Thursday, May 15, 2008
May 28, 2002 | 1) Laurie Anderson, "Live at Town Hall New York City September 19-20, 2001" (Nonesuch)
An exquisite piece of work in a situation that had to be close to impossible to navigate: Straight off, Anderson offers a brief, inhumanly effete little homily on the eight-day-old ruins of New York and the blood fear of what comes next. It's unbearably precious -- until, somewhere into the first or second of these CDs, you realize Anderson's whole performance is an exercise in breath control, and that introduction comes back as a stifled scream, a swallowed curse, whatever you think you might have said in the same circumstance, which Anderson pointedly didn't say in your place.
Song after song becomes perhaps more of a song than it ever was before -- "Let X=X," "Strange Angels," "Coolsville." But how Anderson managed to get through "O Superman" without losing the strict, science-fiction beat is beyond me. Dating from 1979, the composition, it's now clear, is Anderson's "Gimme Shelter," her "Anarchy in the U.K.," her Book of Amos, her "Sugar, Sugar"; it's the end of the world, and it's catchy. It was always terrifying; it was always cute. But now, instead of predicting the future, the song is looking back at a future that has already taken place. Who, what wrote such lines as "Here come the planes/ They're American planes/ Made in America/ Smoking, or Non-Smoking?" -- and how did Anderson sing those lines after it had been revealed that "Smoking" was the answer the song had always contained? These nights were a great patriotic speech, with, scattered through the audience, the dead: Allen Ginsberg, Langston Hughes, Emily Dickinson, Abraham Lincoln.
2) New York's a Lonely Town When You're the Only Surfer Boy Around, Vermont Dep't.
The Magic Rat (aka Steve Weinstein) writes from Norwich: "This is the kind of thing we have for entertainment up here, if we're LUCKY:
"'GANDY DANCER CAFE Presents: HUBCATS, Saturday, May 25 @ 9.00, $5 cover, 39 Main Street, Historic Downtown White River Junction, VT
"'The HUBCATS are an acoustic duo from the Burlington, VT area. The duo is comprised of Stewart Foster and Fred Bauer. A mix of acoustic guitar, mandolin, bass, vocal harmonies and a diverse song list that tends to stray from the mainstream gives this duo a unique appeal. Stewart's . . . early influences have been James Taylor, Jim Croce, Jonathan Edwards and others. While those influences are still noticeable in his style, influences that have played a bigger role in more recent years are such artists as Lyle Lovett and David Wilcox. Brauer has been reviewed by some as "a combination of John Paul Jones & Peter Townsend . . . The HUBCATS has just released a CD titled "FIRST SNOW.'
"Feel my pain."
3) Gossip, "Arkansas Heat" (Kill Rock Stars EP)
Not as sharp a title as "That's Not What I Heard," the trio's debut, but absolutely accurate. You can hear the whiplash of outsiders' hate as readily as you can imagine you're listening to a punk Rolling Stones -- which is to say, Stones rehearsals, and so roughly that 20-something singer Beth Ditto can stick "1965" in the title song as if nothing that's happened since has fooled her for a minute.
4) Isabelle Huppert in "The Piano Teacher," directed by Michael Haneke (Kino International)
Marketing consultants vetoed the original title: "Let It Bleed." As well as promoting it as a version of "Pandora's Box." My God, where does Huppert go after the last shot?
5) "About a Boy," directed by Paul Weitz and Chris Weitz (Universal)
There's a dull soundtrack of new songs by Badly Drawn Boy; the musical high point of this fine picture comes near the end, when the hopelessly nowhere 12-year-old stands alone for a school "Kidz Rock" talent show and attempts to croak "Killing Me Softly With His Song," his mother's favorite. He's dying a thousand deaths -- until his friend and protector Hugh Grant strolls onstage strumming an electric guitar. Missing his floppy hair, looking at once slightly embarrassed and as if he's realizing a lifelong dream, Grant gets just enough melody under the tune to make the boy's effort seem passable, if only barely, and that's what makes the scene -- the refusal of the triumphant finish coded into the moment by countless movie moments like it. It's a combination of Michael J. Fox's pseudo-invention of Chuck Berry's duckwalk in "Back to the Future" and Jennifer Jason Leigh's excruciating but undeniable nine-minute performance of Van Morrison's "Take Me Back" in "Georgia" -- brought way, way down to earth.
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