Fancast #3: Stillness is the move

It is important to admit one’s mistakes. So I’ll start off with Roxy Music’s Avalon. I got lucky with Roxy albums two, four and five. Avalon unfortunately was eight, and eight, as they say, is often too late. MOR, AOR and EOR (elevator-oriented rock) all rolled into one, it was a horrible way to spend 300 bucks.

On the other hand, I did get hold of REM, Live at the Olympia. The story – already semi-legend in REM fan circles – goes something like this. Sometime after releasing Around the Sun, their worst album till date, REM decided that they needed to work themselves back into relevance. They devised an ingenious high-wire solution. Instead of going the traditional way and performing the new songs on stage once they have been worked over and perfected, why not perform them in their rudimentary stages and see if they click? The result was a serious of shows – which REM insists repeatedly from the stage, are not shows at all – which alternates songs dating as far back as their earliest demos to the jagged tunes that would go on to comprise the majority of their 2008 return-to-form Accelerate. For those who have heard that album, and wondered how they got there from Around the Sun, Live at the Olympia will play like a missing link.

The setlist is carefully chosen, many of the 39 songs being plucked from their IRS catalogue. There seems to be a very deliberate attempt to get back to their roots – they perform nearly all of their debut EP, Chronic Town – and to redefine them. There’s an urgency in the air which is invigorating, and familiar to long-time fans. REM is capable of sublime delicacy on their records, but their stage act has always been charged with the energy of punk. Michael Stipe misses a few notes here and there but is still a driving, and playfully compelling frontman. Mike Mills’ backing vocals are upfront (at least as much as backing vocals can be) after a decade of neglect. And Peter Buck…well, one can only hope he gets his due someday. Like Kipling’s ideal man, he meets with folkie strum and powerchord riff, and treats those two impostors just the same. It’s also a rare opportunity to see an album take shape in front of one’s eyes. For instance, ‘Supernatural Superserious’ has little of the impact that made it the lead single on Accelerate – it's simply called ‘Disguise’ here and sorely lacks that mighty opening riff. You can tell from the band’s performance that they know it needs work. It’s one of the few weak spots in a remarkably charged up testament to REM’s song-writing and performing capabilities, and, let’s face it, their unprecedented act of bravery after 20 years in the musical arena.

Have been hearing a good deal of Wilco lately. Heard Wilco, the album, released last year, which tuned out to be a lot better than the temperate reviews it received suggested. Also heard Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, their celebrated 2002 effort. I’ll say this – it left me somewhat cold to begin with, but it definitely improves upon subsequent hearings. I would still question the critical hosannas which followed its release (and continue till the day) but that feeling could wear off with time. If you’re a fan, you should also try and get hold of a documentary shot during the making of YHF. It’s called ‘I am trying to break your heart’ and documents the troubled times which led to their being forced to leave their record label, Reprise, upon completion of the album, and also lays bare the friction between soon-to-be-fired Jay Bennett and the rest of the band.

It’s been an interesting month for singles (of the musical variety). I stumbled upon ‘Maki Madni’ at work – it’s a collaboration between the Derek Trucks Band and Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, and it’s quite brilliant. As is ‘Stillness is the move’ by the Dirty Projectors, a kind of R&B-art rock fusion that is very weird and very cool. ‘Losing my edge’ is dance-rock courtesy LCD Soundsystem; I don’t have much time for this sub-genre, but this one was so funny I kept playing it again and again just to hear the tone of the guy’s voice. Animal Collective’s ‘My girls’ was most critics’ choice for track of 2009; it’s a shimmering, glittering thing, decked up in electronica and complex harmonies, recalling the Beach Boys at their sunniest.

I go now. I make fire. I bring meat. You cook. Wait. Me feminist. Me cook. You do dishes.

In my car stereo: Beatles, Live at the BBC
In my CD drive: Tom Waits, Swordfishtrombones
In my head: Lady Gaga, ‘Poker face’ (damn…)

7 reasons to dislike 3 Idiots

3 Idiots is so amazingly amazing I’d like to take it home with me. I wish I had had someone like Rancho with me in college, so I could have been inspired to drop out, grow my hair long, join a rock band and change my name to Gorgeous Sheep Killer. That would have given me the subsequent opportunity to dump the band five years later, changed my name to Rajkumar Hirani, and make a movie which is 50% sermon and 50% gags of the ‘ageing paraplegic driven to hospital on a two-wheeler’ variety, and rake in crores of rupees. And, like him, I wouldn’t do it for the money, but for the unique opportunity of changing the entire educational system and to see the smiles on the faces of the leaders of tomorrow.

3 Idiots is probably not as bad a movie as I’m making it out to be. Then why, you must be asking, do I appear to have it in for Hirani and Co? I think it’s definitely one of the following reasons:

1. No amount of sermonising (and there’s a lot of that) can change the fact that the issue which this film actually centres around is both prescient and pressing. But why do our filmmakers lack the necessary belief to be able to present an issue in a non-manipulative manner and trust the audience to see the truth behind it? Why beat them over the head with it?
2. The setup in the scenes leading to the discovery of the student suicide was masterful. That the preceding scenes were comic in nature made it all the more jarring. But then the film zig-zags back and forth – slapstick, followed by attempted suicide, followed by slapstick, followed by parental disapproval, and so on – until the viewer eventually gives up trying to differentiate between the emotions that are being provoked from him at every turn
3. This one sounds churlish even as I write it. Its even stranger when you consider that a) I’m an Aamir Khan fan, and b) he does as a fairly convincing job as a college student, appearing for the most part, through a combination of ability, sheer determination and anti-wrinkle cream, younger than both Sharman and Madhavan. So while I can’t say that it was a mistake to cast him in this role, its sad that we had to forget Aamir Khan, the 40 year old, before we could enjoy him as Rancho, the 20 something college student (There’s another attached problem along with this. Previously, when you cast Aamir Khan, you got yourself an actor willing to subsume himself in a particular role until you could see only the character. Now when you cast him, the result is a hybrid of ‘Aamir Khan, thinking man’s actor’ and whatever character he’s playing. This may or may not have been a contributant to the rampant preachiness of this movie (which was also the only real flaw in Taare Zameen Par) though Hirani is known to indulge this vice as well. Of course, it could have been worse – today, when you cast Shahrukh you only get ‘Shahrukh, former actor and star for all time’. And no director knows what you’re going to get when you cast Hrithik Roshan
4. There’s this amazingly bugging female going ‘Mmmm mmmmm mmmmm’ during every emotional scene in the second half. I doubt I would have liked these scenes anyway, but the voice made me want to throw things at the screen
5. It is unforgivable the way the movie sets Chatur up as an object of ridicule when he is the most representative, of all the characters shown, of the way the youth of this country evaluates their success today. We laugh at him because the movie makes it easy for us to do so. Then all of us will leave the hall and go back to living our lives according to the exact principles he espouses in the movie, but will be too stupid (or too dishonest with ourselves) to admit to it
6. The man who brought us some of the best comic setups of the past decade with the two Munnabhai films is now rehashing gags. We’ve seen all these ones before – the guy peeing onto an electrified surface, the ‘noses come in the way’ line, the forgetting of pants, the token gay jibe, the handicap gag…
7. More on that handicap gag. That, and the entire treatment of Raju’s family as a ‘typical 1950s Bollywood movie’ is not only extraordinarily insensitive, but also extraordinarily clever thinking on the part of the makers. To acknowledge their situation as true-to-life and representative of any number of struggling families that send their kids to college would make it a lot tougher for the audience to wholeheartedly encourage Sharman to follow in Racho’s difficult-to-emulate footsteps. The audience would then have to do some soul searching, but why make the audience think when they are ready to let you think for them?

Finally, somewhere in the midst of all this, there was a memorable line to the effect of “How come you managed to start out as an engineer, then do an MBA, and finally end up working in a bank”. This is a question destined to niggle away at all those who, like me, are at a loss to explain their ridiculous career decisions. This movie could have spoken volumes about my current situation in life. It could have…

Aloha baby

It has been/
without a doubt/
three very long years

Dusty in Memphis: Turning up the heat

There are some albums you search for your whole life, and then one day they suddenly appear, looking innocently at you from the shelves as if they had been there the whole time, sporting stickers saying ‘Buy 2 for the price of 1’. If you cast a wide net, it happens quite often, and it can make your day, or week, or month. It may actually be the only real upside to being a serious record collector – but I am digressing. The point is, after five years of searching (and one fleeting glimpse in a Chennai mall) I finally managed to lay my hands on Dusty in Memphis.

In 1968, Dusty Springfield was somewhat of a star in her native Britain. She sounded remarkably like what she looked – blonde and stylish – and recorded three albums which fit snugly into the background as fellow-countrymen Beatles and the Stones and the Who changed popular music forever. On her fourth, however, she took a decisive right turn. Like most white female vocalists of the time, she was a huge admirer of the R&B stars on the other side of the ocean. She especially revered Aretha Franklin, and that distinctive Atlantic sound that emerged from Memphis under the aegis of Jerry Wexler, a mixture of thudding R&B, gospel and soul that was neither wholly holy nor unholy. And so it happened that Dusty, British blonde, chronicler of delicate heartbreak, decided she would record an album in the heart of Memphis.

It didn’t quite go as planned. As the story goes, Dusty was so nervous at the thought of meeting her idol Aretha, and recording in the same studio as her that she never ended up singing there at all. Instead, she recorded her vocals in a studio in England, while the backing tracks were recorded in Memphis, supervised by Wexler, Arif Mardin and the legendary Tom Dowd (engineer on Aretha’s records, as well as others like Bob Dylan, the Velvet Underground and Simon and Garfunkel). The result should have sounded disjointed, tacked on – but miraculously, it doesn’t. Miles away from the actual place, Dusty in Memphis captures the spirit of the Atlantic recordings of the time. She turns up the heat, sonically on ‘Don't forget about me', lyrically on ‘Breakfast in bed’, and in everyway possible on ‘Son of a preacher man’.

The backing musicians are given less space to manoeuvre than they might have had with a local singer and Dusty’s past sound means that the arrangements too often substitute down-home horns and the fantastic guitar of Reggie Young for orchestral backing. On the other hand, crafting an album that sounds black, but doesn’t have a black singer at the helm may not have worked either. Dusty herself resists the temptation to sound radically different from her previous recordings – the only discernable change is a subtle shift in her accent. Never one to bully a line, she sings softly and huskily, only letting herself go on select occasions, which are, when they arrive, the most thrilling moments on the album. Like that moment when she fairly yells ‘He was a sweet talkin’ son of a preacher man’ and then drops pitch and drawls ‘I guess he…was the son of a…preacher man’. It’s a stunningly sexy moment, and surprisingly, for an album that could easily have ended up as a tribute to a particular sound, it encapsulates something that is indefinably but specifically Dusty Springfield.

The entertainment year that was

'In years to come, people will look back and realize that this movie changed everything...'

...is what will not happen

For the record then - best movie to emerge out of India this year, best music as well.




Not his best song. But no one could be more deserving.




...because I am nothing if not a Mark Ruffalo fan. The Brothers Bloom was the sleeper hit that never quite became a sleeper hit. But Ruffalo displaced reality with great style, as did Adrian Brody, Rachel Weisz and, in a super-cool silent performance, Rinko Kikuchi.




'The Last Carnival': Springsteen and the E Street Band say an emotional goodbye to Danny Federici




He died. And then, ironically, he was a star again...




...because the main selling point was not Ranbir as a sardar, but Jaideep Sahni as the writer. And the lead performance was refreshingly modest, so much so that each supporting turn seemed like a revelation.

Tarantino finally repays my fandom by not falling prey to his own

Vishal Bharadwaj's 'fun' movie. It's still pretty dark.

India's Oscar submission. Modest, funny, not one false step from frame one to end.

Ah Rolling Stone, yeh daft auld bugger

Rolling Stone's Top Songs of the Decade
1. Gnarls Barkley – Crazy
2. Jay-Z – 99 Problems
3. Beyonce – Crazy In Love
4. OutKast – Hey Ya!
5. M.I.A. – Paper Planes
...

Idiots.

As expected, its a stupid list. 'Paper Planes' should have been number one, but at least it makes the Top 5. But are there any excuses for having 'Crazy in love' above it? Its supremely catchy, but so is every damn chart-topper now days (they managed to surgically remove artistic merit from popular music somewhere around 2005). And don't get me started on '99 problems'. How is that a better track than say, 'Stan' (No 9) or 'Lose Yourself' (No 12), both by Eminem. And where is 'Radio Nowhere'? Why is 'White Winter Hymnal' languishing below 'Time to Pretend'?

Its been a terrible decade as far as albums are concerned, but that doesn't mean that they got it right. It is not surprising (though it is dissapointing) to see the list topped by Radiohead's 'Kid A'. But even if you make some sort of world-is-becoming-mechanized-and-so-is-Radiohead-aren't-they-so-brave case for it, will someone tell me what the zeitgest-defining 'American Idiot' is doing at No 22? Why is 'Stadium Arcadium' at 74? And why (this is coming from a Coldplay tolerator) is 'Parachutes' ranked higher than 'Viva la Vida'? Those guys will never make a better album - and if you don't encourage them, they will no longer be interested in maintaining the reasonably presentable but ultimately unambitious level of music which has seen them conquer the music world in their own unique well-scrubbed style.

Society!

Christopher McCandless aka Alexander Supertramp (Emile Hirsch) is not like other teens. For one, he paraphrases Thoreau. He also wants, more than anything else, to go to Alaska and live out in the wild. On the way, he finds work on a farm, and a similarly restless spirit in its owner, Wayne Westerberg (Vince Vaughn). A key moment occurs when the two are sitting in a bar, talking the way passionate, inarticulate people do when they are a few drinks down.

Christopher McCandless: I'm going to Alaska
Wayne Westerberg: Alaska, Alaska? Or city Alaska? Because they do have markets in Alaska. The city of Alaska. Not in Alaska. In the city of Alaska, they have markets.
Christopher McCandless: No, man. Alaska, Alaska. I'm gonna be all the way out there, all the way fucking out there. Just on my own. You know, no fucking watch, no map, no axe, no nothing. No nothing. Just be out there. Just be out there in it. You know, big mountains, rivers, sky, game. Just be out there in it, you know? In the wild.
Wayne Westerberg: In the wild.
Christopher McCandless: Just wild!
Wayne Westerberg: Yeah. What are you doing when we're there? Now you're in the wild, what are we doing?
Christopher McCandless: You're just living, man. You're just there, in that moment, in that special place and time. Maybe when I get back, I can write a book about my travels.
Wayne Westerberg: Yeah. Why not?
Christopher McCandless: You know, about getting out of this sick society. Society!
Wayne Westerberg: [coughs] Society! Society!
Christopher McCandless: Society, man! You know, society!

The rest of the exchange is standard Holden Caufield cliche but it scarcely matters - the shouts of ‘society’ continue to reverberate long after the scene has ended. Not since ‘Attica’ in ‘Dog Day Afternoon’ has a word picked out at random and worried to death provided the most resonant moment in a movie.