Now wait a minute!

See these guys on the left? They played Roseland Thursday night, except for some reason they were never mentioned in the New York Times' review of the show. The very first sentence announced "a very strong triple bill"—Machine Head, Trivium and headliner Lamb of God. Poor, poor Gojira, who went on first and completed what actually was a very strong quadruple bill.

Reviewer Kelefa Sanneh also described "the most discordant moment of the night" as when the crowd responded to Lamb of God singer Randy Blythe's injunction to "Give it up for Trivium!" with a mix of applause and boos. But an equally discordant moment had happened earlier, when the French Quartet That Wasn't There was greeted with boos, raised middle fingers and shouts of "Fuck you, Frenchmen!"—I know, 'cause some of the eloquent meatheads were standing right next to me.

Gojira proceeded to shut those morons up with a blistering set played at top volume. (And the sound was crystal-clear, in contrast to Machine Head, which played equally loudly but with a muddled balance that made me feel as if the double kick drum was positioned right behind my eyeballs.) There's a reason Gojira was on the cover of Terrorizer a few months ago: Its latest album, From Mars to Sirius, is a massive slab of prog-death metal (with environmentally aware lyrics, natch), and live the band was pulverizingly heavy, like Mastodon without the dumb facial hair. Randy Blythe seemed to think so too: He joined Gojira onstage for half a song.

MP3 Gojira "Backbone" from From Mars to Sirius (2005)

TV on demand

The indispensable INA (Institut National de l'Audiovisuel) is the repository of French public television and radio archives, and there's gold in them vaults. INA has been putting a lot of its holdings online lately; most of the footage is for rent or purchase (prices usually range between 1.5 and 6 euros), so you can download and watch at your leisure, and there are plenty of free clips and teasers.

Recently, INA uploaded a whole slew of Apostrophes, a wildly popular literary talk show that aired between 1975 and 1990, and remains a classic of French television. Just search for Solzhenitsyn (or rather Soljénitsyne, in French), for instance, and you'll get a special, shot in 1983, where host Bernard Pivot visited the Russian writer (seen playing tennis at one point) at his Vermont house. Other classics I still remember from my childhood include a very drunk Bukowski, a cigarette in one hand, a glass of something boozy in the other, staggering out of the set after driving the usually unflappable Pivot crazy, in 1978.

You can also listen to the news broadcast from the day you were born, and of course, the INA site is loaded with great music, from Sheila singing "Les Rois Mages" in hot pants to entire operas from the Aix en Provence festival, like a Così fan Tutte recorded live in 1955.

Have I mentioned the plays? French public TV used to show a lot of theater, and my generation grew up devouring everything from boulevard stars (all hail Jacqueline Maillan!) to Marivaux in prime time.

Thank you, INA, for giving us the biggest time-suck outside of YouTube.

Young the restless

It was pretty fitting that a blizzard hit New York Friday night; walking down 10th Avenue in whiteout conditions added a layer of deep-freeze fun to Ann Liv Young's retelling of Snow White at the Kitchen.

From what I gather, many—including, it would appear, some of her own (now ex) collaborators—think Ann Liv Young is a fraud who's getting press and European grants solely because her shows are in-your-face raunchy. She usually gets reviewed in dance sections but there's relatively little dancing (or what is traditionally thought of as dancing) in the two pieces by her that I've now seen, and it can be very crude, owing more to 1980s music videos and cheerleading routines to Judson or Martha or Twyla or whoever the hell it is NY choreographers look up to these days. The overall aesthetic is rough and amateurish, but you can't tell if this is a deliberate choice executed with canny precision or the result of a certain haplessness on Young's part. Likely, it's a mix of both, which is one of the reasons I like her shows so much.

While Michael, performed at Dance Theater Workshop in 2005, was mondo trailer trash, Snow White is a gonzo-karaoke Twilight of the Fairy Tales. The cast of three—Young, Liz Santoro and Michael Guerrero—already was onstage, wearing eye-shredding white leotards and black ankle-high Reeboks, as we took our seats. Santoro in particular looked as if she was dreading what was about to happen; rarely have I seen so much anxious boredom ooze out of a performer doing strictly nothing.

They started things off by singing along to Michael Jackson's "Smooth Criminal"; the effect was oddly powerful, with Young in particular looking magnetically feral. In another highlight, Snow White (Young) got fucked by the Prince (Santoro, sprouting a dildo attached to her hips with pink duct tape) to the strains of the original version of "Someday My Prince Will Come." At one point, the Prince berated Snow White in French ("You sucked off all the dwarfs, etc."); at another, Young explained her creative process, which seems to mainly involve harshing on her team, "like when I tell Liz she's a dyke with no singing ability. The next day, she's impeccable." The ensemble of three dressed and undressed constantly, going from one hideous getup to another, while Young, clearly in charge, requested water in the middle of a dance, petulantly barked directions and bossed the other two around.

The entire time, Young's expressions ranged from bratty to angry to frustrated to bored to resentful, as if she was pissed off with her own show and couldn't wait for it to end. It didn't matter if she was play-acting or not and it's this ambiguity that's her strength, this confusion that makes her so bewilderingly interesting. Does it matter if we know what's planned or not? Young is very clever at making it all look like a gigantic car crash in progress but she let us in on her self-awareness with a brilliant idea toward the end, when the three performers sang along to a recording session of the vocals to the Beach Boys' "Help Me, Rhonda" complete with studio fuck-ups and interruptions.

Young's choices challenge ours as supposedly hip audience members: Okay, so we've taken an endorsement of junk aesthetics as far as it will go—now what? Cannily, her perpetually angry, perpetually frustrated mix of self-flagellation and self-satisfaction mirrors that of arty, lefty America.

Snow White plays again at the Kitchen on March 21–24. You'll be hard-pressed to find a better way to spend $12 this year.

News from the front

The French front, that is. As the U.S. sinks into further insanity with every passing minute, the first round of the presidential elections is a month away in France, and things are both heating up and…not.

Heating up, because the center-right candidate, François Bayrou, has come from way behind to pull up to pretty much the same level as the Socialist candidate, Ségolène Royal (candidate MILF!), and now both of them are a few points behind the frontrunner, rightist Nicolas Sarkozy. A few months ago it was assumed by most that Sarko and Ségo would duke it out in the second round, on May 6. Now things are up in the air.

But not heating up either, because the campaign, at least seen from New York, feels rather dull. Sarko has a proven record as a power-mad authoritarian, the great muckracking weekly Le Canard enchaîné has unearthed juicy stuff about his real-estate holdings, and yet he's ahead. But Ségo's campaign is disastrous. She's not any more or less knowledgeable than her male competitors but when she is caught not knowing something, it sticks like glue. Meanwhile, members or former members of her own party are coming up with books attacking her.

On Tuesday, Alan Riding had an article in The New York Times about how contrary to years past, culture doesn't figure out much in these elections. What caught my eye is that how he remarked that unlike in England, in France there's still a "gulf between subsidized high culture and commercial popular culture." First of all, this a rather big overstatement. Unlike in France "directors and actors move freely between serious theater and movies" in England, says Riding; I'm sure this will be news to the likes of Michel Piccoli, Philippe Torreton, Jeanne Balibar, Isabelle Huppert, Catherine Frot—actors who move freely between theater (both serious and not) and movies (ditto). I mean come on: even Alain Delon is starring in a stage adaptation of Bridges of Madison County right now!

Also, since bridging the "gulf" between high and low is to be praised, Riding may want to look into it. A new opera in Copenhagen? Check. Something cooking at the Tate? Right-o. Just don't expect any coverage of what sociological tidbits can be gleaned from Nouvelle Star, the French take on American Idol, for instance, or even of the commercial theater scene anywhere but England (see Alain Delon reference above).

On the newsstands

The new Time Out New York is out, with two short pieces by yours truly: a review of Natsuo Kirino's latest novel, Grotesque, and a preview of the Justin Timberlake shows.

In other publishing news, I'm perversely thrilled to have been called a Nazi by a Salon reader reacting (anonymously, of course) to my article there.

I could have listened to her all night

I blogged about Marat/Sade first, but it actually was the last entry in the weekend's trifecta of shows—on Saturday, I'd seen the revival of Prelude to a Kiss followed by the Philharmonic's concert staging of My Fair Lady at Avery Fisher Hall.

I've never been bowled over by Craig Lucas's plays; they are competent but fail to touch me either emotionally or intellectually. Prelude to a Kiss didn't do anything to change that opinion, especially in the Roundabout's competent but lackluster production. The only thing I have to say is that I don't understand why the character of Rita is so often described as "neurotic." Even in Annie Parisse's high-strung interpretation, Rita strikes me as having not so much neuroses as a variety of issues. When did "neurotic" become shorthand for "strong personality" in America? What's up with the medicalization, especially considering that it's usually employed in reference to women?

Moving uptown for My Fair Lady, which ranged from charming to absolutely thrilling—the latter every time Kelli O'Hara, who played Eliza Doolittle, sang. I'd missed the 1993 revival that starred Richard Chamberlain and Melissa Errico (has it really been ten years since she was scheduled to be the Next Big Thing of musical theater? What happened to that?) so this was my first time seeing My Fair Lady since moving to New York in 1990. It's going to be hard to top the production, even taking into account the fact that no B'way orchestra could ever dream of matching the Philharmonic's insane lushness. Kelsey Grammer may have been typecast as Henry Higgins, but he did a fine job, and it turned out that Brian Dennehy can sing. Who knew?

As a tribute to Lerner & Loewe, here's Mathilde Santing's gender-bended take on "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face," recorded in 1982 with a dinky Casio and drum machine.

MP3 Mathilde Santing "I've Grown Accustomed to her Face" from Mathilde Santing

According to her website, Santing is playing Glinda—in alternance with Glennis Grace, who represented the Netherlands at the Eurovision Song Contest in 2005—in a Dutch production of The Wiz. She's also a brunette now.

The filth and the fury

Sensitive souls were well-advised to take a pass on the Classical Theatre of Harlem's staging of Marat/Sade, which I was lucky to see yesterday, on the last day of its run: It featured the most realistic shit I've ever seen on a New York stage—as opposed to the shitty realism one sometimes encounters at the Roundabout or MTC.

It boggles the mind to think that not only was Peter Weiss's play (full title: The Persecution and Assassination of Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade) once on Broadway, but it won four Tonys in 1966! Glenda Jackson, who played Marat's assassin, Charlotte Corday, was nominated for Best Featured Actress but didn't win. Director Peter Brook also handled the movie adaptation, from which the photo above is taken.

Except for one silent role, there weren't any women in Christopher McElroen's staging for CTH. And this is the least of his conceptual touches. McElroen's biggest stroke of inspiration was to reconceive the physical space so that the action would take place in a central ring enclosed by chain-link fences; the audience sat in two rows on three of the sides, with two lateral galleries allowing the actors to roam behind the spectators. Since Marat/Sade happens in the titular asylum, this entirely made sense, creating the suffocating impression to be prisoner in a pressure cooker. And McElroen ratcheted up the tension already present in the text, keeping the proceedings at a fever pitch the entire time.

The high dramatic point comes during Sade's big speech—which T. Ryder Smith, as the divin Marquis, must give while getting flogged, his white shirt sprouting crimson flowers. Once that's over, he grabs handfuls of excrement from a bucket and smears it all over his face. A woman sitting in front of me laughed loudly, and was told "This is not funny!" (I couldn't identify who said that—a fellow audience member or someone from the cast.) Sitting a few feet away and watching in horror as turds were flying about, I felt as if a huge weight was pressing down on my chest.

My main caveat with the whole endeavor is that too often Weiss's text—which essentially contrasts two ideas of revolution, Marat's radical dream of a revolution by the people and for the people and Sade's highly individualistic philosophy—got lost in the general mayhem (we're talking hoses to calm down the inmates here). Weiss was a leftist German who in the 1960s realized socialism as practiced by the USSR—one of two large-scale models of communism in action at the time—could not work without crushing the individual. (See also Vasily Grossman's extraordinary Life and Fate for the daily practice of Stalinism.) "On the one hand the urge with axes and knives/To change the whole world and improve people's lives/On the other hand the individual lost in thought/Caught in the throes of the calamity he's wrought," summarizes Sade. But it's hard to focus on ideas when someone is banging on a pipe right behind your head or pulling on your chair.

As we embark on presidential campaigns in France and here, those of us passionate about the arts should keep in mind something else Weiss wrote (not in Marat/Sade): “Art is never a weapon in the sense of concrete political action. It only conveys activity, it communicates qualities which we have to detect in ourselves. We are the ones who, upon closing in on a work of art, liberate the powers confined within. Without our ability to ingest, our own ability to think, the work remains powerless. However, with our attentiveness we transpose the latent vision into real, perceptible deeds.”

Partly this is saying that going to a political show—writing a political show—just isn't enough when it comes to "concrete action." Let's keep this in mind when do-gooders start going on and on about the importance of political art: As much as I'd like to think otherwise, art will never replace the less-glamorous practice of politics when it comes to actually changing the world. You can go listen to Springsteen and feel good about yourself, but that won't prevent Rome from burning—ie, the Republican machine from savagely gutting your country's institutions, moral fabric and individual lives.

All the art money can buy

Last week, Lincoln Center announced the lineup for this year's summer festival. My colleague Gia Kourlas has already expressed what she thinks about the dance component, but fortunately the theater offerings look more inviting.

At each of the last three Robert Wilson shows I've seen, I've told myself "never again!" only to get suckered into going just one last time. The familiar thought last popped up after seeing Quartett in the fall, but once again I'll go back to the trough since Lincoln Center is bringing over the staging of La Fontaine's fables that Wilson did for the Comédie-Française, complete with Français actors. I'm also totally psyched by the return of the Kabuki troupe Heisei Nakamura-za, whose last appearance at the festival in 2004 remains a great theater memory, and very intrigued by the prospect of a Taiwanese King Lear (the third major Lear of the year, with the Kline Lear currently at the Public and the McKellen Lear coming to BAM in September).

Also appealing-looking are the four Spanish-language plays, including Gemelos, an adaptation of Agota Kristof's amazing novel The Notebook (which is part of a trilogy but holds up on its own), and Proyecto Chejov, a deconstruction of The Three Sisters by Argentine director Daniel Veronese, whose Hamletmachine I'd quite enjoyed at BAM in 2000.

All in all, we have many reasons to looking forward to July.

Lusophone love

The new issue of the good-looking cultural webzine Obscena is out and it's packed to the gills, with pieces on the Judson Church group, Caden Manson and Richard Foreman, and my own overview of current New York theater on pages 20–22. You can download the pdf here.

Er…it's all in Portuguese. Not a problem, right?

She's a maniac

Catching up with the ongoing fourth season of The L Word, I must grudgingly give kudos to creator and frequent writer Ilene Chaiken. I'm not sure I'd like to share an espresso with her, and I can't tell whether her choices stem from cluelessness or rebelliousness—there's such a thin line between visionary and nincompoop—but her blithe disregard for narrative conventions and psychological logic makes for addictive television. Ever since the series started, characters have made stupefyingly dumb choices (Bette's flirtation with the carpenter and the student, Max going out with his boss's daughter), undergone personality transplants (Helena's turn from arrogant rich bitch to poor patsy, and hard to remember now that she's a saint, but Bette started as an obnoxious alpha female) and somehow tolerated asshole behavior of the highest order (psychopathic Jenny and cheating, scheming Tina still have friends).

And yet…oh, Chaiken, how you torture us with your gallery of self-involved L.A. lezzies in tight tank tops and horrifying haircuts. The show is like a trip to Payard: shiny colors and sweet, sweet indulgences, including my personal favorite—the hilarious name-dropping in conjunction with Jenny's literary career.

I might also mention that Jennifer Beals has been inducted in my highly selective roster of stage/screen crushes, which includes the likes of Vivica Genaux, Valérie Lemercier, Karin Viard, Elizabeth Marvel and Catherine Keener (Diana Damrau, I have my eye on you too). There are many things to praise about Ms. Beals in The L Word, but a personal favorite may well be the fact that unlike less high-profile cast members, who have no choice but to bare all, Beals seems to have a no-nipple clause in her contract. She's been in quite a few sex scenes over the past four years, and every time it's a pleasure to watch the director of photography go through exquisite contortions in order to avoid showing the Bealsaboob.

Another pleasure has derived from seeing the extremely gifted cartoonist Ariel Schrag benefit from gainful employment as a story editor and occasional episode writer (she displayed a sure comic touch in the recent episode in which the girls comfort Cybill Shepherd's husband). She's come a long way since I wrote about her autobiographical comics in the Village Voice back in 1999.

You missed me, you really missed me!

Fine, I know nobody actually noticed I was on vacation so let's go straight to this year's vastly entertaining movie awards—no, silly, not the Oscars but the Césars, the ones that are given out in France. For the second consecutive year the ceremony was hosted by Valérie Lemercier, whom I worship with the goo-goo eyes of a home-schooled 13-year-old. And after what she pulled off a couple of weeks ago, I'll start a cargo cult.

First of all, her entrance to the tune of Zouk Machine's 80s hit "Maldone" has already become an insta-classic. Check out, in particular, Almodovar's baffled look. Lemercier again pulled all the stops in another musical display later on, when she performed the cult dance scene from The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob (1974) as part of a tribute to that movie's director, Gérard Oury, who died in 2006.

Another memorable moment came about when the French distributor of Little Miss Sunshine, which won for Best Foreign Film, accepted the award on behalf on the directors and unconsciously began lasciviously fondling the statuette. Classic live-TV moment.

And because nobody gets rudely interrupted by a swelling orchestra at the Césars, writer-director Pascale Ferran (whose Lady Chatterley eventually won for Best Film) was able to squat the stage with a very long prepared speech about the state of French cinema and the benefit situation of those who work in the industry. She went on and on and on in a deafening silence but the earnest awkwardness of the moment was delish.

Marina Hands (daughter of stage legend Ludmila Mikaël) won Best Actress for the title role in Lady Chatterley. Marion Cotillard might as well start preparing her 2008 acceptance speech now: She's selflessly amazing as Edith Piaf in La Môme. The movie's surprisingly good and I'm sure there'll be plenty of opportunities to come back to it when it's released here in June under the title La vie en rose (never mind there's already a charming Belgian movie called Ma vie en rose).

Other than that, it was really fun to be in France a few weeks before a presidential election. The big talk was about the candidates' real-estate holdings and just how many nuclear submarines the country owns, a question that stumped both major candidates, Ségolène Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy. I also witnessed Sarko host Canal+'s evening show Le Grand Journal. Sarko's problem right now is that he has zero emotional capital, ie the French think he's efficient but also a cold-hearted jerk. When asked to pick a favorite movie scene, then, Sarko showed a clip from the 2001 tearjerker I Am Sam, in which Sean Penn goes all Method on us playing a retarded man. Unbelievably, the show's hosts didn't blink at such a naked display of political calculation.

Sarko's literary pick was Yasmina Reza's thin novel Nulle Part, from which he even read an excerpt. Though Reza's latest piece for the stage, A Spanish Play, has been panned in NYC, the choice seemed interesting until I later learned that Reza's following the candidate around in order to write a book about him.

Back in black

Ah vacation…a week away, several days to recover. While I concoct a little something about what I saw and heard when I was over in Europe, here's a link to my Salon piece about the debate surrounding Jonathan Littell's novel Les Bienveillantes in France. I can't wait to hear Abraham Foxman and GLAAD's shrieks of righteous indignation when the book comes out here next year.

I also saw and enjoyed the new Jackie Hoffman show, Jackie with a Z, a couple of weeks ago. My review in TONY can be found here.

Edwardian talking heads

Preparing to go on vacation is both exciting and overwhelming; in other words, not much time to update this blog. Until I get back in full action, here's a link to my review of Harley Granville-Barker's The Madras House at the Mint Theater.

Jailbait!

When they were around, in the late 1970s, the Runaways were often perceived as Kim Fowley's puppets (because young girls couldn't possibly write their own songs) and described as jailbait (they were all in their teens and total bad girls—ie, they taunted boys and played rock & roll). But their influence has outlasted the middle-aged male critics who used to make fun of them, and their music has aged surprisingly well, as I was reminded at a fun, affectionate tribute by the Stay-at-Homes at Magnetic Field Saturday night.

The Stay-at-Homes are made up of local vets who recreate almost all of Live in Japan—which, luckily, happens to be my favorite Runaways album. Tammy Faye Starlite, who goes through three costumes as singer Cherie Currie, even included the stage banter. But things really hit a high point at the very end, when the Stay-at-Homes tackled the awesome "Dead End Justice," an epic story-song that matches "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" in overblown rock-osity ("On the planet Sorrow/There is no tomorrow"—amazingly enough, this poetry did not seep out of Jim Steinman's brain). I never thought I'd hear "Dead End Justice" live one day, but there it was, in all its tawdry glory.

MP3s The Runaways "California Paradise" and "Neon Angels on the Road to Ruin" (both from Live in Japan, of course)

Coda: While Joan Jett is looking increasingly sad as an aging fetish mama playing Bud Light rock, Cherie Currie's now a professional chainsaw carver. She sells her sculptures, so if you're wondering what to give me for my next birthday… (Hint: think raccoons).

It's on!

For way too many of us, February means one thing: the real beginning of the national selection rounds for Eurovision. And this year already looks like it's going to be a feisty one—Lordi's win in Athens last year has obviously unlocked a lot of "why the hell not?!?" pent-up Eurovision energy. There's talk of Morrissey and Jarvis Cocker participating for the UK, Denmark has just selected a statuesque drag queen and as I've mentioned before, the mighty Ark has entered the Swedish competition, Melodifestivalen (MP3s of several 2007 Melodifestivalen songs can be found here). Even perennial loser Poland has come up with a good tune that boasts a total Gwen/Fergie vibe—exactly what you'd expect from Poland, right? (Although that country has given us the awesome Kasia Stankiewicz so it obviously has pop potential.) If Portugal, which usually is Poland's peer in terms of Eurovision wretchedness, somehow brings out something half-decent, it'll be a sign that Helsinki will be the most hotly fought contest in years.

Now things are heating up in France, where France Télévisions has set up a better selection system than usual. This year, each of the channels making up the public group is picking two candidates within an assigned genre, before the Eurovision entry is chosen at a grand final in March. The most encouraging part is that the entries tend eschew the boring consensual slow-to-mid-tempo crap that's plagued the French selections this past decade; not so good, however, is that France is still far from even nearing the Scandis' particular genius at catchy melodies. Hasn't anybody heard of anthemic chorus and strategic key changes over there?

France 2 is meant to represent variété. Estelle Lemée zooms out of the gate with a fairly strong ’60s-flavored number (though the chorus should be a lot more wow) and an even better visual identity. Estelle and her handlers also understand the importance of gay gay gay backing dancers at Eurovision. Now that's progress! BZR and Cheb Hamid have a good song and the little scenario they play out in the video is sorta fun, but they're definitely not variété, and hasn't the turbo-ethnic genre run its course at the main contest? And what's up with wearing a Brazil soccer jersey? Come on! My bet is on Estelle here.

France 3 looks to be embracing kitsch as well as its assigned genre of "nouvelle scène française." Les Vedettes' "Vive papa!" is written by indie icon Katerine (who recently had a freak hit with the brilliant "Louxor j'adore"). They work a latex-cheerleader look and the song isn't bad, but I'm afraid this brave attempt at over-the-topness is too amateurish. Les Fatals Picards' "L'amour à la française" is a lot better, and non-French speakers should be aware it's sung in a fake American accent. Too inside-jokey to work in Helsinki perhaps.

France 4 (rock and rap) is going with Les Wampas, an old-school—or perhaps just old—punk band that also had a freak hit a few years ago with "Manu Chao." True to form, the chorus of "Faut voter pour nous" goes "You gotta vote for us! Les Wampas are going to win Eurovision!" Alas, history tells us that self-aware songs don't do well at the contest, even when they happen to be great, as was Telex's "Eurovision." And "Faut voter pour nous" is far from great, or even good. France 4's other pick, MAP, performs a rap with violin and accordion in French. Not a chance.

Of the two France 5 pop picks, I prefer Jennifer Chevallier, whose mid-tempo R&B-flavored "Mon étoile" is actually fairly catchy. Among my favorites with Estelle Lemée, and one of the few who'd stand a chance at the showdown in Helsinki (though I'm not sure if the interracial angle would play for or against her at this point). Charlotte Becquin is backed by a girl band, and god knows those are rare in France. In the video they act up a certain lesbo vibe, which is novel enough at Eurovision to score points, but would be a lot more believable if the girls didn't look like they have no idea how to play their instruments. I mean come on, even Vanilla Ninja could play!

Finally, RFO, true to form and mandate, goes the world route, which should really please those who think the multiracial soccer team doesn't represent "the real France." Medi T's "On and On" starts with the national anthem before turning into a bouncy party anthem with the usual lyrics about how we're all the same despite being of different colors and how dancing unites the world. Good thing most Eurovision viewers don't understand French. Valérie Louri's "Besoin d'ailleurs" is relatively stark but not bad. Its problem, shared by all the other songs here, is the absence of a cathartic chorus. As long as French songwriters can't come up with one, we'll never win, simple as that.

Radio radio

I haven't been on the radio in a while and I've really been missing it. (Ah, catching a few zzzz's on the WFMU futon after an overnight slot, waiting for the first morning bus from East Orange to Port Authority…) Fortunately I'll get a fix tomorrow, February 13, starting at 2pm, when I guest on WNYC. If you're in the NYC area you can listen at 93.9 FM or 820 AM, or you can stream the show live from the station's website anywhere in the world. Former Village Voice music editor Eric Weisbard, now at the Experience Music Project in Seattle, is another guest. We'll discuss the concept of guilty pleasures, especially as they apply to music.

Sondheim Follies of 2007

I'm always surprised when Sondheim's music is referred to as cold and brainy—which is almost every time it's referred to. It's never struck me that way; it's not as if we're talking about dry modernist compositions after all, or if his shows don't concern themselves with matters of the heart. What Sondheim does is mostly avoid cheesy sentiment, and that alone passes for glacial detachment in the overheated world of musical theater.

The cliché about Sondheim was trotted out yet again in the Times' review of the Encores! version of his 1971 masterpiece, Follies: "The brittle shield of ice that was once widely believed to encase anything Stephen Sondheim wrote continues to melt apace…this “Follies” definitively tears off the stigma of cerebral chilliness that was attached to it when it opened 35 years ago." But it's easy to melt an inexistent shield of ice. I mean, who would ever think that the heartbreaking "Losing My Mind," probably the best-known song from Follies, is emotionally distant? And that number is far from being an oddity in the Sondheim catalog.

Anyway, on with the show. It's plain that the Follies a few thousand people were lucky enough to see this weekend was exceptional. Casey Nicholaw did a bang-up job with the staging and choreography, and special props to Ken Billington's extraordinary lighting, which made the ghostly younger cast appropriately monochromatic, even when they happened to step up to center stage to interact with their older selves; the effect was akin to a b&w movie character suddenly being dumped into a color picture.

But what really made the production exceptional were the performers, notably Donna Murphy (betraying hairline cracks in Phyllis's regal composure), Victoria Clark (particularly touching when evoking Sally's wasted life and heartbreak), Christine Baranski (our most naturally gifted comedienne, nailing all of Carlotta's lines and doing an impressive job—save for those tricky last notes—on "I'm Still Here") and JoAnne Worley (a scenery-chomping ringleader in the fabulous "Who's That Woman"?). While the number didn't get the most heated applause at the performance I saw, I loved Clark's version of "Losing My Mind," which I even preferred to Barbara Cook's (this is akin to saying that the earth is flat to hardcore showtune fiends).

Someone on All That Chat theorized that the current crop of female musical-theater stars may be the strongest ever, and I find myself in agreement. Of course there have been tremendous powerhouses in the past, but now the numbers are impressive: We can see the likes of Patti LuPone, Donna Murphy, Kristin Chenoweth, Sutton Foster, Bernadette Peters, Christine Ebersole and Tonya Pinkins on a regular basis. (I'm not a huge fan of Audra McDonald but she definitely has her admirers. ) Add a whole bunch of young 'uns working their way up through the ranks, such as Anika Noni Rose, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Laura Bell Bundy and Leslie Kritzer, and we're in really good shape. Now if only we could get exciting new composers to match… but please don't bring up Michael John LaChiusa and Ricky Ian Gordon.

The singles hour

The Village Voice has just published its annual Pazz & Jop Poll. Dylan comes up on top (yawn) with TV on the Radio nipping at his heels (zzzz…), while "Crazy" wins the Golden Toaster for single of the year.

You can look at my own poll here, with the caveat that the results change every week. For the sake of convenience, I'll post MP3s of my top ten singles of 2006 as they appeared in the Voice. Here they are, in alphabetical order.

1. Margaret Berger: "Samantha" Berger was no. 2 on Norwegian Idol, which tells you everything and nothing. A typical Scandi-stomper, "Samantha" is from her second album, the unusually (well, not for a Scandi-pop album, actually) good Pretty Scary Silver Fairy.

2. Bodies Without Organs: "Temple of Love" Yet again BWO entered Melodifestivalen, the Swedish selection process for the Eurovision Song Contest, and yet again they didn't make it through. A shame, for I bet this gloriously old-fashioned explosion of homo energy would have done better in Athens' than Carola's tired entry. And speaking of tough competition, the Ark is entering Melodifestivalen this year, with a peppy Bay City Rollers–style number titled (despite the fact that it suggests anything but) "The Worrying Kind". Go Ark!

3. Cassius: "Jack Rock" Acid lives with this track from Cassius' latest album. Every time I listen to it, I picture an expedition going up Mount Everest: The track climbs up to a plateau and takes a rest at base camp 1; then it climbs some more, and settles down at base camp 2; more climbing, more resting, and so on. The wonky piano and Rolling Stones woo-hoo's take it to the summit. A perennial treadmill tune.

4. Girls Aloud: "Something Kinda Oooh" I included all three of Girls Aloud's studio albums on their respective years' top-ten lists but had to interrupt that impeccable run because their 2006 release was a greatest-hits collection. Fortunately it did feature this new recording. As usual with Xenomania productions, the song has an unpredictable structure: very brief vocal intro, then the chorus, then the verse, and of course a pneumatic bridge to die for. And also as usual, we get the best genius/stupid lyrics a mega-selling girl group has to offer: "Something kinda ooooh/Jumping on my tu-tu/Something inside of me/Wanting part of you/Something kinda ooooh/Makes my heart go boom boom/Something inside of me/Wanting what you do/Something kinda ooooh/Bumpin' in the back room."

5. The Gossip: "Standing in the Way of Control (Soulwax Nite Version)" The Gossip has always shot itself in the foot with the cruddy sound on their recordings. I don't care what people say: It's their refusal to hire a decent producer that's hampered their career, not Beth Ditto's weight and politics. Last year they finally scored a semi-club hit thanks to the Belgian brothers in Soulwax—and an actual bass line.

6. Jamelia: "Beware of the Dog" One of two 2006 hits to cannibalize the synth-pop 1980s. Ruthlessly efficient.

7. The Killers: "When You Were Young" Like the other big drama queen in Vegas—that'd be CSI—the Killers are big, bloated and self-important, with a teeny-tiny ounce of winking self-awareness. This song is U2 for those who loathe U2.

8. Melody Club: "Last Girl on My Mind" A few years ago, Melody Club was slated to play a Swedish showcase at CBGB; they cancelled at the last minute because they got the opening gig on Kylie Minogue's European tour. Still no US release for Sweden's all-male answer to Blondie, but its third release is full of nuggets like this one. The lyrics make the latest Arcade Fire and Decemberists albums sound like the work of fussy librarians: "You're keeping your legs crossed, honey/Like a good girl should/Who's smearing your lipgloss, honey/ Come on take me by the hand." Any guy who mentions lipgloss in a song ranks high with me.

9. Rihanna: "SOS (Rescue Me)" I hesitated listing both this and "Beware of the Dog" because they're so similarly exploitative and so similarly exemplary of a dearth of ideas. Alas, both were lodged in my head in 2006. Rihanna also contributed to the canon of great pop lines with "I'm the question and you're of course the answer/Just hold me close boy 'cause I'm your tiny dancer."

10. Kate Ryan: "Je t'adore" Textbook Europop. The biggest shocker of 2006 for trü-pop fans is that Kate Ryan didn't make it past the semi in the Eurovision Song Contest. "Je t'adore" is so good that in the weeks leading up to the showdowns, us fans were taking bets as to whether she'd win it, place in the top three or in the top five. I was certain that at last Belgium could step to the podium. Oh well… Take it away, Katrien Verbeeck!

A simple plan

I love B movies with a high concept and a low budget, where the director packs 90 minutes—the optimal length for a B movie—with as many variations as possible on the core premise: Cube (strangers must escape from a deadly, always-changing maze); Cellular (kidnapped woman randomly dials and reaches slacker's cell phone; he has to remain on the line while trying to locate her); Phone Booth (the reverse: while in phone booth random man gets call that a sniper is watching him and will shoot if man tries to leave the booth); Descent (women go down cave; mutant creatures hunt them down); Joy Ride (pranksters punk psycho trucker via CB radio; he hunts them down). And that's just recentish ones.

Add Marc Evans' My Little Eye to this canon of satisfying popcorn cheapies. Five people must remain in an isolated, snowbound house for six months—while each of their move is webcast 24/7, à la Big Brother—in order to win $1 million; if one leaves, they all lose. But is there someone outside? Director Evans takes the classic "and then there was none" model (prime example: Alien), wraps it in a reality-TV aesthetic and adds a dash of The Shining for flavor. The barely-above-average acting doesn't help, but the claustrophobic atmosphere is pretty successful on a skimpy budget.

Even more intriguing, Evans' latest film, Snow Cake, has recently come out in Europe and seems to have a tentative release date of April in the US. On paper it looks like a total Hollywood-style weepie with extra-crispy casting: Sigourney Weaver as an autistic woman, Alan Rickman as a grieving man and Carrie-Anne Moss as the neighbor who's bound to help Rickman—what? Love again, perhaps? Recover his taste for life? I foresee dignified non-hugging, Evans being British and all.

Turning gold into lead

Yes, that transmutation (granted, not that rare in the arts) is what David Byrne achieved Saturday night at Carnegie Hall: He managed to make a disco musical about the life of Imelda Marcos uninteresting.

On paper, Here Lies Love, about the former Muse of Manila and First Lady of the Philippines had it all: the shopping obsession, the trips to New York discotheques, the various official functions, such as Ambassador Plenipotentiary and Extraordinary. That, and the fact that Byrne is a clever guy who kept referring to dance music and Studio 54 in interviews. And yet Here Lies Love was worse than bad: It was a crushingly boring exercise in bland, middle-aged taste. In concert form, it was like watching a beige Crate & Barrel couch for two hours.

Where to begin…Part of the problem may well rest in the very definition of the project: Is it a song cycle or a musical? Using Joan Almedilla and Ganda Suthivarakom to sing the parts of Imelda Marcos and her housekeeper Estrella Campos, respectively, indicated a certain musical-theater ambition of creating distinct characters. Alas, this was not reflected in the lyrics, which are heavily narrative, devoid of any personality and of the wit one has come to associate with Byrne himself. At one point he remarked that the words in a song's first verse were taken directly from Imelda's high-school yearbook—"this is reportage," he dryly added to the crowd's knowing laughter. But reportage, you see, does not automatically make compelling art. Things flowed more naturally when Byrne himself reprised a couple of the songs previously performed by the women: If he just sang all of Here Lies Love himself and called it a song cycle, it might actually work better.

It's symptomatic of the project's timidity that Byrne pointed out at the end of the evening that there hadn't been a single song about shoes, because Imelda's footwear obsession was discovered only after her fall. Right, but if we wanted reportage, we'd read the newspaper. A show requires a certain amount of unhinged vulgarity, which unfortunately is the one word that least describes Byrne's oeuvre. You can bet Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber didn't worry about reportage when they wrote Evita.

That singular lack of over-the-top glee was reflected in the music itself. For the first 15 numbers, Byrne and the two lead singers fronted a four-piece band. Most numbers were perfunctorily funky. If you're going to mention Studio 54 when talking about your show, you'd better understand that classic late-’70s disco mixed a deeply ecstatic nature with stupefying musical precision; both were missing at Carnegie Hall. (On his website, Byrne describes "Dancing Together" as "Imelda’s philosophy of why she needs to be beautiful for the Filipino people. A song about the exciting world of socialites, celebrities and expensive items." And yet listening to the song, you'd think he'd never heard Chic.)

At last, a string and a horn sections came in for the final five songs—typically, after the big Studio 54 number! Even though their charts were rather primitive and not used particularly well, they did add a welcome luster to the overall sound, as well as more questions: Why add the extra players so late? When two of the numbers were reprised at the end, they did have the strings and horns—so why weren't they used the first time around? The great disco musical still needs to be written.

For a master class in the orchestrated mix of ecstasy and precision, Byrne might want to listen to these two protodisco tracks, remixed to epic lengths by Tom Moulton. Poetry in motion.
MP3 Detroit Emeralds "Feel the Need in Me" from A Tom Moulton Mix (Soul Jazz)
MP3 Eddie Kendricks "Keep on Truckin'" from A Tom Moulton Mix (Soul Jazz)

I guess we can add David Byrne to the ever-growing list of pop/rock musicians struggling to cross over into musical theater. Randy Newman came close with Faust, a show I believe got an unfair shake and needs to be reeavaluated. Significantly, it's Duncan Sheik, the one whose solo career was rather perfunctory, who's made the most convincing transfer with Spring Awakening. Go figure.