Betty Harris' "Nearer To You" is prime New Orleans soul from 1967. Arranged by Allen Toussaint, it landed in the R&B top 20 charts that year. Harris is backed both by a church-y organ and a blues piano line (the piano is begging to be isolated and sampled somewhere, if it hasn't happened already), not to mention a funky rhythm section and strong backing vocals. The title itself suggests a split (or a compromise) between a spiritual song and a pop tune - it lends itself to either. And the lyrics could, too - at first. Harris sings about doing the best she can despite her faults, which suggest a gospel theme of living up to God's grace. But, then, she sings "I hope I'm not being a  nuisance to you" and "I know you said you would be home soon," which puts the song clearly into secular territory. The gospel roots are still there, though, with the organ dominating - the piano subtly underlines.

Up, which I really liked, but not quite as much as my favorite Pixar films (the Toy Story films, The Incredibles, Finding Nemo, Ratatouille and Wall-E). I did like it much more than the previous Pixar movie directed by Pete Doctor, Monsters, Inc.

Before that I watched Francis Ford Coppola's new film, Tetro, which I also really enjoyed. It's not a blockbuster, but it is Coppola opting out of that game.

XTC   "Garden of Earthly Delights"

The band XTC didn't make many concessions to contemporary pop trends, but "Garden of Earthly Delights" (a single from their 1989 album Oranges & Lemons and that album's opening track) sounds like one. The record is adorned with non-stop guitar lines and percussion that sound vaguely "Middle-Eastern" in that generic 80's world-pop way; the song even ends with an instrumental coda that, for better or worse, sounds too much like a style that Peter Gabriel was working to much better effect a couple of years earlier.

Lyrically, though, this song is classic Andy Partridge, though; it's a paen to a fantasy world where you can have anything you want. You don't even have to worry about heartbreak, because "hearts are built like rubber, so you'll be alright." Which begs the question of whether you want to live in a world where heartbreak doesn't exist (I'll pass, thanks), but the music XTC and their studio friends cook up for this song is so (intentionally) cartoonish that it's too shallow for darker emotions. Or maybe not; as Andy admonishes, "just don't hurt nobody, 'less of course they ask you."

(Andy also drops a reference to "Chekov" in the first verse. Whether this is Anton or Pavel is not clear).

And the wheel lands on - an Elvis imitation!

Johnny Powers' "With Your Love, With Your Kiss" is basically a rewrite of "One Night" (or "One Night (of Sin)," depending on which Elvis record you prefer, though Johnny had the former, a hit single, in mind - the latter wasn't officially released until it appeared in a 90's box set). Like many pop superstars, Elvis inspired many imitators who copied his style very closely. I'll steal and mangle a sentence from John Floyd's excellent book on Sun Records here - Elvis pulled his style from many different sources (country, r&b, Dean Martin, and Mario Lanza, to name just four), while his followers got their pull from Elvis. This isn't necessarily an original sin - Otis Redding started out as a Little Richard imitator, and Bob Dylan aped Woody Guthrie early on. Ya gotta start somewhere, and like Mojo said, everyone  has at least a little bit of Elvis in 'em. Except you-know-who.

When it comes to the 50's fake Elvis legacy, there are two broad categories - copies of his Sun style, and copies of his RCA style (with some overlap). Powers chose the latter (which is ironic, as this was recorded for Sun), but he (or whoever arranged this record - Bill Justis?) threw in a curve-ball by adding a slurping saxophone (with requisite solo) from the playbooks of Little Richard and Fats Domino. Given that Dave Bartholomew wrote "One Night" and arranged Fats' 50s hits, that's appropriate. Johnny's vocals are a very specific imitation of El's late 50's (RCA) style, though, with all of the vocal whoops and dips in the right places. The opening guitar chords copy the start of "One Night" as well.  This isn't the best fake-Elvis record I've heard (that might be Ral Donner's "Girl of My Best Friend,") but it's not bad. I wouldn't replace "Mystery Train" with either, but on an iPod I can have all three of them.

When I was a teenager, I discovered "underground" music from Nirvana. I don't know if millions of teenagers who bought Nevermind proceeded to look for records by Half Japanese or Bikini Kill because Kurt Cobain talked up those bands in interviews, but I did. (And buying a Half Japanese record while living in suburban New Jersey was not easy; I eventually purchased their aptly-titled Greatest Hits double album by mail order directly from the Safe House label by mail order, thanks to an ad in the late Option magazine).

A major part of the underground music scene back then, before the Internet was available in most households (or even colleges*) was the music press. I followed fanzines and small press magazines like Option, Forced Exposure**, Puncture, and many others. And probably from reading one of them (but probably not FE), I learned of Archers of Loaf, a hot new band from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, being touted on the indie-rock scene. My college's radio station was spinning their follow-up EP often as well. And one of my favorite bands, Superchunk, were from the same town. So, around that time, I bought their second album, Vee Vee. I should mention that, in college music circles of the time, the Archers were sometimes lumped in with Superchunk and Pavement (another band I loved), as something of a holy trinity of post-Nirvana indie rock bands that could be the next R.E.M. and make a commercial breakthrough from college radio airplay.

And I didn't like the album very much. I'm not writing this to bash the group. If you're a fan, that's fine; their music just doesn't move me. But I'm sure many teenage music fans go through the process of checking out a "hot" new band touted by the College Music Journal or (these days) Pitchfork and realizing that whatever appeals to plenty of other music heads isn't punching their ticket. (As an adult, I like to think I know better, at least a little). So I can say that my first experience of this came when I listened to Archers of Loaf.

So why are Archers of Loaf on my iPod? Years later, I'm married, and my wife owns a copy of their first album, Icky Mettle. I'm an open minded guy, and I'm willing to take a second chance on music from the perspective of a few more years, so I added the album to my iPod. The particular song that popped up on random is "You and Me." And I can say that, listening to it, I'm still not very enthused. The song borrows the Pixies' dynamic of playing verses at low volume and the choruses with the amps to eleven, with singer Eric Bachmann even screaming, Black Francis style. Nirvana had already been doing the same thing for a couple of years when this record was made, and Weezer*** would try again a couple of years later. It was gold for them, but not the Archers.

The lyrics to this song (and all of the Loaf tunes I've heard) are very oblique, and the song is absolutely free of a melody (something Nirvana and Weezer included in many of their songs, especially the hit singles). I can't be surprised that they didn't break through to a larger audience. The music isn't horrible - I heard plenty of college radio bands back then that were much worse - but it still doesn't excite me. The music is un-melodic, which is fine, but if music isn't going to reach for melody or harmony, I want it to try something improvisational or with unusual structure (the sort of thing Sonic Youth does, or Slint did in their short career), and the music doesn't really do that, either. Though, to give the band some credit, the rhythm section is muscular and drives "You and Me" just fine.

* The college I attended didn't provide Internet access to the entire student body until my sophomore year, and World Wide Web access with graphic-based browsers - remember Netscape? - until my junior year. Napster wasn't around until after I graduated.

**I discovered the great Forced Exposure with their last issue, the one with the great interview with Chris Knox that ran for over 30 pages, with dozens of footnotes.

***Also, early Spoon did much the same thing, but their music evolved quickly in other directions.

Remember those American garage bands of the 60's, with the lead singer who sang in a snotty, faux-English accent meant to pass the band off as a British Invasion group?

Jennifer Gentle are a contemporary band from northern Italy, seeped in the influence of 60's psychedelia and (especially) Pink Floyd when Syd Barrett was setting the controls. And musicians Marco Fasolo and Alessio Gastaldello sing all of the lyrics of their songs in English and with a snotty, faux-English accent. The result is effervescent pop-psych that reminds me quite a bit of such New Zealand groups like Tall Dwarfs and the Clean - it's pop music stretched through a fun-house mirror and distorted into new shapes that sound just recognizable but also unfamiliar.

The song of the day is "I Do Dream You," (a perfect title for a 60's garage tune, or someone's tribute to the genre). I first heard it on the radio station WFMU, which makes this just one of probably dozens of great songs I've discovered from listening to that station. It's set to a rat-at-tat 4/4 drum beat and a quick guitar strum, and Fasolo and Gastaldello also throw in a one-chord organ part, a quick blues lick on each chorus, and a set of lyrics I can't make much sense of - something about voices calling and really liking someone, as far as I can make out.  Which makes the song about as coherent as most psychedelic songs, I think!

(Yes, I know I missed a few days. Also, trying to write something personal about a song can be difficult when I'm submitting songs to the iPod shuffle - I can't possibly have a personal reaction to every tune, and I'm stuck with what comes up first. If I were choosing songs to write about, it would be much easier to do).

From ny_wisdom 's suggestion, I'll write about one song from my iPod each day for 30. Each song chosen from a shuffle.

The Velvet Underground's "Coney Island Steeplechase" was recorded in 1969, but not (officially) released until it was included on the second VU outtakes collection, Another View, in 1985. There's a cliche of music journalism that great musicians (or labels, like Motown) shelve songs that are as good as what they release. (Often true, but those closet-cleaning sets Warner Brothers released after Prince left them suggest to my ears that, sometimes, the outtakes were left in the studio for good reason). 

The Velvet Underground's two outtake collections, VU and Another View, are a more complicated story. The band recorded most of these songs with the intention of including them on a fourth album for the Verve label. When they were dropped, the Velvets signed to Atlantic Records and made a album of mostly new material (though Lou recycled some of these tunes for his solo albums - almost always in versions that are nowhere near as good as the Velvets' recording).

For a band that had critical cache for its avant-garde influences, the Velvet Underground pulled just as much inspiration from 50's rock and roll and 60's rhythm and blues, and "Coney Island Steeplechase" is a fine example (actually, so is almost everything on VU and Another View*). The music is firm rock and roll with a heavy Bo Diddley backbeat (thank you, Mo Tucker!), and, near the end, Lou's vocal rises into a falsetto that could only come from 50's street corner harmony. And in case you didn't already know the Velvet Underground were from New York and proud of it**, the lyrics give you directions to get to Coney Island and ask you to enjoy the simple pleasures of eating ice cream and riding a roller coaster (yes, this isn't one of Lou's darker moments as a lyricist, which just makes it even more charming). All in two minutes and twenty seconds.

(*On the two versions of "Hey, Mr. Rain" included on Another View, Sterling Morrison's rhythm guitar part sounds damned close to Scotty Moore's classic guitar lick on Elvis Presley's "Mystery Train." I love it. And, just to suggest that music is a road that goes on forever (and the party never ends), I'm convinced that Pavement borrowed the opening of "Coney Island Steeplechase" - the bass guitar repeating one note, with a second note starting each measure, over the floor tom - for "Trigger Cut.").

(** In a way, I think the Velvet Underground chronicled life in New York City in the 60's - or certain corners of it, at least - as well as the Beach Boys depicted life on the beaches of southern California in the same decade. Only without, you know, hit records).

This weekend I watched Don't Look Back, D.A. Pennebaker's documentary of Bob Dylan's tour of England in 1965. This movie's regarded as a classic, but - aside from the great opening scene with the cue cards that's become a pop culture classic - I didn't like it much. At least, I didn't enjoy seeing Bob Dylan leading an entourage, escaping from hotel rooms and hosting parties (and complaining for what felt like ten minutes about a glass thrown out of a hotel window). Yep, he's a grade-A jerk in this one. The music's great, though. The few times when I felt the movie really come alive were those scenes that presented Dylan as a music lover - the scene where Alan Price plays a few songs on piano and Dylan listens with real interest, or the one where Dylan bites into some classic Hank Williams tunes. It did't help that the film isn't all that interesting, visually (again, the opening scene is a fine exception). I understand that cinema verite is meant to present a natural vision of real life, but much of the film is (understandably) set mostly in closed confined spaces (hotel rooms, backstage areas, etc.) that don't look all that different from each other. (Stanley Kubrick could have made these settings more visually interesting, I think - he directed several documentaries in his early career). Mostly, though, I wasn't all that fascinated with the presentation of Dylan as a celebrity/artist/gadfly/prick, etc. When Dylan picks up a guitar, or even listens to someone else's music* (the scene with Alan Price, again), he becomes that much more interesting to watch and hear (and more recognizably human, less a persona). I prefer Scorcese's documentary on Dylan for that reason - it's one long, but great, examination of Dylan's influences, with some amazing vintage clips of those musicians, and not a whole lot of game-playing with a public image.

(*yep, there's also the scene where Bob politely listens to Donavan's song and then tears him to shreds with a devastating "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue." If I were Dylan and was confronted by a guy whose first hit was an obvious imitation of my style, I might have responded the same way, though).

Another film on my DVD player this weekend - Star Trek III: the Search for Spock. Wow, not a very good film. There's been plenty of discussion of the new J.J. Abrams film being an elaborate two-hour relaunching of a corporate franchise. True, but this film is pretty much the same thing, with the difference being that there no real dramatic narrative here - the only reason the story exists is to reset the status quo of the characters by bringing Spock back to life. Unlike Wrath of Kahn with the crew facing their mortality, there are no interesting themes to explore. The movie does has some interesting visual ideas, on the planet Genesis and later on Vulcan (a set that's the closest to the visual style of the television series that the films ever reached). But that isn't enough to make the film compelling to watch.

You also get Captain Kirk learning of the death of his son and cracking jokes two minutes (screen time) later*. Since it's all about restoring the Kirk/Spock/Bones formula and the rest of the characters (any characters) don't really matter, that awkward transition doesn't seem very unusual (but it's still bad film making).

No argument - I have to go with Screwy Squirrel. The rawest, most uncut distillation of Tex Avery painted to animation cel.

(Not a Warner Brothers character, by the way - Avery created him for MGM - though I believe Time Warner now owns the character thanks to Ted Turner buying the MGM/UA library).

Having never been to one of their shows before their 1991 breakup, I am now determined to see The Feelies live as often as I can (they reunited last year). My wife and I watched them at a free show at Battery Park last 4th of July (opening for Sonic Youth), and we will be spending this 4th with Haledon's finest again, this time at Maxwell's. This will be our 5th Feelies show; this is a band that, before last year, I never thought I would ever get to hear in concert.

I was lucky enough to see two films directed by Tod Browning last night, as part of Film Forum's retrospective of the director's work. I attended a screening of Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut at the IFC Center with only 12 other people last week, so, feeling jaded, I expected a low turnout for this. (New York City is a film buff's town, and no Kubrick screening should be that empty. Then again, it was a midnight show).

Whoops. The screening room was packed to capacity. This was a "2 films for one admission" deal, and I bought a ticket for Mark of the Vampire (one of Browning's few sound films first). The second movie on the bill was the silent West of Zanzibar, with live accompaniment from a pianist; the live music was enough to sell out the show, and if I had tried to buy a ticket for the silent film first, I might have been out of luck.

Mark of the Vampire is best known for being Browning's second film with Bela Lugosi in a major role (thought it's not as big a part as it was advertised at the time), and for being a remake of the director's 1927 silent film London After Midnight (with the great Lon Chaney). The latter is considered a great lost film - the remaining prints were destroyed in an MGM lot fire in 1955, though rumors of existing prints circulate occasionally (no print ever seems to). London After Midnight was reportedly a serious, and very scary, film. The sound remake is, well, not so good. For one thing, it seems deliberately imitative of the great horror films Universal Studios was producing in the early 30's, almost to the point of being a parody. The problem is that the best of those movies have their own macabre sense of humor (especially the films directed by James Whale). Here, the humor seems more forced, and the atmosphere of the film, meant to be ominous, seems mildly disconcerting. It's been said that Browning never learned to direct sound films very well (even 1931's Dracula becomes very stagy - lots of medium shots of actors talking - after the opening scene in Transylvania). 

The movie does have some good elements. Lugosi seems to be having a blast gently mocking his career-defining role - yep, he's playing another vampire count. There's also good turns from Lionel Barrymore and Lionel Atwill (a staple of 30's horror films), as well as Carroll Borland as Luna, the Count's strange daughter (and a prototype for Vampira). Borland also features in the film's one great sequence, where Luna glides from the air to the ground sporting large bat-like wings in place of arms.

There's a certain unexpected surprise in the story (carried over from London After Midnight), but I don't want to reveal it. I knew about it before I watched the movie though - several great books on the horror genre that I've read reveal it - so I can't say how effective it might have been if I didn't know.

The real treat of the bill was West of Zanzibar, one of Browning's classic silent films. Lon Chaney plays Phroso, a stage magician paralyzed in a fight by a rival for his wife's affections. The rival, Crane, takes off with Phroso's wife, she gives birth to his daughter, and then Crane abandons them in San Francisco (thwewife dies). Bent on revenge, and knowing that the rival (Lionel Barrymore again) is heading to Africa, Phroso plots an elaborate revenge plot that takes years to complete. Traveling to Africa himself, Phroso (now known as "Dead Legs") becomes the leader of a tribe of cannibals, by using stage magic to convince the natives that he is a powerful sorcerer.

So, yes, there is plenty of casual racism in this film. You have to watch the movie with the knowledge that stereotypes like this were plentiful in Hollywood films at the time. I'm not condoning the racism at all, but I have to defend West of Zanzibar on the grounds of Chaney's astonishing performance. After the opening sequence (with the paralyzing fight), Chaney acts throughout the film without the use of his legs - by way of using wheelchairs, crawling through the dirt, climbing on ropes, and so forth. A good man corrupted (and eventually doomed) by a thoughtless demand for vengeance, he writhes through the African village sets like a reptile spreading poison wherever he goes. One other thing I have to mention about Chaney's role in this film. As Phroso - he spouts a full head of hair. As "Dead Legs," his head is shaven and he sports a 5 o'clock shadow - and quite frankly, resembles Marlon Brando as Kurtz in Apocalypse Now more than a little bit. Brando was also playing a Westerner leading and manipulating a tribe of non-Western types as a despot ,with plenty of casual stereotypes of Vietnamese in that film. Now I'm wondering if Marlon knew of this film, and (given his many career stands against racism) was trying to make some kind of oblique statement about film history. Or I'm reading much too much into what could be a coincidence. 

As the story progresses, the story reveals that Phroso has paid for the abandoned infant to be raised in something like a sleazy dive bar in Africa (though I think it's subtly suggested that it's a brothel, and that Maize, the daughter, might have been turned into prostitution if Chaney hadn't pulled her out of there to enact the revenge plot). Phroso's determination to ruin Crane and his daughter leads to an unexpected revelation that could have been cheap melodrama. Except for the fact that Chaney's acting skills, as Phroso learns what his blind thirst for revenge has lead to, absolutely turns the story into a heartbreaking tragedy that elevates the film into something remarkable. Chaney's last few scenes as he discovers the truth about what he has done to others, as well as himself, are extraordinary - he changes from an evil man to a weary, broken one with absolute conviction. The man was capable of much more than just wearing elaborate prosthetics (though not in this movie) and contorting his body into unusual shapes. 

And, for the more lurid film goers of the 1920's (probably the film's intended audience), there's a gruesome final scene - more implied than seen, but just as bleak as the final scene of Freaks. That's not the reason to see this film, but it's there, and was probably a selling point for Universal's marketing department (as was the "exotic" African setting with cannibals, no doubt). Unlike Mark of the Vampire, which moved slowly, felt like a filmed stage play in places, and seemed choppily edited (the latter might not have been Browning's fault, as a few minutes were cut by MGM), West of Zanzibar moves quickly and never lost my visual interest. The camera moves and takes in the elaborate sets (probably a studio back lot, but I was convinced) and never looks like a play.

The audience seems to enjoy the film immensely, which is a sensation I don't get very often when I watch movies in New York, even at Film Forum (damned jaded hipster crowds!). When I do, it's usually for a special revival like this one, and this one was very special.

Are you looking for a rare, hard-to-see old movie that hasn't been screened (in a theater or television) in years? A seldom seen film with Cary Grant, or Deborah Kerr, for example?

You may want to try YouTube (among other online resources).

This article doesn't mention the film, but one of my favorite movies, Frank Borzage's Man's Castle (1932) is available on YouTube in parts (or was, last time I checked).

Let's face it. You really want to see Kitty Pryde as drawn by Bryan Lee O'Malley, don't you?

This is part of a charity auction of, yep, Kitty Pryde art meant to benefit the Oregon Hemophilia Treatment Center. And check out Jeffrey Brown's rendition, while you're here. Oh, heck, also take a look at Tom Neely's rendition of Uncanny X-Men #143 as a Nancy strip. Genius!

Your results:
You are An Expendable Character (Redshirt)

An Expendable Character (Redshirt) 90% Geordi LaForge 75% Data 64% Spock 62% Chekov 60% Uhura 60% Jean-Luc Picard 50% Mr. Scott 35% Will Riker 35% Worf 35% James T. Kirk (Captain) 30% Leonard McCoy (Bones) 25% Mr. Sulu 25% Deanna Troi 25% Beverly Crusher 15%

Since your accomplishments are seldom noticed, and you are rarely thought of, you are expendable. That doesn't mean your job isn't important but if you were in Star Trek you would be killed off in the first episode you appeared in.

Click here to take the Star Trek Personality Quiz

 but Roy Loney and Cyril Jordan of the Flamin' Groovies played together for the first time in 35 years, at the Ponderosa Stomp festival. 

If they do decide to continute this, I will pray for a New York City show.

It's "Mighty Love" (a Spinners cover) by Todd Rundgren, from his album A Capella. Yes, it's the one where all of the music consists of the Runt's overdubbed vocals. A Capella is a strange (even for Todd), uneven record, but "Mighty Love" is amazing (and, appropriately, the last track). Like most of Todd's reissues from Rhino Records, you can buy the CD for about six dollars, thanks to the music industry's new economy.

There's no video I could find for this record, so I'll embed one of my other recent earworms. Unfortunately, the video isn't so hot (the record is much, much better), but at least I could find something. For what it's worth, Alejandro Escovedo's recent (very different) cover of this tune is great, too.

I like the free mp3 ("Sacred Trixter") from the upcoming Sonic Youth album (The Eternal), but in terms of style it sounds very reminiscent of Daydream Nation. I'm not sure if that is a good thing or not, considering how progressive SY's last two albums sounded. I'm planning on buying the new album anyway, though.

Spin Magazine lists the 15 best independent record stores in America (for Record Store day).

I can't disagree with Amoeba Records in the top spot (the San Francisco store is located inside a former bowling alley, as is, therefore, humongous). Other Music also made the list for New York City, but I wish there had been room for Downtown Music Gallery as well (then again, DMG is a genre-specific place - jazz and other improvisational and modern-classical music genres).