Book Review Update

We are happy to announce that we have finally finished Alex Ross' epic history of 20th century classical music "The Rest is Noise". More to come....

15 Albums That Changed My Life

Dedicated to Billy Biondi:

I elect for my 15 Albums the following;

1) Dinah Shore, "Buttons & Bows"
I have very fond memories of listening to this album in the office/den of our home in Edison, NJ while standing on my head. A seminal moment when I discovered I was an unconventional consumer of popular culture.

2) Original Cast Album, "Jamaica"
Harry Belafonte, Lena Horne & calypso music!! Few songs have reverberated with me over the years as "Push de Button" sung by a young vibrant Lena Horne.

3) Elton John, "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road"
I had my first (drunken) sexual encounter to this album with my best friend growing up, Ira. Life would never be the same and neither would that album. Ah sweet memories!

4) Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band, "Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band"
It's high school. All the anxiety, all the peer pressure. In a small private school filled with deadheads, potheads and head bangers I discovered that I was in Philadelphia right at the height of disco and TSOP. I would bring this album to school and have impromptu dance parties at lunch.
Also help teach me the art of a good hook.
Some of the best times of my life!

5) David Bowie, "Young Americans"
The Jean Genie comes to Philly and does Frank Sinatra! A great band backs up one of the most original artists in popular music. Great lyrics, great hooks and David Sanborn on sax!!

6) Talking Heads "Talking Heads '77"
Introduced to me on my first day freshman year in my college dorm by the woman who would go on to be my best friend in the entire world, Lydia. It's jerky spastic rhythms and sing-song lyrics appealed to everything quirky and queer in me. "There's really no hurry, I'll eat in a while" a bit too Anglo-protestant for this Jew ("We're Jews, we eat!) but enlightening!

7) Patti Smith, "Horses"
No one said rebellion at that time like Patti. The mystical crossed with the perverse. And live was always the best; would she fall off the stage again? Throw up all over?
My uniform for several years was the cover of this album: white shirt, suspenders and a military jacket over the shoulder.
Nobody mixed the energy of Rock n Roll with ecstatic poetry like Patti! As fresh today as it was back then.

8) Ornette Coleman, "At the Golden Circle Stockholm Vol 1"
A jazz original that appealed to me with its oddball rhythmic changes and simple melodies. I would play the "European Echoes" cut over and over. Foreshadowed a lot of downtown music to come.

9) John Coltrane, "My Favorite Things"
Another jazz original doing what I loved so much in my life; show tunes!! As a musician and an artist it is great to hear another extremely talented artist take something familiar and make you hear it again in a whole new way. A desert island album for sure.

10) Phillip Glass/Robert Wilson, "Einstein on the Beach"
Who ever thought an opera about nothing could be so fascinating. And sing-able. A quotable!! An early Glass masterpiece helped by the masterful staging of Wilson.
"I was in this prematurely air-conditioned supermarket and there were all these aisles and there were these bathing caps that you could buy that were red and yellow and blue and I wasn't tempted to buy one but I was reminded that I had been avoiding the beach."
Everyone hit the beach!!!!!

11) Laurie Anderson, “United States Parts I-IV”
I couldn't let this list go by without this seminal work by America's foremost artist/musician. A four disc compilation recorded live at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. It documents one of the most amazing performance works I had the privilege to attend. With her droll wit, her onstage techno-wizardry and her keen eye for observation, it still amazes and moves me today.

12) Steve Reich/The Kronos Quartet, "Different Trains"
Another moving masterwork from one of the fathers of Minimalism. Reich demonstrates his uncanny ability, like Janacek, to use the cadence of ordinary speech to drive the music behind it. Partially auto-biographical, here the artist ponders what trains he might have been riding in the 40's if he had been in Europe and not America at that time. Haunting, powerful, uplifing.

13) Brian Eno, "Music for Airports"
Probably Eno's initial Ambient record, this music has an austere Feldman-like openness that made one rethink the concept of Muzak. This album helped me drift off to sleep after many a wild night.

14) Henryk Gorecki, Symphony #3 (Sorrowful Songs)"
I am referring to the London Sinfonietta and Dawn Upshaw version. Of the eastern European "mystic" composer to emerge towards the end of the 20th century, Gorecki seems to have found his way out of the high-brow European avant-garde and actually created beautiful music you want to hear. Of course the lovely clarion tones of the soprano Dawn Upshaw don't hurt this masterwork of modern music. A guaranteed tear-jerker.

15) Gavin Bryars, ""The Sinking of the Titanic"
There had to be a Bryars piece on my list but which one? "Jesus Blood never failed me Yet" with its neo-minimal use of taped voice, musical ensemble and singer (Tom Waits!!)? "A Man in a Room, Gambling" the series of short works he did for BBC Radio which has the audio commentary teaching the listener how to do card tricks and to cheat at the card table, set to short sharp string accompaniment? But after much deliberation I had to choose "Titanic". From the opening crash in the bass, this piece has a haunted, eerie watery quality that is a marvel to hear. Creating a aural sensation of drifting through water, we catch bits of words, tunes (Amazing Grace, played by a string quartet as the ship sank), and noise that add up to one of the most intense, interesting and satisfying audio experiences I have ever had.
Note: not to be played late at night with strangers in the house!!

GREECE OR BUST: "My Life in Ruins"

With any luck, the new Nia Vardalos comedy "My Life in Ruins" has already left your cineplex to journey forth to fulfill its natural function as DVD fodder for your local 7-11.

It seems to be another one of those situation where pedigree doesn't amount to a hill of beans. It looked good on paper. The charming, funny Nia Vardalos, the big, fat movie star from her first film "My Big Fat Greek Wedding". Donald Petrie, a fine director of many comedies such as "Miss Congeniality" and "Grumpy Old Men" was at the helm. A more than capable supporting cast, topped off by Oscar-winner Richard Dreyfuss. But somewhere, somehow the whole thing didn't add up. Not even with the help of visual eye candy like the Greek Islands and Alexis Georgoulis. As Irv, Mr. Dreyfuss' on-screen character might proclaim, "It's a shanda!"

I guess the powers that be thought it would be a good idea to play off Ms Vardalos' success. But then its not often that lightening strikes twice. That movie was a charming, family comedy which was a re-telling of the Cinderella story. Trying to bank on another modern fairy tale, this twisted take on Beauty & the Beast makes us wonder: who's Belle? This visually obvious beast is the stunning Mr Georgoulis, who arrives early on the scene as a hairy mop of a bus driver for the tour the that Georgia (Ms Vardalos) is 'forced' to lead. A smart knowledgeable academic of ancient history, Georgia finds misery everywhere. Her international group is a set of stereotypical tourists, her bus has no air conditioning and no one is interested in hearing her prattle on about Greek history. Any iota of charm is devoid in her character. So we have the Beast & the Beast.
Of course as this predictable tale chugs along towards it happy ending (Georgia gets her groove, or 'kefi' back. This is done by having sex. Big surprise.) Georgia is faced with the monumental decision; stay in Greece leading tours with her new hunky lover of a bus driver or go teach in Michigan?
In the immortal words of the Divine Miss M: what kind of asshole question is that?
Stay away and save your money!

Hommage to JC

Dedicated to one of our favorite artists!

Report from the North Country: or how your intrepid reporter went wireless and learned to love his blackberry.

With the informal kick-off of summer we started ours off with an official visit to the Sunshine Drive-In to catch up on some commercial cinema. First up, Star Trek. This "prequel" mega-movie seems to strike the right balance between satisfying hardcore fans and creating enough dark Batman-like moodiness to attract a new audience. Everyone turns up on cue and young Spock even gets to pontificate with his older, future self (played by the original Spock, Leonard Nimoy, with a set of dentures you can't take your eyes off of). Large, loud and digitally enhanced, we found a lot of the action/fight scenes blurry and unfocused. But when Uhuru is such a hottie who cares! Ah-woo-woo-woo!!
As for the 2nd feature, "I Love You Man" pity poor Paul Rudd! A talented guy who has been in many a Rogen/Aptow production, he is finally given a chance to star in this sad comedy about a heterosexual man with no male friends. A good cast is lost in this pathetic chick-flick disguised as a buddy movie. Avoid at all costs!!

Today's aesthetic quandary:

Can an arts and culture blog exist in a homeless, jobless state? The answer? TBC

MEMENTO MORI

John King
Bea Arthur
Jack Cardiff

You Shall All Be Missed!!

Post 9-11 Architecture

I am posting these pictures as another example of a recent trend in residential buildings that have gone up in Manhattan over the past 5 years. It's what I like to term "jiggly architecture"; buildings who's facades wave and undulate as they rise above the staunch straightness of the avenues and streets below them. This particular building is being piled up at the end of Greenwich Avenue and Eighth Avenue, or, to give it its more luxurious moniker, One Jackson Square. Note the undulating line of the floor-to-ceiling windows; the light of the street is reflected back in fractured sections. These jiggly facades seem to be reflecting our city's and its residents' current anxiety and post-traumatic stress; one false move and I'll collapse like a house of cards!!

If anyone can point out a building with these features that appeared in Manhattan before 9-11-01, I would appreciate you making comment on line here.

And if you haven't noticed jiggly architecture yet, just look around a bit more closely, eh?

Let Us Now Praise Great Achievements!! - Pt 2

Although the new entrance to the 1 train will now make ferry commuters have to step outside to get the train uptown (the temporary entrance was right in the ferry terminal and was a blessing on foul weathered days), the two or three steps one has to take becomes well worth it as you descend to the the mezzanine level, where Doug & Mike Starn have done an incredible installation, See It Split, See It Change. A site-specific installation commissioned by the MTA, the work encompasses the entire mezzanine level. Huge photo murals of the the silhouettes of trees in Battery Park festoon the walls behind the turnstiles, as well as a historic map of lower Manhattan and an enormous image of a leaf. The Starn brothers have been pursuing an almost mythic quest: translating the transmogrification of light to energy to thought into a visual set of key images. And having a three dimensional stage to present their ideas in works tremendously to their advantage. Not only do we get ceiling-to-floor black-and-white photo-murals of the tree branches of Battery Park, but we also have these patterns mirrored and overlaid in the metalwork of the ticketing barrier walls which creates a neural networks of thick and thin lines in grey and black.

This magnificent photo-mural hangs over the stairwell to the 1 train. The image of a desiccated leaf, from the Starn's Black Pulse Lambda series, has become part of their leitmotifs in recent years. With the delicate image fused into large glass tiles, the fragile transparency of the degraded leaf matter is increased 10 fold, the veins echoing lines of a street or subway map.

Also visible upon entrance into the terminal is a gorgeous 20-foot wide floor-to-ceiling mosaic reproducing a historical map of Manhattan. Inspired by a map commissioned by the United States Census Bureau in 1886 that integrated a topographic map drawn in 1640 with a street plan from the Battery to 155th Street, the island’s original topography emerges ghost-like behind a more familiar diagram of the modern city. It is truly stunning!

The MTA has managed to make me want to take Public Transit more knowing that this quality of art awaits me upon alighting on the Isle of Manhatta!!

Let Us Now Praise Great Achievements!! - Pt 1

I don't normally encourage tourism towards my end of New York, but as someone who has lived in NYC for over 25 years and on the Isle of Statten for over 10, I guess I am glad to have lived to see the day of the new South Ferry/Whitehall St Subway station

which just opened this week. Architecturally it is PT plebeian in its structure. However, for 1 train riders the change is significant. No more screeching train wheels pulling into and out of the station. No more 'first five car' warnings!! Imagine!! The 21st century gleams with a small bit of hope, primarily with the smart installation on the ticketing level.... TBC