Butcher's Crossing

Reading John Williams's 1960 Western Butcher's Crossing while Rome—well, Wall Street—burnt was perfect timing.

The book tells the story of young Will Andrews who drops out of Harvard College in the 1870s and goes west to find himself. Under the guidance of man named Miller, he ends up funding a hunting trip to a quasi-mythical Colorado valley, high in the Rockies, where, Miller says, thousands of buffalo roam. The plan is to spend a couple of weeks, kill as many beasts as possible during that time, bring the hides back on a wagon and sells them in the small town of Butcher's Crossing, from where they departed.

They find the valley all right, but Miller gets obsessed with the slaughter and refuses to leave until he's killed every animal—and there's thousands of them. Alas, when he awakes from his bloody reverie, the weather has turned and the four men in the party are snowed in; they spend several months under a makeshift shelter made of hides. After they emerge in the spring, filthy, weak from hunger and the cold, and with one of them pretty much insane, things actually get worse! The trip back turns into a nightmare and Butcher's Crossing itself has changed in ways our Rip van Winkles were not expecting. The ironic twist Williams springs at the end is to deliciously grim to reveal.

Williams doesn't pull punches (I learned more than I ever wanted to know about how to kill, skin and dress a buffalo) but his grim poetry is absolutely mesmerizing. And it's hard to find a better description of a man driven by greed—not so much financial, though Miller certainly wants dollars for his hides, but the elemental need to satisfy a constant craving for more, more and more, even after you have more than enough. Add to this man's destruction of of nature in his quest to control it, and you get a dizzying allegory of a society gone mad.

Indeed, how not to be chilled by the parallel with our barons of finance, who kept wanting more and more and more, and would do anything to get it? As with Miller, who kills buffalo for the same reason too many idiots climb the Everest—because it's there—we now have to deal with the insanity created by morons who got drunk on their own financial wizardry and couldn't stop themselves.

The only good news in this: Williams has only written three novels, making it easy to read his entire oeuvre.

Feeling authentically bluesy

Mixed returns on my last two outings.

Catherine Baÿ's The Snow White Project, part of the Crossing the Line fest on Tuesday, was a total wash as far as I'm concerned. Essentially we milled in front of the Diane von Furstenberg store in the meatpacking district, watching women dressed as Snow White hold placards bearing inscriptions such as "On strike" and "I am an everyday consumer product" inside the store. Suddenly it really felt like the 80s again: a financial meltdown against a background of overpriced doodads, while an artist trots out tired slogans and blindingly obvious concepts. It was a rather smug example of vacant cooptation—and I loathed half the people I was standing next to. I admit that I left after half an hour so I missed the one seemingly dynamic element that came at the end, according to the Times' review. Life is too short.

Then last night I was in the mood for some rawk so off to Bowery Ballroom I went, where Swedish retro masters Graveyard and Witchcraft were sandwiching local act TK Webb and the Visions. The Swedes don't have an ounce of originality between them, faithfully playing a late 60s/early 70s psych- and blues-flavored rock, with a hefty dose of Black Sabbathism in the case of Witchcraft. But they do have that Scandi sense of craft and they threw themselves wholeheartedly into their music. Plus the Graveyard drummer was amazing in an octopus/Keith Moon/Animal kinda way, and Witchcraft has enough great riffs to easily fill a set.

But TK Webb and the Visions…It's almost a bummer to see these guys come across like such a bunch of wankers because Webb at least has been a downtown fixture for a while now, so his commitment seems beyond question. But what's with the second guitarist, the guy in white showing off his tats and striking poses? He looked as if he'd rehearsed every single move in front of the mirror for hours; there was not an ounce of honesty in what he did.

Speaking of which, let's go back to the Celine Dion show for a minute. The Times reviewer wrote of a particular song's interpretation that "instead of connoting feeling — there is not a whit of blues in Ms. Dion’s voice — it felt like a technical exercise."

Whaaaat?

Is the blues the only way to show feeling? Isn't it just one of many performative devices one can use to evoke feeling? TK Webb's gravelly pipes sure made him sound like he felt things, man, for real, but does that make him a better singer? Or even just an interesting one? Furthermore, can't one have technique and emotion? I'm sure those highly trained classical singers would say yes.

In addition, you can think and say many things of Celine Dion, but one thing she does have is feeling—it's just that her version does not fit some people's definition of how it's meant to be expressed, and of realness, authenticity or taste (all dubious words anyway). The last element is the most important here, I think, getting into what the Times' readership think it's okay to mock.

Jeezus, I can't believe I've become a Celine Dion defender…

Celine will go on

Time for some live music! After Carcass and Goldfrapp, I went to see Celine Dion at Madison Square Garden yesterday evening. Ka-razy! It's hard to describe the over-the-topness of that show, which of course was all about Celine emoting and monologuing and doing dance moves (or is that "dance"?) and belting to the rafters. Expected, sure, but if you want to see a born entertainer at work, no matter what you think of her art, the Garden was the place to be last night. Even the Sheila entered reluctantly and left a convert. She even scared me a little when she exclaimed "She's the biggest star I've ever seen!" I pointed out that she had seen Madonna at the same venue a few years ago. "Celine is bigger," she replied. Well then.

This actually was the second time I'd seen the Quebecois songbird live: Back in March 1994, I reviewed her first local show, held at Town Hall. I was then a cub freelancer for the late, much-missed New York Newsday, and I was so eager to get a byline that I'd say yes to anything the daily paper's music editor, the irreplaceable Ira Robbins, would throw my way. Let's just say it wasn't the hippest acts. In addition to Celine, I wrote about concerts by John Denver, Julio Iglesias and Diana Ross; I even trekked to Queens College for Jerry Lewis.

Celine was already doing well in the francophone market but her first U.S. hit, her duet with Peabo Bryson on "Beauty and the Beast," had come out only a couple of years earlier, and "My Heart Will Go On" had yet to land. Clearly she was still holding back somewhat, as this excerpt from my 14-year-old review shows:

"Celine Dion provides a classy, upscale alternative for people who think of Mariah Carey as a shopping mall superstar. Like Carey, Dion has a big voice, and, also like Carey, she loves ballads. But while the Long Islander squarely opts for big hair, big shows and big vocals, Dion takes a more low-key approach, which proved far less grating over the course of an evening. Her simple outfit (long white shirt, black leggings, black jacket) and stage behavior (no costume changes, no dancers, no props and only a few PG-rated pelvic gyrations) provided a visual complement to her relatively pared-down vocals. Dion made good use of her clean, clear, resonant voice without indulging in gratuitous vocal acrobatics—except on a cover of 'Can't Help Falling in Love,' during which she stretched some notes well past their expiration date."

These days Celine does have costume changes and dancers and pelvic gyrations and props (projections and two treadmills). And her vocals are anything but pared down. But what hasn't changed is her core personality (you can take the girl out of Quebec…) and the way she connects with both the stage and the audience. My favorite part was her banter, which clearly is somewhat scripted but still holds pockets of what feels like gushing sincerity (her strong point, as evidenced by some of her most memorable TV appearances). The least you can say about her is that she's completely unique.

One heartbeat away

Finally watched Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud's film Persepolis tonight. I think it was up against Ratatouille for the Best Animated Film Oscar and of course Disney prevailed. A shame, because Persepolis is much more complex than the vastly overrated rodent movie.

Watching it tonight, a scene struck a particular chord because of the current context. The movie is set mostly in Iran after the Islamic Revolution, and it shows, among other things, what happens when ideologues and opportunists band together to rule a country, especially when they use religion as an excuse/tool to enforce their rule. At one point, a woman panicks because her husband had a heart attack and she needs the authorization to get him out of the country so he can get an operation. To her horror, she realizes the hospital administrator in charge of delivering the authorization used to wash her windows. He has zero qualifications and yet there he is, lording it over others.

Sounds familiar? The US has turned into a country where zealots and opportunists band together to pillage natural resources and rob people blind (there's no other word to describe what health-insurance and oil companies do). Incompetent people rise to positions of power, carried on by the passivity and ignorance of the population. Sarah Palin is only the latest in a long line of such people: She doesn't have the qualifications to be vice-president and yet she acts with a sense of utmost certainty. She's very very close to being in charge. We should be terrified.

Through the looking glass

Over at SundayArts, I wrote about what happened when I went to see Reid Farrington's The Passion Project at PS 122. Basically, a college student was taking notes on a PDA, inches away from the performer. Seriously: What the hell?!?

Then on Friday night, the woman sitting right in front of me at Goldfrapp watched the entire show not directly but through her phone's viewfinder, while recording. We were not far from the action and yet never did she look straight at the stage—it was always through the phone. I don't know why she didn't just stay at home and watch Goldfrapp footage on YouTube. But okay, fine, she can have the once-removed experience if she chooses to; what bugged me is that she'd hold the phone in front of me so the gadget was smack in the middle of my line of vision. I don't mind the taking of some photos, I guess, just so I can link to this visual evidence, but recording the entire show on your fricking phone is ridiculous. What the hell is wrong with people that they seem unable to enjoy a live performance for what it is? To me the ephemeral aspect of it is the best part but clearly others don't feel that.

Okay, deep breath.

The show itself was pretty grand, even if live I prefer the more rocking material to Seventh Tree's hippy-pagan fantasias. (The last time I saw Goldfrapp was at Nokia, when they were touring the super-glammy Supernature.) At Radio City the best connection between sound, visuals and venue was during "Strict Machine": the heavy stage curtain was lit in such a way that it made for a fantastically theatrical framing device. Radio City has a huuuuge orchestra so the balconies are set way in the back, making it difficult for a band to take control of the room instead of being overwhelmed by it. Goldfrapp was on top the whole way through.

RIP David Foster Wallace

David Foster Wallace killed himself on Friday. The Times' obit focuses on his importance as a fiction writer and glosses over his nonfiction, which I much preferred—and where he used many of the same postmodern tricks. I can't emphasize enough that how great his two collections, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again and Consider the Lobster, are; all would-be journalists should read them. (Kakutani does mention his nonfiction in her tribute.)

I first discovered Foster Wallace in 1994, when I read his article about the Illinois State Fair in Harper's; in 1996, he wrote about going on a cruise for the same magazine. Both articles were illuminating and incredibly funny—I clearly remember laughing out loud over and over at his descriptions of the fair's food and rides (his approach to this kind of deep Americana has become the norm, though DFW's imitators are just that).

But what made DFW stand out wasn't so much his love for footnotes but the way he wrestled with his role as a writer and with thorny moral issues, something current popular essayists like David Sedaris or Chuck Klosterman never do. The title essay of Consider the Lobster may well be his finest in that regard.

Girls on stage

A couple of show previews in the new Time Out New York: Goldfrapp at Radio City Music Hall and Céline Dion at Madison Square Garden.

The fun part is that I actually reviewed Dion's local live debut, back in 1994, for the now-defunct New York Newsday. I'm looking forward to posting excerpts from that article next to my impressions of Monday's show next week.

The theater's gilded ceiling

Playwright Theresa Rebeck has been contributing to the Guardian's theater blog, and her latest post is a doozie. Basically she addresses a New York Times article that trumpets a renewed focus on men on Broadway—as opposed to the estrogen-flooded past 100 years, no doubt. Rebeck takes that idea to task and I cannot emphasize how great it is to see her anger boil over, especially since she remains funny to the end.

You have to laugh—and Rebeck does, darkly—when reading such lines from Charles Isherwood's piece as "Broadway is also shining a bright spotlight on the male psyche this autumn." The thing is, looking at the male psyche is interesting, but there's a myriad issues swirling around the manner in which it's done on Broadway. For instance, why does the looking have to be done by men? They are controlling the discourse from beginning to end, putting on a great party honoring themselves, and women—who, Rebeck reminds us, make up 60 percent of Broadway audiences—should feel honored to foot the bill.

"Is it a reaction against last season, when the New York stage seemed to be overtaken by domineering women?" Isherwood wonders. He's referring to the main characters in August: Osage County and Gypsy, by the way, not to headstrong playwrights or directors. And since when did two women amount to an overtaking anyway?

Let's bring a teeny tiny bit of perspective and look at that exact same 2007-08 season. What do we find? Men with image issue (Cyrano de Bergerac), men dealing with revolution (Rock ’n’ Roll), drunk men talking to other drunk men (The Seafarer), men inventing cool stuff then fighting over it (The Farnsworth Invention), men finding art (Sunday in the Park with George), men finding themselves (Passing Strange), men running the country (November), men counselled by bad, bad women (Macbeth). Good thing there will be more about them this year, right? Cause it was getting a little tight for them on Broadway for a while.

Let the games begin

Over at the SundayArts blog, I talk about the upcoming fall season, noting a certain timidity on the New York arts scene. How it will all pan out in our age of high ticket prices and shrinking economy remains to be seen…

Live death

On Saturday night I saw enough death metal (at the Carcass-headlined show) to keep me sated for quite a while. Death is one of my least favorite metal subgenres because the songs get too samey for my taste (that's where you can tell I'm an amateur), and the so-called "technical" subsubgenre is beyond boring. That said, I actually spent a pretty good evening at Nokia, especially since I was able to snag a chair at the balcony and calmly read between sets (Richard Hughes' In Hazard, a wonderful 1939 novel about a steamship stuck in a mammoth hurricane).

First of all, I was wrong when I wrote that it would be a five-band bill: There were actually six—Rotten Sound, Aborted, 1349, Necrophagist, Suffocation and Carcass. But true to metal form everything was running super-smoothly and the show was on schedule from beginning to end: I left after an hour of Carcass and it was only 12:30am.

Of Rotten Sound and Aborted there is little to say: by-the-numbers death, and the most interesting thing was that Rotten Sound's singer had a weird quasi-Scottish burr even though he's Finnish.

I had loved 1349 when I saw them at BB's two years ago but last night's set was completely lackluster—it was like a different band altogether. The lone black-metal band on the bill, 1349 stuck out when they showed up in spikes and corpsepaint, which made for a refreshing change from the others' nondescript outfits. Alas, the guitar was weirdly low in the mix and the energy level was decidedly flagging. Not a kvlt night for the Norwegians.

Necrophagist is a very techy death band that looks and sounds like a side project from members of a science club. They all wore cargo pants (the 2008 geek's version of the pocket protector) and played guitars that had, like, 25 strings. Lots of crazy fretboard action—even the bassist did a little tapping interlude. Ugh. The highlight of Necrophagist's set: a ten-second quote from Prokofiev's "Dance of the Knights" at the end of a song. It was completely random and pretty great.

Suffocation, on the other hand, showed you can be death and alive: These guys put on a hell of an old-school spectacle. It helps considerably that they have a real showman in singer Frank Mullen, who's often credited as one of the pioneers of the death growl but does a lot more onstage, whipping up the crowd between songs with earthy Long Island humor. (Suffocation also has two African-American members, drummer Mike Smith and guitarist Terrance Hobbs, which means the band has something like half of all the black musicians in death metal.)

My favorite thing about Carcass (other than they looked like they had stepped out of a vintage Sabbath video, with their flared jeans) was Bill Steer's guitar. He was playing a white Les Paul, an instrument you almost never see in extreme metal, which is all about axes that could poke your eye out if you just look at them the wrong way. In addition to a tone warmer than the brittle one more common in death, Steer and Mike Amott offered a unique combo of technical speed and catchy riffing. The latter is crucial because a lot of the death bands that followed in Carcass' wake just focused on the extreme technicity and forgot about the riff side, producing uncommonly sterile music. (An exception to my mind would be Nile, a super-techy band that's still entertaining because of its nutty obsession with Egyptian lore.)

Hanna hits Camp Rock

It looks like Brooklyn is going to get drenched tomorrow as tropical storm Hanna hits the Eastern seaboard. Much to my relief, however, it looks like it'll have moved out of town by the following day and so it won't get in the way of you, you and you attending my reading at Barbès in Park Slope on Sunday night at 7pm. I'll read from Abba Gold and show some vintage Abba footage.

I'm actually looking forward to the rain on Saturday so I'll have an excuse not to go out and the Sheila and I can hold our own seance on a wet afternoon, ie watch more of the fantastic Australian DVDs she brought back from her recent trip to Oz. More details later, as I'm keen to cover one of them in print, though I can reveal they are vastly superior to Camp Rock, which we watched yesterday.

Let's just say that I've seen High School Musical and Camp Rock, you're no High School Musical. Omigod it's so bad! First, it's quite difficult to get past Demi Lovato, who plays the lead and is absolutely unbearable; 90 percent of her acting consists of her opening her mouth extra wide and baring her huge, blindingly white teeth. And once you've learned to live with Demi, you realize the direction is dead flat (you can tell when Kenny Ortega is not involved) and the music completely pedestrian.

The two bright spots are the unspeakably hunky Joe Jonas, who makes Zac Efron look like Marty Feldman, and Meaghan Jette Martin as nasty popular girl Tess. Or rather the songs she gets to sing, which are the best by far: "Too Cool" and "2 Stars," both very ’80s-revival Kylie.

None blacker

My profile of Ian Christe's new imprint, Bazillion Points, is in this week's TONY. You may know Christe as the author of the excellent history of metal Sound of the Beast, and it's great that he's now started publishing quality books about that still-derided genre.

Speaking of metal, the show not to miss this week (month? year?) is that of Carcass, whose reunion tour stops at Nokia tomorrow evening. My colleague Steve Smith previewed the gig in TONY, and I have little to add other than the headbanging catharsis will be greatly welcome. Also on the lengthy bill is black-metal outfit 1349, which I had quite enjoyed two years ago when it opened for Celtic Frost.

If it was any other kind of music I'd dread a five-band bill, but in my experience metal shows tend to be very well run: Bands stick to their alloted time and the changeovers don't take forever, as they do at indie gigs. There's a lesson there about something or other.

English as a second language

A review of Joseph Horowitz's new book, Artists in Exile, quotes this great line: "Otto Preminger, hearing a group of his fellow émigrés speaking Hungarian, said, 'Don’t you people know you’re in Hollywood? Speak German.'"

This reminded me of the recent decision by the LPGA (Ladies Professional Golf Association) to require its members to speak English. Considering that a third of the membership is Korean, it would make more sense to give Korean and English equal status, no?

Being an immigrant from a non-English-speaking country myself, I'm torn when it comes to the issue of language. On the one hand, I love hearing diverse languages when I walk the streets of New York, and speaking in the tongue you grew up in is an irreplaceable treasure, both affective and cultural. On the other hand, it's undeniable that not being able to speak English well hampers immigrants. When I was doing my immigration papers, I was repeatedly shocked by the insulting way employees would treat applicants who didn't speak English well. The system is hard enough to figure out if you speak the language; if you don't, it's practically impossible—or it costs a lot of money.

What I truly cannot stand is American boors who espouse the "speak English or leave" motto, especially when very often their own grasp on English is tenuous. In my job, I correct native speakers' English every day, and it brings me a lot of satisfaction. I'm especially harsh on those with a lazy approach, those who don't bother with correct grammar, spelling and capitalization. I've worked hard to master a second language, and I have little patience for those who take their first one for granted.

Single moms in the news

While America is debating the fate of Bristol Palin, five-months preggers at 17 and promising, we hear, to marry the similarly teenaged father, France has just learned that its divorced, 42-year-old Minister of Justice, Rachida Dati, is pregnant and unattached. And not only is Dati single, but she's refused to reveal who the father is: "I have a complicated private life and that's the boundaries I've set for myself when it comes to the media. I won't say anything on this subject."

I cannot even imagine a female American politician in a similar position 1) describing her private life as "complicated" (it would be translated for her as "slutty"); 2) choosing single motherhood; and 3) being allowed to choose single motherhood without being tarred and feathered.

Meanwhile, the ravages of religious stupidity, poor education and the politics of sexual abstinence continue in the U.S., now vividly illustrated by the Palin family. The sophistry and rhetorical contortions the conservative right has to display in order to not criticize the Palin situation are a marvel to behold.

A resource for Scandi noir

Thanks to reader Avi, who told me about a good new blog about Scandinavian crime fiction translated into English. Recent posts include coverage of Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy, as the first volume is about to hit America, and the site includes a very helpful list of blogs dedicated to international noir. There's even a companion site with additional resources (including a breakdown of authors by country) hosted by Gustavus Adolphus College's Folke Bernadotte Library. It is located, of course, in Minnesota, the epicenter of all things Scandinavian in the U.S.

Bring the Supersizers to America!

The Dilettante's London spies have reported that they're quite keen on a new series called The Supersizers Go…, in which food critic Giles Coren and comedian Sue Perkins follow the diet of a specific British era for a week, then check in with a doctor.

Here's an excerpt from their Regency jaunt:



And something from the 1970s:



Now at a time when some claim to see a resemblance between Sarah Palin and Tina Fey, it's clear that the real Tina Fey lookalike is Sue Perkins. Perkins is pretty unknown on our side of the Atlantic, though she's built quite a rep in the UK, and she even made the tabloids when her ex Rhona Cameron outed her on a reality-TV show. This will only give more ammo to my colleague Adam Feldman, who has a theory that all the funny women now are gay. Except for Tina Fey, alas.

Here's Sue again, participating in the reality show Maestro, in which celebs have to conduct the BBC Concert Orchestra. The choice of music is particularly inspired.

France in the 1970s

France Culture, part of the French public-radio network, has been running great summer series. I mentioned the one about François Truffaut, but I've also been hooked to Les Années 70, which has been devoting two-hour shows of audio archives to each year of the 1970s. What's particularly inspired is that while the shows do mention big events, they also broadcast rather long, uninterrupted excerpts of less obvious but very 70s documents, like several minutes of Marguerite Duras explaining why it's okay to steal books (even if she herself doesn't have the guts to do it); Solzhenitsyn's appearance on the hit literary TV show Apostrophes; a report on Bertolucci filming Last Tango in Paris; the French Communist Party's head, Georges Marchais, interviewed about a strike; the mayor of a small town complaining about gay cruising; a news report a month after abortion was legalized; and so on.

And while I can't remember lyrics of the songs I hear now, even the ones I get obsessed with, lyrics from songs I heard when I was 10 or 12 are still crystal-clear in my memory, particularly Franco-Frenchy-French hits like Joe Dassin's hideous "L'été indien" (Joe was the son of director Jules Dassin), Johnny Halliday and Sylvie Vartan's "J'ai un problême" (I love the addition of vrooming sounds for the video) or Alain Souchon's "Bidon" (sensitive Alain was one of my mom's favorites and we listened to him a lot in the family Peugeot). Needless to say, none of these songs ever made it outside of France.

I was listening to the show about 1976 this morning, and they were playing excerpts from the very first Césars ceremony (France's answer to the Oscars). For Best Actress, the nominees were Isabelle Adjani in Truffaut's The Story of Adèle H, Delphine Seyrig in Duras' India Song, Catherine Deneuve in Rappeneau's Le Sauvage and Romy Schneider in Zulawski's L'Important c'est d'aimer. Schneider won and gave a speech magnificent in its economy and elegance. Here it is in its entirety: "Thank you very much. I'm very happy and very proud. And I'd like to tell you that tonight I'm especially thinking about one man who taught me my job, who was my master and my great friend. He'll be happy for me. It's Luchino Visconti."

A film that had a huge impact in 1976 France was Carlos Saura's Cria Cuervos. Partly it was because of the stupendous acting by young Ana Torrent, but also because the film's song, Jeanette's "Porque te Vas," was a hit. It remains a personal favorite to this day.

MP3 Jeanette "Porque te Vas"

The Saadiq factor

All right, not to toot my own magazine's horn here, but the Time Out–sponsored show at the South Street Seaport yesterday evening was a blast. The three acts were all completely different and yet to me it completely worked, even if I have to admit the crowds changed pretty drastically for each set, showing that my utopia of a single audience being able to enjoy Endless Boogie, Raphael Saadiq and Oneida is just that—a utopia. (I always find it funny when people tell me they have really diverse music tastes because their iPod has everything from Dylan to the Ting Tings. Give me a break.)

Of the three, my favorite was Saadiq, whose set put a goofy grin on my face. I wasn't really into his first band, Tony! Toni! Tone! but I absolutely loved his second one, Lucy Pearl—a trio with Dawn Robins (from En Vogue) and Ali Shaheed Muhammed (from A Tribe Called Quest)—and his solo output since Lucy Pearl's demise has been reliably sleek and inventive. On his upcoming album, The Way I See It, he looks back at old-school R&B (Smokey, Stevie) in typically smart and classy manner. Live he was the consumate showman, natty in a perfectly cut suit and working the crowd with ease and no cheese. And hearing the Lucy Pearl hit "Dance Tonight" live was a total treat (Saadiq did it with his female backup singer).

MP3 Lucy Pearl "Dance Tonight" (from Lucy Pearl, 2000)

There was an exodus of white hipsters during Saadiq's first song; I told a friend that maybe they would have stayed if that exact same music was played by a junkie instead. Never mind: their loss.

As I said, the crowd completely turned over from Saadiq to Oneida—basically all the black people left and the white ones came back/arrived. While I like Oneida, I'm not sure starting their gig with long, instrumental VU-type grooves was a great idea. It's the kind of stuff you build toward in a set; starting with it kinda defeats the purpose. Sequencing a live set is an art, and one that's quite different from sequencing an album (one of the reasons I don't enjoy the trend of bands playing an album in sequence live).

Cream of the Fringe

Not enough blogging because of too much life, including a vastly entertaining trip to the US Open earlier this week.

But life also involved checking out the Fringe Festival, with a review making it to the pages of Time Out New York this week. As I point out in it, Peter Barr Nickowitz’s The Alice Complex is the second play to be inspired by something that actually happened to Germaine Greer in 2000 (she was held hostage in her own house by a deranged female student). This summer, Joanna Murray-Smith’s take on the episode, The Female of the Species, played in the West End to mixed reviews, with Eileen Atkins in the role of the older woman.

From penning The Female Eunuch (retitled The Cerebral Vagina by Murray-Smith, The Alice Complex by Nickowitz) in 1970 to being a contestant on the 2005 edition of Celebrity Big Brother alongside the likes of Jackie Stallone, Brigitte Nielsen and the Happy Mondays' dancer/mascot Bez (she lasted five days), it's hard to find a better subject for a drama than Germaine Greer. Seriously: forget about the hostage business—her entire life could, should be a movie.

Weirdly enough, The Female of the Species was scheduled to open on Broadway early this year, starring Annette Bening in the Germaine Greer part, but Bening ended up withdrawing and the show never made it to New York. The Fringe play, though rather more modest than what you'd see on Broadway, did boast two excellent actors: Lisa Banes, displaying a sharp elegance that reminded me of Fiona Shaw at times (though like Shaw, Banes had a tendency to ACT) and Xanthe Elbrick, who had already impressed me in Coram Boy; why we don't see her more onstage in NYC is puzzling.

Pop for the masses

Being a pop geek, I was psyched to speak to some of my favorite songwriters for Time Out New York's special Fall Preview issue: Antonina Armato, Matthew Gerrard and Robbie Nevil. (Unfortunately Nevil's quotes didn't make it because of a space crunch.)

What, you haven't heard of Armato and Gerrard? Maybe not, but you sure have heard their work: To mention just recent stuff, Armato cowrote-coproduced the totally genius "See You Again" for Miley Cyrus and "Potential Breakup Song" for Aly & AJ. Gerrard cowrote "I Don't Dance" for High School Musical 2, and they have six tracks on HSM3. Get with the program, people!

Noir whiteout

Because it's been lovely and sunny here in New York for the past couple of weeks, I sought a bit of a cold draft by tearing through four novels from Scandinavia.

First up was Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, translated from the Swedish. I previewed it in the new issue of Time Out New York, so check that out for more info. Basically Larsson has fitted together financial muckracking + serial killers + a locked-room disapperance, three plots that may or may not be linked, making the book the lit equivalent of Russian doll. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is the first volume in a trilogy but unfortunately Knopf isn't putting out the next one until summer ’09. I may have to buy the French version, which has been out (and on the best-seller lists) for a couple of years now, as I'm not sure I can wait a whole year to find out what happens next. Yes, Larsson's that good.

Second was Per Petterson's marvelous To Siberia (which my colleague Drew Toal covered in the aforementioned issue of TONY). I hadn't read Pettersson's critically lauded Out Stealing Horses, so this literary novel (which actually predates Horses) was a discovery. Pettersson crams a lot in a small number of pages, and I guess my surprise at it says something about the bloat that's crept into fiction over the past few years, making short novels a rarity.

Third was Henning Mankell's Depths. This stand-alone novel (so no Kurt Wallander) takes place in 1914 and has got to be one of the bleakest things I've read in a while. In fact, it's like a parade of all the clichés people associate with northern Europe: relentless gloom, miserable characters, frozen landscapes, and depression, alcoholism and death at every corner. And yet I made it all the way through, slogging through the tale of Lars Tobiasson-Svartman, an officer reading depths for the Swedish Navy. Unsurprisingly, it turns out the methodical Tobiasson-Svartman is ill-prepared to measure, let alone deal with the depths lurking within himself (I bet you didn't see this one coming), and all's bad that ends badly.

Mankell provided a blurb for fellow Swede Kjell Eriksson's The Demon from Dakar, ie book no. 4 and a return to genre. Nothing special about this one, a by-the-number procedural. I have no idea why I even finished it, considering I had thought the exact same thing about Eriksson's The Cruel Stars of the Night. Recommanded only to hardcore Scandi-noir fanatics.

Applause, applause

I was watching the Denver convention after work today—at the gym, natch. I started with CNN but couldn't bear all those smug pundits, so I switched to PBS, which was showing the state-by-state roll call. Very interesting to a newly minted American like me, about to cast her first vote in a national election in November!

When I tuned in, Governor Jon Corzine was just casting the New Jersey's delegation votes for Obama. Next in the alphabetical order was New Mexico, which announced it was yielding its delegates to Illinois. "What a fascinating process," I thought, unaware states could even do that, and wondering what exactly the point of doing it was. But then Illinois yielded its delegates to New York. I was flummoxed but okay, if that's the way it works. Hillary got on the floor, surrounded by Chuck Schumer and David Paterson, and she announced a motion to stop the roll call and nominate Obama by acclamation. Which is what happened.

At first I thought it was so exciting and historic and all that. But after about ten seconds my mood turned. What is this, decisions by applause meter?

One of the biggest problems created by the Bush administration over the past eight years is an increasingly ingrained disregard for due process: Let's just dispense with all those petty rules and regulations, which only get in the way, and let's do what we want to do when we want to do it.

Which is why cheering Obama as the Democratic nominee was a bad, bad idea. There are ways to do things to ensure everybody's participation in the democratic process, even if these things are purely symbolic. Of course Obama's nomination was certain, but doing a roll call of the states at the convention, one by one, feels important to me: Democracy is a process, not just a word. The roll call allowed states like New Jersey, which had gone to Clinton during the primaries, to show solidarity by announcing their unanimous support for Obama (which is exactly what it did). Depriving the states, particularly the ones that sided with Clinton in the winter and spring, from openly, decisively, verbally embracing Obama sends the wrong message. The biggest ovation can't make up for it.

You can't stop the Alphabeat

The hand of Blogger fell on the following post, which was taken away from the blog! Here it is again, minus the offending MP3 (I figure that's what happened…), as I quite like Pete Hammond's remarks about songwriting and didn't want them to get lost.

The remix of "Boyfriend" by Danish group Alphabeat is a time machine: board it and you're beamed back to Top of the Pops, some time between 1988 and 1993, when Stock Aitken and Waterman ruled the airwaves with their ultra-synthetic productions. SAW released their stuff on their own label, PWL, which counted as a most potent weapon (re)mixer Pete Hammond—responsible for the new Alphabeat remix.

In the first first two minutes, before the vocals come in, he throws in every retro trick he can think of: syndrums, keyboard bass, hand claps, crisp guitar riff, synth hook. Then there's the song, sort of intact, then there's another break about two thirds of the way in. Oh my god this is so awesome, I just want to cry!!! I can already tell that "Boyfriend" will stand as a highlight of 2008 along with Die Soldaten.

Clearly the extended mix is the best, but the video, using a more compact version, is fun too:



Below is one of my favorite classic SAW nuggets, "That's What Love Can Do" by an American girl group called Boy Krazy.

My favorite aspect of the song is that it starts with the chorus but then the verse is actually catchier, and catchier still is the second part of the verse, which segues into the chorus. Absolutely masterful songwriting there. In regard to the importance of the bridge in a pop song, Hammond once said "A lot of people don't understand what a bridge is, but for me it's the most important part of a song next to the chorus. If you go straight from verse to chorus it throws your timing out because then either the verse has to be too long and becomes boring, or the chorus comes in too early. To me the ideally paced song is one which has a chorus-type intro for about eight bars, which at 120bpm lasts for about 16 seconds, then an eight-bar verse and an eight-bar bridge, which means you're up to about a minute for your first chorus. If the chorus happens any later than that the radio stations will take if off because they're fed up, but if you've got a good bridge leading up to something, they feel drawn to it."

Philosophical musings

My review of Muriel Barbery's The Elegance of the Hedgehog is in the new Time Out New York.

That a novel in which an entire chapter is focused on dismissing phenomenology would be a best-seller in France isn't surprising: This is a country where every spring, the announcement of the philosophy questions at the baccalaureate exam makes the news. Samples from this year's crop:

- Can art transform our awareness of the real?
- analysis of an excerpt from Schopenhauer's The world as Will and Representation
- Is scientific knowledge of the living possible?
- Is it easier to know the other than yourself?
- Can one desire without suffering?

Talk amongst yourselves…

Damn the heavens

So the eagerly anticipated Rhys Chatham show with 200 electric guitars was cancelled at the last minute on Friday: The piece was outdoors, it was raining, and electricity doesn't mix well with water. People were mad and they weren't going to take it. Or were they? Over at SundayArts, you'll find my reaction on the reaction: In short, get over yourself.

La failure de Simone

Boredom made way to disgust today, as my friend Tristan and I endured La Passion de Simone, a 75-minute oratorio by composer Kaija Saariaho and librettist Amin Maalouf, and part of the Mostly Mozart festival.

Boredom because this "musical journey in 15 stations" was so short on musical ideas that I could not figure out on what basis Saariaho is hailed as an important contempory composer. To stay in the piece's spirit of portentous self-aggrandizement, I'll say it was us going through the stations of the cross.

Inappropriate? We're talking about a piece that, under the pretext of looking at the tragic struggle of Simone Weil—who starved herself to death when she was 34, in 1943, refusing to eat in empathy with those lacking food in the camps—tries to elevate to the sublime a tale that's much more down to earth: that of a selfish, childish woman endowed with a monstrous egotism. A stupider, more futile gesture is hard to find: She accomplished nothing, her death creating all the ripples of a tree falling where no one can hear it.

"She was trying so hard to solve some of the problems of our existence," Saariaho has said. Not at all: Weil was trying to solve her own problems, that's all. That inner struggle can be more than enough for an oratorio or an opera or a movie—characters wrestling with their faith was Bergman's crisp bread and butter. Perhaps Saariaho should have watched Winter Light to see how it's done. Art about someone wrestling with the idea of god is quite different from art glorifying useless martyrdom, especially when said martyrdom is couched in a pompous, vacant mysticism—here, the ultimate refuge-slash-excuse for an anorexic egomaniac.

Tristan nailed it when he said Weil was nihilistic and narcissistic. I can't remember now precisely if it was Weil herself (in one of the voiceover readings from her writings) or Maloof who drew a parallel between her factory-worker idea and the number tattooed on the arms of concentration-camp prisoner, but there's quite a difference between the two. But then, you're talking about a woman who mused that Alexander and Jesus were also close to 34 when they died. No wonder the Resistance didn't want her.

McCain endorses social democracy

For some reason it took me two weeks to see the lists of favorite songs Obama and McCain submitted to Blender magazine. It seriously makes me ill to see that Abba shows up not once but twice on McCain's list, with "Dancing Queen" at No. 1.

On the one hand, it may reinforce the prejudices of those who think of Abba as safe, old people's music. Dilettante readers know better, of course! On the other, you could argue that McCain has picked a band hailing from a social-democratic paradise and that it shows that…never mind, it doesn't show anything.

Obama has two non-American picks (U2 and the Rolling Stones) to McCain's one, and he has more female artists. No surprises there. Thank god Malia Obama is a fan of Miley Cyrus. I was starting to think nobody in that family ever has any fun.

Mary, quite contrary

I usually don't mind Mary Carillo. When it comes to American sports commentators, she's right at the top, and if you're going to listen to Olympics-related chatter, it might as well be from her. But I just happened to catch a rather embarrassing segment between events (ie, filler).

Bob Costas, he of the preternaturally smooth brow, had somehow heard that golly, they eat weird things in China, so he sent out Mary to try out some of the local specialties. "I can't believe they eat this stuff!"-type hilarity ensued. At one point, she mused something along the lines of "they'll fry anything around here," right before ordering scorpion on a stick.

If you've set foot in an American county fair, you'll know that they'll fry anything around the US as well, including Spam, avocado, Oreos and frog legs (are these really any better than scorpion?). And at least scorpions can be found in nature, unlike Spam.

This type of hoo-hah provincialism is really tiresome, but it's kinda par for the course when it comes to American coverage of sports, particularly sports taking place in other countries. The New York Times is doing better in Beijing, but it's really dry—it really lacks the kind of humor and gimlet eye covering such a preposterous event requires. (I mean, Phelpsmania is just ridiculous at this point.)

For my money, the best, most irreverent Olympics coverage can be found in the pages of The Guardian, particularly its daily missive "The Beijinger." Subscribe and it'll land in your mail box every day. Of course I also read the French press, so I can follow the travails of swimming star (or should it be ex-star at this point?) Laure Manaudou and the sports we tend to excel in, like judo, fencing, canoeing, whitewater kayaking, etc.

Calling all bunheads

I'm taking a break from devouring Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (seriously, I've been plowing through it—it's highly addictive) to point to my latest post on the SundayArts blog. This one's about the fascinating world of ballet schools. You don't need to be a bunhead—and I'm far from one—to think it's a mesmerizing universe of its own. And there's video clips, too!

In praise of French film noir

My short overview of Film Forum's series on French noir is now online (props to film editor Melissa Anderson for the most excellent title). Lots of nuggets are scheduled to hit Houston Street in the coming weeks, including one of my top five favorite films of all time, Quai des Orfèvres.

If you like François Truffaut

If you speak French (or want some serious practice) and like François Truffaut, French public radio has just completed a weeklong tribute to the director that adds up to a whopping 16 hours of programming. And for a while at least, you can listen to it all spread out on several podcasts. Just go to the France Culture site and scroll down to F to download the shows to iTunes. "Archives" consists of Truffaut himself talking about his work; "Documentaire" has a documentary approach with film excerpts, archival audio clips of people talking about Truffaut, etc.; "Débat" is made up of roundtables with some of the director's collaborators and film scholars discussing his career.

I've only listened to about four hours so far and I'm completely addicted, especially since the series is about a lot more than just one director—it covers the birth of both modern cinephilia and film criticism, French cinema in the postwar years, the relationship between French and American cinemas, etc.

A memorable moment among many, many others. On April 29, 1974, the Film Society of Lincoln Center is presenting a tribute to Hitchcock at Avery Fisher Hall; Ingrid Bergman introduces Truffaut, who delivers a short speech in his strongly accented English, familiar to viewers of Close Encounters of the Third Kind:

"Bonsoir mesdames et messieurs. I beg your pardon in advance because my English is terrible. You just saw the dubbing version—the dubbed version, not the French version. In America, you call this man 'Hitch'; In France, we call him 'Monsieur Hitchcock.' [audience laughs] You respect him because he shoots scenes of love as if they were scenes of murder; we respect him because he shoots scenes of murder like scenes of love [laughter, applause]. Anyway, it is the same man we are talking about, the same man and the same artist. When I began to direct films, I thought Monsieur Hitchcock was fantastique, maybe because he weighed more than 200 pounds. Therefore I tried to eat more and more. I gained 20 pounds but it obviously didn't work. I knew I had to find another way to understand the proportions of his genius. So I asked Monsieur Hitchcock to give me an interview of 50 hours and to reveal all his secrets. The result was a book. Actually it was like a cookbook, full of recipes for making films. But the great secret of Monsieur Hitchcock is a secret of cinema itself. People used to say, 'A film is good when it gives fear or pleasure to the audience watching it.' But I don't believe that. A film is really good when you can read between the images the director's fears when he made this film, or his pleasure making this film [chuckles]. I see it must be pleasure that Monsieur Hitchcock felt when he put his camera on the summit of Mount Rushmore."

The doc podcasts conclude with excerpts from Truffaut's aforementioned interviews with Hitchcock, which were recorded and saved. There was simultaneous translation by Helen Scott since Truffaut's English wasn't good and Hitchcock didn't speak French, so it's very easy to follow. And if you want to focus exclusively on the Truffaut/Hitchcock tapes, the blog If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger… has posted huge chunks of them. Craziness!

I am not unhappy

A colleague who had been reading the travelogue I was writing while on vacation remarked "Boy, you really seem to dislike America." It's actually not the case: I'm reasonably happy living in the US, and I even acquired dual French-American citizenship not so long ago. I also realize that it's precisely that utter fuckedupness of the US that's fostered so much great art over the years—no wonder the chaotic genius that is pigfuck was born in the Midwest, for instance.

What does drive me crazy, however, is how Americans always think they have it better than anyone else and other countries should emulate their model. I won't even get into pesky details like, you know, torture, Iraq, the lack of universal healthcare or the absolute inequality of the social structure here; but travelling abroad, particularly to Europe, you realize that America has really fallen behind in terms of quality of life.

Now this is a topic that hasn't surfaced in the campaign so far, but it touches on something really essential: Do we live comfortable lives with good public transportation, low pollution levels, a widespread adhesion to basic tenets of civility and the social contract? Are we happy? I don't believe the American-style rat race, in which people feel they have to always work more to keep up with the Joneses (ie, buy ever bigger houses, ever bigger cars—that is, before the advent of $5/gallon gas) actually fulfills said people. And one look at the crumbling New York City subway, in which water pours down onto the rails whenever it rains and the stations are filthy and decaying, should be enough to sober up the biggest booster. "Capital of the world?" Hah! Does Mayor Bloomberg really ride the train??

So yes, I do admire the Scandinavian Social-Democrat model. And there's no mystery as to how it's achieved (or at least one of the ways it's achieved): high taxes. Personally, I have no objection to paying more of them if they go to public transportation, better healthcare for everybody, better public infrastructure (ie, more rail and ferries, less roads).

Oh, and while we're on the subject of northern European countries: I've posted on matters pertaining to Scandinavia's approach to music on the SundayArts blog.

Trees died for this?

Lurking in the mail pile waiting for me at work were two tomes: The Amazing Book of Useless Information and Disgusting Things: A Miscellany. The former is a follow-up to The Book of Useless Information and is subtitled "More Things You Didn't Need to Know But Are About to Find Out," while the latter is basically a Garbage Pail Kids version. I realize there's a lot of more offending books, but for some reason those particularly irk me.

For all this I blame Ben Schott and his Miscellanies, which at least display decent wit. The copycats are just unbearable: "Antarctic means 'opposite the Arctic'," The Amazing Book tells us. "American and Russian spaceflights have always included chocolate." "The most popular gift in Eastern Europe is a bottle of vodka." Jeezus, these guys just google stuff randomly and call it a book! Disgusting Things, meanwhile, answers pressing questions such as "Why do dog farts smell so bad?" and "Do some women create artwork with their placentas?" What a colossal waste.

Dateline London, part 3

Farewell, London, it was nice getting to know you a little better. Indeed, it was only on this, my fifth or so visit, that I feel I finally got London. Before, I could never get the lay of the land and constantly got hopelessly lost, unable to figure out where the most basic landmarks were in relation to each other. I truly think it had something to do with the driving-on-the-left thing, as I experienced a similar disorientation on my trips to Australia. In any case for some reason things clicked this time, and I was able to actually enjoy walking around—especially since I also knew which bus to take, and which direction to take it in.

A couple of recent highlights: a really good lunch buffet in a vegetarian South Asian place (lots more fresh veggies and fruits than we'd find in the NY equivalent, where they seem to think everything has to be drenched in either sauce or syrup) and Hampstead Heath. Now that is a city park! I was struck by how bucolic it was, especially since unlike Central/Prospect Park, it wasn't overwhelmed by nonstop athletic activity and nutty picnics in which people feel they have to transplant their entire living room to the outdoors, complete with recliners and stereo systems. The most striking feature: the swimming ponds reserved for men and women. We only saw the women's one, of course, and it was like being beamed onto another planet; the sense of isolation was enhanced by the fact that our host and guide tried to use her GPS as a joke and the device was utterly befuddled as to what our location was. It felt like a slice of women's utopia lifted out of a 1970s feminist novel. I wonder if such a thing could exist in New York.

Before I leave for Heathrow, some observations about cultural differences on television.

In Stockholm, we watched a show called Singing Bee, on which contestants are tested on their knowledge of song lyrics. (I believe there was an American version but it didn't last.) The participants were all quite good, but what blew me away is that they essentially knew pop classics in two languages, Swedish and English. They had no idea what would be thrown their way but they never looked fazed. A guy was equally at ease performing Eurovision entries, Motown, and Swedish tunes I couldn't recognize. Oh, and "The Final Countdown." I'd like to see English or American contestants with this kind of bilingual facility. Actually, you could find them, but they'd be, like, Asian in England, Hispanic in the US. Perhaps a similarly bilingual show exists on, say, Univision in America, but I seriously doubt it could be on one of the major English-speaking networks.

In London, we caught the end of the British version of Deal or No Deal. First, we were surprised by how many family and friends the contestant, Betty, was allowed. But then it turned out they were the people holding the suitcases! So instead of a big razzamatazz set with identikit models holding cases out of a James Bond movie, you had totally normal people, in all shapes, ages and colors, around some kind of table. Second, the whole thing was tuned down several notches from the hysteria reigning on the US version, which somehow bolstered the suspense. It was kinda hushed and thoughtful, and the closeups on Betty's anguished face were almost…haunting.

Which brings me to third: Betty seemed to be in her late fifties/early sixties and looked every hard-lived second of it (HD is particularly merciless). Our Brit host remarked that the show looked like a Mike Leigh movie! I doubt Betty would be allowed on American television: The web of wrinkles and creases on her face harshly illustrated the very notion of aging and mortality, which is not allowed to be suggested in the youth-obsessed US. You could tell Betty had not had an easy life, which of course made the suspense even more biting. Very canny casting there!

Read elsewhere

My review of Jancee Dunn's debut novel, Don't You Forget About Me, is out in the LA Times. It's good readin', folks!

About Jacques Nolot

Oops, forgot to mention that my interview with director Jacques Nolot came out in Time Out New York last week.

I'm loathe to interview young artists these days because for the most part, they don't have much to say. Sorry, they just don't. Older ones, on the on other hand, do have stories, and it's hard to find somebody with better stories than Nolot, a wonderfully wry raconteur who's seen it all and is not afraid to say it all. Read on…

Dateline London, part 2

More sunny weather in London. Yesterday we walked around parts of the East End, with a coffee break at the new Rough Trade shop. I'd only been to the old one, near Portobello Road if I remember correctly, and the difference between the two is like that between a tenement and a boutique hotel. The new store is really spacious, with a little stage in the back for free performances (Neon Neon tonight, Daniel Johnston Saturday), a row of computers with free internet access, and of course the now-de rigueur café. I couldn't help but wonder how they sustain themselves, with that much real estate in a happening neighborhood--aren't record stores supposed to be dying?

Much less impressive: accompanying the Sheila to a business meeting this morning, we had to take the tube at rush hour. I'll never whine about the NY subway at rush hour after that miserable experience. We had to let three trains go by before we could even get on one. Then being tall-ish, I had to stoop slightly, crammed against one of the curving sides. And we were so packed that of course reading was out of the question.

We've been using an Oyster card to get around. It's a magnetic card that you just press against readers as you enter and leave the tube, or as you board a bus. Recharging them is a breeze. Still, the price is high and getting around adds up quickly. And despite this snazzy technology, Stockholm still had the best innovation: you can buy bus tickets on your cell phone, then you just show the cell's screen to the driver as you board. Again, America looks completely stuck in the 20th century there. But since Americans don't travel abroad all that much, they don't even realize how antiquated their infrastructure is. And don't get me started on the rail situation!

Dateline London, part 1

Alas, we had to leave Stockholm yesterday. Goodbye, Tidy Town of the North! We flew on to London, where we'll be for a few days, visiting friends. Much to my surprise, it took us only 90 minutes between the moment we left the SAS plane and our stepping into our new temporary abode near the Fulham Broadway tube station. The smoothness and cleanliness (well, it was filthy compared to Stockholm but spotless compared to New York) of the public transportation were stupendous--even though we keep hearing about how it's a weakness of London. I'm quite obsessed about public transportation, and it's one of my favorite things to explore when I travel. In the midst of the hullaballoo about rising gas prices in America, the lack of debate on public transportation never ceases to amaze me: that is what pundits should discuss, not alternative fuels like ethanol and used cooking oil. As usual, Americans are more interested in bandaids and lunatic pseudo solutions rather than structural innovations--especially since developing decent public transportation would require real change and real sacrifice (ie, higher taxes).

But I digress…

I hadn't been to London in about five years but the mere transformation of Fulham Broadway in that interval says volume about gentrification: For a second I even thought I had led us to the wrong station as it was completely unrecognizable. Just imagine, I don't know, a basic stop on the F in New York renovated from top to bottom, going from a regular station to a subway emporium-slash-minimall with a movie theater, a Starbucks, a Borders, etc. That is what happened to Fulham Broadway in the past five years. The rest of the neighborhood has gone through a similar metamorphosis: it's really poshed up, paralleling, I suppose, the evolution of Chelsea FC, whose stadium is nearby (our host is a transplanted Liverpudlian and so loathes Chelski, as it's nicknamed due to its being owned by a Russian billionaire).

More updates after we go on the town today.

Dateline Stockholm, part 5

We picked the right day for our excursion to the Archipelago, as yesterday was a bit brisk but sunny, and we soaked up the rays on our trip to Finnhamn on the classic steamboat Storskär. The scenery reminded us of the Adirondacks in upstate New York: lots of green, rocky little islands, many with a house or two built on them. And while we did see a few powerboats, there were far more sailboats and far, far less of the humongous, obnoxious SUVs of the seas that clog up American waterways. The steamer was full of people carrying backpacks as the islands are great for camping and hiking (if you don't mind mosquitoes and ticks). The Sheila dipped a foot in the Baltic and promptly took it out, but the water's temperature didn't seem to faze the Swedes splashing about.

Oh yes, we also continued our exploration of Swedish husmanskost (home cooking) with pytt i panna, a sort of hash served with a pickle and beet slices. (I've lost count of the cinnamon rolls we've ingested.)

This morning, I headed up to Skogskyrkogården cemetary, where Greta Garbo is buried. It was quite a trek, as the subway line was under repair and I had to take a shuttle bus. Then I tried to find my way around the place, which is so spartan that it doesn't include many directions. Still, this has to be one of the most magnificent cemeteries I've ever seen; no wonder it's a UNESCO World Heritage site. A fine example of Swedish functionalism, it's completely different from the rococo excess of, say, Père-Lachaise in Paris; rather, it feels as if the graves are just in the woods. I was alone the entire time, walking in a light drizzle. Garbo's grave is a little more elaborate than the others, but not that much: just a reddish headstone with her name, no dates.

Alas, I won't have time to make it to Norra begravningsplatsen, which has Ingrid Bergman, August Strindberg, directors Victor Sjöström and Mauritz Stiller, and Vilhelm Moberg, author of The Emigrants (upon which Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus based their musical Kristina från Duvemala).

Dateline Stockholm, part 4

The Sheila and I were pleasantly surprised by how fun Mamma Mia! is, considering we didn't care for the play all that much. Meryl Streep looked as if she was having a total blast, which more than made up for the fact that the movie clearly takes place now, which makes the math behind a 20-year-old girl being born in the 70s rather wonky, to say the least. But hey, I stopped computing pretty darn fast. Plus, come on, we saw it in Stockholm!

Speaking of enduring magic, I'm quoted in this new Salon article about Abba's everlasting power. I wish I had remembered to mention, however, that for some music fans it's religious-era Bob Dylan, Ne-Yo's latest video and Arcade Fire fans that are cheesy. The cheese whiff clings to Abba mostly in the US and (a bit less so but still) England, countries with a very weird relation to European pop; that's because they're culturally protectionist when it comes to music and still find it difficult to accept the fact that a group from a non-English-speaking country could create great pop music that transcends its era.

Dateline Stockholm, part 3

I've been living in New York for 18 years now, and while I have visited the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building, I'd never seen Patti Smith live until yesterday evening. She plays regularly in town, including popular New Year's Eve stints, but somehow I'd always managed to miss her. Well actually I did see her once a few years ago, but it was a poetry reading in Central Park, one of her first public appearances after her husband's death. I guess I lacked the motivation to catch an actual show because the whole poetic-priestess bit kinda bored me. But I loved her covers album from last year, Twelve, which really drove home the point that she's a fantastic rock singer.

The crowd at the Stockholm Jazz Festival, where Smith was performing, was much larger than the previous day, and the average age higher (I didn't see any babies in sound-blocking headphones this time). The show got off to a great start ("Dancing Barefoot," a 20-minute version of "Are You Experienced") but then fell into a kind of maudlin, slow-paced rut. Things picked up again, however, with a series of absolute punches in the gut: "Pissing in a River," "Because the Night," "Smells Like Teen Spirit," "Rock and Roll Nigger"--she blazed through them all, the band (including classic PSG members Jay Dee Daugherty and Lenny Kaye) pumping mightily behind. And I'm sorry, but you just can't fake that kind of charisma.

On a sartorial note, Ms. Smith spent most of the set in a long coat, explaining at some point that she had a cold. She did take it off a couple of times, revealing not one of her trademark Ann Demeulemeester button-down shirts but a white T and mom-ish jeans (tucked into brown boots).

That was a fitting cap to a day spent exploring the neighborhood of Kungsholmen, then taking the tram around parts of Djurgården. The weather is a bit iffy today, which may provide appropriate atmospherics for a visit to the cemetary of Skogskyrkogården, where Greta Garbo is buried. More later.

Dateline Stockholm, part 2

Of course there is music! Our very first night, we were too bushed to go out so we watched Allsång på Skansen, broadcast live on television every Tuesday evening from the Skansen park in Stockholm. The show essentially consists of artists performing their own hits but also some pop and schlagerish classics and dansbands nuggets. The installment we saw had the Poodles (a glammy band that entered Melodifestivalen a couple of years ago) and some singers and comedians completely unknown to me. The concept is that the crowd sings along (= allsång) on the older tunes. The audience covers a fairly wide age range and it's really fun to watch hipster-looking twentysomethings enthusiastically sing their hearts out next to grannies and children. Allsång's popularity has grown so much that the Dilettante's Special Stockholm Correspondent told us that Robyn and Lena Philipsson have been on it.

Yesterday evening we went to the second night of the Stockholm Jazz Festival. Here, a shout-out to Liisa Tolonen and her crew in the press department, who must be among the most professional, the nicest I've seen in years of doing this job. The fest itself takes place on the grounds of the Museum of Modern Art on the island of Skeppsholmen (a 20-minute walk from where we're staying) and is remarkably run. I was struck by a few things: contrary to American practice, the prices at the concession stands didn't seem jacked up from what they'd be anywhere else in town; everything ran like clockwork despite a bad thunderstorm; the crowd covered a very wide age range, with kids as young as three wearing elaborate sound mufflers (kinda like the ones workers at airports wear); plenty of tidy portaloos. Also striking: people were clearly enjoying themselves but nobody was going wild, even during the Soundrack of Our Lives' awesome set. This last bit wasn't so good.

So, the music. Yesterday must have been Swedish Indie Rock Day because the two main acts on the main stage were Marit Bergman and the aforementioned TSOOL. I'm a big Bergman fan but I wasn't entirely convinced by her experiment: she did her entire set on the piano, backed by the Stockholm Strings quartet. I love her songs because of their bouncy pep and that was kinda lost in those arrangements. It may work better in a more intimate environment.

The most amazing thing is that the aforementioned thunderstorm erupted precisely as Bergman finished her last song, and stopped exactly as TSOOL took the stage. It was uncanny.

I'm not a big fan of TSOOL's albums but live, they smoked. (I realize I'm late to the party as great shows is exactly what's built them a good rep in the US these past few years.) Out of the three acts to emerge from the ashes of the legendary Union Carbide Productions, I'd always preferred the solo projects of guitarist Björn Olsson and drummer Henrik Rylander (so much so that I've interviewed them both for The Wire), but clearly I needed to see TSOOL live to get onboard. Even the Sheila, who displays a very Australian pickiness when it comes to rock & roll, was enthused. Favorite bit: Ian Persson, working a total Tony Iommi look that included super-tight 70s-style pants, 'tache and Gibson SG.

Dateline Stockholm, part 1

The worst thing about going on vacation is that you need to work twice as hard before leaving (hence the lack of posting) and twice as hard when you come back. But it's worth it 'cause I'm now in sunny Stockholm and on my first trip to the supermarket to stock up on lingonberry jam and fish balls, Abba was playing. So there.

After waking up late in the splendid abode of the Dilettante's Stockholm Correspondent, the Sheila and I spent our first day walking around and getting our bearings, refueling along the way with rather good lattes. I like getting them in tall glasses (same as in Kiev), which allows one to stare at the swirling milk. When we were driving in the Queensland countryside a few years ago, we passed a few "Tidy Towns" (a hotly contested award apparently), and yesterday the Sheila reflected that Stockholm was one big Tidy Town. Coming from New York, where trash flies freely around, it feels positively spic and span here.

After walking for a few hours, we finally bought a weeklong public-transportation pass and jumped on the first bus that came around--literally. We had no idea where we were going. We're big fans of buses (the regular ones, not the tourist ones) and they really are the best way to discover a city. Not to mention a great way to get cheaper food; the Sheila pointed out that we were going to feed on the "end of the line specials," which are a lot more affordable to us, crippled by our third-world currency, than the meals in the posh area where we're staying.

Today's program: The lovely Marit Bergman, a longtime Dilettante fave, is playing the Stockhom Jazz Festival (it must be Swedish Indie Rock Day as the Soundtrack of Our Lives is also on the schedule) so we're going to head up that way.

Raging fires

Predictably, Die Soldaten is dividing people. Obviously I stand on the pro side, and very much so, but others didn't care for the show. Anne Midgette's reaction in the Washington Post is interesting.

I won't comment on the specifically musical criticism, not being equipped to do so, so I'll focus on the content and staging. First, she's wrong right off the bat when she says "This is a work that is ready to rebel, even if it is not quite sure against what." Alois Bernd Zimmermann knows exactly what he's criticizing and rebelling against, and he often explicitly states it: the abuse of women by men.

"The exorbitant outlay for the movable seats proved a tremendously expensive gimmick: Pountney could not think of anything more creative to do than move the audience to a different part of the runway for each scene," Midgette writes. Actually, I found the device tremendously effective, and used very well (the seats don't move "for each scene," as she writes). It allows Pountney to play on both space and time, providing a sense of depth as we watch several actions happening either at once or at different moments down the 260-foot length of the runway. It also allows him to explore both a sense of crushing grandeur and intimacy; in that way, the moving seats function like a camera, zooming in and out of particular scenes.

Midgette also says that having Marie raped by men in Santa Claus suits is too obvious an image—but if this stuff was that obvious and easy to come up with, we'd see it (or something similar) more often on our stages. And we just don't. (I'm surprised she doesn't mention the stunning, utterly terrifing pig masks. Obvious, perhaps, but very, very effective—they really scared me.) Those images may look obvious because they are in such adequation with the music and themes, but they really are not that simple. A good director surprises you but also makes you think that what he does is inevitable—which for some may look obvious. Achieving both at the same time is very very difficult, but that's what Pountney did.

That rape scene, in fact, seems to be a problem for many. But it is as horrible as it needs to be. It is nauseating, but not in a way that made me despise the creative team. Unlike torture porn in contemporary horror movies, which makes me find the directors abhorrent, that scene made me despise what the characters did, not what the director did. My esteemed colleague Steve Smith pointed out that the scene doesn't exist in the original, or rather that it happens offstage. Well, it does exist then—Pountney just chose to make us see it. Yes, it is a deliberate decision to hit the audience over the head, to push our collective face into a pit of abjection, but I'd argue that as an audience, we need to go there, we need to descend into stomach-churning hell.

Finally, that Die Soldaten has provoked such arguments is the final proof, if needed, that it has fulfilled its purpose as a piece of art. If you want lukewarm, you can have it any day on any stage in New York. And me, I hate lukewarm.

Home is where Abba is

I've been a lot more excited about the movie version of Mamma Mia! than the stage one, mostly due to Meryl Streep's presence. But for some reason it belatedly occurred to me that I could see it on vacation in about ten days…in Stockholm!

The release of the movie has thrust Abba back in the spotlight, with the four members appearing together at the Swedish premiere. I'm very happy, however, to hear Benny and Björn state one more time that the band isn't going to reunite, no matter how much they get paid. What's a little less good is the avalanche of articles offering backhanded compliment to the band. One in The Independent, at least, looks more closely than usual to the craft behind the glitz. I particularly agree with the line "In Britain and America, bands had – and still have – a huge reverence for tradition and an obsession with authenticity. Scandi-pop doesn't have to pay homage to old bluesmen, or agonise about keeping it real. It can just grab whatever sounds best and feels right."

Of course there's also the usual blather about Abba's lyrics. The author remarks that they're not any more clunky that Chris de Burgh's "Lady in Red," but this is faint praise again—almost anything is swifter than "Lady in Red." It'd be more daring, and more honest, to say Abba's lyrics aren't any clunkier than those by Chris Martin, Duffy, Mariah Carey or, to mention just one major Abba pilferer, Madonna: "I don't like cities, but I like New York/Other places make me feel like a dork/Los Angeles is for people who sleep/Paris and London, baby you can keep." Oy. And unlike Abba, English is these people's native language.

Bitter truths

Charles P. Pierce's essay in Esquire about the Obama candidacy is one of the finest I've read so far. Of course, it helps that I share Pierce's take on Obama's discourse, and the fact that it's basically giving Americans a free-pass card (change without sacrifice, easy charisma over bitter pill). My main qualm is that Pierce's rhetorical gimmicks get a bit grating after a while, but it's easy enough to overlook them and focus on the ideas themselves.

What I like best about this piece is the rage and disappointment that run through it—not at Obama or other politicians, which would be too easy, but at the American people themselves. For despite all the talk about freedom and democracy, Americans do no exercise their most basic rights and do not fulfill their most basic duties as citizens, including voting and holding their elected representatives accountable. But hey, freedom is being able to drive your big-ass car wherever and whenever you want, right?

Pierce comes down harshly on Obama for feeding us bromides about the country's greatness: "The cynic will admit that it’s all great politics. Tell America that it is a great country that simply has lost its way for a spell. Tell the American people that they are a great people who are better than those hucksters who come to divide us. It has a marvelous anesthetic appeal. Swirl down through the clouds of memory and forget that the country allowed itself to follow George Bush over the cliff not merely because it was shocked by the attacks of September 11, 2001, but because it was too pissing-down-the-shoes scared to do anything else. Forget about how eagerly the American people cheered the brutish and the nasty, how simple it was to sell raw animal vengeance dressed up as geopolitical wisdom, and how dumbly everyone followed until well after it was revealed that the people selling it didn’t know enough about the world to throw to a cat. This was the era of complicity. Can Obama end it, thought the cynic, without admitting it ever existed?"

"Why would anyone have faith in America, which is not tough but fearful, not smart but stupid, and not shrewd but willing to fall for almost anything as long it comes wrapped in a flag? Why would anyone have faith in Americans? Barack Obama says that he has that faith because of his own life, because he was able to rise to the point where he can be thought of as president of the United States. He is the country’s walking absolution. That’s his reason, the cynic thinks, but it’s not mine. There has to be confession. There has to be penance. Being Barack Obama is not enough. Not damn close to enough."

Apocalypse now

Words like "genius" and "great"are thrown about regularly these days, but in the case of Die Soldaten at Lincoln Center Festival, they should be used literally. If you're reading these lines, you are likely to have an interest in the arts, so the message is simple: go.

Every time I'm brought down by one more mediocre, bland, utterly pointless show—they are even more lethal than the truly bad ones—I wonder why I'm putting myself through this rigmarole over and over again. Why, why do I feel the urge to stagger back home at 11pm on that slowpoke F train after one more disappointing evening out? It's because as with everything, your chances of hitting on something good are infinitesimal. Just ask anybody trying to date in New York. The odds are against you, so you have to kiss a lot of frogs to find the one prince—in the arts, something that transports you to another realm. You might call it transcendence, and when you find it, it makes up for all these wasted hours. That is what Die Soldaten provided on Thursday night, when I was lucky to see a dress rehearsal of that mammoth piece.

On paper, Alois Bernd Zimmermann's 1950s opera looks pretty austere, and it is, of course: 12-tone music isn't my idea of an elevator to bliss; add a storyline dealing with the use and abuse of a young woman by various men in wartime, and Die Soldaten had the making of a big spoon of castor oil. Honestly, I think it'd still be that for me without this new extraordinary staging (I can't say I will ever listen to the music at home for instance).

Lincoln Center Festival threw its financial might behind importing David Pountney's awe-inspiring production from the 2006 Ruhr Triennale, in which the audience sits on metal bleachers that slowly move along a gigantically long stage—in our case, set up in the main hall of the Park Avenue Armory—while the no-less gigantic 110-person orchestra sits on the side. (This helpful video preview explains the basic idea.)

As we made our way along the stem of the T-shaped stage, an optical illusion made it seem as if it was the actors who were on a treadmill while we were static. Pountney would place his cast along the whole length, making for an incredible impression of depth of space and even time. But the large scale was only part of the picture: The particular genius of Pountney's concept is that you get both a sense of mind-numbing grandeur and, because the action moves in and out of focus, so to speak, one of crushing intimacy—we were lucky enough to sit right next to the stage and so we were just about eight feet away from the cast at some of the most harrowing moments.

Die Soldaten is an ultra-rare case of a highly conceptual staging that brings everything out of the work and more, transforming the way we even consider the interconnection between art and life. It threw my head into a major Exorcist 360 spin. I'm pretty sure that I forgot to breathe during the last ten minutes, when the gruesome plot reaches its apex and at least four drummers in the orchestra are going at it in unison (the din was so ferocious that I could see the other musicians covering up their ears with their hands). A local director I know was sitting a few rows ahead of us and looked shellshocked afterwards.

Total hardcore!

It's hot in herre

Another post on the SundayArts blog, this time about the singular Nellie McKay, whose debut fronting a swing band takes place on July 8.

Life and death on the Prairie

Reading James Howard Kunstler's typically apocalyptic latest post, I was reminded of Jericho, the cheeseball, short-lived TV series I've been watching on DVD.

Kunstler, a Peak Oil theorist, argues that the looming economic crisis will be "something at least twice as bad as the Great Depression of the 1930s: people with no money in a land with no resources (with manpower that has no discipline), hardly any family farms left, cities that are basket-cases of bottomless need, comatose small towns stripped of their assets and social capital, an aviation industry on the verge of death, and a railroad system that is the laughingstock of the world. Not to mention the mind-boggling liabilities of suburbia and the motoring infrastructure that services it."

The premise of the show is that nuclear explosions have destroyed several American major cities, leading to utter chaos in the entire country; the action is centered on Jericho, a small Kansas town cut off from the rest of the U.S. as communications break down, and power, gas and food run out. The response to the crisis is pretty much exactly as Kunstler described it above—though as I finish watching the first season, I'm entirely unclear as to whether the writers intended to critique the American way of life by showing the citizens of Jericho to be foolish, spoiled, childish, irresponsible and selfish, or if they had no idea they were painting such a damning portrait. A satirical viewpoint does peek at times, as when a teen boy (already established as a bit of a douche) happily explains that once the Internet is back on, everything will be all right again, food will be delivered, etc. But are the town's power couple, the former mayor and his wife (Gerald McRaney and Pamela Reed), really meant to be insufferably self-righteous characters prompt to cast judgment (the stereotypical judgmental heartland) or are they meant to represent good, old-school American values? I truly cannot tell.

It's the way Jericho's citizens adapt—or not—to their new circumstances that most resembles Kunstler's description of "comatose small towns stripped of their assets and social capital." First of all, this is Kansas and these people are starving in the middle of winter because no food is delivered and subsistence agriculture doesn't exist; the sole exception, it seems, is a single corn-growing farm (which, characteristically, is audited by the IRS for debt at the beginning of the show). Second, for several days, even weeks, after the first explosion, a lot of townspeople just hang out at the local bar, waiting for help to magically appear. Similarly, they seem content living in ignorance of what happened, and nobody has any interest in exploring the surrounding area—even though we are shown a landing strip and some small planes. Nobody attempts to find alternative sources of energy until months have passed. The passivity is simply extraordinary.

Now I realize we're talking about a series starring Skeet Ulrich here, but Jericho is one of those products whose anthropological/political interest is larger than its production values (as in the ol' Star Trek days, the show was visibly shot in a handful of Southern California locations and absolutely nothing about it looks either Kansan or post-nuclear). Even when it feels as if the creators' intents and what's on screen diverge, a lesson is taught: If there was a major catastrophe in America, the country would be woefully unprepared. And the idea of a Blackwater-like paramilitary company running amok in a devastated country is chillingly realistic.