Monthly Archives: February 2015

Lists

Not From Netflix

I’ve just gotten back into Netflix for its DVDs, not just its handy On Demand service. With so much snow on the ground at our new home in Bethany, casual trips to Best Video aren’t so casual just now. And there are still quite a few titles that I can’t get on the iPad.

I’ve been a Netflix customer since the service first began in 1999, and was struck, looking over my queue, by how many things on it are unavailable. Some have never been available. This is what’s currently on my “Saved Titles” list, the disks that Netflix can not currently provide. All list an availability date as “Unknown.”

• All the King’s Men (the Sean Penn one, from 2006)

• Beware of a Holy Whore (Fassbinder, 1971)

• Cause Celebre (Helen Mirren and David Suchet, 1987)

• Chicago Filmmakers on the Chicago River (doc featuring Jon Landis, Haskell Wexler and others, 2004)

  • Coming Through (Kenneth Branagh and Helen Mirren TV movie, 1985
  • Cracker (the popular Robbie Coltrane crime series)
  • Hollywood Rivals Collection (2005 collection of film clips and other documents illustrating great film-star grudges)
  • House Arrest (divorcing couple Kevin Pollak and Jamie Lee Curtis are held captive by their own children in hopes that they will reconsider)

• Maid to Order (1987 Ally Sheedy/Beverly D’Angelo menial comedy)

• Notes from Underground (contemporary take on the dark Dostoevsky story, starring Henry Czerny, Sheryl Lee, Jon Favreau and Seth Green. 1995, directed by Gary Walkow)

• Popi (1969 Alan Arkin/Rita Moreno comedy. They both play Puerto Ricans.)

• Radioland Murders (1994 mystery comedy starring Brian Benben of Dream On, directed by actor Charles Martin Smith and co-writted and co-produced by George Lucas of Star Wars)

• Spring Forward (drama with Ned Beatty, Liev Shreiber, Campbell Scott and Bill Raymond)

• Super Duper Alice Cooper (the recent Alice Cooper documentary, available for $10 on Amazon but not rentable via Netflix?)

• Big Comfy Couch: Comfy & Joy/Jump for Joy (this demonstrates how long I’ve been a Netflix member. My kids are now 10 and 12, and were into this show—and the live stage versions of it that would visit the Shubert in New Haven—when they were like 2).

• The Fox and the Hound (the Disney film can be watched on demand on Netflix, but not on DVD)

• The Stupids (1996 Jon Landis adaptation of the incredible James Allard children’s book series, starring Tom Arnold. I’ve never seen this film, though I do own the tie-in novel)

• Very Best of America’s Funniest Comedians (2003, with early-career snippets of Chris Rock, Adam Sandler, Jerry Seinfeld, Ray Romano, Norm MacDonald, Kelsey Grammer, Jim Carrey, Rosie O’Donnell, Tim Allen, Richard Belzer, Cheech Marin, Richard Lewis, Jason Alexander, Carrot Top, Paul Rodriguez, Jeff Foxworthy, Janeane Garofalo, Ellen DeGeneres and Drew Carey)

  • Times Square (the film that made Allan Moyle lose his hair, battling for integrity and style when producer Robert Stigwood merely wanted a Saturday Night Fever for punks)
  • Where the Rivers Flow North (1993 stubborn backwoods logger Rip Torn drama. Anything with Bill Raymond in a supporting role instantly goes on my queue.)
  • Xala (1975 social satire by one of my favorite filmmakers Ousmene Sembene)

I’m sure there are all sorts of reasons why these films can’t be gotten: copyrights, song clearances, repackaging, forgetfulness. Some are viewable elsewhere (Cracker, for instance, is on the Acorn TV subscription channel). Maybe I’m the only person on earth who wants to see some of these. But it’s as broad and varied a list as my active Netflix queue, a list that has formed and grown organically, screaming “You can’t see us!”

Interestingly, a number of these ARE on the shelves at my local video store, Best Video. I continue to rely on both Netflix and Best.

Rock Gods

Rock Gods #338: Adventures in Our Little Music Scene

We went unabashed to the Sugary Pop Con. In case you’re unsweetened, this is a music festival, not a confection convention.

We’ve never been ashamed to profess our love for classic acts like The Zagnut Five, The Punctuation Marx and Syrup Boys. But still, this is the cultural affection that dare not speak its name, and some of us are more out about our love for loud cheesy superficial bands than others. We saw a lot of people we know well at Sugar Pops (as it’s affectionately known), and darned if some of them didn’t avert their eyes or duck into hallways when they saw us coming. Others, of course, embraced the culture and loved being among fellow tripe-rock travelers.

Rose Riot of Winged Euonymus greeted us with “Hi-doodly-doo!,” quoting the gummy-jazz classic “Hi Doodly Doo” by the, um, Hi Doodly Doos.

Others wanted to be all learned and academic about the genre, noting that some of the most important guitarists and saxophonists in the harder rock realms had played in sugary studio bands.

Fine. Justify thyselves as thee will. We did the color and the lights and the cool and the lightness. Wouldn’t even know where to put these bands if they wanted to play downtown in our town. Hamilton’s? Too much of a drunken party scene. The Bullfinch? Too ironic. D’ollaire’s? Too big. maybe the outdoor show in the park. With cotton candy and carnival rides. For now, may the heavens bless the Sugar Pops. Besides the live sets—total bliss, too perfect to describe here—we scored a mint 45 of “Fragrant Frank” by the Tri-Fools for only a smattering of bucks, plus a stack of Rich Bears comic books. Sweet, with no guilt.

Tonight: Samses and Adore Clean at the Bullfinch, both with the same bassist, Lauren Snails… The 24 Hours and Best Gas, convenient covers, at Hamilton’s… An Evening with Eunice X. Alon and The Braiders at D’ollaires. Discount admission for distinctive “do”s…

Archie

Riverdale Book Review

Rhyming Titles from Archie #365, March 1989

“Neat Feat”

“Beat Treat”

“Borrow Sorrow”

…and one of the worst, most dated, Archie rhyming titles of all time:

“Colleen Scene”

In this brief gag, Archie is “punished” by having to sit in the back of the class. But it’s not really a punishment, see, because he can ogle girls from back there. Girls, aka colleens. From Wikipedia: “Colleen is a common English language name of Irish origin and a generic term for Irish women or girls, from the Irish cailín (caile, countrywoman).”

Colleen Scene. Gosh. Even “Back of the Class Sass” or “Last Row Gal Ogle” might’ve been better choices.

Music reviews

Scribblers Music Review

The Afro-Semitic Experience, Jazz Souls on Fire (www.afrosemiticexperience.net). This is a departure, even for the ever-eclectic and adventurous ASE. It’s not that the band doesn’t do covers, but they’ve tended to be of traditional melodies from various religious services.This is a more contemporary set, though no less sacred. The songs are rousing spiritual soul, funk, jazz ditties by such hallowed talents as Duke Ellington, Pharaoh Sanders (“The Creator Has a Master Plan,” suffused with the distinctive slide-guitar stylings of Stacy Phillips), Sister Rosetta Thorpe, John Coltrane, Hank Mobley. The foundations on which the band was built, klezmer and gospel, are diminished here (though not by any means gone), and there are a lot more vocals (in English, anyway) than ASE listeners are accustomed to. Thomas A. Dorsey’s “I’m Going to Live the Life I Sing About in My Song,” which has been recorded by both Mahalia Jackson and Nina Hagen, is given a brisk bluesy vibe. There are some trad spiritual tunes to round out the disk: “Fon Der Khupe,” “Avadim Hayinu” (previously recorded on the first Afro-Semitic Experience album, Once We Were Slaves, much fuller and richer and more resonant in this rendition, which spotlights the bass virtuosity of Afro-Semitic co-founder David Chevan) and a “Go Down Moses,” which has almost a marching band feel, until the jazz piano kicks in. A noteworthy stretch for this accomplished ensemble, less overtly prayerful than the band’s earlier work perhaps but with no less faithful fervor.

Lists

Singing in the Shower for February

These is the random stack of CDs cluttering the downstairs bathroom this month. I have a handy Sony 5-disk player in there for showertime.

  • Elf Power, Sunlight on the Moon. Oft-overlooked, pretty darn prolific (15 albums) Elephant Six collective member. This is their most recent album, from 2013.
  • The Best of Antoinio Carlos Jobim. One of those “20th Century Masters” budget CDs. Judging from this, Jobim liked to swim: “Agua de Beber,” “Aguas de Marco,” “Wave,” “Tide” and the ultimate jazz beach song “The Girl from Ipanema.”
  • The Shazam, Tomorrow the World. One of their most audacious power pop efforts, as suggested by lead track “Rockin’ and Rollin’ With My Rock and Roll Rock and Roller.”
  • Elvis Costello Live With the Metropole Orkest, My Flame Burns Blue. The bonus disk is the shorter version of the “Il Sogno” Suite which Costello composed for a ballet based on A Midsummer Night’s Dream (performed in 2000 by the Italian Aterballeto Dance Company).
  • Christiane Noll, The Ira Gershwin Album. There was a time in the ‘90s and ‘00s when Noll was not only making a name for herself on Broadway, she was visiting Connecticut frequently—with Jekyll & Hyde, the Urinetown tour, at the Goodspeed in Mack & Mabel and Lizzie Borden, and in concert appearances at the Bushnell and elsewhere. I love the unexpected selections on this Gershwin set: “Tchaikovsky,” “I Was Doing All Right,” “In Our United State,” “There Is No Music”…
  • The Funky 16 Corners. Amazing funk comp of groundbreaking regional hits of the early 1970s. Does for funk what Nuggets did for garage rock.
  • The Essential Adam Ant.
  • Adam Ant, B-Side Babies. This guy deserves a reappreciation, and it’s nice to see him get taken seriously in some of the newer New Wave history books.
  • 10cc, 10cc. Those first albums captivated me as a teenager, and still think that the blend of the hyper-creative risk-takers Lol Creme and Kevin Godley and the mainstream pop craftsmen Graham Gouldman and Eric Stewart had genius to it. Now I’m older, I think they often too self-consciously precocious and clever, but in the ‘70s there was nothing as smart out there.
  • Teenage Fanclub, Shadows. I don’t think they did one perfect album, but each one has several perfect songs.
  • Randy Newman, Harps and Angels. Proof that, over a winding and unpredictable half-century career, he’s never lost his sardonic touch.
  • MOJO presents DavidHeroesBowie. The free disk that came with the latest issue of MOJO, of “the artists that influenced David Bowie.” Anthony Newley and Jacques Brel and Vince Taylor and The Pretty Things, of course, but also Bobby Bland, Billy Fury, Ronnie Ross Quintet and The Flares (“Foot Stomping,” a taste Bowie has in common with John Waters, who put the song in the original Hairspray film).