I'm in a movie!

Not really. Well, you can see half of my face in one crowd scene if you know exactly where to look. But that's not important anyway. What's important is that Girls Rock!, the (tritely-titled, but still totally rad) documentary about Rock 'n' Roll Camp for Girls that was filmed in 2005 and released theatrically last year, is out on DVD today. I know Netflix has it; presumably local video stores will as well. It does a pretty good job of capturing the heady atmosphere of Rock Camp and its transformative effect on the girls, and you should watch it.

Well? What are you waiting for?

Top Five Unfinished Top Fives (Music Edition)

Well, it's a new year, and time to clear a little junk out of my brain. Although considering the spectacular amount of junk that's in there, this will barely make a dent, but still.

At any given moment I've probably got a dozen or so potential Top Five lists floating around my cranium. Some are new (or newish) and need time to be fleshed out, some are essentially done except that I keep rearranging the order or swapping out also-rans, and some have been floating there, incomplete and likely never to be completed, for far too long, and I'm tired of thinking about them. Therefore, in order to get rid of a few of them, I present my

Top Five Unfinished Top Five Lists (Music Edition)

5) This one. Hah! I got all meta on your asses.

4) "Top Five Videos That Creep Me Right The Fuck Out." I'm trying to remember when this one started, and I feel like it must have been when I was writing that post about The Puddle Flick, but that was just a few months ago and I could swear this list has been around a lot longer than that. Anyway, in that post I talked about visiting my grandparents in the summer, which I, my sister, and our cousins did every year when we were kids. Nana and Pop-Pop had cable, which we did not have at home, and cable had that once-most-glorious of channels, MTV. (Insert head-shaking comment about how MTV actually used to play music videos.) Cousin B. and I, the music obsessives of the family, would set up camp in Pop-Pop's den and watch until we were bleary-eyed. In the wee hours of one particular morning, we saw for the first time Eurythmics' video for "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)", which now seems almost tame (almost--nothing that involves Annie Lennox can ever be truly tame), but at the time was easily the freakiest thing on MTV. We were so creeped out by it that we actually turned off the TV and went to bed, where I promptly had a nightmare involving a cow.

Thinking about creepy videos reminded me of Catherine Wheel's "Waydown", which I'd always thought was one of the few videos that attempted to be creepy and succeeded, and thus was the seed for this list planted. Unfortunately I couldn't really come up with anything else to add. I flirted with Dr. Dre and Snoop (Doggy) Dogg's "Deep Cover", because that was the first time I ever heard Snoop (it was his first appearance on record, actually) and his sing-song delivery--"Cuz it's one-eight-seven on the undercover cop"--did, in fact, creep me right the fuck out. But that was more the song than the video, so it didn't really fit.

3) I'm not even sure what the title for this one would be. Something to do with comeback songs or late-career hits that I liked, but there's too much dissimilarity in the items...like, it includes Duran Duran's "Ordinary World". Now, I fucking hated Duran Duran in the '80s. I hated all of those poncey British synth-pop bands, but DD was the worst because they were the biggest and therefore the hardest to avoid. So when they made a comeback in the '90s with "Ordinary World", I was rather surprised to find that I quite liked it.

On the other hand, I was a huge fan of R.E.M. at the beginning of their career, but later soured on them (and I can pinpoint the exact moment things went south: I was in a bar on the Upper West Side of Manhattan that was full of frat boys from Columbia, and they kept playing "It's the End of the World As We Know It" on the jukebox and singing along at the top of their lungs--or attempting to sing along; it was more like, "Drunken mumble drunken mumble LEONARD BERNSTEIN!"--and I was like, wow, I kind of hate R.E.M now). I didn't pay much attention to their career after say, 1987, but in 2001 I heard their then-new single "Imitation of Life" on the radio, and found myself really moved by it for reasons I can't quite pin down. I still tear up when I hear it. It also has an excellent video.

Finally, the song that was the catalyst for this list came from the greatest vocal duo in rock music history. Known for their exquisite two-part harmonies, they had a long string of hits before enduring an acrimonious breakup. At this point, if you're thinking of Simon and Garfunkel, deduct 100 internet points, for I am speaking of Phil and Don, the Everly Brothers. My love of the Everlys was fostered by my parents--"All I Have to Do Is Dream" was their song when they started dating in high school, and they would often favor my sister and me with their rendition of that and other Everlys songs on long car trips. As I said, the Brothers had a string of hits in the late '50s and early '60s before fading away, but in the mid-'80s they attempted a comeback with a single penned by Paul McCartney. Now, I give McCartney a hard time at every opportunity, but only because he's a prodigiously gifted songwriter--as a melodist especially--who chooses to waste his talents on kitsch, schmaltz, smarm, and pastiche. (I think that was also the name of Lee Eastman's law firm.) Obviously though, he can write the fuck out of a pop song. His tune for the Everly Brothers, "On the Wings of a Nightingale", is a real thing of beauty, a two-and-a-half-minute pop miracle. And the video, featuring Phil and Don restoring a vintage car, is really sweet. (Note: the video I originally linked to has been removed. The sound quality on this one is not great, but it's all there is.)




2) "Top Five Well-Known Songs By Well-Known Bands Featuring Amazing Vocal Performances By Women Who Got Little If Any Credit And Whose Names You Probably Don't Know." Inspired by my irritation with someone who claimed that Dark Side of the Moon was his favorite album but did not know who sang on "The Great Gig in the Sky". I was forced to school him on how Clare Torry improvised her vocal during a single take. Also on the list: Ellen Foley on Meat Loaf's "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" (her vocal infamously lip-synched by Karla DeVito in the video) and Merry Clayton on the Stones' "Gimme Shelter". (Check out Merry's funked-up solo version of the song here.)

At number one was to be, at least initially, Darlene Love on the Crystals' "He's A Rebel". Now, I love the girl groups of the early '60s, and there were so many great vocalists. I love the impassioned soul shouting of Martha Reeves of Martha & the Vandellas. I love the eternally heartbroken wail of Mary Weiss of the (so awesome) Shangri-Las (there are few more nakedly emotional moments in rock than the beginning of "Leader of the Pack", when, after the hummed/spoken opening, Marge and Mary Ann Ganser ask, "By the way, where'd you meet him?" and Mary bursts in with the first sung line, "I met him at the candy store," making that simple declaration sound like the most profound words in the history of Western civilization. Chills, every time I hear it). And of course I love the throaty throb of Ronnie Spector, sounding like nothing so much as liquid sex poured into the shape of a seven-inch record on tunes like "Be My Baby", which I will forever insist is the greatest pop song ever recorded. But there's something about Darlene Love that makes her, for me, the cream of a very good crop. When I was younger I always used to fall asleep listening to the radio, and I remember once hearing "He's A Rebel" while I was in that twilight state between waking and sleeping, and thinking, "Holy fuck. Listen to her. Every syllable she sings sounds like her entire life depends on it."

So, "He's A Rebel" was going to be number one on this list, but then I thought maybe I'd swap it out for another song that featured Darlene, uncredited, on the lead vocal, Bob B. Soxx & the Blue Jeans' "Not Too Young To Get Married". The singing is just as great, but the song is even more intense--after a slow intro, it kicks right into high gear and doesn't let up until it's over, said intensity making it clear that "not too young to get married" was code for "not too young to do stuff that society deems only OK between married persons". But then I thought that neither that group nor that song were as well known as the Crystals and "He's A Rebel", so that didn't jibe with the theme of the list, and then I could never come up with a fifth entry that was satisfactory anyway, and so I'm giving up. But let's give "Not Too Young To Get Married" a spin anyway, because it fucking rocks.




1) "Top Five Videos". I know, sounds really simple, right? But that's kind of the problem. Trying to do a list as simple and straightforward as my all-time favorite music videos inevitably leads to overthinking and fatal vacillation. Do I include stuff that I love because it's hilarious (hello, "Sabotage") or just stuff that I love "seriously"? Do I include a simple performance video that for me is fraught with meaning and emotion, but for others is probably just a simple performance video?

Plus, I just read a piece--maybe on the A.V. Club?--about how the internet and sites like YouTube are allowing us to reconnect with our fuzzy memories in concrete ways, and how that can take the shine off of things we thought we loved, which, totally. I thought that Men At Work's "Overkill" was one of my faves, due mainly to its evocative entre chien et loup atmosphere, but that was when I hadn't seen it for years. It's still pretty good, but it doesn't seem as magic as it once did.

I'll tell you what, though, I knew for sure what number one would be. Let's have a look, shall we?



Just an amazing synthesis of sound and image, right there. The song is a masterpiece to begin with, the apotheosis of Mazzy Star's somnambulistic take on psychedelic folk and blues, and like much of their music it evokes (for me, at least) a soft kind of heat, and dust filtering through slanted sunlight, and the torpor of late afternoon. The flitting, bleached-out desert images of the video complement it perfectly. Those images, so evocative of the great West and all that it symbolizes in the collective American unconscious, combine with the iconic motifs of train, car, and rolling pavement to resonate through the decades and recall everything from campfire songs and hobo tales to The Grapes of Wrath and Thelma and Louise. Plus, Hope Sandoval looks really hot in that black tank top.

I also love the moody shots of the band playing, all indigo blue and dark shadows, and that one shot of the guitarist sitting and playing on the roof of the car while the train rolls past in the distance is killer. But the shot that stops my breath every time, and that I have to imagine was achieved through pure serendipity, is the two crows sitting on the telephone wire under the moon (at about two minutes and 15 seconds into the video). Something about that image stirs my soul in a way I can't put into words, and don't really want to.

The Greatest Three Seconds of Silence in the Universe

I bought a turntable this weekend! I don't know what it says about my life, but this is easily the most exciting thing I've done in a while.

I've been meaning to buy one for a long time, and now and again I'd stop in at various secondhand electronics stores looking for a good used one, but I could never find one that wasn't outrageously expensive given its condition. Apparently the hipsters are digging vinyl now, which I guess is driving up the cost of "vintage" turntables. I finally figured that function mattered more than form, and decided to just buy a new one. You can now get turntables with USB connectors and audio-editing software for digitizing vinyl records, which I thought was a nifty idea, so I went for one of those.

Now, I haven't actually owned any vinyl in nearly 20 years. You may have heard the sad, sad tale of how my entire collection--well over 300 LPs--was stolen from my apartment when I lived in Camden, NJ in the late '80s, a psychic wound from which I'll never recover. Since vinyl was putatively moribund at the time, I switched to buying cassettes (possibly the worst medium ever concocted for transmitting sound) and eventually, with deep reluctance, CDs. (Over the years I've come to a grudging accord with CDs, but my experience of them will forever be colored by the first one I bought: 10,000 Maniacs' In My Tribe. I remember bemusedly staring at my speakers as I listened to it, trying to figure out what was wrong. It sounded airless and cold, like each band member had been hermetically sealed in plastic during recording. And that possibly the recording had been done on the space station from 2001.) But I've been looking forward to the day when I could start amassing a collection again.

I've read that some bands are now forgoing CDs altogether, and releasing their new material on vinyl along with a code that allows the buyer to download the record in digital form as well. May I say that I am kind of in love with this idea? It's absolutely the best of both worlds, and I plan to buy all my new music in that form if it's available. (May I also take a moment to delight, as others have, in the fact that it appears vinyl records will outlive CDs after all, and the sweet, sweet irony therein?) But for the time being, all I really want to do is haunt every record store in Portland and sort through the bins of used LPs.

In fact, after setting up my new turntable, I immediately made a beeline for Everyday Music, which, along with Music Millennium, is where I generally do most of my shopping. I had $20 in cash on me and I made a deal with myself not to spend more than that, but considering that the average cost of a used vinyl record seems to be about two to six dollars, I figured I could get five or six albums with that. I started flipping through the stacks, and instantly I was flooded with memories of the endless hours I'd spent doing the exact same thing as a teenager. Just the sensation in my hands as I held the upper corners of the records and flipped them forward one after another made me weirdly happy. Real records!

The first thing I came across that I wanted was the Allman Brothers Band's At Fillmore East. Ooooh, how long has it been since I've heard "Stormy Monday"? Gregg Allman can sing the blues like no other white dude, and his brother Duane was one of the few guitarists who could make a ten-minute jam seem too short. Alas, it was new and not used--and "audiophile quality" at that--and would have taken all of the money I had to spend. I was too excited about leaving with an armful of records, so I moved on.

I made it up to "H" before I reached my spending limit, and here's what I walked away with:

-The Association, Greatest Hits. I've recently become interested in baroque pop--in fact I'm listening to Lee Hazlewood & Nancy Sinatra as I write this--and someone recommended the Association as worth checking out. I know their big radio hits--"Cherish", "Never My Love", etc.--but I'm looking forward to digging a bit deeper into their catalog.

The Bangles, All Over the Place. This is one that I used to own. The tale of the Bangles is a sad but all-too-typical tale: this, their first album, was a flop, and after it flopped their record company gave them a makeover (by putting them in garish outfits that were hideous even by 1980s standards, which is really saying something), pushing Susanna Hoffs as the main focus onstage and onscreen, and "polishing" (read: crapping synthesizers all over) their sound. I hate everything the Bangles did post-makeover, but I love this record. It's a great hybrid of garage rock and jangle pop, and would be worth buying even if it only contained their dreamily sublime cover of Katrina and the Waves' "Going Down to Liverpool".

Blondie, Eat to the Beat. Another one from the old collection, and probably my favorite Blondie album. "Dreaming" is such an incredible pop song, and--speaking of dreamily sublime--"Shayla" still kills me every time I hear it. I'm so glad to have this album again.

Ellen Foley, Nightout. Foley was known, if she was known at all, as a musical foil to the likes of Meat Loaf and Ian Hunter rather than for her own work. I've never heard this record but I've always thought she had one of the most amazing voices in rock. More on that in a future post.

Heart, Dreamboat Annie. The Heart that I knew growing up was the '80s Heart, with their gross power ballads and videos that used camera tricks in a vain and sad attempt to hide Ann Wilson's weight. Classic rock radio played their earlier hits from the '70s, of course, but it was impossible to extricate that past from the then-present, and...well, long story short, I never liked Heart. Then one day, several years ago, I was at a vintage clothing store in Berkeley and I heard a beautiful song playing. I asked what it was, and turns out it was the title track to Dreamboat Annie, their 1976 debut. I've had a mental note ever since to pick it up when I got the chance. This was the record I put on when I got home, and I must say it makes a perfect accompaniment to an autumn afternoon in the Northwest.

I never realized how much I missed the ritual of putting on a vinyl record. Pulling the sleeve out of the cover, slipping the record out of the sleeve and balancing it with my thumb on the edge and fingers on the label, slipping it over the spindle....

And then, lifting the needle. Hearing it drop with that deeply satisfying ka-thunk, followed by the greatest three seconds of silence in the universe. The silence in which I wait, electric with anticipation, for my soul to be filled with real music once again.

The Cult of Personal-ity, Movie Edition

When I was growing up in the swamps of Jersey, WABC-TV in New York, a.k.a. Channel 7, provided a huge chunk of my movie education. In the days when TV news consisted of a half hour at dinnertime and a half hour at 11, and the rest of the time we had no fucking idea what was going on, Channel 7 used to have something called the 4:30 Movie. In between The Edge of Night (one of the few 30-minute soap operas) at four and the news at six each weekday, Channel 7 served up a movie, edited to fit into a 90-minute time slot along with plenty of commercials. Typically each week had a theme, like Godzilla week, Elvis week, Beach Party week, or--my personal fave--Planet of the Apes week. For some reason I could not get enough of those damn dirty apes. Anyway, for latchkey kids like my sister and me, a glass of Hawaiian Punch and the 4:30 Movie meant afterschool heaven. (If you remember it as well and are looking for a blast of nostalgia, or if you’re interested in learning more, there’s a site dedicated to it here.) The theme song to the 4:30 Movie was particularly awesome. Check it out…

…and tell me that doesn’t get you TOTALLY FUCKING JAZZED to see a movie.

As I entered my teen years, I became less about movie-watching in the afternoons and more about movie-watching in the wee hours of the morning, particularly on weekends. Fortunately, Channel 7 also had the Late Movie.

The Late Movie seemed to have a fairly small library of films, since the same ones would show up time and again. There were a few that I developed a particular affection for and would watch every time they were on; eventually the rhythm and flow of their scenes became as familiar to me as the songs on a favorite album. I’ve come to think of them as my personal cult movies.

Note that I’m not talking about Cult Movies with a capital C-M, which is to say, movies that are well-known and widely regarded as such. There are certainly a number of films considered capital-C Cult that would appear on my list of favorite movies, like Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Warriors, Dazed and Confused, and Office Space, to give just a few disparate examples. But what makes personal cult movies personal is that while they’re movies that I love, and that I’ve seen so often they have permeated my being such that I still remember and think about them even though I might not have seen them for decades, they’re pretty much wholly unknown to your garden-variety movie-watcher. In other words, while I know that there are others out there who love these films too, I am, among the general populace, and for the intents and purposes of this post, a cult of one.

Whew. Okay, have I explained it to death yet? Anyway, this list was going to be a traditional Top Five, but I’m throwing in a bonus movie, because while I was conflicted about including it, I think everyone deserves to know about it. So here we go:

Top Five Six Personal Cult Movies

#6) Mazes and Monsters. Or, to give it its full title, Rona Jaffe’s Mazes and Monsters. Like we’re supposed to go, “Oh, Rona JAFFE’S Mazes and Monsters. I thought maybe it was Jane Austen’s Mazes and Monsters.” This is the one I debated about including, for two reasons: one, it was a made-for-TV movie. But then I realized that there’s another TV movie on the list that I have no intention of leaving off, so that can’t be a disqualifier. Two, it’s the only movie here that I love ironically, and if there’s one thing I don’t want this blog to be, it’s a dank pile of irony-sodden hipsterism. There’s more than enough of that on the internets as it is. The fact is, though, I do love this oh-so-’80s movie (1982, to be exact), from its hysterical premise--role-playing games are an express highway to psychosis for weak-minded youth!--which, believe it or not, was a serious discussion topic back in the day, to the presciently over-the-top lead performance of Tom Hanks, fresh from Bosom Buddies and essaying his first dramatic role. I swear, check out this scene: you can draw a direct line from this to Philadelphia.

Co-starring with Hanks was the apparently-abducted-by-aliens-in-the-mid-’80s Chris Makepeace, star of Meatballs and My Bodyguard, and also known as the poor man’s Robby Benson. Seriously, whatever happened to that dude? Anyway, what makes M & M such a treat is its deadly earnestness in dealing with a threat that is so clearly ridiculous. I can’t resist giving you another clip--it’s only 30 seconds and it neatly sums up the tenor and tone of the movie.

There's a handful of other clips on YouTube, all of which are highly entertaining, but the entire movie is impossible to come by. I am assuming that Tom Hanks has done his utmost to track down and destroy any copies that might exist.

#5) Almost Summer. When Bruno Kirby died a couple of years ago, his eulogists remembered him for a number of roles: as Billy Crystal’s sidekick in When Harry Met Sally… and City Slickers, as the Rat-Pack-loving limo driver in This Is Spinal Tap, as the young Clemenza in The Godfather Part II. When I heard he had passed, the first thing I thought of was this flick. It was released in 1978, and to give you an idea of the kind of star power that illuminated Hollywood in those days, its main draw was Didi Conn, just off her role as Frenchie in that year’s blockbuster, Grease (which I saw four times in the theater, a record that stands to this day). Kirby plays a high-school politico who, when his hot and brainy ex-girlfriend runs for student body president, decides to take a nebbishy outcast and transform him into a powerhouse opposition candidate. That sounds kind of serious, but it takes place in Southern California, so there’s also bikinis and whatnot. What I like about it is that while it’s essentially a teen comedy, it has some interesting things to say about political maneuvering and how candidacies are constructed. As such, it mines some of the same territory as (the far superior) Election, but it lacks the satirical and farcical elements of that film, and so offers a more straightforward take on the subject. Plus, there’s an awesome domino-toppling scene.

This would be a great flick to watch during the current election season, but it is, of course, unavailable. Well, there’s a guy on YouTube offering a free download if you subscribe to his channel, but since I'm both paranoid and a firm believer in the maxim of “You don’t get something for nothing”, I’m a little concerned that that nothing might turn out to be something--like malware, for instance. Anyway, there is this one clip, but be forewarned that the first four and a half minutes is the opening credits, in which nothing happens.

#4) The Last of Sheila. This one’s actually on DVD! Made in 1973, it boasts a cast of all-stars of the era, including James Coburn, Richard Benjamin, Raquel Welch, Dyan Cannon, and James Mason. Written by the rather odd pairing of Stephen Sondheim and Anthony Perkins, it’s a fiendishly intricate mystery tale set against gorgeous French Riviera locales. Rich guy Coburn’s girlfriend (the Sheila of the title) is killed by a hit-and-run driver after leaving a party; one year later, he invites six friends who were there onto his yacht for a Mediterranean vacation. Turns out he knows that one of them was the driver who struck Sheila, and he’s created a sadistic game that will force the killer into the open. There are twists and turns galore, and the whole thing is smartly written, well-acted, and highly entertaining. It’s especially fun to watch multiple times, as you begin to notice the many clues, both obvious and subtle, strewn throughout the film. I highly recommend renting this for a rainy Sunday afternoon. There don’t seem to be any complete scenes on YouTube, but someone has put together a six-minute “trailer” that gives you the flavor of the film:

#3) A Little Romance. Sorry to get all girly on you guys, but...well, pardon me for a moment while I squee: *Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!*

OK, I feel better now. Anyway, this George Roy Hill-directed confection from 1979 is one of the most beguilingly romantic movies of all time, no less so for concerning the first innocent romance of two thirteen-year-olds. Diane Lane (making her first appearance on-screen, as well as her first-but-not-last appearance on this list) is an American schoolgirl in Paris, with a neglectful actress mom, a love of books, and an off-the-charts IQ. She meets her intellectual equal in French boy Thelonious Bernard, who uses his gifts to handicap racehorses, and they fall in love. They meet up with a never-hammier Laurence Olivier as an elegant old gentilhomme (or so ’twould appear) who fills their heads with tales of romance, including the Venetian legend that a kiss in a gondola under the Bridge of Sighs at sunset will seal their love for eternity. When Lane learns she’s being shipped back to the US, the trio sets out to fulfill the legend before the young lovers are separated.

I can’t even put into words how much I love this film, but I can tell you it was the first movie I ever bought for my personal library. It can be seen in its entirety on YouTube, but trust me, don’t watch it that way--with its spectacular French and Italian locations, it needs to be seen on a bigger screen than your computer monitor. It’s out on DVD and available through Netflix, and is more than worth a rental if you count yourself a lover of romance.

Oh, before I give you the trailer, I have to make note of the performance of Ashby Semple as Lane’s best friend. Apparently this is the only acting job she ever had, and man does she knock it out of the park, in one of the most hilariously genuine portraits of teen awkwardness ever drawn on film.

#2) Cotton Candy. This TV movie from 1978 (apparently a good year for personal cult movies) was the…um, illustrious Ron Howard’s directorial debut. It stars Charles Martin Smith (a truly underrated actor, if you ask me) as a high school loser who forms a band (called Cotton Candy) with a bunch of other outcasts--a nerdy keyboardist, a surfer-dude guitarist, a Chicano bass player, and a *gasp* girl drummer--in order to take on the local blow-dried, tight-panted, satin-jacketed rock stars at the Battle of the Bands. It also stars Ron’s brother Clint, who makes everything he appears in better, as Smith’s best friend and the band’s manager.

Now, that this movie is pure cheese from start to finish is inarguable. However, keep in mind that there are many types of cheese, and this is no cellophane-wrapped, neon-orange “processed cheese food”. No, not at all. This is like a top-of-the-line, well-aged, perfectly balanced, creamy French brie. It is the king of cheesy movies, and all other cheesy movies must bow to it. Cotton Candy may be an awful band, but they’re awful in the same way that Styx or REO Speedwagon is awful, which is to say that they’re not inept, or abrasive, or boring--they just write tepid arena-rock songs (minus the arena) that make you cringe when you hear them, or when, inevitably, you find yourself singing them days later. (I didn’t say they weren’t catchy. And I must admit, the last song they play in the movie, which I think is called “Born Rich”, is actually pretty rockin’.) On the other hand, their nemesis band, Rapid Fire, is just plain awful. But they’ve got the looks, whereas Cotton Candy, not so much.

It’s true that I will like almost any movie that concerns musicians, particularly if it documents processes like forming a band, writing songs, recording, etc. (except Once--man was that an overrated flick). It’s equally true that I’m especially fond of movies from the 1970s, so Cotton Candy already has two points in its favor. But there’s something special about this movie that’s hard to pin down. It might be that it’s just so genuine, proudly wearing its cheesy soft-rock heart on its polyester sleeve. It might be that the actors never take the project less than seriously--Charles Martin Smith gives an almost painfully real performance as the longtime loser who’s finally found something that he loves and is good at, and Clint Howard will kill you worse than corbomite with how hard he's selling it. Or it might be that this is a movie about something that holds deep meaning for me--the redemptive and transformative power of rock ‘n’ roll music. Whatever the reason, despite--and at least partially because of--its cheesiness, Cotton Candy is a movie that I love with all my heart. I’ve got a tattered copy of it on VHS that I finally transferred to DVD, and I still watch it at least once a year, preferably in the wee hours of a Saturday night/Sunday morning, as of old. It’s not available commercially, but you can watch the whole thing on YouTube--not my preferred method of movie-watching, as I mentioned, but if you can stand it, it’s totally worth it. In the meantime, here’s Casey Kasem with a 30-second rundown:

#1) Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains. The movie that inspired this list, it was not a Channel 7 Late Movie selection. Rather, it appeared on Night Flight, a mishmash of music videos, weird shorts, concert films, and the like that ran late at night on the USA Network on Fridays and Saturdays in the 1980s. The way it worked, at least as I remember, was that a four-hour block would be shown twice on Friday, and then the same block would be shown twice on Saturday. This meant that when they showed L&G,tFS--which they did every few months--it would be shown four times in one weekend, and I would watch it all four times. Simply put, this movie changed my life. I went into it a metalhead burnout who thought you had to be touched by God--or perhaps Satan--to play rock music, and came out the other side a radicalized punk who understood that what you said--or even just the fact that you said it at all--was more important than how well you said it. I went into it a hopeless daydreamer and came out determined to make those dreams happen. I went into it with nothing and came out with everything.

If that all sounds a little hyperbolic...well, I was a teenager, so it came naturally. The plot of the film also concerns teenagers, specifically three young women--Corinne Burns (Diane Lane in her second film, following A Little Romance); her cousin Jessica (Laura Dern, also appearing in just her second credited role); and her sister Tracy (Marin Kanter, who sadly seems to have disappeared after this movie)--living dingy lives in a dingy Pennsylvania coal-mining town circa 1980. Trying to stave off the dinginess, they form a punk band called the Stains (and give themselves awesome punk names that sadly are never used after the opening scene: Third-Degree Burns, Dizzy Heights, and Dee Pleted, respectively). When UK punks the Looters come to town as the opening act for washed-up rockers the Metal Corpses, Corinne talks the road manager into putting the Stains on the tour, despite the fact that they’ve only had three rehearsals. The band’s subsequent rise and fall redefine the term “meteoric”.

I had never seen a movie like Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains before--I had never even heard punk rock before--and I was totally electrified. There have been a few moments in my life, mostly music-related, where I swear I have actually felt my DNA being rewritten. The first time I saw the scene in which Corinne watches the Looters play was one of those moments. Even now it makes every fucking hair on my body stand on end. Watch this brilliantly shot and edited sequence, and watch the emotions that play across Lane’s face:

In case you weren’t sure who the band members were, that’s Paul Cook and Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols on drums and guitar, respectively, Paul Simonon of the Clash on bass, and an almost unrecognizably slim Ray Winstone as Billy, the singer. Also featuring reggae artist Barry Ford as the tour manager, Lawnboy, L&G, tFS did not lack for musical credibility.

The film was never given a theatrical release, nor was it released on video. In the decades after its appearances on Night Flight, the only way to see it was on pirated VHS, or at one of its exceedingly rare festival runs. I never managed to catch it, and so, over the years, the memory of it grew great in my mind. I started to wonder whether, if I was someday able to see it again, it would live up to that memory. Would it be as good as I thought it was back then? When I read a few months ago that the film was finally, finally going to be released on DVD, I immediately pre-ordered a copy from Amazon. And seriously, I never get excited enough about stuff to pre-order it, so you know this was a big deal. It was released last week, arrived on my doorstep a few days later, and I watched it late on Saturday night, just like the old days. Was it as good as I remembered? Well, I have to say that it was not.

It was better. While the young punk inside of me still thrills to the music, the story, and the grubby punk aesthetic, the seasoned movie-watcher I’ve now become realizes that this is just a great fucking movie, on so many levels. Acting-wise, Winstone displays a swaggering confidence in what I understand was his first leading role, and Christine Lahti makes the most of her limited screen time with a gritty performance as Corinne’s white-trash aunt. Dern and especially Kanter ground their characters in teenage realism, David Clennon has a memorable turn as the Looters’ agent, and Fee Waybill of the Tubes is nothing short of awesome as the lead singer of the Metal Corpses. (On this viewing I also noticed for the first time a couple of blink-and-you’ll-miss-them appearances by Elizabeth [E.G.] Daily and Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Brent Spiner, hilariously mustachioed.) But it’s Lane’s movie, and she is absolutely riveting in a role that is diametrically opposed to her character in A Little Romance. If you’re a young actor, watch those two movies back to back and consider it a master class.

Equally impressive, though, is the screenplay by Nancy Dowd, which is littered with killer dialogue and insightful moments. It’s remarkable to realize that L&G, tFS precedes riot grrrl and subsequent movements by a decade, since it so clearly prefigures riot grrrl’s raw sound, confrontational politics, and deliberately contradictory aesthetic (see kinderwhore). Don’t watch expecting a screed or manifesto, though; Dowd’s script is much more sophisticated than that. While it lobs satirical grenades at the media (nothing new there, but I swear, it’s almost like a satire of media satires), music industry greed (see previous parenthetical thought), and bloated ’70s rockers (the scenes with Fee Waybill skewer rock-star stereotypes just as effectively as This Is Spinal Tap in like, one-eighth the time), the screenplay takes equal aim at the Looters, with their presumed genuine radicalism, and at Corinne and the Stains themselves. I don’t want to throw a bunch of quotes at you, but consider this exchange between Corinne and Billy after the Stains have leap-frogged the Looters to take over the headlining spot on the tour, and the multiple levels the script is working on:

CORINNE

You’re sooooo jealous. I’m everything you always wanted to be.

BILLY

A cunt?

CORINNE

Exactly.

The infamously jarring tacked-on ending, filmed when the actors were obviously older, still jars, but it’s one of the few missteps in this nearly flawless film. Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains is obviously not for every taste, but now that it’s finally received a long-overdue video release, I feel certain that its cult is destined to grow. If you’re a fan of good acting, satire, swell trash, punk rock music, or all of the above, see it.

The Awesome List: A Top Five

Here is a list of the Top Five Cultural Artifacts I Currently Think Are Awesome. Rather than listing them numerically, I'll be choosing one winner in each of five categories.

TV Show: Mad Men.
Are you watching? If you're not, then stop. Stop not watching right now! With Battlestar Galactica on hiatus, MM is the best-written show on television. The casual misogyny and racism can be off-putting at first, but...well, a quote from Chandler Bing fits here: "OK, but you have to push past that, because it's about to get sooooo good." Seriously, we all know that in the early 1960s it was a white man's world, and MM wants nothing so much as to immerse you in that world, to envelop you in a gin-soaked haze of Lucky Strike smoke and Brylcreem fumes. And as I've watched, I've realized that the struggle of the female characters--strong, intelligent, ambitious women who today would be CEOs and Senators instead of secretaries and trophy wives--to carve a place for themselves in that world is, for me, the most engaging aspect of the show. Mad Men's backdrop is fascinating and its characters are richly rendered. The acting is top-notch, and the production design and art direction are nothing short of sublime. I actually look forward to Sunday nights now.

Music: Duffy.
I'm sort of putting myself out there with this one, because lately Aimee Duffy's songs have started to turn up in the kind of places--cosmetics commercials, chick flick soundtracks--that could lead to her becoming the next KT Tunstall or Natasha Bedingfield, i.e. a ubiquitous, vaguely "girl power" (yech)-identified pop singer whom I want nothing to do with by virtue of her ubiquity and girl-poweriness. But I'll have you know that I jumped on the Duffy bandwagon early, essentially the moment I heard her brutally catchy single "Mercy". After listening to "Mercy" at least two or three times a day, every day, for a week, I plunked down my fifteen bucks for Rockferry, her debut album. (At least, it's her debut album as Duffy. Apparently she made a record before under her full name, but I don't know anything about it, nor do I want to. I suspect it might be on the order of Alanis Morissette's pre-Jagged Little Pill work.) She's been compared to Joss Stone and especially Amy Winehouse (and all three have been compared to Dusty Springfield simply because they're British lady soul singers), but of that trio I think Duffy's the standout. I like Stone okay (really dug her re-working of the White Stripes' "Fell In Love With A Girl"), but something about her seems false, and I really don't care for Winehouse--her vocal affectations grate and her songs strike me as cynical pastiches. On the other hand, Duffy's tunes sound like lost classics: while I was initially disappointed that nothing else on the record has the uptempo intensity of "Mercy", I was quickly won over by soaring, string-drenched soul ballads like "Warwick Avenue" and "Stepping Stone". While I was listening to my mp3 player on random today (something I only recently started doing), the latter song came on after the Shirelles doing the glorious Goffin-King number "Will You Love Me Tomorrow?", and it didn't totally pale in comparison. That's pretty high praise from me.

Foodstuff: Julie's Organic Chocolate Ice Cream Bar Dipped in Dark Chocolate.
One of the things I miss most about smoking pot is eating while stoned. Even if you've never smoked marijuana yourself, you probably know that one of its effects is a perceived intensification of sensations, including taste. Put another way, pot makes food taste better. Since it also increases focus, when you're stoned and you eat something, you are all about eating that thing. I guess it's fortunate that I don't smoke anymore, since I'm sure my metabolism could no longer handle digesting a whole pint of Cherry Garcia or an entire loaf of toasted raisin bread, both of which I have eaten while baked. Anyway, I picked up these ice cream bars one day when I was upset about something and felt like I deserved a treat (they're kind of spendy), and they are insanely good. They are so good that, even though I have not smoked pot in well over a decade, I feel like I'm stoned when I eat them because the chocolate flavor is so intense. Unfortunately for you non-Oregonians, Julie's is a local company and they pride themselves on making ice cream in "small batches", so you probably can't find it anywhere else.

Website: Stuff White People Like.
Instructions:
1) Read.
2) Laugh hysterically.
3) Start to notice how many things actually apply to you.
4) Stop laughing and become concerned that you are too white.
5) Decide you don't care and go back to laughing hysterically.

Advertisement: Those commercials for Progressive starring "Flo".
At first I, like any human with a functioning cerebrum, found these ads annoying. But the more I saw them, the more they grew on me. (Ah, the insidiousness of advertising. Don Draper would be proud.) The fact is, it's all about Flo. There's just something ineffably sexy about the way she says "tricked-out name tag." And underneath all that clown paint, she's pretty cute.

We meme it, man.

Holy crackers, three months since I last posted! Anyway, I'm back, and I brought a meme.

Now that the corporate crappification of Television Without Pity has been fully effected, I've started getting my daily pop culture fix at The Onion A.V. Club. A recent post over there picks up on a meme that's apparently making the rounds: pick a favorite album for every year you've been alive.

As with most lists, making it was more troublesome than I initially thought. Some years offered an embarrassment of riches: for 1977 I could easily have chosen Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols (which I did not, despite the post title), Elvis Costello's My Aim Is True, or Bob Marley's Exodus. Had I been doing a Top Ten for each year I might also have thrown in Steely Dan's Aja and Thin Lizzy's Jailbreak. But I decided to show some self-discipline and limit myself to just one. (And honestly, '77 was pretty much a lock from the get-go: The Clash is one of a handful of records that I can say, without hyperbole, changed my life.)

Other years proved difficult for the opposite reason: there seemed to be few, or no, albums that I really deemed worthy of inclusion on the list. Take 2001: I like Pink and all, but is she an artist of the same magnitude as most of the others here? No. Nonetheless, I wanted my list to be complete.

I also wondered whether to pick artists and albums that I loved back then, during their own eras, or stuff that I appreciate now, with my (somewhat) more refined palate. I decided that both outlooks should play a part: for 1981 I originally had Stevie Nicks's Bella Donna, which I (and many others) played incessantly at the time, but which I can't really see myself listening to now (although I will crank up the radio if "Edge of Seventeen" comes on). I swapped it out for the Go-Go's Beauty and the Beat, which I still spin now and again. Indeed, everything that made the final version of my list is either in my current collection and still listened to, or is something that I had at one point (probably on vinyl) and mean to replace when I can.

So anyway, here's the list:

1965 Rubber Soul, The Beatles

1966 Revolver, The Beatles

1967 The Doors, The Doors

1968 Electric Ladyland, The Jimi Hendrix Experience

1969 Led Zeppelin II, Led Zeppelin

1970 Plastic Ono Band, John Lennon

1971 Sticky Fingers, The Rolling Stones

1972 The Harder They Come, Jimmy Cliff et al. (movie soundtrack)

1973 Dark Side Of The Moon, Pink Floyd

1974 I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight, Richard and Linda Thompson

1975 Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen

1976 Night Moves, Bob Seger

1977 The Clash, The Clash

1978 Parallel Lines, Blondie

1979 The Wall, Pink Floyd

1980 London Calling, The Clash

1981 Beauty and the Beat, The Go-Go’s

1982 Chronic Town, R.E.M.

1983 War, U2

1984 Let It Be, The Replacements

1985 The Wishing Chair, 10,000 Maniacs

1986 Licensed to Ill, Beastie Boys

1987 Appetite for Destruction, Guns N’ Roses

1988 It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, Public Enemy

1989 Maria McKee, Maria McKee

1990 Facelift, Alice in Chains

1991 Nevermind, Nirvana

1992 Hey Babe, Juliana Hatfield

1993 Exile in Guyville, Liz Phair

1994 Live Through This, Hole

1995 University, Throwing Muses

1996 Sheryl Crow, Sheryl Crow

1997 Jet, Katell Keineg

1998 Got No Shadow, Mary Lou Lord

1999 Fly, Dixie Chicks

2000 Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea, PJ Harvey

2001 M!ssundaztood, Pink

2002 Jennie Bomb, Sahara Hotnights

2003 Streetcore, Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros

2004 Gold Medal, The Donnas

2005 Back to Me, Kathleen Edwards

2006 Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, Neko Case

2007 Magic, Bruce Springsteen

2008 Rockferry, Duffy

"I've just received this meme-o!"

Sigh.

I don't know about this meme thing. But Amy's been doing it a lot lately, and it's pretty fun to read, I guess.

I don't really know about this blog thing, either. I'd pretty much decided to abandon it, given that my readership, which at its height was maybe five or six people, would seem to be down to just Amy and Kirk. Of course, if I had to pick only two people to read my blog, in all honesty it would probably be you two.

So, off we go, then.

Steps:

1) Go to this site and you can find out what song was #1 (according to Billboard Magazine) on the US Charts on any particular week in history.

2) Look up your birthday.

3) List the #1 songs that have occurred on your birthday throughout the years you've been alive.

4) Cringe at how bad music was, and how bad it is now!


Thing:

1965 - "This Diamond Ring" by Gary Lewis & the Playboys. (I know the refrain--"This diamond ring doesn't shine for me anymore"-- and that's about it.)
1966 - "Lightnin' Strikes" by Lou Christie. (Same deal, refrain only, but hey! I always thought this was Frankie Valli. Kind of silly, it's not like he's the only dude who sang in an annoying falsetto.)
1967 - "Kind of a Drag" by the Buckinghams. (Three in a row where I can sing one line.)
1968 - "Love Is Blue" by Paul Mauriat. (Oh. My. GOD. I didn't know this was number one on my b-day! You have no idea how much I LOVED this song as a child. LOVED. My mom had the album whence it came, the cover of which has stayed with me almost as much as the song. But yeah, I used to play this over and over, and just cry and cry and cry because it was so beautiful and sad. Listening to it now, the loungey '60s vibe of the arrangement almost threatens to overwhelm the melody, but...it really is one of the loveliest melodies ever put down. And that opening arpeggiated E-minor on the acoustic guitar, that later gets picked up by the harpsichord, just kills me. As I mentioned to Amy once, I'm a sucker for arpeggiated minor chords. Oh, and then it modulates on the bridge by switching from E-minor to E-major! That's one of my favorite things!)
1969 - "Everyday People" by Sly & the Family Stone (Damn, y'all. Not only do I have nothing cringe-worthy so far, I've got actual great songs.)

1970 - "Thank You (Falettin Me Be Mice Elf Agin)/Everybody Is a Star" by Sly & the Family Stone (Damn.)
1971 - "One Bad Apple" by the Osmonds. (I could've sworn I posted something once about the ongoing battle I had with a childhood friend over who was better, the Osmond Brothers or the Jackson 5, but I can't find it. I mentioned the day-glo poster of the Jacksons I had over my bed, and that Tito was my fave.... Oh well. I was right, is all that matters.)
1972 - "Without You" by Nilsson. (Lovely song since ruined by one too many diva-esque performances.)
1973 - "Killing Me Softly With His Song" by Roberta Flack. (Also lovely; survived an encounter with Lauryn Hill and cronies.)
1974 - "The Way We Were" by Barbra Streisand. (Ouch. First real cringe there. When I think of this song now, I think of Tom Hanks singing it to Mercedes Ruehl in Big: "Scattered PIC...cherrrrs...."
1975 - "Pick Up The Pieces" by the Average White Band. (Don't know it. Kinda surprised. These were peak Top 40-listening years for me.)
1976 - "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover" by Paul Simon. (Awesome song. Simon's laid-back vocal style has always bugged a bit, but he's definitely one of my most-admired songwriters.)
1977 - "Blinded By The Light" by Manfred Mann's Earth Band. (Yay! A Springsteen-penned tune! And the only song of his ever to hit number one, even if this version was aptly described by Dave Marsh as "mangled", and even if it inexplicably-but-memorably trades "cut loose like a deuce" for "wrapped up like a douche".)
1978 - "Stayin' Alive" by the Bee Gees. (Cringe. I love pre-disco Bee Gees, though.)
1979 - "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy" by Rod Stewart. (Cringe. Also, no.)

1980 - "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" by Queen. (I'm getting tired of typing now. Good song.)
1981 - "9 to 5" by Dolly Parton.
1982 - "Centerfold" by J. Geils Band. (Played to death in the early days of MTV.)
1983 - "Baby, Come to Me" by Patti Austin & James Ingram.
1984 - "Jump" by Van Halen. (Least favorite VH song.)
1985 - "Careless Whisper" by Wham! (CRINGE.)
1986 - "How Will I Know" by Whitney Houston. (I actually liked this song a lot when it came out.)
1987 - "Livin' on a Prayer" by Bon Jovi. (Had a Springsteen song, guess I had to have a Bon Jovi song. For the record: not a fan.)
1988 - "Seasons Change" by Exposé. (I liked Exposé, but this was a ballad rather than a dance tune, and I wasn't crazy about it.)
1989 - "Straight Up" by Paula Abdul. (OK, things are getting rough now. I'm stopping here. There's nothing good in the '90s anyway, and I seriously don't recognize anything from the '00s, and I swear, every single one of them is by [crappy R&B diva] featuring [crappy hip-hop guy]. I have no patience for this "featuring" business. Pretty much every song ever recorded features someone whose name isn't on the label. Just quit it.

No one out here seems to know how to pronounce "Schuyler". What's up with that?

When actors from a TV show I really love appear in other projects, I'm always compelled to watch, for better or worse. Thanks to my abiding love for (the late, lamented) Gilmore Girls, not to mention my enduring crush on her, I've suffered through some pretty terrible movies for the sake of the beautiful and talented Lauren Graham. On the other hand, Scott Patterson's new sitcom on the CW, Aliens in America, has turned out to be surprisingly engaging, even a bit subversive, if not in the same league as the other comedies on my current Awesome List (to wit: The Office, which breaks my heart as frequently as it cracks me up; 30 Rock, whose wicked smart and incredibly dense episodes more than fill the void left by Arrested Development; and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, which is just fucking funny, though its season is now sadly over).

I've always found Alexis Bledel, the youngest Gilmore Girl, to be rather modestly talented, and her roles outside the show have betrayed a lack of onscreen charisma; nonetheless, it was because of her presence that I recently watched a movie called I'm Reed Fish. It's a pretty standard indie quirkfest that also stars Jay Baruchel (of Judd Apatow's short-lived TV series Undeclared, the follow-up to his equally short-lived Freaks and Geeks, which in case you didn't know is one of the best shows ever). Baruchel, with his skinny limbs, sunken chest, pasty skin, and hipster doofus hairdo, looks like he might have been hired as a low-rent Zach Braff, but is actually a lot more likeable and a lot less douchey than the Braffster. I went into the watching experience with zero expectations, which may be why I actually found the movie kind of charming, though I'm not saying you should watch it. You could get pretty much the same experience by putting Garden State and Napoleon Dynamite in a blender, plus there's a "twist" that the screenwriter clearly thought would lift his film above the indie pack, but which merely deflates its emotional tension.

Baruchel was good as the titular character and Bledel was a dud as his fiancée, but the standout performance belonged to Schuyler Fisk as his erstwhile sweetheart, newly returned from Texas to their quirky Northern California town. The only thing I'd ever seen Fisk in was The Baby-Sitters Club (shut up), which she made as a pre-teen, so this was my first time seeing her as an adult, and she was kind of the anti-Bledel, lighting up the screen with some serious presence. Baruchels' character was supposed to be torn between his two loves, but to the viewer it didn't seem to be much of a contest, unfortunately. I'll definitely keep an eye out for Fisk in future roles.

Anyway, what I really wanted to bring your attention to, gentle (and patient) reader, is not Schuyler Fisk's acting, but her singing. I was sort of peripherally aware that she'd been putting a music career together, in a "that girl from The Baby-Sitters Club movie plays music now? That's kind of weird. Is she doing the acoustic-y singer-songwriter thing? I can't imagine that's going to be any good" way. I have a low tolerance for acoustic-y singer-songwriters as it is, with their solemnity and their introspection and their mellowtude and their acoustic-yness. An acoustic-y singer-songwriter needs to be pretty awesome to catch my ear. So I was quite surprised to be watching an indie movie with zero expectations about anything and to have Schuyler Fisk sing a song in that movie and turn out to be pretty awesome.

Like I said, I'm not recommending you rent the movie, but I am recommending you watch the scene with Schuyler singing on YouTube: http://youtube.com/watch?v=YhpuI8-Ew7g. I've watched it a bunch of times and I cry every time, not because it's a sad song but because it's a really good song, and because her voice is really lovely and pure like a church bell ringing across a wildflower meadow on a May morning, and because she smiles so sweetly when she sings. I'm a little bit in love right now.

BLOG!

About as often as I post something here, I post something music-related at the Wolfman Fairies MySpace page. Since I remain, for some reason, unwilling to give up the pretense of maintaining this blog, I figured I'd cross-post my latest entry.

The Donnas were in town the other night, at the Hawthorne Theater. Just a couple of years ago I counted the Donnas as one of my very favorite bands, and while I still think they're great, both the show and the new songs were a bit of a disappointment.

One of the things I admire about the Donnas is how much they've evolved from their rather humble beginnings. While the "What if the Ramones were chicks?" shtick of their early records was undeniably fun, it was not terribly distinguished, and their jailbait image and the overhanging Svengali shadow of their Kim-Fowley-wannabe producer Darin Rafaelli were kind of icky. But, refusing to allow others to define them, they kicked Rafaelli to the curb after two albums and moved away from bubblegum punk and toward the hard rock and glam metal that were their first and truest loves. Along the way their playing grew by leaps and bounds, and by the release of their fifth album, and major-label debut, Spend the Night, any thoughts of "Teenyboppers with guitars—how cute!" were supplanted by "Shit, these women fucking rock!"

In particular, Spend the Night showcased the playing of drummer Torry Castellano, whose thunderous beats belied her tiny size, and guitarist Alison Robertson, who, to put it matter-of-factly, had killer riffs coming out of her ass, sounding like a cocktail of Angus Young and Ace Frehley with a twist of Southern boogie metal. The songs on Spend the Night were uniformly great: pounding, hooky hard-rock party anthems with nary a ballad in sight. Ultimately, StN was the apotheosis of the Donnas' style, a record on which they inhabited the cock-rock universe as no women had done before, on their own terms and without any actual cocks involved.

This, of course, led to the question of what they'd do next. While not a huge stylistic leap forward, the follow-up album, Gold Medal, nonetheless continued the Donnas' evolution. Robertson traded in her signature Les Paul for an SG, giving the band a leaner and meaner sound. Bassist Maya Ford contributed notably more complex lines, and singer Brett Anderson, whose limited range had always been the band's major weakness, displayed enough control of tone to indicate that she was working to stretch her boundaries as a vocalist. And even if the group was as yet unwilling to abandon their lyrical preoccupations with put-downs and partying, their songwriting as a whole grew more mature, retaining the hooky riffs and melodies while showing greater versatility in style and mood. (On the almost Beatlesque title track, acoustic guitars make their first appearance on a Donnas record.) On the whole, Gold Medal was an even stronger album than Spend the Night, and I personally had high hopes for its follow-up, expecting the Donnas to evolve even further.

Unfortunately, the new record, Bitchin', while by no means bad, is a retreat to the safety of their established style. The songs are similar to but less distinguished than those on the last two records. They've slowed their tempos down, which contributes to the overall feeling that they're getting tired. Granted, "tired" is not a word I could accurately apply to their show last Friday. These women are very good at what they do, and their performance was spot-on. Anderson is a charismatic frontwoman. Robertson was a writhing mass of sweat and hair as she effortlessly tossed off riffs. And no drummer in rock is more fun to watch than Castellano, as she tosses her befeathered blonde mane from side to side and shouts the song's lyrics to the heavens while furiously beating her kit. (When the band appeared on TRL a few years back, some hip-hop artist who was there—can't remember which one—remarked, "That drummer puts her back into it, man", which: word.) But something about the whole thing seemed…perfunctory. I'm thankful that irony has never been a weapon in the Donnas' arsenal, but it's hard not to wince when Anderson shouts out, in all seriousness, hoary rock-singer clichés like, "How's everybody doin' tonight?" and "Are you ready to rock, Portland?" For all the sweat and excitement in the air at the Hawthorne, I felt like I caught a whiff of staleness as well.

The Donnas have worked hard to become as good as the '70s and '80s artists they admire, and they've succeeded. The question now is, can they continue to grow beyond that? Can they become something greater than that which they sought to emulate? Or will they settle for complacency and a slow descent into irrelevance? It occurred to me that, in a little over a year, the Donnas, all of whom were born in 1979, will begin turning 30. If they continue with their typical pattern, they should be working up a new record around then. Will facing down the barrel of that particular gun move them to consider their legacy? I, for one, will be waiting. And listening.

The Pros and Cons of MP3ing

My commute to work is not terribly long: it’s a 10-minute walk from my house to the MAX station, a 10-minute ride on MAX, and then another 10-minute walk to work. Add in a few minutes’ waiting time for the train, and it takes me about 35 minutes all told to get to work. So, not terribly long. Still, it’s nice to be able to listen to music on the way, especially if the weather’s really crappy and I decide to take the bus instead, which means less walking but usually more waiting, since the buses always seem to be running late.

I have a portable CD player, but it has a tendency—a very, very strong tendency—to skip a lot, especially if I do anything that involves any sort of motion. So last Christmas, I asked for and received an MP3 player. Notice I said “MP3 player” and not “iPod”. I specifically did not want an iPod, not only because they, like Macs, cost significantly more than anybody else’s products, but because those annoying commercials for Mac make me never want to buy anything from Apple. They also make me want to punch that goddamned scruffy-faced hipster pitchman in the nuts. But I digress.

Because of the whole skipping issue with the CD player, I went for a flash-based player rather than a disk-based one, which means no skipping but also a lot less space. My Sansa e260 only has 4 megabytes of memory, but since I have no intention of being one of those people who store their entire music libraries on their players, that’s fine. The Sansa is also black, and has black wires and earbuds (gross word), so when I see everybody—frakking everybody—else with their white iPods, I get to feel like less of a sheep.

For some reason it took me a while to get around to loading it up, but it’s about half full now. My original intention was to fill half of it with music I already owned, and the other half with downloaded stuff. I’m still feeling uneasy about the whole downloading thing, though. I mean, I clung to buying LPs well after their demise became a fait accompli, and moved to CDs only reluctantly. I still miss the more substantial…thingness of the LP. And downloaded albums have no thingness at all. I did, however, recently download my first album, so I could see how I felt about it. And then I immediately burned it to CD. (By the way, it was Lady Sovereign’s Public Warning. Highly recommended.)

The wonder of the MP3 player is, of course, its size. Mine slips easily into my pocket. And when you slip those earbuds in, you barely notice they’re there. The other day after work I went downtown to do some browsing at Powell’s (and may I just say that having the largest independent bookstore in the world at my disposal has to be one of the top five things about living in Portland). It had been sunny most of the day, but towards the late afternoon clouds rolled in from the west, and as my train crawled over the Steel Bridge, a light rain started to fall. My player was kicking Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea. When I got off the train I flipped my hood up, and it was weird…all of a sudden, I felt like PJ Harvey was inside my head. Walking down the rain-slicked streets of downtown Portland, I felt like I was in a movie, with “The Whores Hustle and the Hustlers Whore” as my soundtrack. And then, as I waiting to cross Burnside Street, who should walk right by me but Gus Van Sant. It was, like, this perfect Portland moment.

If there’s a downside to portable music, it’s that I tend to get very…involved with my music. It leads me to forget sometimes that I am, in fact, in public, where air drumming is more likely to be identified as mental illness. It can occasionally even be dangerous, like yesterday when I was walking home: I was listening to Sahara Hotnights, and I always get very hepped up at the end of “Only The Fakes Survive”, with its repeated chorus with the gang vocal. I love a good gang vocal, especially a girl gang one. “Aren’t you getting sick of being so polite?” ask the ladies. Yes, goddamit, I think, I AM getting sick of being so polite! And in my rocking-out, sick-of-being-so-polite state, I very nearly walked into an SUV that was backing out of a driveway. I guess I’ll have to learn to pay a bit more attention.