, of which the first 30 minutes set up the snakes on a plane part (a misfortunate young man witness a mob killing, he becomes an FBI-protected witness who must fly from Hawaii to LA), then we see the boarding, we get to know the passengers, and the fateful flight takes off. They show us the WHOLE seatbelt safety demo. But eventually we get to the reason we’re watching the movie – the snakes that are on the plane (make that Die Hard with snakes). Several sick deaths in the lavatory. By the end of the movie, the usual disaster movie and cop movie stuff has all happened. Very cleverly, the cables and gas masks look like snakes (lots of long thin things in the film). Crap dialogue like “I owe you a dinner to show you my appreciation.” Now we’re just waiting for “More Snakes On Another Plane”.

There are lots of great extra features, like 12 minutes of deleted and extended scenes that show a lurid extended fat lady scene. The Snake Wrangler Documentary explains that there were 450 non-venomous snakes on the plane, and that they were selected due to their similarity to venomous snakes. Another documentary showed how the CG was rendered, but this is sort of the boring, crappy part of the documentary. Next.

The extras run nearly as long as the film itself.

The Good, The Bad, The Weird

Wednesday, December 28th, 2011

TGTBTW

TGTBTW


The Good, the Bad, the Weird – Lots of stylish killings, disposable playground sets (jump, swing, demolish), cool posing, great hair, earrings, sets, stunts. Very little CG, those are all real explosions and horses racing through a true Chinese desert. Anachronistic dialogue (in French, no less): “Je t’aime, moi non plus.” Cool superflous scene when The Bad hears a centipede moving in his room at night and pins it to the wall with a throwing knife, then shoots the hilt of the knife to drive it deeper into the wood. Yes, he’s very muscular, with a ridiculously-sculpted stomach. Diving helmets save lives in desert town shootouts (but what are they doing so far from the ocean anyway?). Blood splatter on camera lens (ewww!). “I’ll prove who’s best. Don’t die till ten, and be sure to watch.” Rescued kids, then where did they go? Another disposable town, another shootout, like Waterworld. Great real stunts. Flamenco version of “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood.” Great shoots – sandstorm duster just goin’ by. Cool “Making of” reel and interviews. Apparently, 200 guns were used in the film, the most for a Korean film. Lots of extras. Logistical nightmare.

Catch 22

Wednesday, December 28th, 2011

C22

C22


Catch 22 – The film of an unfilmable novel, full of great cameos from a dozen well-known names like Alan Arkin (as main character John Yossarian), Bob Newhart, Jon Voight, Buck Henry, Art Garfunkel, Martin Sheen and many more. Great airplane shots, with dozens and dozens of bombers taking off. First five minutes show silent credits, dawn in the mountains, airplanes, eventually show humans, and then the movie picks up. Very artsy. Kafka-esque plot about paranoia and insanity. Great shot of 20 bombers taking off. Casual plane crash. Uses “Thus Sprach Zarathustra” two years after Kubrick did in 2001: A Space Odyssey. “You’re a very weird person, Yossarian” sums up the film. Plane prop blasts guy on platform. Airfield destruction.

The Miles Davis Story

Wednesday, December 28th, 2011

TMDS

TMDS


The Miles Davis Story – I’m embarrassed to say that I know nearly nothing about Miles Davis, one of the most important musicians of our era, it is said, and a major cultural icon as well. So when I saw this DVD in the public library, I jumped at a chance to watch it and learn.

The story wanders through Miles Davis’ life, interviewing him, his fellow musicians, biographers, ex-wives and girlfriends. It does a great story of bringing to life the musical magus as he was known and loved. We learn about his upbringing in Saint Louis, how he fathered three children while still in his teens, his musical upbringing, the throat operation that left him with a raspy voice and his first big breaks. Then there is the early first trip to Europe, where he got an enthusiastic reception and was treated as an equal. He got a scarf from a French girlfriend that he always wore. There’s the anecdote about how, when he was already very famous, how he was three hours later for a concert in Venice. Facing an angry crowd that has been kept waiting a very long time, he lifted up his trumpet to play, and within 25 seconds you could hear a pin drop in the audience. Bizarre, freaky musical discipline with an eagle eye towards innovation. “Keith, you know why I don’t play ballads any more? Because I like playing ballads so much.”

Miles Davis was a good cook too, cooked up fish for Bill Evans.

Cream farewell concert, Cream reunion concert

Wednesday, December 28th, 2011

Well, I recently found the DVD of the Cream farewell concert of November 26th, 1968 at the public library; I had already bought the DVD of the Cream reunion concert of May 2nd, 3rd, 5th and 6th 2005 a few years earlier, so I took this opportunity to watch them back to back and see what I could learn from the experience.

CFD

CFD


Cream farewell concert – According to announcer Patrick Allen, “They may not be the greatest musicians or the greatest poets of their age, but together with the Beatles, they are getting through to the greatest number. Their motto is simple: forget the message, forget the lyrics, and just play.” While the concert has been described as a band far from its peak, playing just to get through the set and get it over with, this show is pretty okay. However, the concert is broken up by interview bits and strangely rotund announcing and silly descriptionizing from the BBC. But it’s not just the concert that you get here, there are also fantastic interviews with Ginger Baker and Eric Claption where they describe their art (Jack Bruce’s piece is more conceptual and idealistic).

The “Sunshine of your Love” solo seems a bit un-coordinated, audience rushes stage briefly, feathers fly. Clapton plays his Gibson ES-335 and a Firebird, but not the famous Fool Gibson SG. The narrator gets carried away, explaining that rock music is always under attack, its reputation sullied by moneymakers, pretentious lyrics, shoddy musicianship, incompetent pop artists, and critics who sneer at long-haired youth; some of the players have severe classical framing, but escape to pop, like Jack Bruce, who was trained as a cellist, but who needed two years to un-learn what had been drilled into his head. Bruce explains that Bach’s basslines can teach you everything you need to know about conventional harmony. Songs are unimportant, jumping off points for improvisation. “Recent scientific experiments at Berkeley have demonstrated that the loudness of rock music can actually damage the ears. The Cream have 12 enormous loud speakers, each one of them loud enough to fill the Albert Hall with sound.” Dynamics of soudn in its infrancy, affects audience in a physical way. “The electronic guitar is also dismissed as little more than a jangling noise machine, incapable of subtlty or delicacy. Eric Clapton has build his reputation as a blues player on just these qualities.” Clapton demonstrates controls using his Fool SG in an earlier interview than the final concert, he’s shown with long hair, mustache, beads, a cigarette burning at the guitar head. Explains the “woman tone”, with the bass tone off, on the bass pickup, volume all the way up (of course). Finger vibrato. Stock runs. Can release emotions and play things out, realise aggression on the guitar. Amazing Clapton tutorial is worth the price of admission. Normally he’s only seen from the back. Ginger Baker hard to understand. Drum clinic with Ginger Baker before “Toad”. Interesting to see how many pieces he has in his kit. He drove bolts through some of his cymbals, perhaps for extra zing.

In the concert bits, there’s trancy shimmer in “White Room” solo, so we don’t get to see what Clapton’s doing, there are very poor shots of him throughout. Cool jam in “Politician”. The band doesn’t play “Strange Brew” or “Badge” in this show. The band plays nine songs: Sunshine Of Your Love”, “White Room”, “Politician”, “Crossroads”, “Steppin’ Out”, “Sitting On Top Of The World”, “Spoonful”, “Toad” and “I’m So Glad” (that last song was the first song played at the reunion show 37 years later. Trippy effects in the video, but minimal actual stage lighting. “Lighting may be the art of tomorrow.” The whole show is 80 minutes long, not 127 as stated on the case.

CRAH

CRAH


Cream reunion concert – Here’s a video of the May 2005 London reunion show at the Royal Albert Hall (nothing from the October 2005 New York show, here or anywhere else). The band is looking… old. The sound is… not loud. The guys play and play and play, its just the music, pure, stripped-down music, but there’s nothing here that is mind-blowing – it’s mainly for fans. The packaging is a bit deceptive – I bought it thinking that it was something from the band’s original run in the 1960s, not noticing the 2005 hidden in the psychedelics on the cover art. There is no description on the back, just a song list. So, the first time I watched it, I didn’t get half way through before I gave up, wrote an angry review that I posted on Amazon (that got quite a bit of negative feedback) and left it at that. When I was in the library the other day and came across a DVD of the original farewell concert, I thought it was time to revisit this and watch the two shows back to back.

The concert starts off with a walk backstage. The band is not wearing hippy clothes or costumes, just simple shirts and jeans. Seated audience, trippy background colours. Quiet mix. Weird shot of Ginger’s stockinged feet at the drum kit (see pics below). Hot middle-aged women in the front row (ditto). Two red roses at Jack’s feet. Eric buffoonishly announces “we’ll play everything – we might talk to you from time to time.” They do neither. Topless girl on somebody’s shoulders in audience replicating Woodstock (probably just briefly before she was thrown out). Long, dramatic pause in the middle of “Badge” – which they’d never performed live before, since it was on their Goodbye album that came out after the final show. They’d also never done “Pressed Rat And Warthog”. Jack Bruce takes a load off and leans against a stool. “Sweet Wine’s” Ba-ba… Ba-ba-ba-ba-… ba-ba-ba-BA-ba-ba-baaaaaa” is a bit silly for sixty-something musicians to be playing. Somehow, the band dynamic is one thing, but the audience dynamic is another, and we get lots of shots of the crowd (or at least the people in the front row – see photos below). In “Sunshine Of Your Love” we see two Asian couples in the audience, one a short haired (Hong Kong) yuppie couple, and another a long-haired hippy (Japanese?) couple, the man with a mustachio. Another fan holds up his copy of the Disraeli Gears LP. At the end of the show, the audience is standing, big long very wanky drum solo. Mainly guys in the audience. Some pre-encore backstage shots. Close-ups on six hands of the three musicians playing in harmony.

The interviews are revealing, silly and funny. “We don’t do the leaping about crap. It’s the music, not anybody gyrating onstage.” Ginger explained that Cream was not a rock band, two of them are jazz men and Eric is a blues man, and blues is the same as jazz. “We have the gift of time, which not many have.” Eric noted that they often forgot their cues, they were young and took risks and were experimental, they didn’t know what they were doing, but they somehow found their way spontaneously at The Albert Hall. Gingers also adds that “The others get nerves, always have been. I never do. The more people the better, I like it. People help you play. They really do.”

Here are some weird, random pics taken from the DVD:

Ginger Baker's stockinged feet...

Ginger Baker's stockinged feet...

Pretty, middle-aged fans in front row eyeing Jack Bruce

Pretty, middle-aged fans in front row eyeing Jack Bruce, Part 1

Pretty, middle-aged fan in front row eyeing Jack Bruce

Pretty, middle-aged fan in front row eyeing Jack Bruce, Part 2

Pretty, middle-aged fans in front row eyeing Jack Bruce

Pretty, middle-aged fans in front row eyeing Jack Bruce, Part 3

Ginger Baker's lyrics sheet for "Pressed Rat and Warthog", set list.

Ginger Baker's lyrics sheet for "Pressed Rat and Warthog", set list.

Pretty, middle-aged fan in front row eyeing Jack Bruce

Pretty, middle-aged fan in front row eyeing Jack Bruce, Part 4

Cute Asian (Japanese?) hippy couple awed to be in front row of Cream reunion concert

Cute Asian (Japanese?) hippy couple awed to be in front row of Cream reunion concert

Devoted fan flashes Eric Clapton his LP copy of Disareli Gears

Devoted fan flashes Eric Clapton his LP copy of Disareli Gears

Here’s the band playing “Sunshine of your Love”, with both Bruce and Clapton playing Gibson SGs.