MOVIES So, I recently contributed my picks for the best movies of the decade to a list on Nerve.com, and it was fun to reflect on the 21st century’s impressive cinematic yield to date, from Almost Famous (2000) to Young@Heart (2008), and especially the bumper crop years like 2001 (The Royal Tennenbaums, Ghost World, Mulholland Drive, etc.) and 2007 (There Will Be Blood, Juno, No Country For Old Men, etc.).
Tellingly, no films from the past year scored Best of Decade honors on the aforementioned list…which is not to say 2009 was a bad movie year, exactly. In fact, picking the following Top Ten was difficult because many of the films I saw in the last 365 days were pretty damn good (if not great) works of high-level craftsmanship from old reliables and talented newcomers.
When I was young, I thought of my life as a movie.
Now, with the slow accumulation of minor incidents building to occasional Season Finales of suspense and drama, I think of my life as a long-running, low-rated HBO series with a small but dedicated cult following.
And, just as HBO promos often feature thematically evocative songs to hint at future seasons, I typically find some tune stuck in my head this time of year (which more often than not winds up fitting nicely with the drift of events in my life and the lives of those around me).
At the moment, Nelly Furtado's "Say It Right" seems to have nominated itself for my 2010 theme song, but the month is young so we'll see...
As for the rest of the decade's theme songs, they generally applied eerily well to the years they previewed, and if you buy me a beer sometime I'd be happy to recount the twists and turns of the past ten exciting seasons (though even without the recaps, you can probably guess the general gist of some of them based on the soundtrack below...)
And so, as the era of New Year's Eve glasses featuring funny OOs for eyes draws to a close, please to enjoy the following selections, courtesy of my psyche:
2009 SEASON: "Sex Changes" by the Dresden Dolls (which, I should note, had nothing to do with me actually getting a sex change operation...)
2008 SEASON: "No One" by Alicia Keyes
2007 SEASON: "Sad Little Fat Man" by David Bowie
2006 SEASON: "Make Your Own Kind of Music" by Mama Cass
2005 SEASON: "This Year" by The Mountain Goats
2004 SEASON: "Mr. Blue Sky" by E.L.O.
2003 SEASON: "Lose Yourself" by Eminem
2002 SEASON: "New England" by Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers
2001 SEASON: "I Am A Man Of Constant Sorrow" by the Soggy Bottom Boys
The Boston Phoenix -- which owns the generally underwhelming “alternative” radio station WFNX, one of whose DJs tellingly got his panties in a bunch the year Tom Waits scored a Best Alternative Grammy, because said deejay didn’t consider frickin’ Bone Machine as “alternative” as, say, Green Day -- gleefully reported this week that CBS Radio was pulling the plug on FNX’s competitor WBCN so they could replace it with the kind of Mix station that pumps out product from popular “music” brands like American Idol and the Pussycat Dolls.
According to the Phoenix obituary, CBS is whacking the 41-year Boston institution because of, duh, corporate greed and the death of radio...but also, according to a smug quote from WFNX program director Max Tolkoff, because the Rock of Boston “flipped to alternative and started to chase after ‘FNX in the early ‘90s.”
Which is only true if you accept the WFNX definition of “alternative” as shitty neo-grunge Nu Metal and a maddeningly repetitive playlist virtually unchanged since the day Kurt Cobain ate his shotgun. (Honestly, guys...even Courtney Love doesn’t want or need to hear “Smells Like Teen Spirit” every hour on the hour.)
Inventive, offbeat music that’s actually an alternative to the same old mopey, tuneless noodling that’s defined the mainstream “alternative” format for nearly two decades can, of course, be found every day on college radio stations like Emerson’s WERS...and way back in my beloved 1980s, it could also be heard on WBCN, side by side with the likes of Led Zeppelin, back when people enjoyed music in more than one marketing demographic -- which, as the success of the iPod reminded pretty much everyone but terrestrial radio and the music industry -- is pretty much ALL the time.
Before switching to a rock format in the 1960s, WBCN (a.k.a., the Boston Concert Network) was a classical music station of the sort my folks might have enjoyed in the early years of my own life, when symphonies, show tunes and Mitch Miller holiday albums accounted for 90 percent of my listening environment. Then, in 1981, my friend Steve Lewis gave me a cassette of the “Nocturnal Emissions” Christmas show he’d taped off 104.1 FM (complete with awesome time capsule spots for the likes of New Wave clothing boutique Hubba Hubba) and effectively rocked my world, opening my eyes to a brave new universe of music -- from Elvis Costello, Siouxsie Sioux and David Bowie (along with his bestest duet buddy, Bing Crosby) to the Kinks, the Waitresses, the Damned, the Residents and the weirdo who penned the immortal lyric, “I found the brains of Santa Claus underneath my bed...”
“Nocturnal Emissions” was the oddball fiefdom of WBCN’s program director Oedipus, who (long before WFNX began broadcasting in 1983) had already helped to popularize the music of truly alternative acts like the Ramones and the Clash while famously breaking local bands like The Cars and Aimee Mann’s one-hit wonder ‘Til Tuesday. Indeed, that local flavor and focus was always my favorite aspect of the Rock of Boston, from its support of up-and-coming New England bands (exemplified by the annual Rock & Roll Rumble showcase competition) to Charles Laquidara’s Big Mattress drive-time show, which attracted both pointy-headed prog-head college students, North Shore professionals and working class South Shore Sullys -- and, though I’ve never heard him directly acknowledge it, clearly inspired a young B.U. student named Howard Stern, who adopted much of Laquidara’s morning party comedy format (including, at one point, Big Mattress alum Billy West).
Unsurprisingly, my parents hated WBCN and the muted but transformative adolescent rebellion it unleashed in me. I’ve always suspected, for example, that my mother deliberately trashed (or burned) a treasured 104.1 t-shirt I used to wear in the early days of my burgeoning New Wave consciousness. Which is sad, because while that particular piece of clothing surely wouldn’t fit me anymore, and though the station eventually became a soulless shell of its former self (not unlike the lobotomized Randle Patrick McMurphy at the end of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest), I could at least run it up a flagpole today and fly it half-mast in tribute to the once (and future?) Rock of Boston.
So, the other day, my lovely Polish bride is reading “Splendor In The Grit,” an article in the June 2009 issue of Vanity Fair by James Wolcott about New York City in “the crumbling anarchy” of the 1970s “when artists’ lofts were inhabited by actual artists, every subway car held potential drama, and legends -- Lennon, Warhol, Garbo -- walked the streets.”
At one point in the article, Wolcott talks about “the advent of cable-access programming,” which, long before the Internet, allowed commoners (as well as plenty of uncommon fringe dwellers, like pornographer Al Goldstein and NYC stripper emeritus Robyn Bird) unprecedented access to mass communication and local notoriety. And one of the most successful and influential programs to emerge from the new DIY-TV scene was “Glenn O’Brien’s TV Party (with a guest list that included Blondie, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and the Clash),” which ran from 1978 until 1982 in Manhattan and, eventually, L.A.
After reading that O’Brien’s show had been preserved and released on DVD, my better half Netflixed several episodes, as well as TV Party: The Documentary by filmmaker Danny Vinik, which traces the evolution (and eventual dissolution) of the coolest televised cocktail party of all time.
Taking his cues from Playboy After Dark and the Rat Pack days of the Carson-era Tonight Show, O’Brien (a handsome, martini-dry New Wave bon vivant) invited his artsy Village friends to come to the studio, hang out, smoke pot, and play with the equipment -- and since they were young, creative and weird, the results were funny, chaotic, and pretty much unlike anything else on TV, before or since.
For one thing, O’Brien’s friends included the likes of Fred Schneider, Fab 5 Freddy, Robert Fripp and an adorable pre-fame Debbie Harry (who, in one segment, bounces on a pogo stick to demonstrate the nuances of punk rock dancing). Meanwhile, familiar faces like David Byrne and Klaus Nomi pop up in the house band, while Basquiat is in the control booth, typing absurdist poetry on the Chryon.
David Letterman, back in the “anything goes” phase of his career, was a kindred spirit and professed fan of the show, and as the notoriety of TV Party and its regulars increased, it began attracting ever more famous scenester guests, from Bowie to Mapplethorpe, until the rising wave crested and, like all good things, the party came to an end: O’Brien got married, Harry’s bandmate Chris Stein caught a nasty case of pemphigus vulgaris (contributing to the breakup of Blondie), the yuppification of Manhattan drove the bohemians out and eventually everybody just moved on.
But Vinik’s documentary brings it all back, and those with fond memories of the early ‘80s may feel like they’re watching old home movies of their younger selves in a far funkier time, only with more famous faces and a freakier soundtrack. Rent it today...you’ll dig it the most!
The parade had already been going awhile by the time Amy and me got back from hiking in the Blue Hills. Broadway and both Teele and Davis Squares were closed for the event, so we had to sneak in the back way...the wrong way down a few one-way streets...to get to our neighborhood, then we parked and joined the scattered crowd of townies along the route.
Now, I know a lot of governments like to celebrate national holidays by rolling all their niftiest tanks and missiles through the capitol, but that kinda thing just makes me nervous.
On the other hand, what makes me feel downright patriotic in the least ironic way possible is an event like the Somerville Memorial Day Parade, from the tiny old man playing trumpet in the American Legion marching band and the Sons of Italy color guard hanging out with friends on the sidewalk during pauses in the procession to the young Asian girl marching along stone-faced in minuteman regalia and the black kids and Albanians and Greeks and Lebanese hanging out on the sidewalks in lawn chairs, buying SpongeBob balloons from vendors and firing bubble guns into the soapy musket smoky air.
Ah, but ain’t that America for you and me? Ain’t that America something to see baby? Ain’t that America, home of the free?
Yes, I just spent the afternoon in a John Mellencamp video.
Ooh yeah. But, really, for me it was all about the Shriners, or whoever those guys in the Aleppo fezzes were, and there were scores of them, possibly hundreds, taking up easily half the parade with their flags and weird Arab trumpet noodling and fake goatees and turbans and their candy-tossing...and forget about tiny little cars: the Somerville Shriners had tiny little 18-wheelers, not to mention tiny golf carts, tiny buggies, pop-wheelie clown cars, horses, horse cars, Segways and a trailer broadcasting a Shriner quartet as they sang “Yankee Doodle went to Baghdad riding in a Humvee” into dangling CB radio handsets.
Given the median age of most of the Shriners seemed to be about 78, I began to worry that someday there would be no one to drive the tiny little cars along future parade routes...but then I started noticing some tattooed hepcats under the occasional fez, so maybe there’s hope.
And ever since this past November, I’m all about Hope.
Hey, there! So, Nerve.com is discontinuing the Screengrab blog I've contributed to for the past year or so, and at some point before they pull the plug, Scott Von D. and/or myself will be posting a list of links to the blogs of all the various Screengrab refugees...
...which means a few more people than usual may conceivably be checking out this poor, neglected blog in the near future, so I suppose I oughta get on the stick and start updating with a little more regularity.
In the meantime, as I recently noted on the aforementioned Screengrab, I participated in the 2009 Boston edition of the 48 Hour Film Project a few weeks back, and the resultant short movie ("Sock Pox") is posted below. Enjoy!
