heep see (special silverdocs edition)

The September Issue
directed by R.J. Cutler

Made by the same folks that did The War Room, a shot of the interior of Vogue's offices as it gears up for their largest issue ever (a/k/a the September issue) feels more war-like than anything in the movie about James Carville. One person esteems Vogue to be more like a church, with main subject Anna Wintour the pope, "the most important woman in the United States." But strangely enough, the film's heart does not reside within this expressionless, sunglass-hidden cultural icon, but rather in her foil, Vogue's creative director Grace Coddington.

"You don't have to look perfect," Coddington assures the cameraman as she puts his beer belly body into a fashion spread at the end of the film, "It's enough that the models are perfect." She at one time was such perfection herself, modeling with the likes of Twiggy and making the swinging '60s London scene, before a car windshield put her on the other side of the camera.

Now fraught, aged, unglamorous, stressed-out, a powerful foil to that Prada-wearing devil, "a romantic left behind" as Grace puts it herself, Coddington might be the first such female figure on the big screen to be all of the above. And as the film makes evident, she's a total artist and genius as well.

No Impact Man
directed by Laura Gabbert and Justin Schein

A Gawker comment that appears in this film about Collin Beavan and his year-long experiment to leave absolutely "no impact" on the environment by not generating trash, riding in a car/ train/ elevator, and --six-months in-- not using electricity labels this man "a bourgeois fuck." And I can't say I disagree with that sentiment, as Beavan is one of the least-appealing characters of recent memory. Even though the film does inspire one to shop exclusively at farmers' markets with ones own canvas bags, staring at the smug-mug of this Fifth Avenue Co-op owner also makes one want to drive out to Wal-Mart in an SUV, throwing out Starbucks cups all along the way.

Act of God
dir. Jennifer Baichwal

Missed about half of this film, so I found myself adrift in impressionistic imagery of lightning storms. The film is about people randomly struck by lightning, and how they interpret it: as either the epitome of a random act or else its polar opposite, a determined act. Baichwal really plays with structure here, but to the point where it loses its grip on reality. There's also this immense leap into a digression about how the creative act itself is like a bolt from the blue. perhaps it doesn't quite fit, but the film ends in this uncanny duet between Paul Auster, reading a short story about a boy he saw struck dead by lightning when he was a child, and an incandescent guitar improvisation by Fred Frith.


Still Bill
directed by Damani Baker

From the outside, it seems almost impossible to fuck up a documentary about Bill Withers, especially when it opens with a pulse-raising montage of the man grooving through a series of live performances on Soul Train and other sound stages. And as a subject that probably doesn't quite get why he's getting the feature film treatment himself, he continually downplays his work with a knowing self-deprecation and wit.

Yet the film's pacing and editing runs contrary to the man's own powers. Emotionally-attuned but never maudlin, crafted but never rambling, direct and never aimless, Bill oeuvre has little in common with his documentary. He's burned out on the biz twenty minutes into the film. Chronology is abandoned midway through, amid a montage of live performances from the Bill Withers' songbook at Prospect Park, the concert strangely mute as old footage of him gets super-imposed. By film's end, we're suddenly back here.

It's fine enough to plunk the man into a backyard BBQ chat with Cornel West and Tavis Smiley, but it never quite moves beyond the novelty of its participants. We see Bill get teary-eyed over any number of things, from talking to a class of stutterers to watching his own daughter sing a song in his studio, but that sacrifice of cohesiveness for such moments still isn't quite Bill.

Bloody Mondays and Strawberry Pies
directed by Coco Schrijber

What does a dessert maker strumming Lou Reed's "Perfect Day" have to do with no-necked stock brokers, American Psycho, a Frenchman painting numbers, football hooligans, a guy lounging in the desert, a 101-year-old businessman, the woman who "doesn't like Mondays," a toothless guys selling newspapers on Wall Street, Danish teens, a female spy, and $40K wrist watches have in common? Uhhhh....despite the chicanery of editing that seemingly makes this into a meditation about "boredom," absolutely nothing.

Dancing With the Devil
directed by Jon Blair

You'd be forgiven for thinking you stumbled into yet another remake of Miami Vice at the start of this film about life in the favelas. Bombastic, brutish, with ludicrous "cop show" aesthetic choices that beggar belief. Both the muscle-bound cops and hideous drug dons of this film thank God for (fill in the blank). Well, God has alot to answer for with this one.

This is documentary porn at its most cruel. Let's get a close-up on this guy's ear, mangled by an attack dog. Now let's get a good look at his broken foot. How about this woman shot in the face? Let's hold that shot until everyone in the theater has to turn away. Now let's talk to this drug kingpin, making sure to pan down and sloooowly regard his mangled tree stump of a leg, looking like it's got shelf mushrooms growing all over the diseased skin.

But whatever we do, let's not pause to understand just how fundamentalism, religion, and capitalism helped to create this mess in the favelas. And let's be sure to only put a female in the film when it's time to show young woman dipping low to a hot favela funk track that goes "Just spread your legs/ Just squat." What ultimately wound up running through my mind while watching a pastor hand out food to these poor kids was if they were going to recycle those plastic cups or else continue to negatively impact the environment.

Treehouse 003

As seen in the New York Times!

Just don't be intimidated by the quote that Treehouse is for "serious technoheads" as --simply put-- it's party music for party people. And who better to elucidate that quality than our special guest, Alex From Tokyo. As always, it's upstairs at Frank's Cocktail Lounge. The needle drops and the disco ball starts spinning at 9pm and yours truly will be on by 10 (no doubt some of the records listed below will be in the gig bag). Hope to see you out!

heep see

Been buying up heaps of tunes while out on the road, so thought I'd laundry-list a few recent favorites:

Talking Heads: Speaking in Tongues LP (with the Rauschenberg art)
Voyage: Disco Around the World LP
Everly Brothers: Stories We Could Tell LP
Chilly: For Your Love LP
Keith Hudson: Steaming Jungle LP

Kikrokos: "Jungle DJ" (Spectacular Disco Mix by Jim Burgess)
John Tropea: "Livin' in the Jungle"
Beautiful Swimmers: "Swimmers Groove"
The Winners: "Get on Up and Do It/ Love is Free"
Hot Chocolate: "Every1's a Winner/ Put Your Love in Me"

Permanent Vacation feat. Kathy Diamond: "Tic Toc/ Zucker Hut"
Eletrik Dred: "Butter Up (Gimme Some Bread)"
Ann-Margret: "Love Rush"
The Bombers: "The Mexican/ Dance Dance Dance"
The Bombers: "(Everybody) Get Dancin'"

Sinnamon: "Thanks to You"
Susan Stevens "Boogie Walk"
PiL: "Memories"
Diskjokke: "Asa Nisi Masa"
Prins Thomas: "Mammut"

Barbara Roy: "Gotta See You Tonight"
Barbara Roy & Ecstasy, Passion & Pain: "If You Want Me"
Staple Singers: "Slippery People"
Rockers Revenge: "Walkin' on Sunshine"
Gary's Gang: "Keep On Dancin'"

washington, b.c.

The only time I had ever visited Washington, DC previously, it was for work, in the middle of the abject purgatory that was the previous regime. About the only thing I recall from then was how unsettling the Washington Monument was up close, how we had to walk past a crackhouse to get to our fancy boutique hotel, how a five-minute drive from the capital unveiled women in crusty Daisy Dukes, shriveled and toothless from too much Tina.

Not that Chocolate City has changed too much, but the entire place feels suffused with O-motion (def. that wondrous sensation of well-being that floods one's self when Obama's name gets mentioned in conversation or in a newspaper article) upon my return. This go-around, DC feels like a dream come true, to the point of it almost being ludicrous:

*Randomly run into Fugazi's Brendan Canty on a street corner, buzzed and about to go sing karaoke? Check.

*See Christo and Jeanne-Claude give documentary legend Albert Maysles a lifetime achievement award and hear Maysles talk about how in seeking to understand a person, you grow to love them? Check.

*Gardens in full bloom (and in full utilization) in every single front yard I stroll past? Check.

*Delirious amounts of Ethiopian food? Yep.

*Ridiculously great 12"s sitting in the dollar bin at Som Records? Untold amounts.

*Seeing R.J. Cutler's brilliant new documentary The September Issue that seemingly is about Anna Wintour and Vogue, yet trenchantly reveals instead the genius artistry of creative director Grace Coddington? Yes.

*Attend a block party with Trouble Funk dropping the bomb on my ass? You betcha.

dirty projectors interview

If you read the internets, you've no doubt already had the Dirty Projectors' new album, Bitte Orca, shoved down your throat. By which I mean, lovingly and deliciously shoved down your throat, as BO is a wondrous thing in 2009, something I never thought I'd admit for a work of theirs. In the past, DP mainman Dave Longstreth and his work struck me as too precious and precocious, over-thought and over-wrought. But within moments of "Cannibal Resource" I was converted. A metaphor excised from my Spin review perhaps put that transition best: "Like a pineapple, Longstreth’s prickly surface now belies the pop within: bright, tart, sweet, and gushing all at once." It helped that I spent plenty of time with the album down in the Caribbean. Anyhow, I had a chance to chat with Longstreth over a bowl of black rice as he mused about mis-translations, Coltrane's Meditations, Paper Rad, and Henry Rollins as mere mouthpiece for Greg Ginn's vision.

I moved to New York in 2005. I did finish my studies at Yale. I thought I was leaving for awhile because I hated it.

What did you hate about it?

I hated the attitude, I’m super into learning and stuff like that. Just the feeling of that at the school, is just kinda gross.

What does it emphasize instead?

Instead of a noble and clear pursuit of knowledge? The same shit that college anywhere is about, or academia. Specifically, I wanted to study painting and music together. You come up to a certain point where you can learn about the history and the technique, but you can’t really teach the thing itself.

It’s a giant metaphor.

Yeah, a giant metaphor. There’s this reverence for the way things were done that was just stiff and unnatural.

Do you study painting still?

I’m focused on music.

I think it’s funny your band name invokes this other medium and discipline.

Porn you mean.

Nonono. My girlfriend is a filmmaker and she goes “a dirty projector is my nemesis." Then there’s “DP” double penetration jokes too.

I didn’t think about that at the time.

What did it stem from?

I like the idea of it being an open phrase. I like the idea of a psychological projection, the idea of sharing or agreeing on a mutually blurred image. Also just the idea of this bloom of imagination that happens when things are translated poorly, mistranslated, um…which is something that I feel like is a generative principle in the music that I write.

Glitches and the like? I was thinking of this correspondence that takes part in Ulysses, where Bloom has this affair with a woman and the woman means to write “I do not like that word” but instead misspells it as “world.” It totally changes everything. It’s this amazing mistake.

Totally! What if she does mean ‘world’?

(mention getting a word from "Stillness is the Move" in the review wrong)

That’s my shit! I don’t know if you’re looking for it, but when it first occurred to me that one could try to re-imagine an album from memory (Rise Above) and I was thinking of Damaged, I was like…at first I was horrified of the idea but I went “That’s what I have to do.’ That was the most explicitly expository of a mode of dirty projection that I’ve done so far. The songs on this album that I wrote for the girls were coming from a similar place. Seeing if I could transpose a melody that I’ve written into this other instrument, if I could speak through them. That idea of taking one thing from one idiom and putting it in another.

Did you ever get feedback from Ginn or Rollins about Rise Above?

Rollins yes, but Ginn no. But to clarify, I'm completely uninterested in Rollins. Rollins is a figurehead; it’s Ginn’s vision. You know your shit, but it’s not about Rollins.

Ginn is the shredder visionary.

He was in some documentary recently, where they managed to interview him. And he was soooo stoney. He was on another plane. And it felt like this kind of…not to draw a Stephen Dedealus thing, but I would’ve loved to be there with him in that kind of moment, responding to it. Dead Oceans made an effort to get in touch with him, to get his approval, also from a pragmatic, copyright approach. He was just OUT. Not available. But when we played in Austin on the tour, I guess Rollins was doing “spoken word.”

AKA a stand-up routine.

AKA motivational speaking for dispossesed teenagers. Which is a mildly noble pursuit. The next day he’s in Waterloo just as my friend had pressed play on Rise Above. He was walking around, glancing up at the speakers amusedly. An interesting footnote is that apparently Rollins bought a whole bunch of Sun Ra and West African guitar music. Which I thought was hilarious.

“I suddenly need some Thomas Mapfumo…” But back to the girls and transposing your intent onto them, was there any correction on their part? Like, saying that a girl wouldn’t express something in such a way? As a man, I wonder if a woman would think like me?

No, I just wrote the songs. Haha. I was thinking about that, especially on “Two Doves.” It was really funny to write that.

That was even more of an originating idea for the album was the old truism that an indie rock band is only as good as its record collection. One thing that annoyed me about Rise Above in hindsight was how I had unwittingly played into that, pitting West African guitar music against Black Flag. It was a totally awesome thing I was thinking about, but I like the idea for the new album to be about taking the most blockbuster references. Basically carving my musical language into a bedrock of the most blockbuster references. Songs that are just unequivocally successful music, in terms of progeny that our culture has: Timbaland, Zeppelin, the Beatles. Music that it’s pointless to like or dislike and see if we could maintain that.

Bitte Orca is the German word for please and then the carnivorous whale. The song with that phrase, I feel like there was a meaning…the way it relates to the music is twofold: in the broad sense, there is something gentle and barbed in that combination of words. Something smooth and jagged. Sweet and sour. I love music like Coltrane in ’65, this kind of apex that is resolving apparent opposites, taking two things that are on opposite ends of a spectrum and showing them to be totally entwined. As Coltrane took the technical and the spiritual expression as totally one.

The end of his classic quartet or more with Rashied Ali and Alice Coltrane?

I was thinking of Meditations.

That's funny, as I always think of that particular record as having a true dichotomy between chaos and peace.

I guess in the past, I tried to do that with the music that I’ve written. Not only have it be on a level, but to have this corresponding idea frame, which I never really considered essential to the enjoyment of the music, but as another layer of it. With these songs, I tried to just ask less of the songs in the hope that they could be bigger.

You went through a lot of band members, did you not? Was it a personal thing or was it a difficulty in getting the vision properly transcribed?

Wanting to have it bend to the music. The way DP started was me writing the music because I write and I’ve always written music. It started as an art project. I didn’t think about it as a rock band or career, I just did it because I do it. It wasn’t until I was touring so much that it was time for me to simplify and codify this a little bit in January of ’07.

Was it hard to find the right personnel to carry it?

Yes and no. Our instincts were good. Looking back it feels very haphazard. It all made sense.

Was it pre-meditated to have a more feminine aspect to it?

I like music and art and literature for that matter that posits its own world. Wagner, William Blake, or Coltrane, or Ulysses, something that is an entire world. A balance of masculine and feminine. Kinda retarded but magazines ask artists to generate content for them so they don’t have to pay anyone. I ended up doing ten songs that fit the broadest and most inclusive aspects of “new jack swing.” The expressiveness of R&B to bear. Two things that appeal to me about that, that uniting of opposites and the masculine-feminine, rhythmic, melodic, bringing it all together. The way the band has formed totally makes sense.

What is startling about Bitte Orca is that the album has the feminine songs as the centerpiece.

This is the first album where I’m writing for this group of people, for Angel, Amber, Brian, me. The treatment of the girls as alternate embodiments of myself. The polyphony and hocketed stuff…That wasn’t a pre-ordained idea. I wanted it to be like a Beatles album, with everybody having their own tune. It’s just what felt natural (in terms of sequence). Which one is it? This one, it appeared in a certain form.

What about how the cover of Slaves’ Graves being re-iterated a second time?

Right! As I was writing the basic cassette versions of the melodies, I wanted that to be the cover, Amber and Angel enacting that emblem. I like the idea of revisiting an old idea in progressively greater detail..

When you read these spiritual tracts about going in a circle or what have you, there’s this sense of returning to the starting point, but one step up. A spiral more than a circle.

A cyclical idea of history. I love it. For sure.

What was the first African thing you got into?

There was that Eno essay about the migration of African musical something. He calls it something awesome, the transmigration of something. It starts with the Congo, gets into the slave trade, to the West Indies, down into Brazil, up into Spain. It’s this amazing historical map that he did. Just seeing how Fela was re-Africanizing James Brown just a few years after James Brown had gotten Africanized.

Or Ali Farka Touré hearing the blues and folding that back in, to where western ears hear him as John Lee Hooker…

I can see where that’s coming from. Oh! Have you heard Group Doueh? That to me is that moment!

(Play him the new Sublime Frequencies release from Group Bombino and then quote his quote from The Believer about "contextualizing the international music/ American 'independent' music relationship (not just sanitation, domestication, and theft, but proper deconstruction, abstraction, and creative misreading)
I like that on SF stuff, you can hear rock’n’roll becoming Thai pop but mishearing it and vice versa.

Yeah, I can’t remember the exact context in writing that but yeah, it’s an awesome time to be making music, just to be involved in the whole thing. The trading of ideas and stuff like that is…I feel like it is a different model than the Graceland love and theft way. I feel like it’s a different sort of paradigm.

Do you get to engage with people outside of indie rock, outside of the states?

We might play some shows with Ali Farka Touré’s son, which would be soo cool.

I’m one of those people that engages with the rhythm. I love to engage with language and trying to, particularly with poetry, examine from all possible angles, which can be a source of playfulness or airlessness. Earlier albums and earlier lyrics that I’ve written, I let that reign, this interest in language as a slippery thing. Less so with this album. I just wanted to be more direct. To me a way of getting at that was being less conscious of the things that we’re all singing. Just letting them. Not not editing exactly, but just doing it.

Can you tell me a bit about the lyrics for "Temecula Sunrise"?

This came out of this discussion I had with James about these Paper Rad kids camping out in these warehouses in Providence, these disused artifacts of this different social organization. We were thinking of these miles and miles of new construction subdivisions that blanket the landscape outside of every city in the US. On tour, you’re driving through them, before and after the city, these new construction zones. After the social impetus that makes these things pass, we were imagining what these buildings would be used for. We had these ecstatic artist kids just painting crazy murals and making funny Utopian art in a new construction home in Temecula, California.

beta's sweet dreams

For all of the Japanese readers of Beta Blog, a head's up: I just received a parcel from the fine people at Sweet Dreams Press. Included in the package is not only a delicate little book on Ida (including many swell pictures of one-time Graham Ave. record pusher Miggy Littleton) but also a copy of their latest issue (#4), which features a Japanese translation of my interview with Alan Bishop about "world music" (originally in The Believer's 2008 music issue).