And the time is right for dancing/fighting/racing in the streets.

Posting will probably be a bit irregular for the next couple of weeks, due to my summer vacation and general August torpor. And when I’m at Burning Man next week, any comments requiring approval will get queued up until I return. We’ll return to normal (or what passes for it around here) soon after Labor Day.

posted 19 August 2008 in Self-reflexive. no comments yet

Legendary record producer Jerry Wexler died on Friday. His contributions to rhythm and blues were immense–starting with the fact that he coined the term–but he ranks high in my pantheon of interview subjects for a totally different reason. Out of the hundreds of people I’ve spoken with in the line of work, he’s the only one to conclude the interview by telling me a dirty joke.

Oh, you want to hear the joke? It went like this:

After forty years on the job, a mailman’s retiring–he’s working his route for the last time ever. At one house, he’s greeted at the door by a beautiful woman who takes him upstairs and screws his brains out. Then she takes him downstairs and makes him a dynamite breakfast. Then she hands him a five-dollar bill. “Thank you for everything, but what’s the money for?” he asks her. “Well, last night, I told my husband you were retiring and we should do something special for you,” she says. “He said, ‘Fuck him. Give him five bucks.’ The breakfast was my idea.”

posted 18 August 2008 in News, Tasty Bits. no comments yet

I got a cool email from Debbie Falb:

This afternoon I was reading a stack of old family correspondence and stories and found something written by my great aunt called “Penny Walk.”

Turns out that in the early ’20s on Staten Island my great grandfather would get all his kids and a lot of the neighborhood kids out of the house every Sunday morning by taking them on a 3-hour “penny walk” around the neighborhood. Same idea: at (almost) every corner they’d flip a coin — although at the time it sounds like there was lots of open space on Staten Island, as she writes of going through “fields, meadows, woodlands, across brooks, and through the old iron mines.”

She notes that no matter how many adventures they had on the way, they always arrived home right at noon for Sunday supper.

She ends the story (written not too long before she died):

“. . . it occurred to me that I conduct my life just as Father led the Penny Walks. My path, tao, halacha is not random. It has been mostly a win-win choice at the crossroads or forks. I have had many options. So far, in spite of obstacles, real or imagined, I’ve come home in time for lunch from adventurous Penny Walks.”

The name of Debbie’s great aunt, by the way, was Marion Friedman (nee Siegel). The story was written in 1996, when she would have been almost 80.

So this week’s flipwalk (#33) is dedicated to Marion and her dad, pioneers in New York City flipwalking.

The teaser image:

I’ve also updated flipwalk #29 with the correct information (and the story of the walk).

posted 15 August 2008 in Photos. no comments yet

We return to a chortling Kevin Seal. Once again, he screams and jumps over the VJ desk to communicate his extreme state of overstimulation in regards to the top 100 of 1988. He points out that the “Circle in the Sand” video, being shot on the beach, marks a return to the setting of Belinda Carlisle’s first solo hit, “Mad About You.”

In an interview clip, Carlisle explains that it wasn’t a comfortable shoot: “We filmed it in northern California, near Half Moon Bay, and it was freezing cold. I’ve never been so cold in my life. And it was windy, and I was in a chiffon dress. And it was probably one of my more uncomfortable experiences–but it turned out good. I think it’s one of my favorite videos.”

Our opening shot: in the background, waves crash on the beach. In the foreground, there are a couple of clotheslines. Clothespins hold up two small video screens, which wobble in the wind. One shows footage of waves crashing on the beach, while the other shows Carlisle, also on the beach, crouching down by a chair.

That’s basically the concept for the video: clearly there was some new bit of technology (an early green-screen thing, maybe?) that let the director insert other bits of film into the image and make it look like a towel on a clothesline, not a box that should be subtitled “Belinda Carlisle reporting live from Half Moon Bay.” And dammit, he made the most of it. We cut back and forth to different angles on the beach. Sometimes Carlisle is visible in the picture-in-picture, sometimes we just get extra shots of waves crashing on the sand. There’s a screen propped up in the surf, like the world’s least practical drive-in movie. Carlisle looks mature and glam with long auburn hair, more like a Douglas Sirk heroine than a Go-Go.

There’s a full-screen shot of Carlisle leaning against an orange-and-white sign, looking cold. She’s singing with her eyes closed–too much wind? Cut to earlier in the day: she’s lying on the beach in her chiffon dress, with a photo album open in front of her. Closeup: Carlisle swaying through the frame with a big hank of rope. She gives the rope a loving sidelong glance. Then she looks straight into the camera, trying to seduce us, but we know that she’s already given her heart to that piece of rope.

We see various full-screen shots of Carlisle, and then see the same shots hanging on the clothesline, suggesting that today is just material for tomorrow’s snapshots. Carlisle wraps her arms around herself and keeps shifting her weight from one leg to the other, suggesting that she’s so cold she’s worried her nipples might snap off.

“Circle in the Sand” has junior-high-school love-poem lyrics (“you complete the heart of me”) and a sing-song melody. Apparently, nobody involved in making Heaven on Earth thought they’d end up releasing a third single from the album. (And boy, were they out of material after this–the fourth single was a cover of Cream’s “I Feel Free.”) Thomas Dolby apparently played on this track, an anonymous presence except for the solo break, where he hits the “harpsichord” setting on his synth and does a couple of oddball runs up and down the keyboard.

My pal Ted was a camp counselor in the summer of 1988. He polled his little troop of third-graders on what the greatest song of all time was: “Circle in the Sand” was the winner.

“Circle in the Sand” hit #7 on the singles charts. You can watch it here.

posted 14 August 2008 in 1988. 1 comment

It turns out my longer article about Trent Reznor is also up on the Rolling Stone website now. During the interview, Reznor briefly had to excuse himself with a bloody nose. “Are you sure you’re clean?” I teased him. He laughed. “That’s what I think of too: people are going to think I was doing blow.”

During the dress rehearsal, Reznor directed a steady stream of (gently mocking rather than abusive) sarcasm towards the technicians, most of which I didn’t have room to include. This was my favorite, said as he called a brief break: “Let’s take ten minutes and figure out what to do. Ron, that will give you time to think of an excuse on why the lights came on a bar late in ‘Wish.'”

posted 13 August 2008 in Articles, Outside. no comments yet

The commercial break kicks off with another airing of the “Big Bang ’89” promo, hyping the big show live later on MTV that night. Sandra Bernhard looks skinny and sexy and mean (in marked contrast to her subdued, puffy appearance on Project Runway recently–is she on some variety of steroid medications, or was it a facelift that hadn’t settled in?)

Another ad for The Conductor batteries. A black guy in a tuxedo gets into a Checker cab, hoisting a case that holds either a cello or a standup bass. It’s raining. “Broadway. And 107th,” he tells the cabbie. “Hey, you ever just get dizzy?” the cabbie asks him, which is an odd conversation-starter, whether you’re in a cab or a commercial. (Sign of the times: the cab includes a sign reading “Driver not required to change bills over $10.”) Then there’s a sonic assault: the cabbie’s chatter, a static-heavy radio, squeaky windshield wipers, the cabbie singing opera badly, honking horns. “If you have an ear for sound, then you have the ears for The Conductor,” says the voiceover. The musician puts on his Walkman and grooves out to some bad light jazz.

Once again, we get the magnificently weird Coca-Cola commercial featuring Earth Wind and Fire and a bunch of silver-garbed robot aliens. I saw a bit of EWF live footage last week–they had this great stage gimmick where a member was suspended perpendicular to the mike stand. Why hasn’t anybody ripped that off in the decades since? In this ad, by the way, they don’t set up a kit for the drummer, so he’s consigned to doing some high kicks while holding his drumsticks.

And then, once more, the minute-long spot for The January Man. That’s the fourth airing so far. This time, I tried to get through it just by grooving on the Marvin Hamlisch score: it’s a propulsive horn-driven groove, suggesting that this is actually an exciting piece of cinema. So Hamlisch is lying to us, but who can blame him?

Budweiser brings us the story of a road manager for an R&B arena act. He shakes hands with a teamster, saying “What’s up, Big John?” He’s got a clipboard but still looks groovy with a leather jacket and an aqua shirt. We see drums and a synth being unpacked. All the flight cases, usually seen in basic black, are the exact shade of the red Budweiser logo. The road manager irons out some important details on the phone–on a pay phone, that is. That alone seriously dates this commercial. An attractive woman is working behind the mixing board as we see quick cuts of a piano and a spotlight. “Showtime, Dave,” says the road manager, knocking on a door in the bowels of the arena. A bearded guy in a pink tuxedo hits the stage as the voiceover says, “For the hustle.” Then after the product shot, we see the star, the road manager, and the soundboard woman toasting each other over cans of Bud. (I don’t think “Dave” is an actual singer, although he has a vaguely familiar look to him. Please share any theories as to his identity in the commments.)

Another MTV promo, from a series called “Animals” that I really liked back then. It had cutting-edge computer animation (not as good as Pixar, which came out with “Tin Toy” in 1988, but not too far behind). The camera pans up a large staircase with a blue silo on top. Inside the silo, the camera moves around at the level of a tabletop, looking up at a coffee cup (and way up at a high ladder with a circus platform on top). We climb up a spoon and into the coffee cup, and jump into the cup to a watery, overcaffeinated death. There’s laughter on the soundtrack and a graphic reading “THAT WAS AN ANT’S LIFE.” (There were about half-a-dozen spots or so in the series, I believe, all about the demise of various animals in that silo.) For once, there are creator credits at the end. This was the work of three companies: Program 33, Mac Guff Ligne, and Canal Plus. They’re all French, sneaking their nihilistic little European cartoons into the minds of American youth. Encore!

I found the “Ant’s Life” video on YouTube here (apparently from its airing on an Australian show called Eat Carpet.) More examples of the “Animals” series can be found here.

posted 12 August 2008 in 1988. no comments yet

The new issue of Rolling Stone has two articles by me; one of them, a profile of guitarist/producer Ry Cooder, is available online. It turned out Cooder and I had a friend in common: the most excellent Mr. Jalopy. Two footnotes on the piece: the turkey sandwich was, indeed, excellent. And the last paragraph might be the most Guitar Player thing I’ve ever put in an article.

posted 11 August 2008 in Articles, Outside. 1 comment

With this flipwalk, I’m two-thirds of the way to completion of this project. (There’s other pleasing aspects to the number, including it being the fifth power of two–or given my binary decision-making process, the number of possible paths for about three minutes or so of walking.)

That’s a teaser image, as usual: click here for flipwalk #32.

posted 8 August 2008 in Photos. no comments yet

Kevin Seal explains that they’re shoehorning in another video that didn’t make the cutoff date, one that will in all likelihood appear in the 1989 countdown. (Basically, this means that MTV blocked out time based on ten videos an hour, but some hours (two out of the first two), they have time to play eleven.)

We open with a closeup on Bono’s boot, tapping out a rhythm. Wow, that’s a substantial heel. Sure does look like he’s boosting his height. Fade to an over-the-shoulder shot of the Edge: we see his left hand on his guitar and his shadow, which lets us know he’s wearing a hat. A klieg light dramatically turns.

You may think of 1988 as the annus maximus for U2’s dour black-and-white phase–but I prefer to consider it the time when they really liked to wear hats. U2 have donated a lot of their old costumes (sorry, “stage outfits”) to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame–seeing them there this week reminded me that although I remembered the Zoo-TV era as a useful corrective to the “authenticity” they were peddling for a while, they made just as many missteps on the ironic side of the spectrum. Remember Bono as Macphisto? Remember the PopMart jumpsuits with lemons embroidered on them?

We now fade back and forth between black-and-white scenes of U2 playing the song in an empty theater and (mostly) color scenes of New York City. The empty theater scenes emphasize stark spotlights and Bono’s wide-brimmed black hat, which gives him a rabbinical mien. The New York City montage: heading across the Brooklyn Bridge with windshield wipers going (just before the “cold and wet December day” lyric–there’s some very literal-minded editing in this video), stock footage of the Statue of Liberty, a pan down the sign of the Apollo Theater, a vintage clip of Billie Holiday nodding her head, a shot of a skyscraper at night with selected windows lit up to spell “U2,” stock footage of the Empire State Building, a b-and-w shot of an NYC cop, and a shot of the Loews Astor Plaza theater with a big sign for the Rattle and Hum documentary. Then there is footage of Bono arriving at that theater (presumably for the movie’s premiere), waving to the crowd. There is a gloriously superfluous subtitle, in case you just got whacked by a crowbar and have no short-term memory, identifying the location as “New York.”

The Edge walks into the same premiere, sporting a white hat and toting an old-fashioned movie camera on his right shoulder. Larry Mullen looks dignified in a white T-shirt and a black jacket. Maybe Adam Clayton skipped the premiere?

Cut to Sun Studios, where U2 are cutting this song. (I assume this is the footage that appears in Rattle and Hum, but you can’t make me watch the movie to find out.) Larry Mullen is drumming in a small white room in front of a big picture of Elvis. Then as we cut to Bono in the empty theater, we get a superimposed image of a black girl in a peach jacket, running forward and looking happy. It could be an outtake from a chewing-gum commercial.

There’s a brief clip of Adam Clayton getting out of a Checker cab: apparently he made it to the movie after all. More footage of the outside of the Apollo while Bono sings about “Birdland on 53”–couldn’t the U2 research department dig up any images of Birdland? They make up for it with youthful pictures of John Coltrane and Miles Davis, spliced in as Bono name-checks them.

It’s not at all clear what the timeframe of this song is supposed to be, by the way. Some lyrics suggest that it’s written from the point of view of somebody in the mid-’60s reveling in New York City jazz, while Holiday and Coltrane were still alive. But the reference in the opening verse to WBLS would place the song somewhere after 1974, when the radio station started using those call letters. So maybe it’s about Bono coming to New York City and improbably hearing Billie Holiday on the urban-contemporary WBLS? Or just maybe, could it be that the lyrics are just a semi-coherent mishmash? (In fairness, I should say that I have a soft spot for this song. That’s mostly because of how it sounds–I think U2 should use a horn section more often. And while the lyrics do a crap job of saying anything in particular about Billie Holiday, they do a pretty good job of capturing how the crackling energy and artistic history of New York City can feel to a newcomer. Also, I like the “eyes swollen like a bee sting” line.)

More cuts between the empty theater, Sun Studios, and archival footage of Holiday. Then a “Los Angeles” subtitle over footage of another Rattle and Hum premiere (it looks like it was at Mann’s Chinese). Bono marches out into the street in a spotlight, standing on the double yellow lines of Hollywood Boulevard. The band did some busking at this premiere: we see a clip of the Edge with an acoustic guitar and Mullen with a tambourine. Lots of flash bulbs, and then the chewing-gum girl returns, as happy as ever.

Clayton’s cigarette smoke looks really cool in black-and-white, by the way. More empty theater shots, more Sun Studios, more archival footage of miscellaneous jazz musicians (plus still photos of Aretha Franklin and James Brown, neither of whom I particularly associate with New York). As we head for the fade, the video includes some color clips of 1988 Harlem residents, to demonstrate that Bono’s love for black people extends to the unfamous.

“Angel of Harlem” hit #14 in early 1989. You can watch the video here.

posted 7 August 2008 in 1988. 2 comments

Possibly the most clichéd place possible to do a celebrity interview is at the Chateau Marmont hotel. I’ve done quite a few there, many of them with people who are Los Angeles residents and use the place as the equivalent of a conference room. Lily Allen, as it happened, was actually staying there. Before we spoke (a few weeks back) she sent down a laptop with a playlist of some songs she was working on for me to listen to; it was tagged “journo.” She hadn’t done an interview in over a year, and was visibly weirded out by the process, but was good company regardless: modest about her achievements but saucy in her affect. The result was a short “in the studio” article, now available online.

posted 6 August 2008 in Articles, Outside. no comments yet