Sunday 12.27.2009 | 5:23 AM EST
I had the priviledge of traveling with The National on their summer 2009 tour supporting some band called R.E.M. I guess they were pretty good, but the National lads brought it with typical grace and vengeance.
//More
Sunday 12.27.2009 | 4:23 AM EST
We all know and love Sir Knight Berman’s prolific charm as a pop craftsman. Ok maybe not all of you, so pay attention…
If Calvin & Hobbes hosted a tea party for Truman Capote, J.D. Salinger, Richard Brautigan, Willy Wonka, Stephin Merritt, The Jazz Butcher and Sir Lawrence of Felt, they’d likely sip just enough of the magic tea to come up with marble’s own brand of be-bop-a-loo-pop.
Each month, Berman gifts the internet with tuneful tales of whimsy populated by cats and girls, Batman and rain, chocolate and nicotine and the pain of being pure at heart. Twelve months later, the MT’s inner circle receives a limited edition compilation of those tracks….something we lovingly package as a Marble Sleeve Cover.
It works like this: The BrothersQuote (a moniker bestowed upon us 20 years ago by a dangerously cute fille we both courted, unsuccessfully) sit in the Garçonerie, smoke and talk pop, snicker, giggle and scheme to come up with the next Greatest Idea for an Album Sleeve Ever. Taking a cue from Bowie’s croon for Zimmerman’s sand and glue, we shoot in Brooklyn in 2001 and on the New Jersey Shore in 2005 to produce the gleeful silliness of A Case of the Tea and Jersey Shoreline.
Next year, Berman will don a jet-black punk-rock wig and loosen his tie for maunet’s shot at Patti Smith, Horses. In the meantime, pay Mr. Berman a visit at marbletea.com
–
© maunet.com
Wednesday 12.23.2009 | 4:23 AM EST
Everybody’s got ‘em, present company obviously included. Lists and lists of the best of this and that to help mark the passing of another 10 crazy years. But the Ought’s ancestors called, and they want their jaggy guitars, compressed drum tracks, cheesy keyboard sounds and whispery vocals back.
So, here’s to those records without whom our latest crop of honorable pirates and thieves would have starved on the streets. And make no mistake, this is no slight. The bad only borrow. Only the good steal.
Listen up:
I love the new site! And this is a great mix! Have you seen the BBC Doc “Synth Britannia”? I think you’d dig it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeVRYPjcVXg
Monday 12.21.2009 | 4:23 AM EST
This is not Pitchfork. (Ok, obviously not, but stay with me). It’s a grand organization, to be sure. Those talented young boys from Chicago have given me much to love, laugh and barf about. Their opinionated slant, overwrought prose and sharp fashion sense serve as inspiration and anathema to the spirit of this little forum.
That said, any arbiter of all that is Pitchfork-y will be quick to jump on some of the more obvious choices made here. Take it easy. I got a lot of weird records, man. But like old Robyn Hitchcock says, “if you can’t dig cliches, you can’t dig rock and roll.”
So, with that spirit in mind, this list does not give representation to a large swath of the really really cool kids of the decade. Fuckin’ a, there’s like a brazillion coolie bands out there. And while my record collection contains entries for at least a gazillion of them, I’m sticking with just the ones that spent the longest time spinning my disks between Jan 1 2000 and Dec 31 2009. The big guns are such for a reason…
//More
Sunday 12.20.2009 | 4:23 AM EST
Ok, so this is not a list of the best books published in the past decade… simply those I happened to read and enjoy most between 2000-2009.
Not too many big surprises here for many of you, but a few are buried or ignored little gems. Some already have their own posts here, others will follow suit.
Now, to the list:
//More
Saturday 12.19.2009 | 4:23 AM EST
I can’t pretend that this is some erudite, New Yorker-style list of the decade’s very best films. Far from it. This is simply a list of the movies I most enjoyed this past decade. Some truly are great films. Some are guilty pleasures that I found myself watching and re-watching despite, or perhaps due to, their decidedly light yet charming stories.
You’ll note there are only a couple of foreign films included here (why are foreign films so…foreign?). And, surprising even to me, most are not independent films. This year’s list has more than its share of big-budget Hollywood films driven by major stars. It seems La-La Land’s shlock-infested green-light district finally granted residency to truly artful films possessed of integrity and soul (even as the Academy continues to reward culturally pandering, heart-string yanker-wankers–ahem, Slumdog–over darker, more complex material). More accurately, this list reflects the fact I’m getting old, lazy and soft. I’ve clearly lost my edge. Sigh.
Countering that sentiment (and nepotism aside), I’ve included two award-winning documentaries made by personal friends. I am most awed by directors Marshall Curry (Racing Dreams) and Benjamin Niles (Note By Note) for their will, passion, perseverance, courage, taste and talent. Their positions on this list were hard-fought and well-deserved. If you love independent film, you won’t find two better examples than these. Run, don’t walk, to see them.
And the winners are…
//More
Saturday 12.19.2009 | 4:23 AM EST
At 83 years of age, the infallible Sidney Lumet wielded the newest HD technology to make 2007’s Before the Devil Knows Your Dead, a disturbing hell-ride that keeps furious pace next to other dark classics, Happiness, The Grifters and Requiem for a Dream.
A sort of Cane and Abel story, this boiler room drama mines signature Lumet territory: conflicted characters caught in relentlessly escalating circumstances. Long Days Journey Into Night, Network, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, Strip Search…all these films follow protagonists through paths that inevitably lead to regrettable ends. In Lumet’s most recent effort, The Devil’s only salve is administered in the first 5 minutes, as the camera exposes Marisa Tomei in a disarmingly compromised, um, position. It kinda knocks the wind out of you. Age has most definitely been kind to Ms Tomei. So very, very kind…
Sorry, let me get a grip here, catch my breath…
Point being that Mr. Lumet has made quite a few fine fucking films (excuse the pun). It started with a bang in 1957. Yet, the only physical violence in 12 Angry Men occurs before the story begins. It stands passively off-stage, letting it’s characters’ urban frustrations burst their well-tailored seams in a court room drama that pits race, class, age, volatile temperaments and stiff moral resolve fiercely against one another.
Maybe what we need is a little yelling here…
On a hot summer day in New York, this jury of twelve angry men are penned-in, pent-up and put out, ready to decide a man’s fate in time to get home for dinner. Until–cue cinema voiceover–One Man Stands Alone in the pursuit of justice.
Henry Fonda plays a sort of inverted Fountainhead hero as an architect Standing Alone against bigotry, peer pressure, disinterest and ignorance. Brave juryman Davis turns the egotist Howard Roark on his handsome, manly head and shakes out a humble servant of the people. With calm reserve and modest intelligence, mild-mannered Davis serenely chips away at the bias and prejudices of his peers in an effort to save a disadvantaged urban youth from the electric chair. Wow. Sounds totally, like, serious. Well, it is– and well it should be.
But cut to the chase. Our hero’s liberal rhetoric and steely resolve does indeed Save the Day. Sorry, it’s not a spoiler when a film is over 50 years old. But the ending is not the true payoff here. Taut script and riveting ensemble performances aside, 12 Angry Men proves the one point that often-maligned, right-winged Ayn Rand got right: thoughtfulness, reason and unflappable integrity are in fact marks of a man worthy of your attention and demanding of your respect.
Just don’t make him angry. You won’t like him when he’s angry.
–
We now present to you the unfortunate practice of making
laughable trailers for seriously good films …
Friday 12.18.2009 | 6:23 AM EST
In between London and Berlin, while on The National Brokeback Mountain Tour. Lovely town. Certain gens were real dicks to us though, despite our sincere, if not broken, attempts to speak the language. It was the Bush years, I guess we’ll for give them.
Friday 12.18.2009 | 4:23 AM EST
Among Kyoto and Tokyo lies Berlin as a favorite in my travels to date. Paris can suck it.
Speaking German is easy. Just add Strasse to the end of every English sentence
and you can pretty much get by…
Friday 12.18.2009 | 4:23 AM EST
After only seeing it on U2’s 1982 video for Sunday Bloody Sunday, I finally got to witness this amazing venue first hand. Did not disappoint.
Thursday 12.17.2009 | 4:23 AM EST
In 2006 my wife and I bought our first house. Not in Brooklyn, mind you, but in the far-off lands of upstate New York in the town of Ithaca. Why the hell for would we want to live in the “most progressive city in the country,” (bullshit), a town where it’s cold as fuck from October thru April, the sun never shines, the offical car is the Subaru Outback and the town is entirely populated by insulated Ivy League kids and aging hippies. Not to mention the worst fucking drivers, worse than the South.
Why indeed? My brainy wife Yula was accepted to Cornell for a well-funded PhD program in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology . She was thrilled, I was less so. I mean, no way in hell I’m moving up there. I mean, my business is here in Brooklyn, right? But who am I to keep the love of my life from self-actualizing? No way. So we ended up with our city home and our country home. How upscale. Who’da thought.
So we buy this awesome house: four bedrooms, tons of light, half-acre of land, large porch with a stunning view of the valley…. plus an apple tree, frequent visits from a family of deer and a fat-ass groundhog we’ve come to call Fatty McFatty. Pretty fucking sweet.
But there’s a catch. This lovely house on the hill is accessed by a driveway with a 45-degree pitch. Try gettin’ up that in a foot of snow, Outback or no… Well, this minor to major annoyance poses a second problem of which you will soon learn, for this is where the real story begins…
//More
Wednesday 12.02.2009 | 4:23 AM EST
Sharing a numerical moniker with c23, Mick 23 iterates one simple graphic element into a remarkable variety of visual/verbal haikus. Oh, and they’re funny. Funny’ll get you every time…
Tuesday 12.01.2009 | 4:23 AM EST
“Y’all take a listen, you’ll hear a Deep Sound comin’ down from Bobby Peru.”
An unforgettable bit of obliquely vulgar dialogue by Willem Dafoe in Wild at Heart.
What cinephile among us doesn’t conjure these words every time he micturates in a public facility? We know Dean Wareham does…
Watch the clip here. But Caution!
Not for the Meek at Heart. Seriously. Don’t play this clip within earshot of mothers, children, bosses or members of polite society.
Monday 11.30.2009 | 4:23 AM EST
I know i’m probably stating the obvious here, but let me just remind us all:
Jethro Tull sucks ass.
Standing in line at Five Guys Burgers last week, Ian Anderson’s pretentious little flute flurried and pranced out of the speakers like a renaissance fairy. I almost had to leave before my order was up. Thankfully, Deep Purple came on next, raining rawk bombs on Jethro’s baroque parade and I was left to wait in peace as my tasty burger sizzled to perfection.
Now, I’m not a total philistine–I don’t subscribe to the notion that classical arrangements and motifs don’t have a place in the Pantheon of Rock (witness the current crop of exquisite baroque pop from The National, Arcade Fire, Belle Orchestre, Belle & Sebastian).
But I draw the line at the flute…
//More
Sunday 11.29.2009 | 4:23 AM EST
The National's 2001 Debut
I don’t have to remind you of my deep and abiding love for The National. Don’t argue, they’re the band of the decade. Finding their purchase with Alligator, Boxer was a mature, mesmerizing monster of a record. But when’s the last time you listened to their recording debut? It truly was a harbinger of great things to come from the Brooklyn lads. (All you real music critics out there, for god’s sake stop calling them Ohio transplants. Let a man escape his past, already.)
Few minutes ago my portable music playing device served up “Son” during a walk through Prospect Heights. For a long stretch, this song held the pole position on early National set lists. Boxer’s lush arrangements and literate understatement aside, this track runs a close race to make the Top Ten National Songs of All Time list. (There is no such list to date, but there will be. There will be.) Matt’s boozy tenor was never more resonant. The roomy production gives the song room to breathe (an asset only temporarily lost on their sophomore record). But I digress. Here’s where the real bias comes in:
It’s the drum part, stupid. Multi-tracked syncopated toms lift the song from Lapsed Catholic Ballad to Primal Paean. Shit. I think I sounded like Patrick Bateman reviewing Sussudio just then. Sorry. Can I distract you with the sweet cover photo of dashing drummer Bryan wiffle-balling in the pool? No? Then I better go now. I have to return some video tapes.
© maunet.com
Saturday 11.28.2009 | 4:23 AM EST
Plastic La-La-Land, urban sprawl galore. Scorching desert land, prickly trees are old as sin. Crispy skin and classic cars and rock n’roll. Delicious drink, that burgundy and coke. Go figure…
Friday 11.27.2009 | 4:23 AM EST
Every time I walked past American Psycho in a book store, I was mesmerized by the cover: a vaguely victorian photograph of a sinister, steely-eyed yuppie. I knew it was a grisly book about a psycho serial killer. I didn’t read these kinds of books.
Now, I don’t mind movie violence. It doesn’t get inside me and linger. (One notable exception includes Larry Clark’s Kids). But reading mainlines a subject right to the brain, and that particular drug wasn’t my bag, baby. So I saw the movie instead.
Director Mary Harron’s take on Patrick Bateman’s mad shenanigans is pretty gruesome, but it relies more on the suggestion of violence than on graphic torture-porn. She made a wise decision by focusing on the book’s biting satire and black humor that pervades even it’s most horrifying passages. The art direction for the 80’s period piece is pitch perfect, and Christian Bale’s deliberately affected performance is spooky and hilarious. The fact that my girlfriend Chloe Sevigny is in it don’t hurt none either. (Ok, you know she’s not my girlfriend right? I mean in my mind.)
//More
Thursday 11.26.2009 | 4:23 AM EST
Couple of days ago, after weeks of listening to nothing but Post Punk records by Gang of Four and Adam Ant, I found myself in a singer/songwriter state of mind. But not for any of that precious Bon Iver/Jose Gonzalez stuff…. yes, They Are Great. Yes, this decade’s crop of SSWs is quite lush. But I’ve been craving something that doesn’t have the word Hip stitched on it’s sleeve; I’m craving a singer that doesn’t deliver his lines in a wispy-willow whisper (or a wimpy James Taylor whine) that says “I’m sensitive and sad but it’s ok cause soon I’ll be almost famous in Brooklyn.”
I was looking for something that my dad would have listened to when he was wearing hip on his sleeve, wherever Brooklyn was in those days.
//More
Wednesday 11.25.2009 | 4:23 AM EST
I had the priviledge of traveling with The National on their summer 2009 tour supporting R.E.M. Shooting with the “pro-sumer” Nikon D80, I braved the press trench, touched with a bit of penis envy alongside the “real” press, with their 14” fixed 1.8 lenses, multiple cameras hugging their paunchy bellies. Nevertheless, I managed to get some good live shots with a 2.8 300mm zoom.
Now, you would think a southern boy like me, having spent a good part of the early 90’s in Athens, GA, would have attended quite a few REM shows – not so. They are one of a few must-see bands I’ve managed, for one reason or another, to miss altogether (The Pixies, The Police, The Smiths). The last opportunity I had to see REM was on the Document tour at the historic Fox Theater in Atlanta. Alas, I gave up the tix to my then-girlfriend after an unanticipated break-up. So much for taking the high road…
Despite the missing live action experience, REM records were, for many of us, one of the sountracks to our late teens and early 20’s. But let’s face it – every band must run it’s creative course–after Monster, I got off the train before the band reached it’s next station.
So… the notion of seeing REM 10 years after their prime at first did not thrill me near as much as the fact that old friends were opening for one of the biggest bands of our time. Let’s face it: reunion tours, whatever the band, tend to be a most cringe-inducing event–they reak of desperation and crass commercial motives. (The only reunion tour worth its salt was Fleetwood Mac in the late 90’s when they fucking brought it with a vengeance.)
Boy was I wrong to assume REM would prove the rule.
//More
Tuesday 11.24.2009 | 4:23 AM EST
My Mexican abluelito onced asked my Welsh grandmother if she wouldn’t like a Jack & Coke, to whom she wryly replied:
“Why ruin two good things by putting them together?”
Indeed. I just heard a commercial hawking tex-mex to the tune of Joe Jackson’s “One More Time.” Now, I’ve come to excuse, sometimes even embrace, the tastefully placed pop song used to capture the hipster consumer’s attention. Nick Drake’s Pink Moon for VW. The Walkmen, The National for Saturn. Well done, Sterling Cooper.
But really, c’mon.
Don’t get me wrong. I survived my penniless 20’s by pawning record store promos to salsa with that spicy little dish known as the Taco Supreme. A cheap date is better than no date at all. And to this day, the mexican monkey on my back conspires against my dear wife’s delicious efforts at improving my diet.
But just ’cause José occasionally rocked a Latino pencil-stache doesn’t mean he should be reduced to hawking nachos under his coat.
Bring back the chihuahua instead. That chihuahua was funny.
If you’re gonna do it, do it right.
Sharing a numerical moniker with c23,Mick 23 iterates one simple graphic element into a remarkable variety of visual/verbal haikus.
Friday 02.26.2010 | 4:14 EST
daniel aka autobahn aficionado says:
great shots mau!