Going West

If you read only the NY Times to figure out what to do this weekend, you'd miss the best show in town: Today, the paper of record doesn't list Paula West at Iridium in its roundup of music gigs, an omission that's egregious bordering on crazy.

Fortunately my own mag is on the case: "If a night of jazz entertainment were still up to the standards set by Ella, Billie and Sarah, then San Francisco–based Paula West would be the only (yes, only) contemporary vocalist worth the price of admission. Not only is her full-bodied contralto a thing of beauty, it’s connected to an emotive intellect that makes the American Songbook speak to the future rather than the past."

It may sound like hyperbole but I can assure you it's not. I saw Ms. West yesterday evening and had a huge happy grin plastered on my face the entire time. I'm not sure there's anybody else on the scene right now who could make me feel as if I was hearing warhorses such as "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered" and "Skylark" for the first time. And her set cannily mixes these familiar tunes with more obscure ones, as well as new arrangements of well-known songs (it took me a short while to recognize Dylan's "Don't Think Twice"). While West's dusky tone sounds positively dreamy on the slower numbers, I was most thrilled by the way she rode the beat with uncanny precision on the faster ones (she's backed by an ace quartet too). She's now joined my two favorites, Ella Fitzgerald and Anita O'Day, when it comes to jazz takes on the American Songbook. Yes, she's that good.

By the way, West's previous local engagements have been at the Algonquin's Oak Room, a place I like but which can get a bit chilly, not to mention pricey. Her natural warmth and performing style seem to fit better at Iridium. And for fans, the evening's bill is a lot lower than it would be at the Oak Room.

Credits in the straight world

Catching up with the Self-Styled Siren and her always-enlightening takes on classic Hollywood, I finally read her post about credit titles. Since the post and most of the comments focus on American movies, here are a few European titles that I particularly love:

• Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Delicatessen (1991), which matches names and objects referring to the job at hand.

• Laurent Brett's retro-minimal titles for OSS 117: Le Caire Nid d'Espions (2006). The clip starts with the very end of the pre-credit sequence. The film, a spoof of the 1960s action series OSS 117, was a huge hit in France.

• Steven Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can couldn't be any more American—except for its title sequence, designed by the Parisian team of Kuntzel + Deygas. Although you could of course point out that they're paying cheeky tribute to Saul Bass.

• Pedro Almodóvar: so much to choose from! Here are High Heels (1991) and Bad Education (2004). The latter channels the Hitchcock/Bass/Herrmann trinity to great effect.

• best TV credits ever? The Avengers. Amazingly, the quality remained high season after season; check out a sample here. Even the much-maligned New Avengers had decent credits, which says a lot. They also had lengthy end credits, which are pretty much gone from modern series.

• Okay, The Avengers win on style, but The Persuaders' credit sequence was narratively astute as it used split screens to give the background story of this early-70s series' main characters, played by none other than Tony Curtis and Roger Moore. Plus, music by John Barry. Strangely, this show seems pretty unknown in the U.S., whereas it was hugely popular in France.

No reunion is impossible!

Last week my colleague Mike Wolf asked me what show I would love to see even though it was highly unlikely to happen. "Dusty Springfield!" I yelped. No, a show by someone alive—picky, picky, picky. "Kylie Minogue!" No, more rock. I couldn't think of anybody at that moment and he couldn't hold it anymore: "Teenage Jesus and the Jerks are playing the Knitting Factory in June!"

Okay, I have to say that on the cool scale, that one's an 11. Teenage Jesus, of course, was the ultra-abrasive no-wave band that unleashed the young Lydia Lunch on the world. They played short songs, recorded a couple of EPs and disappeared. Now they're back for one night, with Lunch handling both vocals and guitar.

Mike has more details on the TONY blog. The only question right now: When am I going to find the time to go to the Knit's box-office and buy tickets.

P.S. Teenage Jesus' shows were brief: 15-20 minutes. Which is the way it should be. Too many bands now, full of egotistical self-regard, go on forever. I was reminded of that sad state of affair Saturday, when the utterly mediocre Bodies of Water, opening for Sons and Daughters at Bowery Ballroom, rambled on for an unconscionable 45 minutes. And another note for Bodies of Water: Vocal harmonies doesn't mean four people singing at the same time but in collaboration. Which, you know, requires some actual work.

learning by example

Reviewing Gerald Graff's Professing Literature (a history of English departments in American universities) in The Nation, William Deresiewicz mentions that scanning the postings on the Modern Language Association Job Information List is a good way to see where English departments are headed.

"The most striking fact about this year's list is that the lion's share of positions is in rhetoric and composition. That is, not in a field of literature at all but in the teaching of expository writing, the 'service' component of an English department's role within the university. Add communications and professional and technical writing, and you've got more than a third of the list. Another large fraction of openings, perhaps 15 percent, is in creative writing. Apparently, kids may not want to read anymore, but they all want to write. And watch. Forward-thinking English departments long ago decided to grab film studies before it got away, and the list continues to reflect that bit of subterfuge."

Ah yes, that things about kids wanting to write, not read. And I'd actually extend that comment to people in general. Writing, writing everywhere, and no one to read all those words! I'm not sure there's anything an MFA program could teach that could not be learned by reading intensely. And I mean reading fiction, not essays or memoirs. That applies no matter what you want to write, whether it is journalism or a novel. When I'm in a position to interview people for writing or editing positions, I always ask them about their favorite authors. It's not meant to be a trick question, but appallingly many applicants treat it as such.

It's simple: If you don't read enough, you won't realize that what you write is banal garbage.

While trying to mend a ligament a couple of weeks ago, I engaged in chit-chat with the physical therapist. Upon hearing that my job involves trying to fix other people's sentences despite the fact that English is not my first language, he asked me how I learned it. "School at first, but also listening to music in English, watching films with subtitles very early on but especially reading—lots and lots of reading." He acted surprised, as if reading was an odd choice. The real surprise is why this would come as a surprise.

This is hardcore

One of my favorite black-metal bands is Norway's Gorgoroth, fronted by a true-blue psychopath named Gaahl (that guy on the left). Alas, Gorgoroth is unlikely to ever play in the States, and there's two main reasons. One is that Gaahl has a police record, having spent time in the clink for assaulting a man; the other is that Gorgoroth's live show includes rather interesting props. Click on this link and admire photos from a gig in Oslo. Nude crucified people wearing hoods—makes Chris Ofili's painting of the Virgin Mary made with elephant dung or Andres Serrano's Piss Christ look like Pat the Bunny, huh?

It's doubtful the band could ever get a visa to play in the US, except maybe…Here's a crazy idea: The Guggenheim or P.S 1 or some such institution should bring them over as an art project. Yes, that's it! Curators, if you're reading this please get on the horn! Otherwise New York fans will have to book a ticket for the Wacken Open Air festival in Germany, where Gorgoroth is scheduled to play this summer. Not a bad option, actually, considering this year's lineup also includes the Carcass and At the Gates reunions.

Gorgoroth "Wound Upon Wound" (from Ad Majorem Sathanas Gloriam, 2007)
Gorgoroth "Untamed Forces" (from Ad Majorem Sathanas Gloriam, 2007)

Look elsewhere

I've started contributing to the new Thirteen (aka WNET, New York's public-television outlet) blog, linked to the station's upcoming Sunday Arts show, which debuts this week. You can check out my first post there.

Songs of Paris

My TONY interview with director Christophe Honoré and actor Louis Garrel can be found here. In the main piece they discuss mostly their collaboration on their new musical, Love Songs (Les Chansons d'amour); if you want want more, there's also a bonus Q&A in which Honoré expends on the film's shoot and on the one he just completed, an adaptation of Madame de Lafayette's La Princesse de Clèves.

Two striking things about Love Songs: It's a French musical that does not remind the viewer of Jacques Demy every other second, and it features one of the most gorgeous casts I've ever seen. I mean, it's like some beauty bomb exploded on the set.

The songs were written by Alex Beaupain, who can actually be seen in the movie, performing "Brooklyn Bridge" in a club. Honoré, Beaupain and the cast members participated in a special DVD-release party-slash-show back in December, and it looked like a ton of fun.

Louis Garrel and Ludivine Sagnier "De bonnes raisons" (from Les Chansons d'amour soundtrack)
Louis Garrel, Clotilde Hesme and Ludivine Sagnier "Je n'aime que toi" (from Les Chansons d'amour soundtrack)
Chiara Mastroianni "Au parc" (from Les Chansons d'amour soundtrack)

Scenes from a break-up

Here's another installment in the occasional series in which I revisit some good shows of yore. Today: World of Pooh at Maxwell's on March 16, 1990—one of the most unbearably tense gigs I've ever seen. Forget pigfuck audience abuse or whatnot: We watched two people psychologically pummel each other on stage, and it really was not fun at all. It was also, of course, entirely memorable.

At that time, I was finishing my MA in history at Rutgers, though the truth is that most of my memories of that era have to do with music rather than scholarly pursuits: doing shows on WRSU, going to gigs several times a week—I'd gotten very familiar with the New Jersey turnpike (and Route 1, when I was too broke for the toll). I can't remember what prompted me to go see World of Pooh. I don't remember if I had their sole full-length, 1989's Land of Thirst, by then or if I bought it at the show. I may have been prompted by having heard the band was pals with Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, which I absolutely loved back then, ever since mail-ordering their debut cassette, Wormed by Leonard. World of Pooh was pretty emblematic of a short window in the mid-80s to early 90s when San Francisco was a hotbed of screwed-up inventivity. When I saw mentions of the NufSed label, Seymour Glass' Bananafish fanzine or producer Greg Freeman, I knew there was a good chance I'd like whatever it was.

World of Pooh was Barbara Manning on bass, Brandan Kearney on guitar and Jay Paget on drums; the group was both propelled and hampered by the love-hate relationship between Manning and Kearney, who were partners on and off stage. Except their couple was imploding at the time, and they took it all out to us, the audience. On record the songs revealed pent-up hostility beneath the jangly exterior, but even that didn't prepare us for Maxwell's.

Kearney kept berating and humiliating Manning, telling her she was fat and couldn't play, and she either demured uncomfortably or looked at him in what I now remember as stunned passivity. It was just horrible to watch, and of course completely enthralling. It didn't feel like a put-on but like the raw implosion of a couple right in front of us, Scenes from a Marriage punk rock–style. In fact, this turned out to be World of Pooh's last show, the band pretty much ending right there and then because Manning and Kearney could not function together anymore. And the weirdest part is that in between the tense banter, they managed to sound great.

Now, an art experience given extra meaning by the romantic relationship between two of the principals isn't new, from Richard and Linda Thompson to Angela Gheorghiu and Roberto Alagna. And the downfall of an artistic couple can be obvious fodder for both parties. But there's something quite different about listening to a song about a break-up and seeing the break-up of both a relationship and a band with your very eyes. World of Pooh at Maxwell's was uncomfortable because we were privy to something abjectly personal. It feels quaint in our age of sharing too much, but 18 years ago hearing and seeing this hate-filled intimacy was quite jarring.

Manning went on to a rich if now tragically unheralded solo career; Paget joined Thinking Fellers; and Kearney continued being active with a variety of projects including Caroliner, Job's Daughters, Archipelago Brewing Co. and Faxed Head, as well as the NufSed label.

World of Pooh "Mr. Coffee-Nerves" (from Land of Thirst, 1989)
World of Pooh "Bone Happy" (from Land of Thirst, 1989)
World of Pooh "Mogra" (from Land of Thirst, 1989)
World of Pooh "Druscilla Penny" (a cover of an odd 1971 song by the Carpenters, one of the few performed by Richard; from a free single that came with an issue of Bananafish)

Kooky cutter

After seeing maybe ten shows and pieces of his, from opera to evening-length works, I remain unconvinced by Mark Morris's genius. The staging of Purcell's King Arthur I saw at City Opera yesterday did not change my mind; When it comes to opera, Morris probably should not be left to his own devices; that is, he should not direct and choreograph. (Big exception: Orfeo, which was pretty great indeed but feels like a fluke.)

Having gotten rid of the plot, Morris staged King Arthur as one kooky tableau after another. His worst tendency—sentimental cuteness—quickly came to the fore and didn't depart for the rest of the evening. While I did enjoy the first-act orgy (who wouldn't?), the show felt pat, pandering, lazy. And still, I applauded just to shush the lone booer. The idea is to encourage experimentation with opera, not deter it. So what if it didn't work? You could close your eyes, block out the silliness on stage and bask in the glorious music. Fine, so it kinda goes against the point of live opera, but you also gotta make the most of what you have.

And the music was beautiful indeed. You may be more familiar with King Arthur than you'd think: Peter Greenaway and his composer Michael Nyman used Purcell, and KA in particular, as the departure point for The Draughtsman's Contract (the cue "Chasing Sheep Is Best Left to Shepherds" is probably the most famous), and back in the early 80s Klaus Nomi had an unlikely European hit with "The Cold Song", from the first act.

Klaus Nomi "The Cold Song"

The fairest one of all

Like many people, I have a thorny, love-hate relationship with Disney. It's hard not to admire the craft that goes into many of the films while at the same time being repelled by their message and the image of the company as a whole. Having absurdly enjoyed the soundtrack to Enchanted (yes, that'd be the one that clogged the Oscars with three performances), I finally caught the movie on DVD. If only it could have ended after 45 minutes…

The premise is simple: a typical animated Disney princess falls in love with a prince after knowing him for about five seconds, and is dispatched to real-life Manhattan by his power-hungry stepmother; she leaves behind her meadow of singing animals and talking chipmunks to enter a city of precocious six-year-olds and Crackberry addicts. The best part is that the irrepressibly perky Giselle still acts in NYC as if she was living in animated la-la land. This is where the movie is really inspired, and I'm not sure it's entirely on purpose (whatever: I'll take it). You see, Giselle behaves as if she's clinically insane, and thanks to the comedic chops and natural charisma of Amy Adams, who plays her, the viewer is torn between feeling sorry for nutso Giselle and being totally charmed by her. In that part of Enchanted, you're watching a delusional woman act out her fantasies of a rose-colored world—like someone who's watched too many Disney movies and started believing their noxious subtext. She gets the local fauna to help her in a musical number, for instance, except of course it's rats and roaches and pigeons. Giselle is the most beautiful bag lady you've ever seen, spouting crackpot wisdom and surrounded by vermin. Needless to say, I loved that bit.

This being Disney 2008, Enchanted goes on to 1. indulge in a ridiculously over the top battle with Susan Sarandon as a giant dragon (shades of Sleeping Beauty's Maleficent of course, but boring as hell, like a cheesy outtake from Ghostbusters), 2. have Giselle save her new prince instead of vice versa and 3. have Giselle become a fashion designer, ’cause she's not a stay-at-home princess (and her helpers are animals, not Chinese people in sweatshops). Sigh.

P.S.: This is a musical in which Broadway pros like Idina Menzel and Tonya Pinkins (and Julie Andrews, who narrates) don't even get to sing!

The Great Less-White Way

Last week I had the opportunity to see Come Back, Little Sheba, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Passing Strange back to back. Which means that the vagaries of chance made me see the three shows that make the Great White Way a lot less white in a row. (I was also supposed to see the Latino-flavored In the Heights but got sick; the upshot was that spending three days home allowed me to catch up with The Wire.)

The revival of William Inge's 1950s "issue play" Come Back, Little Sheba qualifies by virtue of its blind casting, as S. Epatha Merkerson plays the part created by Shirley Booth in 1950 (and which she also did in the movie adaptation). Now, I've somehow managed to avoid seeing a single episode of Law & Order in all the centuries it's been on, so I wasn't familiar with Merkerson, who has a big recurring role on that series. But she really blew me away on stage: She managed to create a subtle characterization that still resonated all the way to the last row. When her husband comes back to their house in the second act, perhaps clean after a drunken binge and hospitalization, her hesitation, her fear at meeting him at the door are just heartbreaking. I also thought the production made a good case for the play as a rather harsh indictment of a pathetic marital trajectory typical of the 1950s. (As a side note: the curse of the Biltmore Theatre, home to the stodgiest productions of the stodgy Manhattan Theatre Club, is finally broken.)

Debbie Allen's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, however, is too often misguided. Early on, Allen makes the mistake of setting up a broad comedic tone and after that it's impossible to reel the audience members back in—they react to everything as if they were watching a sitcom (down to going Awwwww when Big Daddy acts semi-affectionate toward his wife) and nothing can stop them. The reviews have been all over the map, which may have a lot to do with the audience: The critics sometimes think of its reactions instead of the director's actual intent, and those reactions are mostly completely off.

Not crazy about Anika Noni Rose, who never quite shows the cracks coursing through Maggie the Cat and sounds rather muddled in the first act. Unlike most critics I enjoyed Terrence Howard's performance as Brick, especially in the crucial second set with Big Daddy (James Earl Jones, who unfortunately sat on a wet spot the night I saw the show—probably a remnant from one of Brick's spilled drinks—and sported a gigantic stain on the back of his pants, prompting us to wonder if Debbie Allen had planned it as some reference to Big Daddy's "spactic colon"). Oh yes: The set and lighting are mindboggling eyesores that look downright amateurish.

Best of the bunch: Stew's Passing Strange. I'd really loved the show when I saw it at the Public last year, and it looks and sounds great on Broadway. Formally and thematically, Passing Strange defies the usual, tired Broadway paradigms; it tackles in a very smart (and very funny) way the issue of forming one's identity, and it does so in a context rarely (or even never) explored on stage—that of a middle-class African-American who likes pop and rock music, and who also confronts Europeans' ideas of blackness.

I'd never really enjoyed Stew's records, either solo or with the Negro Problem, and in retrospect I realize why: He was writing musical-theater songs without a musical around them. His score for Passing Strange is superb from beginning to end—much superior to Duncan Sheik's much-praised score for Spring Awakening, for instance. Add to that the best ensemble on Broadway right now, and you have a rare show. I see on Playbill that it's playing to half-full (I'm an optimist!) houses, so you should catch it before it meets an untimely demise. Or perhaps word of mouth will do its job and get some bodies in. Basically if you like well-crafted pop and rock music but despise musicals because they're "cheesy," this is the one show you can—nay, should see.

Holy Euro-mackerel!!

France has just announced that it's sending Sébastien Tellier to the Eurovision Song Contest. That, my friends, is earth-shaking news. Apparently Tellier is going to perform "Divine," a song from his latest album, Sexuality.

Two huge things here: First of all, "Divine" (which can you hear streaming here) is performed in English, which is a humongus departure for France, one of the last countries to stubbornly stick to English at the contest. In fact, it may well be the very first time the French entry will be in English.

Second, Tellier is that rare case of a totally odd bird that's also rather commercially successful—meaning he already has both a good critical reputation and a viable commercial career. The fact that France 3, the public-TV channel that runs the contest in France, went for him shows that it fully realized a drastic move was needed to both make the contest meaningful again at home and make a statement about what French music means in 2008.

With Sexuality, which is produced by Daft Punk's Guy-Manuel de Homen Christo (!!!), Tellier said he wanted to make an unabashedly, well, sexual album. (The cover will give you an indication.) The songs I've heard so far are really, really good, mixing a traditional French-pop songwriting approach—Tellier often refers to Gainsbourg and Christophe in interviews—electronics.

So it's clear why France 3 picked him. Why he chose to go is another matter, and I'm curious to see how he rationalizes that decision. My guess: He's nuts (in a good way) and he's going precisely because it's such an unexpected move for him.

My eyes, my ears!

Reading about the Gossip's forthcoming live album today reminded me that I'd meant to post about another item related to the band's singer, Beth Ditto. Apparently Mika is a big fan of the Gossip and he invited Ditto to perform a song with him at the T in the Park festival in Scotland last summer. The result is this unmitigated atrocity.

Where to begin... First of all, it is immediately clear that nobody onstage has any clue about the, shall we say, essence of the song; if they did, they would not let that guitarist go on with his wanking fretwork. Second: Is this a cheat sheet Ditto is holding?!? Third: Enough with the pseudo-soulful vocals, which only make the hapless duo sound like rejects from American Idol—and in fact there were better performances on Idol's recent 80s night. Lucky T in the Park punters, who got to witness this karaoke fiasco. The sky looks a bit ominous at times; perhaps it opened up at the end of the song in a fit of righful retribution.

The Price is right

My interview with Richard Price is up on the TONY site. You can check out the original piece as it appeared in print, as well as "director's cut" with deleted scenes—Price had a lot to say.

Ironically, my first question to him was about the fact that while reviewers praise the accuracy of his ear, it's doubtful said critics know what they're talking about: How can Michiko Kakutani, the NY Times' lead reviewer, know how drug dealers really talk and whether or not Price's dispatches from the projects have the ring of authenticity? (By the way, I included myself in this: It all sounds "authentic" to me, but how would I know? I have to watch The Wire with subtitles!) His response, in brief: He makes stuff up—as well he should, I might add.

Next thing I know, Kakutani's review of Price's latest, Lush Life, starts thus: "No one writes better dialogue than Richard Price — not Elmore Leonard, not David Mamet, not even David Chase. Not only does Mr. Price have perfect pitch for the lingo, the rhythms and the inflections of how people talk, but he also knows how to use a line or two or even a single phrase to conjure a character’s history and emotional vibe."

I can dig the remark about conjuring a history or a vibe, but unless she's been holdin' it down in Queensbridge (and not with Maureen Dowd), how would Kakutani know if Price has perfect pitch for the lingo of the homies and cops who make up a large percentage of his characters? Her info would have to come from books and films or TV. Simulacrum feeding on itself. How Barthesian.

Girls on page

The new book by Jonathan Coe, The Rain Before It Falls, will surprise fans of previous efforts such as The Rotters' Club and The Closed Circle. First of all, this satirical specialist of blokes has written a "women's novel" he says was inspired by Rosamond Lehmann; second, the narrator is an elderly lesbian. Not being a fan of the "write about what you know" school (a novel is fiction, after all), I enjoy it when writers step out of their comfort zone—in this particular case, when a straight man writes a good lesbian character. And Rosamond (yes, she is named Rosamond) is a good character, in both senses of the word: She is a good soul and a good person to have around in a book.

In The Rain Before It Falls, bad things happening to good people (and bad things happen to bad people, too), but one of the book's central conceits is the senselessness of not letting go. Rosamond never recovers from her two-year affair with Rebecca, and she never gets over her childhood friendship with Beatrix either—even when it becomes clear Beatrix is manipulative, selfish and uncommonly mean. The self-defeating trajectory of Rosamond's life is what makes the book so deeply melancholy.

I've also polished off Marie-Dominique Lelièvre's fascinating new biography of Françoise Sagan (pictured), Sagan à toute allure. It's actually elegantly written and far from your standard American or English bio loaded with meaningless details such as "Monday, March 15, 1973, was a rainy day, the stock exchange was down, he was wearing green socks, etc." Instead, Lelièvre trims the fat and captures what Sagan meant in her times and how she operated—this should be what all bios are about, but they rarely are, drowning those insights under an avalanche of "I did my homework" minutiae.

And the author has a quirky way with background detail. For instance, Sagan was in a terrible, life-changing (it led to her being hooked to drugs) car accident when she was 22 or so, but instead of getting into mindnumblingly boring medical details, Lelièvre talks to J.G. Ballard about the meaning of car crashes! Another fun one: Sagan's writing was often described by reviewers are being light, casual, transparent; Lelièvre takes some of her books to Jean-Louis de Boissieu, a Sorbonne grammarian, so he can analyze the vocabulary and sentence construction. He finds them a lot more sophisticated and complex than Sagan was ever given credit for, pointing out that when they wrote about her books, reviewers actually described Sagan's life rather than her literary worth.

American readers may find Lelièvre's often-elliptical approach frustrating but I find it challenginly cool. And there's plenty of great goss, like the fact that Sagan had an affair with Ava Gardner, or her love story with Peggy Roche, fashion editor at French Elle, or the story that her dog Banco OD'ed after sniffing one of her coke-saturated handkerchiefs. Oddly, no mention whatsoever of Annick Geille, editor in chief at French Playboy in the 1970s, who recently published Un amour de Sagan, a memoir about her lengthy affair with the novelist.

Dance, girl, dance!

There's a long tradition of French actresses branching out into singing: Jeanne Moreau, Brigitte Bardot, Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Adjani, Isabelle Huppert, Sandrine Kiberlain, Agnès Jaoui, among others, have all recorded albums. Jeanne Balibar (currently on NYC screens in Rivette's Duchess of Langeais) joined the music fray not so long ago and has made two records. I just read that this fall she'll be adding to her extra-curricular résumé when she appears in a dance by Boris Charmatz. Here we've seen Claire Danes dip her toes in the modern-dance waters at PS 122, but Balibar seems to be pushing the envelope a little further.

As if this weren't enough, another prominent French actress is due to make her dance debut this fall: Juliette Binoche is going to be in a show choreographed by Akram Khan, who himself will dance in the duo; this will be done first in London then in Paris. A bit more info here. (Binoche bugged me for a long time but I'm digging her more and more as she ages; she was surprisingly likable in Dan in Real Life for instance.)

I wouldn't be surprised if BAM wasn't already sniffing around these shows, especially the Khan/Binoche one. After all, they offer everything that institution loves: high-brow veneer and brand-name appeal.

Boogie on down

My preview of the upcoming Kelley Polar show is up. New and improved: Be sure to scroll down to the end to hear streams of three songs from Polar's somptuous new album, I Need You to Hold On While the Sky Is Falling (Environ).

Note that this weekend the stars will be in perfect disco alignment over Brooklyn. Escort plays Southpaw in Park Slope Friday night for the meager price of $10 ($12 at the door), which amounts to less than a dollar per Escort member! Here's a short clip from the ensemble's PS1 gig last year. The sound is crappy but you can still tell they're playing Gino Soccio's "Dancer." You can even see me, wearing a red T-shirt and striking a rock-critic pose (ie, observing instead of dancing) when the camera pans left around 0:47.

The following day, Saturday March 1, the aforementioned Polar plays as part of the big Environ bash at Studio B in Greenpoint.

I'll be at both shows. See you there, New Yorkers!

Lady Oscar

I had placed my chips on There Will Be Blood so I had a late collapse in our Oscar pool yesterday, after leading most of the evening. Things like getting both Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress did help, however. Weirdly Tilda Swinton seemed to be considered the dark horse and her win an upset, even though she's far from an unknown quantity and has been remarkable in pretty much everything she's ever done. And not that I wanted Juno to get anything (it is a trifle at best) but its getting Best Script particularly rankled me as the script is precisely the worst thing about the movie.

My favorite acting trend last night: Every single Oscar went to a non-American. Tilda Swinton is British; Daniel Day-Lewis is Irish; Javier Bardem is Spanish; Marion Cotillard is French. I'd like to say this is a seachange in prevailing acting styles, though it's probably just a coincidence. But what if it means a swing of the pendulum away from the Method and toward, you know, just making things up and pretending? (Though some may argue that DDL is pretty Method.)

Psyched to see Cotillard win, as I did like both her and La vie en rose, plus, you know, it's great to see a French actress up there 48 years after Simone Signoret, but at the same time I'm seriously bummed by this kneejerk rewarding of 1) the transformation of a beautiful actress into an ugly duckling through the magic of latex, 2) showy acting and 3) and biopic acting. Cotillard's performance, of course, covers all three bases. Again I enjoyed her a lot but it's frustrating to see understated or comedic performances always get the shaft. Over the past several years, way too many Oscars have gone to actors embodying real people (as far as one can say that Ray Charles, Idi Amin Dada, Truman Capote or Edith Piaf are "real" but let's not get too meta-meta here) and biopic-ing has become a surefire ticket. Pathetic.

Speaking of rocking chicks: Tina Fey came out for Hillary and pretty much nailed it on SNL's Weekend Update. Check out the video here. Her killer wrap-up: "bitch is the new black."

Epic and monumental

Saw the Diana Vishneva-travaganza, Beauty in Motion, this weekend at City Center. For those of you who don't keep up with the bunhead world, Vishneva is a prima ballerina at the Mariinsky Theater as well as a principal with American Ballet Theatre. In terms of ballet, she's a supernova—the kind who can draw crowds (City Center ain't small) based on her name alone. Not being a ballet expert, I won't say much about the evening, except that yes, she is that hot, and two of the three short pieces by Moses Pendleton (of Momix fame) not only pushed cutesiness as far as it could go, but they also felt like a total waste of Vishneva's time and effort as they could have been performed by just about any dancer with a modicum of training. (Unfortunately the Sheila wasn't feeling well and we had to leave at the second intermission, thus preventing us from witnessing a piece of which the Times said "when we get to hell, it will be full of ballets like this"—which of course made me really regret to have missed it!)

But let's just focus for a second on what is now my favorite program bio ever: that of Tatiana Chernova, designer for the Pierrot Lunaire ballet. Some choice excerpts:

"Her distinctive vision of the world and style make her a unique and vivid phenomenon in the motley flow of artistic trends. Both literalness in the standard realist manner and absorption in quotidian detail are profoundly alien to the very nature of her creativity."

"Chernova's style is epic and monumental. Large-format panels, like mysterious mirages, combine the read and the conditional. The precisely calibrated correlation between the abstract and the concrete, dreams and reality, is always present in the work of Tatiana Chernova. Her works can be regarded infinitetely. At first our eyes capture the image as a whole, then they begin to travel, stopping at various details. Without noticing it, we are drawn inside the painting, into its spatial medium. And that is yet another magical characteristic of her art."

"Everything in her paintings is voluminous yet weightless. A strong 'sculptural' sense of form and pleasure in drawing difficult angles and dizzying compositions define her optical paintings in the manner of Michelangelo's ceilings and the academy of the Carracci brothers (17th century)."

If only all bios could be as wonderfully unselfconscious… Alas, Playbill is full of to-the-point awards recaps, mentions of Law & Order, and grateful thanks to god and agents. I don't see Tatiana Chernova thanking deities or agents—she obviously doesn't need either.

French laurels

Once again, the French film awards aka the Césars have showered praise on an "auteur" movie by giving best film, best director and best script to Abdellatif Kechiche and his La graine et le mulet. (Remember that Pascale Ferran's Lady Chatterley had won last year.) I'd loved Kechiche's previous movie, L'Esquive (Games of Love and Chance in English), which displayed one of the most dazzling uses of the French language I'd ever seen; startingly, it had also won the top prizes at the Césars, launching the ongoing trend of crowning decidedly arty movies.

Unsurprisingly, Marion Cotillard won best actress for La vie en rose, a feat she may repeat at the Oscars Sunday night as the current common "wisdom," if you can call it that, holds that Julie Christie is too old to win. It's an insane reasoning and now I'm torn because I'd like Christie to win just to shut up the hatas and of course I'd love my homegirl to get rewarded as well. In the meantime, you can see Marion accepting her César from Alain Delon here. Unfortunately the video gets cut off at 2:25 but we get the gist.

Welcome back

Looks like Your Flesh, a zine I used to read with great interest back in the late 80s and early 90s, is back in action as an online publication. Okay, it's not really new news, but I'm happy enough to give them a belated shout-out. One of the reasons I so enjoyed the mag back then is that it plugged a lot of so-called pigfuck bands, which overall I much preferred to the concurrently happening—and much more successful—grunge acts.

Even better, Amphetamine Reptile, one of my favorite labels ever, is back in action. Cows, God Bullies, King Snake Roost, early Boss Hog: AmRep classics. (It's not a coincidence that the word "noise" was pretty much part of AmRep's logo.) Not only that, but flagship band Halo of Flies, led by label boss Tom Hazelmyer, is back as well! Watch out for a forthcoming three-song 7" by Lydia Lunch backed by…Halo of Flies! Oooh mama!!! I was lucky enough to hear a burn and it oozes bile. Just fantastic stuff—I listened to it five times in a row this afternoon, then went on and ordered the vinyl from AmRep mail order. You should as well.

I'll never forget that time in the early 90s when I went to the Park Slope food co-op (just visiting!) wearing a T-shirt bearing AmRep's signature slogan "Dope, Guns and Fucking in the Street." A woman stared at me and said, sotto voce, "You know you have a bad word on your shirt, right?"

Fortunately some brave souls are keeping the flame alive. There's Clockcleaner in Philly, for instance, and White Drugs, a quartet of mad Texans I know nothing about except their album Harlem is messed up in all the right ways:

White Drugs: "I Hate Yr Face" (note the righteous spelling of "your")
White Drugs: "Surrounded by Studs"

Ballroom blitz, part zwei

I did make it back from the Tokio Hotel show in one piece, though I'm not entirely sure my eardrums have not been perforated. We shall see.

Entering the Fillmore New York at Irving Plaza (the venue formerly known as Irving Plaza), the Sheila and I were surprised by the sparseness of the audience, considering the show was sold out, and by the gray hair. But you see, one enters IP from the back of the main floor, and it turns out the entire crowd (90% female) was pressed at the front, near the stage, thus taking up only about two thirds of the available space, and it was the parents who were at the back.

When the boys took the stage, pandemonium ensued: the shrieks were absolutely overwhelming, along with the crowd's massive swirls, the human mass swaying from side to side like a ginormous single entity; it's a miracle nobody got crushed.

As for the show, I have to say the band isn't quite there (yet?). It plays decent pop-rock tunes, but live it'd be pretty banal without the crucial addition of the crowd participation. Most of the fun for me was gawking down from the balcony and watching hundreds of girls sing along and emulate singer Bill Kaulitz's every move: When he punched the air, they punched their air; when he jumped up and down, they jumped up and down (as much as you can while being one hair away from having your lungs crushed by the throng). I just love this kind of stuff and could watch it for hours.

A big minus: the Kaulitz twins, on vox and guitar, bizarrely play exclusively for each other, superbly ignoring the rhythm-section dudes—the Kaulitzes seem to telepathically emit "Stand back, porkies!" toward their plainer bandmates, which gives off awkward vibes, to say the least, and makes the group appear more mercenary than I think it actually is.

Still, it's pretty great to see American teens get off their asses for a German band. Okay, Tokio Hotel sings mostly in English now, but I never thought I'd ever see a hand-written placard at a NY show saying "ICH LIEBE DICH."

Bleating time

There are many stars of French variété I grew up disliking, like Michel Sardou and Serge Lama, and usually I remained steady in my dismissal of them: If I couldn't stand them when I was 13, chances are I still can't stand them. A major exception is Véronique Sanson. For years her bleaty vibrato drove me crazy, but for some reason hearing her 1972 song "Besoin de personne" on the radio a few months ago led to a conversion. It was as if I heard Sanson with a new pair of ears, discovering an uncanny melodic talent and great arrangements. I still have problems with her vocal mannerisms (something she shares with another singer of the same generation, Julien Clerc) but now I can overlook them and focus on the songwriting.

After releasing a pair of singles with her sister Violaine and François Bernheim under the name Les Roche Martin, Sanson put out her solo debut, Amoureuse, in 1972; in retrospect, it stands along Carole King's Tapestry as an album by an introspective female singer-songwriter backing herself on the piano in the early 1970s. (I started writing that it was ahead of its time but in actuality it is very much of its time.) The record and its followup were produced by Michel Berger, who'd go on to reinvent France Gall's career. In 1973, Sanson left for the US where she married Stephen Stills (yes, of Crosby, Stills etc.) and stayed for a while. Like many first-rank variété singers, she's still active and popular—the French public tends to remain more loyal than the American one.

From the variety show Cadet Rousselle, here's Sanson performing her first hit "Besoin de personne," sporting a sensational crochet vest:



Kiki Dee did an English version of the title track, "Amoureuse," in 1973:



Here are three MP3s from Sanson's 1972 solo debut, Amoureuse: "Tout est cassé tout est mort" "Pour qui" and, of course, "Besoin de personne."

Ballroom blitz

German pop phenom Tokio Hotel is coming to New York! My preview in Time Out is here. I will be attending the Monday gig, and I sure hope to be deafened by the screams of a thousand hysterical girls—with a smattering of hysterical boys, to be sure.

My main regret: that the Teutonic heartthrobs are singing in English now, as I would have loved loved loved to see them stick to their native language. It worked in Europe after all, with millions of non-German-speaking fans mouthing along to songs like "Der Letzte Tag" or "Übers Ende der Welt." Ah well, we still have a ways to go in America. If even Shakira had to switch to English to make it past the Latino population, what hope is there for guys singing in the tongue of Goethe?

Wrong priorities

The thing I regret missing most while I was away on vacation is Romeo Castellucci's Hey Girl!, which has a short run at Montclair State's Kasser Theatre. I literally had been looking forward to it for months, having been shaken to the core by his Tragedia Endogonidia: L.#09 London Portrait back in October 2005 and wanting more.

Whether you like him or not, Castellucci is one of Europe's most important theater directors right now. The New York Times even did a piece on him in Arts & Leisure. But then who did they send to review the show? Neil Genzlinger, a third or fourth stringer. This to me is a stunning move: One of the two lead reviewers, Ben Brantley or Charles Isherwood, should have reviewed the show. When the Coen brothers or Steven Spielberg or Mike Leigh releases something new, the film is reviewed by one of the Times' two chief critics, not a freelancer. It's as if the daily's theater section was unaware of what's going on in the field it's meant to cover. This is in equal parts befuddling and offensive. An equivalent would be the film section not covering the career of Abbas Kiarostami or the explosion of Korean cinema for the simple reason that they're a little too foreign, not in English or not following the aesthetic codes determined by Hollywood. In theaterspeak, this means the section is not interested in things not done in a naturalistic style and/or on Broadway.

But then, of course, too often the main theater critics display so many hang-ups that their reviewing the show does not mean we would have been spared gasp-inducing statements like "The main shortcoming of 'Hey Girl!,' though, is its unrelenting grimness." What, theater is not always feel-good? You're kidding! This kind of sentence creates knots of frustration in my stomach.

Great white yonder

Yikes, a week without posting: I'm a bad, bad blogger. My excuse is that I had the opportunity to ski in Colorado at a bargain-basement price, so I took it. My first time going down the Rockies' trails—and it was quite an experience, on and off the slopes.

Now, my American readers need to understand that when you grow up in Europe, skiing is not the richy-rich sport it is here. Prices are considerably lower and in France, for instance, there's a long-standing tradition of classes de neige (snow classes), when (sub)urban kids are shipped off to the mountains for a week mixing classes and skiing.

It's not quite the same here. I was able to afford the trip only because of a cousin working at the Beaver Creek resort for the season: I crashed in her room and benefited from her huge discount on lift tickets. Our idea of entertainment was trivia night at the local coffee shop/bar ($1 for a Coke). The other skiers' experience was quite different: nearly $700 for private ski lessons for instance, multimillion-dollar houses on the slopes, and an easy $25,000 for a week at the Ritz-Carlton (where ski valets take off your ski boots at the end of the day so you don't have to put in the effort yourself—something I find utterly ridiculous).

Even though I live in New York, where enormous wealth is far from rare, I somehow manage to avoid being directly confronted to it in my daily life. I mean, I know full well that some people on our own Park Slope street live in million-dollar homes while we're lowly renters but they all wear the Slope winter uniform of fleece anyway, and they all get the same $3 breakfast sandwich at the local diner, and they all get the same pizzas delivered. (Well, there was that one time when the Sheila picked up an ATM receipt left by the previous customer and the balance for that checking account read $980,000!)

But being in Beaver Creek and Vail was quite different: The smell of money was pervasive everywhere I turned. It may have had to do with my own guilt in partaking in what is, in the US, an elite sport, like doing polo in the Hamptons or something. The thing is, customers in those resorts are so pampered that lift tickets are hiked to offensively high levels ($92/day is the regular price) to keep the amenities going and, possibly, the number of people (riff-raff?) on the slopes down. It's a reasoning I find absurd in my daily life, and yet I love skiing and so am willing to swallow my class-war guilt and forge ahead.

Interesting detail: My cousin told me that among the countries well represented at the Beaver Creek Ritz are Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela. I guess Chavez's socialist policies still allow some people to do well for themselves…

Hogwash Island

The current issue of The New Yorker has a small portfolio on Coney Island in winter, with an intro by Mark Singer. As so often happens in that magazine, the text looks perfectly fine at first, until you let it sink in and realize it's just suburban and sentimental.

Let's take for instance, the following innocuous-looking sentence: "If you're in a the mood for a trifecta, you can still buy lunch at Nathan's and lose it, in installments, aboard the Wonder Wheel and the Cyclone."

Whaaaa?!?

First of all, Singer leaves no cliché unturned: mentioning hot-dog emporium Nathan's is utterly expected, especially when you can get better material from the Russian places in nearby Brighton Beach or the new taco stands, or Totonno's on Neptune Avenue if you really want another long-running institution.

But even worse is that neither Singer nor his editor seems to have spent any actual time at Coney Island in winter: Both the Wonder Wheel and the Cyclone close during the cold months, reopening only mid-March. Guys, this is a basic fact of NYC life!

Nathan's, the Cyclone, Weegee…can we at least get less moldy banalities? Something about Stephon Marbury growing in the Coney projects, for instance, or the yellow submarine marooned offshore.

Coincidentally, the Sheila and I went to Coney last Sunday and yep, the Wonder Wheel and the Cyclone were boarded up. We also strolled on the boardwalk; it looks empty and ghostly in The New Yorker pics, whereas we saw a hopping place, packed with families (the vast majority of them Russian-speaking) getting some fresh air. And I've been to Coney enough times in winter to know this was not a freak occurrence. The back alleys of the amusement park itself are, indeed, deserted, but the boardwalk is jumping even in February.

Sisters o sisters

Tip of the hat to James Wolcott for directing me to Susan Faludi's review of the anthology Thirty Ways of Looking at Hillary: Reflections by Women Writers in the Observer. Faludi starts by zeroing in on the fact that Clinton's actual politics and proposals are rarely discussed (one of my pet peeves in the Clinton/Obama duel—not talking about specific policy points plays to his strengths) then goes on to dismantle the contributors' self-absorbed takes (it would have been nice to get more specific examples, though the Susannah Moore quote is priceless) and look at the mother syndrome in American politics. I can't say that I always agree with Faludi but she seems to hit the nail on the head there. Thomas Hobbes may have written that man is wolf to man, but damn!—woman can be bitch to woman.

More is Moor

Oops, forgot to mention another piece in the current issue of Time Out New York: a review of the new DVD of Anthony Mann's El Cid. in which Charlton Heston battles Moors in 11th-century Spain.

While Mann is one of my favorite film directors, this particular movie is a snooze. Lack of space prevented me from going at length about the lack of chemistry between Heston and Sophia Loren, and from pointing out that the screenplay largely borrows from Corneille's classic 17th-century play Le Cid, though it's not credited anywhere. The play is still a must in French schools and it's packed with lines that have burrowed deep in the national consciousness, like "Ô rage ! Ô désespoir ! Ô vieillesse ennemie !" ("O rage! O despair! O inimical old age!" in the translation offered by Project Gutenberg) or "À vaincre sans péril, on triomphe sans gloire" ("In conquering without danger we triumph without glory").

And let's not forget "Je suis jeune, il est vrai, mais aux âmes bien nées,/La valeur n'attend point le nombre des années," which translates as "I am young, it is true, but in souls nobly born valor does not depend upon age" and might as well be Obama's self-assigned motto. Speaking of which, I'm going to be in town tomorrow after all so I'll cast my very first vote in an American election. Terribly, terribly exciting!

A Springer in my step

I saw Jerry Springer: The Opera at Carnegie Hall and was somewhat impressed—by the show itself rather than the production—even if I can't say I reached the gushing heights of Ben Brantley, going all Edmund Hillary on us in the NY Times. In brief: the score is absolutely superb, the lyrics are uneven, the libretto even more so.

Two particular elements that Brantley singled out for praise were glaringly faulty to me: The orchestra sounded tinny and sometimes cheaply undersized (cost-cutting measure?), and Harvey Keitel was a problem in the title role—as in, he had zero stage presence. This proved to be disastrous in the second act, in which Jerry Springer really comes to the fore and has to carry a lot more of the action than in the first act, where the parade of trailer-trash guests provides all the entertainment we need (but even there, the book could have been tightened up). Unfortunately, Keitel was a blank, robotically walking through the evening. Good thing the rest of the cast was superb, with a particular shout-out to Max von Essen, who made a brilliant entrance in a mini-skirt and pumps.

That was only one of the many bright moments that night. I'm no fan of profanity in shows, for instance, finding it usually a weak, cheap crutch, but there the avalanche of raunchy language and situations became completely surreal and turned into a kind of touching and often very funny poetry. (I'm waiting to see if Mamet is able to pull off a similar feat in his new play.)

There's basically two ways to get me at the theater: come up with a completely new device, something completely crazy I've never seen before; or find the extraordinary in the ordinary, sucking art out of the most mundane, the crassest spectacle. Normally I cannot bear the Jerry Springer Show—even at the gym with the sound off I can't look at it. But in that context, it became utterly captivating.

Jerry Springer: The Opera looks at its subjects with both and a refreshing lack of condescension. In that it resembles Mike White's Year of the Dog, possibly the most underrated movie of 2007. I've been told that the trailer makes the movie look like a romcom focusing on the relationship between Molly Shannon and Peter Sarsgaard, played against a cute-pet background. This could not be more misleading, as the film actually looks at a woman taking a drastic turn in her life and at how a certain kind of (benign) extremism can take hold in someone. (There are quite a few incensed posts on IMDB from viewers lured to the movie by the trailer and bitterly complaining about being cheated.) White never patronizes Shannon's character, even when she sinks to a unhinged low at some point; he's also very clear-eyed about the manipulative aspect of Sarsgaard's animal-loving character. And from a purely filmic point of view, White proves to be a more than adept director, coming up with beautiful compositions that really play up the eerie flatness (as in, lack of depth) of the SoCal location.

Bringing up the vote

My interview with Swedish pop star Robyn is in this week's TONY. The one bummer: I won't be around to see her NYC show at Highline Ballroom on February 5.

I'll also miss voting in the New York Democratic primary that same day as I'll be in Colorado. But lo and behold, that state is also holding a primary on February 5 and I've volunteered to help out the locals in Avon! Stay tuned as I encounter American democracy up close and personal.

Entering the 20th century

I just received a mailing from my alma mater, the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris (aka Sciences Po), asking for money. They even trumpeted a new logo and included a pin! Now this is routine for alums of American universities, but in France it's pretty racy stuff. The mailing's related to a new law from summer ’07 making a chunk of donations tax-deductible. Again, routine here but groundbreaking in France, where a lot of university-level education is very very cheap (tuition for my years at Sciences Po in the mid-’80s was under $1,000 total). Believe me, escaping from college without debt makes a huge difference on your outlook on life.

But at the same time the French university system is in crisis, crying out for money and losing competitive edge. I can't say that I'm fully aware of all the issues at play, but it's hard to argue with the fact that French universities don't have much money. I feel many American ones have reached a ridiculous level of obscene luxury, absurdly sheltering their clients—sorry, students—inside privileged cocoons, and I certainly think education needs to be either free or cheap (again, getting out of college debt-free is huge), but there's got to be a middle ground somewhere.

Anyway, Sciences Po's president, Richard Descoings, is very proactive (some say in a rather self-serving way; just check out his blog) in modernizing Sciences Po. Part of me likes this aggressive attitude, which I find refreshingly rare in French academia but—and I kinda but kinda not apologize for being so crass here—dude's got to do something about the slicked-back hair; it really only works if you're a flamenco guitarist.

That warm, fuzzy feeling

I've been having a feisty ongoing debate with a couple of colleagues who are pro-Obama while I'm pro-Clinton. Now, we all agree that no matter who the Democratic nominee is, we will all gladly vote for him/her in November. In the meantime, however, the arguments have been flying left and right like monkeys in the starry Oz night.

One of said colleagues mentioned a recent New Yorker article by George Packer as having convinced him even more of the two candidates' respective (de)merits. I read it this morning on the subway and it made me so angry that I had to put it down for a minute. Most of the article is devoted to Clinton's character and it sets her against her main rival thus: "Clinton as executive, Obama as visionary." Problem is, Obama's speeches maybe visionary but visionary does not pay the bills. His speeches are winning because they are just feel-good hogwash. They are maddeningly evasive, and most of the people who are for him can't get specific about his politics. Obama and his followers assume that once Americans wake up, they will get right back to fulfilling their destiny as naturally generous, enlightened people ready to turn the other cheek, help the downtrodden, clamor for higher taxes for the public good and drive small cars—or even better, use public transportation. Right, the same people who voted for Bush not once but twice (and there was no excuse the second time)—these people just need inspiration to trickle down from above to do the right thing. Same thing for the military and pharmaceutical corporations: They too want change and they'll go along with Obama's "can't we all get along?" plans.

The scary thing is, Obama fans like him for the same reason a lot of people liked Bush: He seems like such a nice fellow. Packer: "In the New Hampshire cafeteria, Clinton couldn’t quite make an individual connection, even when listening sympathetically to a woman in the crowd who said that she held down two jobs and still had trouble paying for her asthma medicine." But I don't want a president to connect with me, Elisabeth Vincentelli—I want the president to connect with the country.

Packer goes on to describe an Obama meeting: "Obama spoke for only twenty-five minutes and took no questions; he had figured out how to leave an audience at the peak of its emotion, craving more. As he was ending, I walked outside and found five hundred people standing on the sidewalk and the front steps of the opera house, listening to his last words in silence, as if news of victory in the Pacific were coming over the loudspeakers. Within minutes, I couldn’t recall a single thing that he had said, and the speech dissolved into pure feeling, which stayed with me for days."

What is this, Pollyanna at the megachurch??

I personally would like to have some hard-ass competence in the White House and I don't see Obama as being able to deliver it. If he thinks the Republicans are suddenly going to be swayed by his charm and share in his bipartisan efforts, he's in for a rude awakening—and we may be in for another Carter-type presidency.

The villainy within

So the new Bond movie is going to be called Quantum of Solace, which sounds like something that'd be playing at Manhattan Theater Club. The designated villain this time around is played by Mathieu Amalric, who confides that he's going to play the part prop- and tic-less (ie, forget about slavic accents and fluffy cats). For you see, this guy's villainy comes from within. AP quotes Amalric as saying, 'That's maybe what is horrible about today. We can't guess who the villains are. The villains are invisible.'' The actor also explained that he's modeling his character on Tony Blair and Nicolas Sarkozy. ''I've been taking details, the smile of Tony Blair, the craziness of Sarkozy, he's the worst villain we've ever had."

Note that unlike in most Bond movies, however, it's villainous Sarkozy who's getting the babe right now.

In the mix

The year-end mix I fashioned for Idolator is up here. My TONY colleague K. Leander Williams also made one, which you can check out here.

Osterreich & roll

A couple of years ago, I reviewed Der Blutharsch's When Did Wonderland End? for TONY. It was a fairly positive review—at least about the music itself, since it's hard not to have qualms about the band's politics. I'm sure the band doesn't get much mainstream attention that actually focuse on its sound, as it plays martial folk and is prone to military uniforms and listing its song titles in Gothic font. In other words, Der Blutharsch causes me real problems because I quite like many of its albums but the reality of what bandleader Albin Julius is about makes me squeamish, to put it mildly.

Anyway out of the blue—or rather out of Austria—landed on my desk a package containing Der Blutharsch's latest album, The Philosopher's Stone. At first I was mildly freaked out because if there's one mailing list I'm not convinced I want to be on, it's that type. But the rock critic in me quickly took over and I listened to the album.

Judging by the one-sheet that came with it, the CD seems to be Der Blutharsch's last: The self-described "inventors of military pop" are "leaving the arena and heading towards new territories, the promised land on the search for the tower of song." (Huh?) The band's current motto further confuses matters: "Uniforms are always changing — Rock ’n’ roll will stay forever!" Yeah, whatever you say. At least we won't read this in Pitchfork anytime soon.

Once again divided in numbered segments, the CD isn't as diverse and compelling as When Did Wonderland End? (and the production sounds a bit muddy to my ears) but it has its moments, like the weird doomy-psych vibe on track 5. Not to mention that when it comes to a certain kind of grandeur, I'd love to see an oil-wrestling match between Der Blutarsch and the grad students in Arcade Fire.

Der Blutarsch "The Philosopher's Stone II" (from The Philosopher's Stone, 2008)

Educating Rita

Busy Friday evening: The Sheila and I went to see Conor McPherson's The Seafarer on Broadway (blah; how many plays involving endearing drunks can the Irish crank out?) then we rushed downtown to see April March open for Au Revoir Simone at Bowery Ballroom. The show was pretty fun, and once again Bowery's excellent sound system well served the bands.

But the most memorable thing for me may be what happened during the changeover. The Sheila was asking me if I'd ever taken photos at shows and I said no, but during a short period of time in the late ’80s and early ’90s I used a small cassette recorder to tape bands like Pylon, Scrawl and the Go-Betweens. A young gentleman next to us overheard me and very excitedly (and very politely) asked me how I knew the Go-Betweens, because they're such an obscure old band and he had just discovered them himself. I gently told him that the Go-Betweens aren't all that obscure, and that they were still putting out records and playing shows until last year, when one of them died. He looked dumbstruck. I told him that they have a dozen albums out so he has a lot of pleasure in store.

When we left during Au Revoir Simone's set (a little too nice after a while), I gave him a piece of paper where I'd written: "This is where Au Revoir Simone got their inspiration: Colossal Youth by Young Marble Giants (1980)." (Yes, I did include the release date; once a rock critic, always a rock critic.) Anyway, I hope he'll look up that band.

Young Marble Giants "N.I.T.A." (from Live at the Hurrah, recorded in 1980)
Young Marble Giants "Colossal Youth" (from Live at the Hurrah, recorded in 1980)
Young Marble Giants "Radio Silents" (from Live at the Hurrah, recorded in 1980)

Lit crit

My review of Walter Mosley's new novel, Diablerie, is in the L.A. Times today. Easy Rawlins fans are dispensed from running to the bookstore: their hero is, alas, nowhere to be seen.

Things have been quiet on the lit front. I'm reading Balzac's A Woman of Thirty but once that's done, I have to immerse myself in research on the early-’90s American music scene for a project due in March. Any suggestions on what I should read?

The year that was

The results of the Idolator music poll are up here and my own ballot is there.

No big surprise: For albums, the top three is made up of LCD Soundsystem, M.I.A. and Radiohead. The music world may have splintered into a million shards, but consensual artists still exist. Of course, they are consensual among a very certain type of music lovers. One of the actual consensual albums of the year in terms of sheer sales shows up at no. 578: I seem to be the only one to vote for the High School Musical 2 soundtrack. Looks like HSM isn't even a perverse hipster pick—yet, as I'm ready to bet some of the songs will be karaoke staples in Williamsburg five years from now. On the other hand, Daughtry, the biggest-selling album of the year, did not get one single lousy vote.

Popular singles seem to be easier to love, with Rihanna's predictable triumph. As much as I adore a good hit, I can't stand this song for one simple reason: the way she sings the word umbrella. Rarely has a single word so irritated me.

Museum piece

Paris' Museum of Music, part of the Cité de la Musique, is putting together a huge exhibition about Serge Gainsbourg, to run from October 2008 to February 2009. A blog dedicated to the show has been set up. There are only two entries so far, but one of them is a doozy: It juxtaposes excerpts showing how both Duke Ellington and Gainsbourg adapted Grieg's "Solveig's Song" from Peer Gynt. Brilliant.

When worlds collide

Two fascinating articles in the New York Times arts section today: an interview with Stephin Merritt (who talks, among other things, about why he dresses all in brown) and a report on rappers suspected of taking human growth hormone and steroids (in hip-hop, "Your body is your brand and you’ve got to maintain that image").

Of course both articles are about the way an artist's visual aesthetics and style make up a personal brand. Still, how fun if there had been an edit mix up: Stephin Merritt is mentioned in steroid scandal, vitamin-water endorsement in danger! Timbaland dresses in khakis and brings Henry James book to parties!

Hitting the sawdust

Caught an evening of "new circus" Friday night at the French Alliance. The terms refers to a hybrid of circus, dance, theater and performance art (completely devoid of animals) that's quite popular in France but not really practiced here, where circus means either Ringling Brothers or Cirque du Soleil. The most famous practitioner may be James Thiérrée, who gets gigs at BAM, but otherwise we don't see much new circus in New York, save for the occasional short run at the New Victory Theater on 42nd St.

The French Alliance program introduced four companies, each performing a 20-minute excerpt from its regular evening-length show. The overall tone was elliptical and arty, with varying degrees of success. My favorite was Compagnie XY, whose series of balancing acts used suitcases of various sizes as props; the program explained that "the production examines the outward physical mobility of travel and the interior stagnate life of each traveler," but I mostly saw, well, a balancing act, albeit one with very nice dry humor. A shoe-in for the New Vic.

My other fave was Compagnie Bal's "Éloge du poil" (pictured), in which Jeanne Mordoj, sporting a fake beard, starts off with a contortionist bit, performs ventriloquism with two animal skulls and slides an egg yolk around her neck and along her arms. It's fairly opaque and vaguely creepy, and quite memorable. This one could do well at PS 122.

Jean-Baptiste André used a video camera to add another visual element to his balancing routine. It would have impressed me more if Compagnie 111 hadn't done something very similar in its amazing Plan B at the New Vic a few years ago. Still, André's bit elicited delighted oooh's and aaah's from the audience.

As for Compagnie Chant de Balles, there's only so much juggling I can take, even backed by a live lute player. Especially backed by a live lute player.

Time is money

Apparently President Sarkozy is trying to expand the way a country's economic health is measured by expanding the defining parameters.

According to the Associated Press, "Once the preserve of philosophers, measuring happiness has now become a hot topic in economics.

A recent report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development considers taking into account leisure time and income distribution when calculating a nation's well-being. And the European Commission is working on a new indicator that moves 'beyond GDP' to account for factors such as environmental progress.

Richard Layard, a professor at the London School of Economics and author of the 2005 book 'Happiness: Lessons from a New Science,' said Sarkozy may be seeking recognition for policies, popular in Europe, that promote well-being but don't show up in the GDP statistics.

Governments are rated on economic performance, and this influences policy in favor of boosting GDP, the value of goods and services produced over a calendar year, he said.

'But people don't want to think they live in a world of ruthless competition where everyone is against everyone,' Layard said. 'Valuable things are being lost, such as community values, solidarity.' "

Of course one may suggest that Sarkozy is pushing for this change because on paper France could do better in terms of unemployment or inflation, whereas most French people are not hurting for days off. But really, is using leasure time to measure a country's level of success such a bad idea? Americans are often said to be obsessed with money—it's certainly the image they have in Europe—but is it really so true? I'm pretty sure more than we'd expect would choose a balanced, happy life over the mere accumulation of money. (Or I may just be terminally deluded.) Income distribution also is a huge problem in the US, and I for one would be happy to see a country go down the ranks when the disparity between high and low salaries is too high.

Aussie imports

There are two reasons, both Australian, I started watching Cashmere Mafia: Miranda Otto and Frances O'Connor. Otto (right) is best-known here for playing Éowyn in the Lord of the Rings franchise, but she was a lot more interesting in the small flicks she made in Oz, like The Last Days of Chez Nous, Love Serenade and The Well. O'Connor (left) was really appealing in Love and Other Catastrophes, an otherwise mediocre film.

As for the series itself, it begs the question: Is Darren Star shameless or washed-out or both? Centered around a quartet of women (each representing a different hair demographic; see photo), Cashmere Mafia is a total rip-off of his previous show, Sex and the City. Beyond the core idea of four female friends supporting each other through love and career troubles, the aesthetics are identical: The fifth main character is New York itself, with a profusion of brand-name locations (Cielo and Payard in yesterday's episode), and there's even time-lapse footage of clouds in the sky.

The main difference so far actually reflects an evolution in NYC itself: Samantha & Co. hardly had checkbook problems, but the new characters are seriously loaded. They are career women (they met in business school) who live gilded existences—in short, they're the type of people who can afford places in those "luxury condos" we see going up all over town, and they're the type of people who are sucking the life out of real New York by turning it into a playground for the rich. Not that the series is about that, of course, since it gears up to be your usual relationship porn—just like my other fave, The L Word. Still, the first couple of episodes have me semi-hooked because of the aforementioned actresses (particularly Otto, hottt in the ice-queen way that always works wonders with me).

Horseman of the apocalypse

I just love tales of artists gone wild and wow, did Bartabas go wild! Or just plain nuts.

New Yorkers may know the monomonickered Bartabas as the leader of the equestrian troupe Zingaro, whose shows Chimere and Eclipse were seen here (under a bigtop) a few years ago. In addition to Zingaro, he runs an equestrian academy in Versailles. Bartabas is all about the poetry of the horse, the unique relationship between man and animal, etc. It's like a highbrow version of Steve Irwin set to world music, an approach that doesn't particularly touch me but whatev'—he's popular.

Back in December, our whisperer du cheval was supposed to meet with a representative from the regional cultural-affairs office to discuss public subsidies to the academy. When told that 4% of the 2008 state contribution was going to be put on hold, Bartabas flipped out, threw a chair at his interlocutor and smashed his desk, stormed out of the office and wrecked xerox machines and a radiator on his way out. He spent the night at the police station.

As if this wasn't embarrassing enough, the latest news is that Bartabas has just sent a letter to the French minister of culture asking her to apologize for preventing him to perform the night of the incident. It's this kind arrogant sense of entitlement that gives cultural subsidies (which I unequivocally support) a bad name. On the other hand, it's small potatoes compared to the current cultural, er, forays made by President Sarkozy.

Two great tastes

What I learned this week: Don't go to the Met doped up on cold medicine. It makes it really really hard to stay awake, especially when the opera is Prokofiev's War and Peace, which goes on for over four hours. I hear it's one of the Met's most lavish productions, which is easy to believe since Prokofiev wrote something like 60ish roles and at times it feels as if there's hundreds of choir members and extras (plus the occasional horse and dog) onstage.

What I had not realized going in was that it was staged by Andrei Konchalovsky, who must have one of the most bizarre trajectories in modern cinema, going from cowriting Andrei Rublev for Tarkovsky to directing the superb epic Siberiade to…Tango & Cash? Hard to believe the same man who could convincingly fit both war and peace (plus the occasional horse and dog) on an uptown stage once handled both Sylvester Stallone and Kurt Russell for the screen. I do have a fond memory of his Hollywood debut, Runaway Train, a nifty action movie (based on a screenplay idea by Akira Kurosawa!) that starred Jon Voight, Eric Roberts and Rebecca De Mornay—the latter two back when above-the-title careers still felt like a serious possibility. Runaway Train was a far sight from Siberiade, but even then, going from it to Tango & Cash must have been a rude awakening as to the inner workings of commercial American cinema—which would find a way to turn the horse and the dog into cute anthropomorphic sidekicks, what with that war and peace business being a bummer and all.

The ones that got away

Like last year I've contributed lists of my favorite albums and songs of 2007 to the polls run by Idolator and The Village Voice. I'm not entirely sure when they're going to come out, but in the meantime here are some songs from 2007 that I discovered after the deadline. I'm pretty sure Emmon's The Art and the Evil would have made the album list had I heard it on time.

Emmon "High Horses" and "Friends" (from The Art and the Evil)
Can't you picture Swedish popstress Emmon, aka Emma Nylén, listening to early Depeche Mode? She's around 13, holed up in her room while it's snowing outside, and suddenly it hits her: Speak & Spell is genius!!!

Nylén (pictured) had a busy year: She's also is in the band Paris, whose own ’07 release ain't too shabby either.
Paris "Mountains" (from The Landlord Is Kind Enough to Let Us Have Our Little Sessions)

Staying in northern Europe, Denmark gave us Private, the new project from former Superheroes mainman Thomas Troelsen. "My Secret Lover," the album's title track, betrays a fixation with early Michael Jackson and Prince. The lyrics are worthy of Miranda Cooper ("I met you at the club, no further comment/I said, Baby, let's go back to your apartment") and the song features two of my favorite pop ingredients: a phone call and meta lines ("Man, I'm a man machine/Check out my style cause I'm going real wild/I'm plugging in keyboards one at the time/And then I gotta song, gotta a song in no time") uttered in cartoonish voices. Added bonus: out of the blue someone threateningly bleats "I'm coming after you" in a chipmunk squeak. I almost never say this about a song, but "My Secret Lover" ends too quickly.
Private "My Secret Lover" (from My Secret Lover)

Crossing the Atlantic we end up in Argentina, where the techno-poppy Miranda! delivered its excellent fourth album, El Disco de tu Corazón. I picked a track featuring a guest, the Spanish band Fangoria, whose leads used to be in Alaska y su Dinarama, one of the prime groups of Madrid's early-’80s movida.
Miranda! "Vete De Aquí" (from El Disco de tu Corazón)