Sufjan Stevens "Illinoise"

Don't get me wrong. This is a great album. He accomplishes exactly what he set out to do with uncanny ease: to produce the most non-threatening album ever made about the state of Illinois. Hell, it's even more non-threatening than the only band ever named after a city in Illinois. And that's saying a lot. I have to question when popular music took this turn into being completely innocent and non-confrontational. With Third Eye Blind? The Gin Blossoms? John Mayer? James Blunt? The fact is Sufjan and his ilk are a marketing campaign away from being VH1 darlings, a la Mayer and Blunt. It's music girls can play in their air-conditioned Camrys on the way to the office. It's music thier boyfriends can play while internally struggling with their buried homosexuality. And while the songs can be irresistibly catchy and it's produced beautifully, the whole preciousness of the album turns me off. Rock and roll is supposed to be threatening. And folk music? Folk music has its roots in confrontation, in questioning the status quo. This is where I get completely flabber-gasted by this "new folk" misnomer. Its not folk. It's like really well-produced alternative Mayer-rock. And that's it. Its not a bad thing or a good thing, really, I just think the praise being heaped on Sufjan is coming from the wrong angle.

The New Wave of Instrumental Rock

I had a friend once tell me that he didn't like the Beatles because they were the first band to take the soul out of rock and roll. And while I certainly like the Beatles, I understand where he is coming from. No one ever accused the Beatles of sounding funky. They were about as white as rock music comes. There are bands today that have taken this to comical extremes. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, the Fiery Furnaces, the Magnetic Fields, and a hodgepodge of jingly-jangly alternative folk bands (i.e Sufjan, etc.) make music that would fit in just as well at a traveling carnival as they would inside a dark smoky bar. This isn't to take away from these bands, but what they don't do for me is evoke any type of feeling beyond being lily-white and not good with tools. They're wimpy. And that's rock and roll sacrilege. While not every band can- or should be- Black Flag or Guns-N-Roses, I tend to move towards bands that are capable of evoking a mood, of getting you in touch with your "soul", if you will, for a few minutes.
In the late '70s and early '80s a smattering of bands began to do this. They weren't funky and they didn't rock. They were morose, dark and depressed. Their singers committed suicide or wore pasty make up. They were Joy Division, the Cure, the Sisters of Mercy and a myriad of other bands that made up the early "goth" scene. What these bands did so effectively- especially the Cure- was evoke a solitary moment, a mood of unsettled peace. While they were lyrically depressing, the music, in most cases, was oddly majestic and grandiose, as if they were playing from the peaks of mountains. This is the kind of thing that sucked a 19-year old freshman college student, like me, right in. I certainly didn't have the soul of Marvin Gaye or Teddy Pendergrass, but I sure could dig what Robert Smith was whining about.
Fortunately, and one of the great things about rock music in the past six years or so, a lot of bands have decided to do away with the lyrics in the first place and have decided to let the compositions speak for themselves. Bands like Mogwai and Godspeed!You Black Emperor have taken pages from the Cure handbook and have developed albums that evoke the same majesty and grandeur that "Closer" or "Disintegration" did decades before. I'd like to highlight what I consider, in my jumbled opinion, some of the better instrumental bands that have come along in the past few years. I highly recommend checking them out.

SAXON SHORE


Matt Doty has a double major in ceramics engineering (?) and business. He has also been the only constant member of Saxon Shore from its inception. It's a collaborative effort, which makes their recordings even that more remarkable. Doty lives in New York and the other members live in Philadelphia and D.C. The music is melodic and infectious. They seem to capture a lot of Sigur Ros-ish moments, but their music is more immediate and less lengthy. I highly recommend "Replacement Driver" off of their "Be a Bright Blue" album. I haven't heard anything I didn't like by these guys and another thing that makes them appealing is their dynamic approach to song-writing. Each album has a very distinctive sound, which I suppose is characteristic of a band that has gone through different line-up changes, but there is a consistency throughout each recording.

RED SPAROWES


The bathrooms at Tonic only have one toilet in them, so there is room, theoretically, for only one person at a time. This is significant because it means people can go inside, load their one-hitter, and fill the bathroom with pot smoke for the next guy. I remember thinking this as I entered a marijuana-scented bathroom just before Red Sparowes' set, after enjoying Torche and suffering through Made Out of Babies and Daughters (this ultra-hardcore, mathy screamo stuff just makes me feel old, old, old, which I obviously am. More power to 'em.). The Sparowes came on and played an inspired set, videos projected on the screen behind them, the stage bathed in a dark, greenish light, the band themselves staring at their feet, letting the music speak for itself. It was a great show and reminded of what it would be like to see the Cure circa 1986, stripped down, in a bar that fit 100 people, albeit with no Robert Smith. "At the Soundless Dawn" was one of the best albums released last year- with or without a singer. The music, like Saxon Shore's is incredibly melodic and immediate, but also intensely heavy. I am going to see them again at the end of this month, in a bigger place, and, hopefully, there will be a one-person bathroom there, too.

MONO


Northsix has a basement and a main space. I went to see an awful ska band with a friend of mine because another friend's band was opening. It chased me down to the basement, where I witnessed a very well-dressed group of Japanese kids crushing it with My Bloody Valentine-like walls of noise. I mean, this space is probably the size of my living room. It was deafening. Mono's last two albums have been produced by Steve Albini, so they have mastered the crescendo as well as any band I've heard in the past ten years. Unlike Saxon Shore or Red Sparowes, Mono's songs have a tendency to build. In this sense they don't have the immediate, almost pop-like sensibilities of the other two bands. Mono's songs are long and tend to consist of layers and layers of sound. Live it makes for a very intense experience, although the second time I saw them they played in the main space and you could hear the punk rock band in the basement bleeding through the softer, quieter spots. But it was almost appropriate, as if Mono was meant to drift in and out of your awareness until they come crashing down around you in one, big, majestic sonic boom.

"The Descent": Why Take the Baby?

I was in Peace Corps when "The Blair Witch Project" came out. After it was released on video, some volunteer who had gone home for a visit brought it back to Cameroon and left it at the dorm by the headquarters. The dorm was a depressing place. It was dark and usually filled with shuffling, sick and unhappy volunteers, because most of the time you were only there because you were sick, quitting, getting kicked out, or ending your service. And it was constantly messy and I always expected to see empty Burger King bags and a bong on the coffee table to complete the picture. Nonetheless, there was an extensive video library and that's usually what you did to wile away the time. I was there one time for some sort of tooth ache and the dorm was uncharacteristically empty. It was late at night, around 2 AM, and I couldn't sleep, so I decided to watch "The Blair Witch Project". By the final twenty minutes of this goddamn film I had a pot in front of me because I thought I was going to puke, but I was too freaked out to actually get up and walk upstairs to the bathroom. It scared me so effectively, I felt sick to my stomach.

I watched it again the next night with a bunch of other volunteers. One volunteer, who wasn't particularly fond of the film, kept saying "Who gets lost in a forest in Maryland?" and then he told me I probably was feeling sick from the hand-held camera cinematography, rather than any type of effective horror film making.

My friend, of course, is right on both counts. No one gets lost in a Maryland forest and the camera-work was probably making me nauseous, but I still feel "The Blair Witch Project" is the best horror movie ever made- including "The Exorcist" and any of the classic slasher/stalker/supernatural thrillers that have come out. What my friend didn't know is that the forest was a HAUNTED forest and no one escapes a haunted forest. And he also didn't know that even though the camera work may have made me a little queasy, I was still too fucking scared to even go upstairs to pee. I didn't tell him that part.

I like horror films. I go to see all of them. I wasn't allowed to watch them as a child so there's a bit of a pornographic obsession with them. Seeing "Basketcase" for the first time was as titillating as watching "Splendor in the Ass". Only it's a little more socially acceptable to recommend the latest Japanese horror flick to come out than Jenna Jameson's double-penetration video extravaganza. So horror flicks it is.

I saw "The Descent" with my wife yesterday at a five-dollar theater in Queens. The theater itself is a bit like the dorm in Cameroon- dark and dirty with a lot of shuffling people, although most of these people like to talk to the movie screen and bring three year olds to horror movies that were explicitly produced by "the makers of 'Saw' and 'Hostel'", which weren't exactly "On Golden Pond" or "Beaches". They had a STROLLER, for fuck's sake! It seems everytime I go to see a horror flick in New York City, there is always somebody there with a toddler. Which I guess explains why everyone who grows up in this city seems completely crazy. I mean, for all I know, the kids could be watching "Semenbiscuit" at home.

The movie is by the book, sans the sex. Six women go for a fun day of spelunking, a group of pale, Golemesque beings wants to eat their flesh, and only one survives. And while it didn't have me wishing for a pot to vomit in, it was easily the best horror film I've seen since that night in Yaounde. "The Descent" capitalizes on that same fear that made me scared to go up and pee- fear of the dark, fear of being alone, fear of being torn limb from limb by pale, blind slithering creatures with no regard for human life. The director played obvious homage to "Carrie", "Alien" and a dozen other flicks, but the creatures are convincing, the fear- nestled within the flickering lights of headlamps, torches, flares and the LED light of a video camera- is palpable and it sends a message to the directors who make shit like "Saw" and "Hostel". Making something unwatchable doesn't make it horror. It makes it horrible. In this case, I couldn't take my eyes off the screen. I was too scared to look away. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to grab a torch and a sharp object and work my way to the bathroom. If you don't hear from me soon, please tell my wife I love her.

French Cinema, Robert Downey Jr. and Peeing On Hardwood Floors

After one particular drunken night, my girlfriend and I stayed at a friend's house. He was kind enough to offer us his room, as he was going to spend the night at his girlfriend's. Some time during the night, as if to return his favor, I woke up and peed in the middle of his floor. Luckily, they were hardwood floors. I have also, in the middle of the night, sat naked on a girl I did not know, God bless her, and tried to wear a backpack as a pair of pants. All of this was in partnership with heavy drinking, which obviously screams DRINKING PROBLEM, or, on the bright side, at the least, makes me humble. So who am I to point fingers at Robert Downey Jr. if he so chooses to sleep in his next door neighbor's daughter's bed? Am I that far removed from that kind of behavior? So it is with the ardor of a fanatical fan that I watch Robert Downey Jr. chew up scene after scene in "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" and, more recently "A Scanner Darkly". Drunk or not, his acting is exhilarating and inspiring and for that alone, I'll raise a drink to him. I'll just try and keep my piss- and my naked ass- in the right place.

One thing Robert Downey Jr. is not is French, and that's probably a good thing. I just saw "The Bridesmaid" at the Angelika Theater in Soho. I was surrounded by lonely old men and women and sometimes I wonder if I, one day, will look like them- incredibly hairy, nervous and fidgety, as if Parkinson's is a prerequisite for liking foreign films, dressed in ill-fitting clothes, fumbling with a film guide and a copy of the New York Times, while brushing the three or four strands of oily, unwashed hair off my greasy forehead. The answer to this, of course, is yes, if I'm not already there. I did, after all, wear a goddamn wife-beater to the movie theater. Anyhow, one thing I like about these French films- and I saw "Cache" not too long ago in the theater and recently rented "Elevator to the Gallows" (fucking excellent) and "The Secret Life of the Bourgeoisie"- is how the camera tends to linger a lot longer on a scene than Hollywood films are willing to allow. I suppose this is the MTV effect, this desire to frantically cut and cram as much action into a single frame as possible- but, at least in France, it seems the camera is given much more time to linger and savor, so when you reach a point in any given movie- whether it be the blood splashing across the kitchen wall in 'Cache', or a decaying corpse in the closet in 'The Bridesmaid'- it makes it that much more creepy. Both "Cache" and "The Bridesmaid" were incredibly disturbing movies because the camera stayed there long after we wanted it to leave. In fact, the viewers end up being stuck in these uncomfortable situations along with the characters, and it makes for a very apt and unsettling viewing experience, especially, when dealing with these taut, suspenseful Hitchcock-esque plots.

In this sense, perhaps, "A Scanner Darkly" and "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" are about as anti-French as you can get. Downey's fast, frenetic, tic-filled performances are perfect for the herky-jerky editting of ADHD Hollywood. I am pretty sure a lot of this has to do with years and years of well-honed substance abuse, as I've been accused of being pretty herky-jerky myself. And while he didn't wake up in a stranger's house, he did, in one scene in "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang", pee on a corpse. Of course, it wasn't a French film, so they cut away. Quick. At least that's what I think they did. I was too busy trying to get my legs through the goddamn backpack straps.

MIssion Impossible: CPR

Ethan Hunt has fallen in love. He has fallen in love with a 22-year old brunette medical doctor, because only in Hollywood can beautiful women complete four years of undergraduate work, four years of medical school and three years of residency by the time they are barely old enough to drink. This is unfortunate for Ethan because he works for the IMF- the Impossible Mission Federation, as opposed to the International Monetary Fund, which is what I kept thinking the goddamn acronym stood for, which made his job all the more confusing to me for the two hours I was locked into the Loews E-Walk at Time's Square. It is unfortunate for Ethan because his job is TOP SECRET and even his prodigal-like wife is incapable of keeping that kind of secret, without, of course, her very existence being threatened. But all of this- and I mean all of it- is completely forgiven because it is summer time. And summer time is the only time of the year we can sit around with our shirts off, drinking Coors Light, barbecuing hot dogs, and spending ten bucks to see the kind of mindless action drivel Hollywood is perfect at making.

But, of course, Ethan, played by an incredibly fast-running Tom Cruise, does, in fact, compromise the life of his wife, who, ironically, is kidnapped by an incredibly effective Truman Capote...er, I mean, Phillip Seymour Hoffman. It is an extremely successful action movie for an hour and a half. Tom Cruise's calculation of a fulcrum to send him flying a hundred yards and two hundred feet down from the top of one Shanghai building to the next is worth the ten bucks. A great sequence on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, a whodunit plot and some cool masks, made it, for a while, one of the best action movies I'd seen since "Spiderman 2". But then the writers had to write an ending.

In any other forum, I would write something like this before I went on to the next paragraph: SPOILERS!!! But then that would be assuming that everyone reading this blog is either planning on going to see the movie or is a complete idiot, which, I'm assuming, is not the truth. In short, the writers decided they should create a bit of tension by CAUSING TOM CRUISE'S HEART TO STOP BEATING, THUS RESULTING IN HIS WIFE HAVING TO GIVE HIM CPR TO REVIVE HIM!!! Oh, Boy! The whole theater was literally covering their eyes. I was on the edge of my seat. Did she clear his airway first? Did she shake him and say "Annie, Annie, are you okay?". Did she measure two fingers away from the bottom of his sternum before starting chest compressions? But, more importantly, did the music suddenly stop, dramatic slow motion kick into effect, sweat dripping off of her anxious, beautiful face, breathing amplified? Did she give up and begin beating on her husband's chest in frustration? Did he magically wake up coughing something up, even though he wasn't choking? DID WE EVER HAVE A FUCKING DOUBT THAT HE WOULD REVIVE AND HAVE THE WRITERS EVER HEARD OF SOMETHING CALLED DEUS FUCKING EX MACHINA?!?!? Harumph. This must be standard Hollywood fare, something they teach you in film school at UCLA.

"Mission Impossible 3" is hardly a bad summertime blockbuster, but this tacked on ending seemed patronizing at best and was an easy way out. If one of my students had written it, I'd give them an 85. But my students are thirteen. Therefore, this one gets a 70. Sorry, Ethan. Don't have a heart attack.

Sonic Youth: Rather Ripped

At a show Supermassive played at Cogan's, before I left for Cameroon and before Cogan's turned into pizza joint, I made a remark that "the future of rock and roll is in the hands of a bunch of guys in their thirties". Four people cheered. And I certainly wasn't referring to the band that was playing at the moment, which, incidentally, was mine, even though we were in our thirties. I was referring, playfully, to God and Famous, which was chockful of middle-aged guys chasing teenage dreams, and achieving it, albeit at a small, Cogan-esque level.

When I was a freshman at Virginia Tech, I remember, quite vividly, sitting in my friend's dorm room, on a belly full of beer, marijuana and LSD, listening to the Butthole Surfer's "Locust Abortion Technician", Flipper's "Generic Album" and Sonic Youth's "EVOL". The lights were off and I was staring at the door, which was changing shapes drastically. While the changing shapes were probably due to the dose of LSD I had put on my tongue earlier, I contributed it mostly to Thurston and Lee's meandering, squealing, shrill, intense guitar work. "EVOL" instantly became my favorite album and it proved to be the soundtrack to my life for a couple of years. I was head over heels in love with Sonic Youth.

Thurston Moore is now 47 years old. He has a kid with his wife Kim Gordon and they live in a plush house in Connecticutt. They appeared on an episode of the "Gilmore Girls". And they have just released their 200th studio album. And the great thing about it, is that it rocks, which just blows my mind. And while it is mind-blowing, it isn't surprising. In a show a I saw a couple of years ago in Norfolk, Thurston was literally scaling the walls after passing his shrieking, feed-back laden guitar to a fan over-hanging the balcony. He crawled up, grabbed his guitar, ran around the balcony to the other side, crawled back down and ended the song with a Sonic Youth flourish. Even after 25 years (!) of noise, Sonic Youth still has it. And "Rather Ripped" just confirms that. The album is a solid slab from start to finish, and, in a way, it is almost their best. The guitar work is splendid, stringy and melodic and noisy in the way that is only possible when you've been playing together for, well, 25 years. I hate to say it, but it's almost Dead-like in it's noodly-ness. And that's actually a good thing.

I used to skip my architecture labs when I was 18 because they were overwhelming and depressing and I had the self-confidence of a elderly cat with a bladder problem. I would go up to the library in Cowgill hall and read "ArtForum" magazine. In one issue, Sonic Youth was profiled. Sonic Youth! I was floored. So rock and roll can be considered legitimate art, I thought. This, of course, led to me changing my major to Wildlife Management, eating copious amounts of psychedelic drugs, and, eventually, dropping out. Which made me an artist, obviously.

But I have to hand it to Sonic Youth. I am thirty-eight years old now and I'm still listening to these guys. And when Thurston sings "Do you believe in rapture, babe?", I almost think I do. I really, really do.

Downloading Bob Dylan

At one time, when Dylan still lived in Hibbings, Minnesota, he went to a friend's house- a big folk connoisseur with a large collection of hard-to-find folk albums- and, essentially, stole 30 albums. The friend hunted him down and had a minor tete-a-tete, which involved the brandishing of a bowling pin. When I received "No Direction Home: Bob Dylan" in the mail the other day, my next door neighbor informed me that he had just downloaded, from Limewire, ALL the Bob Dylan albums, which, in my estimate, must be close to 500 or so. While I didn't chase him down with a bowling pin- after all, I don't monitor the Internet, or bowl, for that matter- it did make me think about our relationship with music, especially after seeing this fascinating documentary about one of America's quintessential cultural icons. I should really care less that someone can get on line and, in the amount of time it takes to do a couple of loads of laundry, end up with the entire catalogue of G.G. Allin recordings, but it does creep me out a little. And not just because my computer is incapable of supporting a program as aggressive as Limewire, resulting in my seething jealousy of my neighbor. It creeps me out a little because having 20 albums of ANYBODY used to mean something. It meant you were a bit of a freak. It took work to get that many albums, it took time, and, most of all, it took money. Its a wonder Dylan's friend didn't chase him down with an entire gaggle of bowling pins. It really is.

With that being said, it was fascinating seeing Dylan's early exposure to music being expressed through his playing and writing. This was the 1950s. His family had just moved into an old house. In the living room there was one of those old turntables, the kind where you slide back the top to get inside, and on the record player was a 78 of a country song. Dylan played the song over and over, learned it, developed a relationship with it. He talks about this in one of the current interviews featured on the disc, so the record, of course, had a huge impact on his development as a singer and song-writer. I mean, what a great story. My first exposure to music was the radio. I bought a 45 of "King Tut" by Steve Martin at King's Department store, where they had all the Top 40 45s lined up in enticing rows. "King Tut" was probably like #22. Now THAT's commitment. Not to sound like a curmudgeonly old man, even though I am, in fact, a curmudgeonly old man, but will saying "I first heard it on a ringtone" have the same impact as saying "I dusted off the old 78 and put it on the turntable, which we had to turn with our own hands..."? Our relationship with music has changed dramatically. And it not only changes what we listen to, but it changes the very nature of the music that is being exposed.

Bob Dylan was a result of post-war America, the Midwest, living in a town with a main street, dependent on the surrounding mines that supported its economy. He searched out Woody Guthrie, literally, and it took him, ultimately, to Greenwich Village. That's just something that could never happen today. It's interesting to look at the ebb and flow of popular music in this country, the passing of the torch from one generation to the next, to see where it will go. I just wonder, with the availability of music now, and the relative ease it takes to make good sounding recordings, if we'll ever find another artist like Dylan. It's an interesting thing to await, for sure. Until then, I'll be at my neighbor's house, perusing the Limewire catalogue, waiting for my clothes to dry, trying to download the entire catalogue of Pete Seeger recordings. Sigh. Where's King's Department store when you need it?

"A History Of Violence": Closet Mobster Dad

At one point in this movie, the son looks at Virgo Mortenson, or whatever his name is, whom I believe at one point played an elf in another movie, or, at least ran around with elves, and says, "What are you? Some kind of closet mobster dad?!" He then looks flustered and walks away, into the front yard. The first thing I thought, when I saw this scene, was "Closet mobster dad. That's funny." Then I thought this: "Why is he walking into the front yard? Where is he going to go?" This is after the scene where Virgo has sex with his wife, who is dressed up like a cheerleader, but before Virgo has sex with his wife on the steps, at which time she was no longer dressed up like a cheerleader. My brother swears that this is the worst movie he has ever seen. I'm not quite sure I would go that far, but considering a lot of people had it in thier top ten lists for 'O5, it is a bit disconcerting.
Knowing it was based after a cartoon, er, graphic novel, I can give the script writers the benefit of the doubt. I mean, why not name the mobster "Joey" and his brother "Richie"? Why not have him spend three years in the desert finding himself and his wife, have kids, and live the small town life of a diner owner with a 17-year old kid? Which puts him at least twenty years removed from his life as a gangster, which must have been an incredibly short career, considering he looks about 40 in the movie. Watching this movie was like reading one of the short stories I used to have to read when I took MFA classes at ODU: it was painful, but I felt sorry for everyone involved. Especially those who had to watch it. Ugh.

The State Of Indie Music: 1998-Present

When I was in junior high school, 8th grade, the age my students are now, I was beginning to plant the seeds for my life-long obsession with things that don't matter, specifically rock and roll. Between my sister's collection of late '60s hippy rock and my nerdy friends fascination with heavy metal, I had the ground pretty much covered for music that kids didn't listen to in Virginia Beach. While Ozzy Osbourne and Def Leppard may have forged a large fan-base in, say, middle Ohio, Virginia Beach, with it's waves and skate parks, was not as welcoming. Billy Idol was big. The Talking Heads and U2 were big. Liking Iron Maiden was not exactly a good move for a nerd. In fact, it was a defining nerd move. And I made it over and over. I was, in fact, a nerd uber alles.

But that is neither here nor there. What I liked about heavy metal had nothing to do with Satanic imagery or spiked leather collars. What I liked was the heavy part. What I didn't like was the associative stupidity. So, a middle ground, as I entered high school, was punk rock. When the guy who sat behind me in Algebra II/Trig loaned me "Never Mind the Bollocks", I was hooked. It was like metal without the lead guitars and the tight pants. But it did have one other thing in common with metal: it, too, was incredibly stupid. Sid Vicious was closer to Ozzy Osbourne than either "artist" was to, say, Bob Dylan. And this was, ultimately, disappointing. I was many things in high school- nerdy, self-conscious,lazy, virginal- but I wasn't stupid.

Enter the Minutemen and Husker Du and the Meat Puppets. The Butthole Surfers and Scratch Acid and Sonic Youth. Post- "Damaged" Black Flag. Joy Division, the Sisters of Mercy and the Cure. It was the late '80s, the advent of "indy" rock and a smart kid like myself who liked the intensity and heaviness of both metal and punk, was now offered a way out that was considerably less stupid than singing songs about "London Leatherboys" or "Surf Punks". It was life changing and eventually led to me dropping out of college to join the minions of kids in the late '80s, early '90s who started bands and, really, became part of something that saved popular music from complete and utter intellectual impotence. (Although you wouldn't know that by listening to the lyrics I wrote. Or by the pants I wore. Yikes.)

Which brings me to today. Should a 37-year old man still be listening to bands that consist of 21-year old college dropouts? Has my relationship with music, specifically new, independent rock and roll, changed because of my age? Does it have to? As I mentioned in the previous post, the best thing about indy music is that it represents the age it was produced, it is an expression of what is going on at that moment and time, with no real precedence given to the past, or, if it is, looks at that past as a kind of ironic touchstone- we'll take this guitar lick here and FUCK it up. It would be easy for me to list my five favorite "indy" rock albums of all time, and that would be a list common to a lot of people my age- "Zen Arcade", Meat Puppets "II", "Double Nickles On The Dime"- but that may say more about my relationship with the time period than it would my relationship with the album. The challenge is picking albums from post 1998, the year I turned thirty. And that's what I want to do. There is no criteria for picking these albums other than the fact that I listen to them often and consistently, from start to finish. They don't represent anything to me other than good independent rock and roll. Some are heavy and some are not. All of them have a melodic intensity that attracted me to my sister's album collection and my friend's metal albums back when I was 13. And all of them rock.

The Aluminum Group "Happyness"
The Dismemberment Plan "Emergency and I"
Broken Social Scene "You Forgot It In People"
Interpol "Turn On The Bright Lights"
The Stills "Logic Will Break Your Heart"
The Notwist "Neon Golden"
Built to Spill "You In Reverse"

There is still a space in my heart for Ozzy and Iron Maiden. And I still listen to my sister's record albums. I am happy, however, that at 37 I can still get excited about new music. While the reasons may change, the music, ultimately, is still heavy.

"Match Point", American Princes and "The Kingdom".

I have a friend who spent 4 years at NYU studying film, worked for a year in the industry and left to go to culinary school. He left the film industry because, quite frankly, he got tired of working on shit. On my first trip ever to New York, the same time I met this friend of mine, I was invited to a screening of a film he and another friend of mine worked on. It was a packed Loew's theater in Time's Square, a rainy Thursday evening, the first after 9/11. Bush's mug was all over the 42nd street Jumbotron. People were stopped in the sidewalks, looking up, mesmerized by the closed-captioning. You're either with us or against us. He continually referred to the terrorists as "folks". Inside the theater, the filmmakers were handing out padded underwear as a promotional gimmick. The movie was, ostensibly, about the fashion world. And it was a veritable train wreck. All this money, all this time, all this unnecessary hoopla, all to kill off a first-person narrator because there was, apparently, no other way to get out of this mess of a script. It's this kind of abuse of the creative process that chased my friend into the kitchen. My friend and I constantly remark how there really are no good movies anymore. And it's partially true.

Case in point. I fell asleep during "Capote". I thought "Crash" was narratively all over the place. And so on. It's not that these are bad movies, per se, they just aren't great. And I mean great in the sense that flicks like "M" or "Papillon" or "Cool Hand Luke" are great. They lack the cohesiveness in the writing, the whole believability factor, which, ultimately should be the goal of any great film. It's what separates the theater from film, I think. When you're in the theater- and this is why the theater gives me the willies- you know you are watching a bunch of adults playing pretend. Film tricks us into thinking what we are watching is unfolding before our eyes as each and every day does- in real time, in a real way, palpable and painful.

Which is why I loved "Match Point" so much. Forget the fact that it was Woody Allen. As bizarre and outlandish as the plot ultimately got, the behavior of the characters was entirely believable. And the narrative links- the foreshadowing of the tennis ball- during the opening scene- precariously perched at the top of the net and, later in the movie, a wedding ring slowly careening off a fence rail, gave the movie an emotional punch, a reason for believing the preposterous plot line. I had no idea where Woody was going with this and, at one point, I stopped the movie and looked over at my wife and asked, quite seriously , how anyone could put themselves in such a shitty position. And when the guns got pulled out, I was floored and hooked. "Match Point" is a great one.

As for the American Princes, a rock band from Little Rock, Arkansas, via NYC, their third album "Less and Less" is a slab of schizophrenic rock and roll, wearing their influences on their many sleeves, it goes from inspired post-punk bombast to gently meandering acoustic self-reflection in the span of one song. Like Built to Spill's new one, "You In Reverse", "Less and Less" is great summer music, rock and roll to barbecue and get drunk to. It's not perfect, by far, and probably won't age very well. But it captures the moment quite well, and that's what good indy rock seems to do.

"The Kingdom" is a Dutch mini-series written and produced by Lars Van Triers about a haunted hospital. I can't seem to get through an episode without falling asleep, but it is pretty interesting and I like to hear all the garbled, hard-edged consonants as I read the captions.

Well. That's it for the first installment of Man Star's Guide to The World. If you read this, because I have a funny feeling no one will ever read this in the first place, leave me a comment.