Wednesday, Jul 9, 2008
Aug 23, 1999 | August 23, 1999
1. Atmosphere "The Abusing of the Rib," on "Stuck on AM -- Live Performances on 770 Radio K" (No Alternative/www.radiok.org)
Drifting out of a studio at the University of Minnesota is a modest, unsettling, finally disturbing question: "What do you love?" The questioner is the earnest, smooth-voiced Slug, of the Minneapolis hip-hop collective Rhyme Sayers; off to the side is the gravelly, much older-sounding voice of Eyedea, a high school student. A piano runs a repeating, regretful line in the background, regretting that all questions were settled before the questioner arrived, but he doesn't buy it. Life has put him on the spot; he means to put you there, too. Still, he makes a beautiful reverie, and you can fall into it and forget yourself, until the very end. Somehow gathering up all the menace of Bo Diddley's "Who do you love" (God help you if it isn't him) and none of the flash, Slug's "What do you love?" becomes the hardest question he can ask. Now so much is at stake you can imagine that you or anyone might mumble, stammer, and then admit it: "Nothing."
2. "lunapark 0, 10" (Sub Rosa/www.subrosa.net)
Beginning with a ghostly, unbearably romantic minute from Apollinaire in 1912, then thunderbolts from Mayakovski in 1914 and 1920, avant-garde poets read the century, which seems to have finished prematurely; by about 1960 they're mostly talking about themselves.
3. Ad for "Notting Hill" (your daily newspaper)
Snuggled next to Julia Roberts', Hugh Grant's face takes you right back to the silent era, when leading men like Wallace Reid (king of the racing picture -- "The Roaring Road," "Double Speed" -- before he became addicted to morphine) burst from their posters in unthreateningly fruity grins, mugs dripping with lipstick, rouge and the eyeliner that with Grant makes his eyes look like they were cut out of a magazine and pasted on. That's right, he's not human. He's not supposed to be.
4. Dusty Springfield "I Only Want to Be with You" (HBO, 9:30 p.m Sundays)
I have no idea why Springfield's 35-year-old fluffy first hit is so thrilling as the kickoff to "Arli$$," spreading warmth and delight over the montage of Robert Wuhl's sports agent suffering Bill Bradley's no-look hoop, Jesse Ventura's choke hold, Katerina Witt's kiss. Maybe it was just a perfect record; maybe the release is all in the editing.
5/6. Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band "Kandy Korn" on "Grow Fins --rarities [1965-1982]" (Revenant) and "The Mirror Man Sessions" (Buddah)
An L.A. band's guitar piece, live from 1968, from the studio the year before, in both cases arriving from a future still ahead of us, a future momentarily circling back to look for a spot in Mississippi in 1930, but missing.
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