#like music + written work still qualifies as art. you guys know that right. that's why ai writing and ai covers are still morally wrong.

[feenmies]

every time i see people act like character.ai and other ai art sites are two completely different concepts it makes me laugh because like. that site is basically if not actually identical to a fanfiction ai model that rips from the works of countless writers . just because you can input your own personalities and backstories now doesn't mean the bots aren't based on the work of pre-existing writers 😭 it's all still ai generated . not to be the fun police or anything but i think we should be more mindful of the fact that it's literally still ai art by definition and you are feeding the ai model by using it for x reader scenarios!!! like idk. i wish we lived in an era where commissioning/requesting fics was still widely popular so people didn't see a need to use ai sites

[funknrolll]

Focusing on Prince and the song Avalanche: Lesson learned or....??

Hi my music lovers, today we are celebrating the birthday of the undisputed music legend and virtuoso: Prince Rogers Nelson. Since all that is happening these days, I wanted to offer you guys the chance to reflect on these crucial issues. Therefore I chose to focus only on one song in Prince's vault: Avalanche. In my opinion, this piece is quite relevant to what is happening these days. I really hope I do Prince justice. I hope we can learn something from this article and the lesson Prince taught us. Should there be anything, I missed do not think twice to let me know or contact me. Enjoy the article.

In 2002, Prince released One Nite Alone (Solo Piano and Voice by Prince). As the title suggests, the only accompaniment in this album is the piano. Today I want to offer you the chance to reflect on the song Avalanche. Avalanche. The message delivered with this song is compelling, and the lyrics were magistrally written. Moreover, as many people know, Prince was an avid reader and an extremely educated person who had a vast knowledge not only about music but also about history, in this case. Indeed, with these words, the Artist is referring to some historical events to create one of the most MONUMENTAL protests songs in music history. Before I explain this total MASTERPIECE, I need to mention some crucial points. I will never stress enough about this. We all know that Prince was a black man. However, the fact that he, in some interviews, said things like "I was brought up in a black and white world. Black and white, night and day, rich and poor. I always said that one day I was going to play all kinds of music and not be judged for the color of my skin, but the quality of my work" or quoting his song Controversy "I wish there was no black or white" etcetera... It does not mean he was not conscious and aware or proud of being black. This does not mean that he was not aware of what black people had and still have to endure and go through. Indeed, Prince was extremely knowledgeable of everything that I mentioned, and he was proud of being black, and this is something significantly present in his music, in his sense of style, in his words, lyrics, music videos, concerts, and movies. I'm making this point because I have overheard too many people accusing Prince of not embracing his blackness or even being biracial as the new york times erroneously claimed. None of these things are true. I also heard that the Artist was not aware of what black people had and still are going through and that his music was not "politicized enough." This is another big fat lie. This song is proof. Therefore, before writing and describing this MONUMENTAL song, I thought I needed to re-emphasize this significant point. By the way, Prince's mother was NOT Italian. She was a beautiful black woman. Furthermore, as already mentioned, Artist had extensive historical knowledge and was also conscious and aware of how black people have always been exploited and treated. Moreover, Prince was accustomed to speaking his mind and saying what he meant, and just by reading the superlative and poignant lyrics, we could see that the Artist was quite straight-forwarded in writing this piece. Indeed:

He was not or never had been in favor

 Of setting are people free

 If it wasn't for the thirteenth Amendment

 We woulda been born in slavery

 He was not or never had been in favor

 Of letting us vote, so you see...

 Abraham Lincoln was a racist who said

 "You cannot escape from history "Like the snow comin' down the mountain

 That landed on Wounded Knee

 Nobody wants to take the weight 

 The responsibilityHear the joyous sound of freedom

 The Harlem Renaissance

 Hear Duke Ellington and his band

 Kick another jungle jam

 Ooh, do you wanna dance?

 Who's that lurking in the shadows?

 Mr. John Hammond with his pen in hand...

 Sayin' "Sign you're kingdom over to me

 And be known throughout the land!"

 But, you ain't got no money, you ain't got no cash

 So you sign yo name, and he claims innocence

 Just like every snowflake in an avalanche...Like the snow comin' down the mountain

 That landed on Wounded Knee

 Nobody wants to take the weight 

 The responsibility 

This masterpiece begins with a quote taken from the 4th Lincoln-Douglas debate held in Charleston, South Carolina, on September 18, 1858. Lincoln opened his discussion with these words: 

"While I was at the hotel to-day, an elderly gentleman called upon me to know whether I was really in favor of producing a perfect equality between the (slur)  and white people. [Great Laughter.] While I had not proposed to myself on this occasion to say much on that subject, yet as the question was asked me, I thought I would occupy perhaps five minutes in saying something regarding it. I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, [applause]-that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of (slur), nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people. I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races, which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And since they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man is in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race."

This was just the beginning of the speech Lincoln gave, and the words bolded are the exact beginning of the song by Prince (disclaimer: I replaced the racial slurs with this (slur) since I do not want any slurs on my platform). Moreover, as we can see in this song, the Artist was calling out the former President Abraham Lincoln for being racist. As you can see from this speech, HE REALLY WAS A RACIST. Moving on with the speech, Lincoln also said that he was not against slavery, and therefore he did not want to abolish it. Additionally, Prince mentioned the thirteenth Amendment. Before I report the Amendment, I believe it is important to contextualize it. What I am about to write will show one more time that Lincoln was a stone-cold racist, unlike many people were taught in schools. So, during the Civil War, the South USA (which economy was unfortunately still based on slaves working in plantations), wanted to keep a balance of free and slave states to maintain its political power in Congress. Southern slaveholders feared the loss of control for many reasons, including a rational fear that if Northern abolitionists had eventually swayed their representatives to vote to abolish slavery, the South wouldn't have had the votes to stop it. So, on September 22, 1862, President Lincoln warned the Confederate states that if they did not rejoin the Union before January 1, 1863, he would free their slaves. If they had timely surrendered, he would not have issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Therefore, on January 1, 1963, Lincoln "proclaimed" the "end of slavery." Bear in mind that this was as much an act of political/military strategy rather than moral courage.

Additionally, the Emancipation Proclamation freed only slaves held in the eleven Confederate states that had seceded, and only in the portion of those states not already under Union control. Slavery was left untouched in the loyal border states. The Proclamation also expressly exempted parts of the Confederacy (the Southern secessionist states) that had already come under Northern control. Most important, the freedom it promised depended upon the Union (United States) military victory.  The actual abolition of slavery was achieved when the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified on December 6, 1865. The first section of the Amendment declares, "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime where of the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.". In addition to everything mentioned, the second segment of the speech I bolded is about the right to vote. Eventually, the Artist ends these verses accusing Lincoln of being racist, saying that it is not possible to escape from history. I must say that Lincoln really was A RACIST, and we have always been taught history the wrong way. I also must say that despite the abolition of slavery, black people were never really free, for racism was and still is one of the biggest plagues not just in the USA but all over the world and what we have seen until now is the proof.

Moreover, in the next verses, the Artist mentioned the Harlem Renaissance. For those who do not know that was, I will give a quick explanation of it. The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural, literary, and intellectual movement that fostered a new black cultural identity. This movement flourished in Harlem, New York, after World War I and ended around 1935 during the Great Depression. The movement raised significant issues affecting the lives of African Americans through various forms of literature, art, music, drama, painting, sculpture, movies, and protests. Voices of demonstration and ideological promotion of civil rights for African Americans inspired and created institutions and leaders who served as mentors to aspiring writers. The Harlem Renaissance arose from a generation that had lived through the gains and losses of Reconstruction after the American Civil War. Sometimes the parents or grandparents of those who lived during that historical period were slaves. Many people who lived in the Harlem Renaissance were part of the Great Migration. They moved out of the South into the black neighborhoods of the North and Midwest of the USA. African Americans sought a better standard of living and relief from the institutionalized racism in the South. Others were people of African descent from racially stratified communities in the Caribbean who came to the United States hoping for a better life. Uniting, most of them were their convergence in Harlem, New York City. Furthermore, Harlem was the center of a musical evolution that uncovered amazing talents and created a unique sound that had yet to be paralleled. Jazz was the newest sound, and it attracted both blacks and whites to go to nightclubs like the Savoy Ballroom to hear artists like Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, and Miles Davis. Jazz was a result of the Harlem Renaissance, which originated from the musical minds of extraordinarily talented African American people. The genre includes traits that survived from West African American music, black folk music forms developed in the New World. In his song, Prince was indeed referring to jazz music and one of its most relevant and most brilliant artists: Sir. Duke Ellington. In the next lines, we see the Artist mentioning John Hammond. Hammond was a white talent scout, record producer, and music critic. This is another excellent example of how history has been distorted. Indeed, if you look upon the net, you will find that this man fought against segregation and racism. However, if you read Frank Kokofsky's book, John Coltrane and the Jazz Revolution of the 1960s, you will learn the truth about the political economy of white domination over black music. In particular, Kokofsky focuses on the relationship between John Hammond, Columbia Records, and the Artist Bessie Smith. Indeed, as Kokofsky writes:

"The first and most important point to emphasize is that, as author Chris Albertson reveals in his biography of Bessie Smith, Hammond signed the singer to a series of contracts with Columbia Records that gave her a small, fixed fee for each performance she recorded and no royalties. Such contracts were apparently standard practice with the executive, for Billie Holiday unequivocally stated in her autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues: 'Later on John Hammond paired me up with Teddy Wilson and his band for another record session. This time I got thirty bucks for making half a dozen sides.' When she protested about this arrangement, it was, according to her, a Columbia executive named Bernie Hanighen – and not John Hammond – 'who really went to bat for me' and 'almost lost his job at Columbia fighting for me.'" 

Hear the joyous sound of freedom

The Harlem Renaissance

Hear Duke Ellington and his band

kick another jungle jam

Ooh, do u wanna dance?

Who's that lurking in the shadows?

Mr. John Hammond with his pen in hand...

sayin' "Sign ur kingdom over 2 me

and b known throughout the land!"

But, u ain't got no money, U ain't got no cash,

So u sign yo name and he claims innocence

just like every snowflake in an avalanche. 

This situation is quite familiar, isn't it? Perhaps Prince had heard or read about this, and therefore he decided to add this fact to this masterpiece.

 Last but not least, another relevant part of this song is the chorus. Indeed, with this brilliantly written chorus, Prince is referring to the massacre of Wounded Knee, where more than 350 Native-American were killed. Indeed, On the morning of December 29, 1890, Chief Spotted Elk (Big Foot), leader of a group of some 350 Minneconjou Sioux, sat in a makeshift camp along the banks of Wounded Knee Creek. The group was surrounded by U.S. troops sent to arrest him and disarm his followers. The atmosphere was tense since an order to arrest Chief Sitting Bull at the Standing Rock Reservation just 14 days earlier had resulted in his murder, prompting Big Foot to lead his people to the Pine Ridge Agency for a safe haven. Alerted to the band's Ghost Dance activities, General Nelson Miles commanded Major Samuel Whiteside and the Seventh Cavalry to apprehend Big Foot and his followers, and the regiment intercepted them on December 28, leading them to the edge of the creek. While confiscating their weapons, a shot pierced the brisk morning air. Within seconds the charged atmosphere erupted as the Indian men rushed to retrieve their seized rifles, and troopers began to fire volley after volley into the Sioux camp. From a hill above, a Hotchkiss machine gun raked the tipis, gun smoke filled the air, and men, women, and children ran for a ravine near the camp, only to be cut down in the crossfire.

More than 200 Lakota laid dead or dying in the aftermath, as well as at least 20 soldiers. Although the story of the Wounded Knee Massacre is well-known, its causes and effects are still an enigma 125 years later. For 19th century Americans, it represented the end of Indian resistance and the conquest of the West. For Native-American, it represented the utter disregard of the U.S. toward its treaty responsibilities, its duplicity, and its cruelty toward Native people. In the 20th century and beyond, Wounded Knee continued to fuel controversy and debate. Notably, what is particularly controversial was and is the impetus and intent of the government that day, the role of the military, and the conflicting ways the tragedy is remembered today. Indeed, from this story, we can see how Prince gave his listener another example of how racism was a persistent plague.

Like the snow comin' down the mountain

that landed on Wounded Knee

Nobody wants 2 take the weight-

The responsibility

Moreover, as I said, the Artist with this MAGISTRALLY written lyrics educates his listener on how racism has always been a persistent, prominent, outraging, and horrifying plague that is still going on today. In addition to that, we can notice Prince's deep and broad historical knowledge, which is something incredibly fascinating and mesmerizing. Moreover, the arrangement of this song, the instrumental and the vocal delivery is among the finest and most poignant he has ever done. Indeed, the Artist with this masterpiece delivers an extraordinarily intimate and intense but yet POWERFUL performance. In my opinion, even though the only instrument played is the piano, its arrangement is outstandingly complex. The blues genre the Artist opted for, also could not have been more following the whole meaning and purpose of the song. Furthermore, the Artist's incredibly broad vocal techniques are perfectly accompanying the meaningful message of the song. Prince, with his ability to shift from a beautiful falsetto to an extremely low chest voice to eventually change to a powerful head voice during the last chorus, is putting into sounds magistrally and vividly a poignant lesson we are still struggling to learn.

Thank you for your attention.💜 Peace. G💜

[liujinhee]

[ Kyuhyun/Reader ]

plotting an us (working title)

Word Count: 2,622

Summary: Art student y/n, theatre student Kyuhyun one shot

Uh, so this was supposed to be a y/n fic, but I think I gave the character so much personality that they qualify better as an OC? Haha... im sorry guys :')

-

There was little use in trying to reason with yourself why you travel two hours every weekend to the Penguin Ice cafe. Cafe menus were unreasonably expensive, and Penguin Ice was located in the heart of the city, where the population was far too saturated for your liking.

Then you hear the familiar voice saying the words Welcome to Penguin Ice cafe, and you know you'll be coming back next weekend regardless.

You walk straight up to the counter—even if you had a crush on one of the part timers, it didn't mean your judgement was clouded enough that you'd drop by during rush hour just to see him. At 4pm, the cafe was quiet, a few patrons scattered in different corners.

When Kyuhyun's gaze falls on you, his professional smile softens into one you now recognize as warm. “Single scoop of matcha and vanilla with sprinkled topping, having here?”

“Got it in one.” You return the smile, hoping it isn't too wide. The way your feelings tend to write themselves on your facial features has never done more good than harm thus far. Digging into your pocket, you hand him the bill; never the exact amount, if only for the selfish reason of wanting him to drop the change onto your open palm.

And he does. “Here's your change,” Kyuhyun sings in that merry tune you know by heart.

“Someone's in a good mood.”

He makes a show of scanning the bar, which currently only has him manning it, before leaning forward. He's not close enough that you feel his breath, but still close enough that your heart rate picks up as he tells you in a hushed whisper that fails to contain his glee, “It's payday.”

You snort at that, even though you already had your suspicions. Kyuhyun simply gives you a cheeky grin and wags his brows, seemingly pleased to have shared that little tidbit. Your hand twitches with the instinct to reach out and ruffle his hair, something you're not quite able to do to someone you can barely call an acquaintance. So you settle for a Congratulations, to which he bows dramatically, My heartfelt thanks, before twirling away to prepare your order.

He may be majoring in theatre, you think. Or at the very least, hold an interest in it. It's not the first time the two of you have exchanged words in such a manner, nor do you believe it'd be the last. As you watch him drop a generous scoop of ice cream into a cup, you wonder if you should ask him today. Something like, What school are you from? What's your favorite ice cream flavor? Do you want to catch the next musical that comes?

But they all feel like questions that'd make your existing dynamic awkward. In a way, you already consider Kyuhyun a friend, despite not knowing anything about him other than his name, which you got from his name tag, and that he only works on weekends, which is written on their blackboard under the Shifts section. 

Once again, you spend too much time overthinking, and your order is ready before you come to a decision, Kyuhyun extending the cup to you with a gentle hum. Your mumble of thanks matches the tone of his hum, and your feet bring you to your usual seat, empty as it always is. Customers aren't the biggest fans of seats by the entrance, after all; the constant opening and closing of the door can get annoying. It doesn't bother you, however. As much as you dislike crowds, you find comfort in the buzzing of human activity.

And, well, if the seat provides you a good view of the bar where Kyuhyun busies himself with cleaning up, that's just a really big bonus. Once you're satisfied with the angle of your chair, you bring out your pencil and sketchbook, flip to a fresh page, and begin sketching.

It's not always Kyuhyun. Scenery fascinates you, and you've long since lost count of the cityscape, the parks, the rivers that you've drawn from memory and imagination. But it's always when the imagination starts that Kyuhyun joins, somehow making his way into the scenery.

This time, you’ve sketched him barefoot by the beach, laughing as he splashes seawater up a silhouette with his foot. It’s an imagery that comes easily to you; Kyuhyun with his friends out having fun together. He seems like the type of person who is able to get along with everyone, and you're near certain he is.

You scribble down the date and your signature like you do on every piece of art, leaving out your name. The ripping of the page is quiet, barely audible over the music; the edges of the paper imperfect, but they always are. 

As you rest the paper under the now empty cup, you can't help but imagine how Kyuhyun would react to the sketch this week. He hasn't shared his thoughts on your sketches since that first time nearly three months ago, when you'd come to Penguin Ice with your friends for a birthday celebration.

I like the way you sketch, Kyuhyun had told you as he served the tray of sundaes ordered by your table. Art student?

Yeah, you'd answered after a moment of shock, watching how the man's eye was trained on the lines of your sketch. Understanding that it was genuine praise. Your eyes had fallen to his askewed name tag, committing his name to memory. And, um, thanks. He'd tipped his head in acknowledgement, set down your orders, and returned to his post.

Looking back, it might've seemed like nothing. But to the you back then who had been dealing with self doubt, the words of a stranger had been everything you needed to hear and more. While your friends chit chatted and ate, you'd done up a quick sketch of the cafe, and left it on the table with a short thank you note addressed to Cho Kyuhyun.

The next time you'd come, it had been because another friend was curious after seeing your post about the cafe before. Even then it had been Kyuhyun who took one look at you and went, Ah, the art student! Right? The memory of that moment still makes you chuckle now. It's in his recognition that Kyuhyun started becoming more than a part timer at a cafe in the city for you.

Now, as you wait for Kyuhyun to turn away and busy himself with cleaning before sneaking out of the cafe like a protagonist in a cliche romance drama, you wonder if this plot will ever advance, or if this is but a draft that will not live to see a happy ending.

It doesn't really serve as a surprise when you come across Kyuhyun at a local arts festival you are a participant of. You've thought about it, the what if. What does surprise you, is how you come across him.

There's an event pamphlet, of course, but you're also not the type of person who focuses on details like the musical cast names. It's not like any of them would ring a bell, since they're students. Except one of them does. You don't connect the dots at first, too tired from hours of live sketch after live sketch for customers. Then you hear it, his My heartfelt thanks, and the thought is formed.

Can it be? You reach into your back pocket for the pamphlet and flip to the musical lineup for today. Sure enough, printed in bold is the name Cho Kyuhyun along with a photo of him. Gods, does he look cute in casual wear. You're staring hard at his photo when he rips your attention back to him with his vocals.

While you wouldn't go as far as to call yourself a theatre enthusiast, it's not like you haven't been to musicals. You have, and you enjoy them when you do. Paid hundreds of bucks for a good three straight hour sitting of a show that'd live in your memories for decades to come. And when Kyuhyun sings, goosebumps rising along your arm midway through the first line, you know that's the kind of level he'd belong on in the near future. That's how good he is.

You're in awe, then you're in wonder, and then maybe, just maybe, you're falling in love with the theatre student and part time ice cream man Cho Kyuhyun. The sudden realisation startles you, but you accept it just as quickly. Little as you may know, it's enough for you to have developed feelings for him, and you feel it growing stronger every passing second in your mind. Your fingers itch with the need to capture this moment forever in the form of a painting.

Then the musical comes to an end, the cast coming together, hands joined as they bow their thanks while the audience reciprocates with thundering applause. Your eyes are still on Kyuhyun as the curtain falls, but you're certain he hasn't seen you in the dark. Nor would he know or have reason to be looking out for you.

You're out the moment you're able, zigzagging through the night crowd back to your post in a rush. It's not that you're late to return, nor will your neighbor mind even if you were. You simply need to pick up a pencil right now and bring to life the visuals buzzing in your head. It's been a while since you've felt this adrenaline rush under your skin. 

This is going to be a masterpiece.

-

You drown yourself in the canvas, skipping your weekly visit to the Penguin Ice cafe for the first time. There's only one reason for it: you don't want to override the memory of seeing Kyuhyun on the stage. A side you've never seen before, a temporary skin he wears so well one may be fooled into thinking it is his own.

There's a moment when you wonder if you'll ever finish the painting—each time you think you're quite about done, the paint setting for the last time, there's something new to add or to revise. You want to make it perfect, but in art, nothing ever is. Still, it is through willpower that you drop the brush for good, stepping back to take a good look at your painting.

It's… well, there’s no other way to say it: it's the man you saw on stage that night. It’s as close to what you wanted to express as you think it can get. The desire, the urge to convey your admiration for Kyuhyun grows overwhelming, and you rush to hold down on the power button of your phone. It’s 7:12pm on a Sunday. Which means there’s a good chance Kyuhyun will be there. They close at 10pm on weekends… can you make it?

It's worth the risk, you decide. You've got to be stupid at least once in your life (or many, but that's not how the saying goes, see). You wrap up the canvas carefully, yelling to your parents that they don't need to buy your share for dinner later, and rush out the second you feel presentable enough for public appearances.

Kyuhyun stares at you unblinking, and you do the same. It's easy to get lost in the reflection you see in them—and he blinks, light returning to his eyes.

“Hey,” he greets, but behind it you sense the question.

“Hey,” you return between pants.

“We're closing,” he says slowly, as if you can't tell from the flipped chairs and cluttering of washed utensils, “But if you're okay with on the go, I can bring out the tubs.”

You shake your head wildly before Kyuhyun can go grab said tubs. “That's not why I'm here.”

When you don't elaborate, he nods once and prompts, “Okay… So you're here to…”

“Pass you something. I can wait till you're off work. If you don't mind, I mean.” You're babbling, and you just know your face is a deep shade of red from nerves and embarrassment. To his credit, Kyuhyun doesn't judge despite his wrinkled brows, and gestures in the direction of your usual seat. So that's where you head. And you wait, your mind too crowded and thoughts so jumbled that you blank out until someone taps you on the shoulder.

“I'm done here,” he says, but now your brain short-circuits for a different reason. Kyuhyun in a plain t-shirt and shorts with a bag slinging across one shoulder shouldn't be anything worth ogling over, but it is. Even more so than the photo you'd seen on the pamphlet. You struggle to remember how to string words together and give him an answer, digging into your backpack for the thing you're here to hand him but can't quite remember what.

Then your fingers brush against the cloth holding your canvas, and you're reminded of your purpose. Right. With your heart slamming against your chest, you carefully pull out the painting you spent a week on, all while watching for any changes in Kyuhyun's expression. He has that cute frown that suggests he's confused, and you bite back a smile as you extend the canvas in an offering.

“For me?” 

The laugh breaks free from you as he accepts it with a cautiousness you've never seen. “

“Is there… something here?” He wonders aloud, gesturing between the two of you. His question is innocent enough, but then you see the way he's nibbling on his lower lip, the way he's peeking at you from under his long lashes—why are they so long anyway, you briefly wonder.

“An empty space,” you quirk, still somewhat afraid to take the leap, but unwilling to leave his question hanging in the air. 

Kyuhyun is instantly right by your side, the sleeves of your t-shirts brushing against each other, his body heat radiating off him this close. You feel yourself stiffen before you relax, easily growing used to this new lack of distance.

“So that's fixed,” Kyuhyun says after four beats of silence. “Anything else?”

“Hmm,” you hum to stall time as you think of other quirky answers to give, but it seems that isn't something Kyuhyun is willing to take a second time. His steps grow wider as he makes to stand in your way, forcing you to look up at him. He isn't exactly tall per say, perhaps a 1.8, but you're simply leaning toward the other end of the spectrum. 

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

He smiles, small and shy and hopeful. “It'd be really embarrassing if I'm reading this wrong, but are you interested in me the same way I'm interested in you?”

And now it's you who's worrying your lower lip, question after question clogging up your mind about all the things you can say that will ruin any possibility of the two of you—Then you look at Kyuhyun again, and realise the man’s likely feeling the same, to some extent.

Licking your dry lips, you decide to go for it. “If by that you mean—” you swallow before you're sent into a coughing fit because of your salivary glands, “—The I want to hold your hand on a date kind of interested… then yes.”

“Who said anything about dating?” he teases, and before your brain even registers the words for you to feel disappointed, he continues, “I think we should start with self introductions first, shouldn't we? After all, I still don't know your name.”

“Okay then.” Kyuhyun clears his throat, his posture tall and grand before he gives a graceful bow, hand extended. “Would you do me the honor of exploring the potentials in this budding relationship?”

It seems like the plot is moving forward, after all.

[dweemeister]

The Princess and the Pirate (1944)

Bob Hope’s mastery of quickfire one-liners and self-deprecation endeared him to American audiences listening to him over the radio or watching him in films. Those skills made him the ideal Academy Awards host (Hope still has the record hosting the most ceremonies) and frequent entertainer for the United Service Organizations (USO). By the 1940s as a contracted actor to Paramount, Hope starred in the Road to... musical comedy series with Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour. Their comedic chemistry made the films runaway hits. Road to Morocco (1942) represented the series pinnacle, but Paramount wanted to move on – loaning Hope out to Samuel Goldwyn Productions (at this time affiliated with RKO Radio Pictures as distributor) for two films in exchange for Gary Cooper’s services to make For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943).

The first Bob Hope movie with Goldwyn, They Got Me Covered (1943), made little impression. For the second film, Goldwyn lavished an A-picture budget for Hope, Virginia Mayo (an unofficial member of the Goldwyn Girls), and director David Butler. As a detour from the Road to... series, The Princess and the Pirate is filled with fourth wall-breaking references that make it impossible to recommend for anyone who has never seen a Bob Hope movie from this era. With that qualifier in mind, The Princess and the Pirate is an offbeat comedy that Hope’s fans and admirers will enjoy, though it is certainly not his finest work in motion pictures.

We open with the title screens describing a ruthless pirate named Hook. Immediately, Bob Hope breaks the fourth wall to tell the audience: “That’s not me folks, I come on later. I play a coward!” Hook (Victor McLaglen), who – shockingly – has a hook hand, has just buried a valuable treasure on a desert island when he orders an attack on a naval ship. With his buccaneers of the Avenger swindling the booty, Hook’s crew also kidnap the Princess Margaret (Mayo), who has run away from home in defiance of her father, the King (Robert Warwick), as she wanted to marry a commoner. Hook’s crew also accosts an actor, Sylvester the Great (Hope), who sleeps in the cabin across from the Princess. Sylvester escapes abduction by disguising himself as a gypsy. The Avenger’s eccentric tattooist, Featherhead (Walter Brennan), finds the disguised Sylvester attractive. Featherhead helps Sylvester and Princess Margaret escape, directing them to see find his cousin somewhere on the pirate cove named Casarouge.

Also featured in The Princess and the Pirate are the Governor of Casarouge, La Roche (Walter Slezak); Hook’s first mate, Pedro (Marc Lawrence); Hugo Haas as an ethically challenged barkeep; and a film-ending cameo that makes a ruffled Hope exclaim that this will be the last picture he makes for Goldwyn (it was).

In these days where memories of Bob Hope’s radio and USO work are waning, his wise-guy humor might not be as funny to some viewers. Without question, his comedic timing and delivery is as refined as anyone’s. Director David Butler even admitted that Hope himself did not need much direction with the screenplay by Everett Freeman (1942’s George Washington Slept Here, 1951’s Jim Thorpe – All-American); Don Hartman (1935’s The Gay Deception, Road to Morocco); and Melville Shavelson (1958’s Houseboat, 1959’s The Five Pennies. But Hope’s signature jokes about one’s own shortcomings and metatextual jabs over the ways the Hollywood Studio System worked are not sustainable for a feature film unless there is support from elsewhere in the movie.

The Princess and the Pirate does not have the broad humor one sees in the Road to… series. Instead, the film’s comedy – which still possesses Hope’s comedic hallmarks – is interwoven into the plot. On another level, The Princess and the Pirate is a swashbuckler parody that provide its supporting characters (namely, the antagonists) with more antics and jokes than the typical Bob Hope comedy. The swashbuckler genre was overdue for a parody by this point, as the genre had been popular since the silent era – The Crimson Pirate (1952) and The Court Jester (1955) would come later. As Hook, Victor McLaglen’s energetic performance – his threats to slit Sylvester’s gizzard or gullet enliven the intentionally hackneyed writing – is a joy to watch. McLaglen, a character actor often found in gritty, hypermasculine roles, looks like he is having the time of his life in this film. So too is an unhinged Walter Brennan, who had the distinction (fortunate or unfortunate depending on how one views it) of looking much older than he was. Brennan’s tattooist must have been the film censors’ worst nightmare – a slightly queer and lusty pirate. And in a role where he is more than just an old Western coot playing alongside a John Wayne or Gary Cooper, he gets to be more cartoonish than in any other performance I’ve seen him in. For The Princess and the Pirate, McLaglen and Brennan’s complement those of Hope and Mayo’s.

For Mayo, The Princess and the Pirate was her first starring role. Though she participated in singing classes with the Goldwyn Girls, Mayo herself never joined the company. Yet, she was a breakthrough star in her own right. As the film’s no-nonsense, strait-laced foil to Hope, Mayo plays off Hope’s comedic chops, but her character resists Sylvester’s raised eyebrows and naughty suggestions. That Hope and Mayo have no romantic spark subverts swashbuckler tropes, as the dynamic between their characters can best be described as friendly bickering. In Princess Margaret’s exasperation as pirates board their ship, their comedic dynamic sets the tone for the rest of the film:

PRINCESS MARGARET: Why don’t you die like a man? SYLVESTER: Because I’d rather live like a woman!

Costume designer Mary Grant (1957’s Sweet Smell of Success) gowns see Mayo go through various wardrobe changes – just how many dresses does she have on her person? – in the film’s splendid Technicolor. The remarkable production design by Ernst Fegté (1943’s Five Graves to Cairo, 1950’s Destination Moon) and Howard Bristol (1940’s Rebecca, 1959’s Anatomy of a Murder) not only encompasses the ships, but the Casarouge exteriors and La Roche’s palatial residence. The Casarouge art direction – ramshackle wooden buildings, portside materials strewn haphazardly across the docks – help make it believable as a sleazy den of inebriated, trigger-happy scalawags. As the final act transitions to La Roche’s governor’s mansion with its high ceilings, ornate furniture, and gleaming floors, the sets look like they came from some lavish musical. Despite some indifferent camerawork (as one often finds in comedies), The Princess and the Pirate’s backgrounds are always fascinating to look at. Filled with so much detail, the film almost escapes the restrictions of the soundstage that almost all of it was shot in.

According to Hope, he enjoyed making The Princess and the Pirate and his character’s ability to don various costumes to evade the villains (which reminded him of his vaudeville beginnings). But Hope’s loan to Samuel Goldwyn had expired – actors and actresses in the Old Hollywood Studio System had little leverage to oppose loan deals written up by studio executives – and he was ready to return to Paramount. With World War II raging in two theaters, he would continue to entertain American troops on various USO tours. Virginia Mayo remained with Goldwyn until 1949. With her ascension to being a leading actress, she starred in a handful of comedies opposite Danny Kaye and was cast against type in her brilliant performance for William Wyler’s The Best Years of Our Lives (1946).

Though The Princess and the Pirate might not be the most memorable (or funniest) film its two leads starred in, it is a welcome swashbuckling comedy that defies the swashbuckling stereotypes that one comes to expect. Entertaining though it is, several references are rooted in an assumption that one knows about Bob Hope’s filmography, Samuel Goldwyn’s reputation, and other period-specific media. Feeling more like an animated short film stretched longer than it should, the movie should only be seen by those who have an interest in the cast and crew involved with the production.

My rating: 7/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. Half-points are always rounded down. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found in the “Ratings system” page on my blog (as of July 1, 2020, tumblr is not permitting certain posts with links to appear on tag pages, so I cannot provide the URL).

For more of my reviews tagged “My Movie Odyssey”, check out the tag of the same name on my blog.

[tillidontneedfantasy]

No. 6 Collaborations Project - Ed Sheeran: I’m not like a regular musician, I’m an Uncool™ musician.

When Ed Sheeran emerged onto the American pop scene in 2011 - 2012 as an understated solo act, he famously utilized the loop pedal in his live shows, creating the sound of a full production with just his voice and one little guitar. This is just one of the elements that made Ed Sheeran such a compelling rising star; one singer-songwriter could cast a very large shadow. 

Sheeran’s dominance over the pop scene since then and throughout the last decade is undeniable, and he really wants you to know it and acknowledge it on No. 6, as he (rightfully, but not so moderately) celebrates his musical achievements and endeavors over the years on tracks such as “Take Me Back to London” featuring Stormzy and “Remember the Name” featuring Eminem & 50 Cent. But he also doesn’t want you to forget that still, despite all of his success, *Amy Poehler from Mean Girls voice* he’s not like a regular musician, he’s an uncool musician. Travis Scott opens “Antisocial,” a well-produced but underwhelming song about Sheeran’s introversion and anxiety, by stating, “All you cool people, you better leave now,” which sounds silly coming from an artist as "in” right now as Travis Scott. This is a message Sheeran attempts to drive home even more so on the opening track “Beautiful People” featuring Khalid, where Sheeran explains how he does not quite fit in with the lifestyle of his industry. For someone who is so adamant that he remains uncool, he sure scored a heap of very cool artists to collaborate with him on this new record, even including a DJ, loop pedal be damned.

Funny enough, the song including DJ and producer Skrillex, titled “Way To Break My Heart” is one of the few that is reminiscent of Sheeran’s roots, both sonically and lyrically. While Sheeran’s singer-songwriter chops have not particularly diminished with success, they feel repetitive and at a stalemate on No. 6. Sheeran still holds his own on the strongest tracks, but the voices featured on this project are what hold them up the most.

BEST TRACK: “I Don’t Want Your Money” featuring H.E.R.

No. 6 is thematically heavy on Sheeran’s relationships with fame and with his wife, Cherry. Sheeran is generally most triumphant when he focuses on the latter, a love song master as displayed by the overwhelming success of the overly cliched “Thinking Out Loud” and “Perfect” (from x and ÷  respectively), but is most effective on this album when he integrates it with the former. On “I Don’t Want Your Money,” Sheeran outlines the strains that celebrity life put on a relationship in a way that is universally relatable, whether you’re a pop mega-superstar or an average Joe from Chicago who’s had one viral tweet. In the 2nd verse, he sings: 

“Baby I’m doing it for us, so why you taking that tone like I’m the bad guy? / I thought it would have made me better in your dad’s eyes / I’m busy stacking up the paper for the bad times / ‘cause baby, you never know / I’m popping right now, but there will come a day when I won’t.” 

No matter the lifestyle or job, anyone who has ever been a working individual in a relationship knows the struggle of a work-life balance, and the pressure when things are going well to do all you can to maintain that lucrativeness in case it all falls apart in the future; it’s a sacrifice for the sake of security. Sheeran’s awareness that his height of fame for any musician is not built to last forever is also a refreshing note of modesty. H.E.R. graciously lends her magically soothing vocals as the voice of Sheeran’s wife, assuring him that his time is much more valuable to her than his money, beautifully supported by a very sweet guitar riff. There’s a lot of horns in this song as well, which don’t necessarily fit with the theme or vibe but somehow work anyway, because horn instruments can improve almost any pop song exponentially.

WEAKEST TRACK: “1000 Nights” featuring Meek Mill & A Boogie Wit da Hoodie 

Directly following the relatability of “I Don’t Want Your Money,” Sheeran reminds us that, despite the trick he might have just played on us, we, in fact, cannot relate. Sheeran chronicles his “faded” tour ventures as he casually hops through continents on “1000 nights.” Following a recent trend of artists dismissing any criticism or opinions that are not glowing, Sheeran proclaims in the 2nd verse, “I don’t need to read reviews if you can’t do the things I do.” Although Ed Sheeran will most definitely not need to read this blog post, I hope he and his peers remember that ubiquitous success does not make anyone impervious to imperfection, and that consumers are allowed to and should continue to think critically about art. Maybe that sentiment will mean more coming from me once I tour multiple continents.

THE IN-BETWEENS

One of the strongest tracks, “Best Part of Me” featuring YEBBA, showcases Sheeran’s longstanding ability to churn out a heartfelt ballad, musically stripped back with the simplicity of his earlier work and his staple romantic prose. “Feels” featuring Young Thug and J Hus is short, sweet, and catchy, yet feels easily lost in the fray. A bit too often, Sheeran sounds out of place on his own album. On “South of the Border,” a fun track that feels slightly derivative of the mega-smash lead single “Shape of You” from ÷, Camila Cabello and Cardi B steal the show. And on the jarring yet intriguing closer, “BLOW” featuring Chris Stapleton and Bruno Mars, Sheeran’s first verse is quickly dulled by Mars’s shine. Kudos to Sheeran for gathering such talent, but when it works best, Sheeran’s in the passenger’s seat while his contemporaries are driving, making you forget who even owns the car.

BEST PROSPECTIVE SINGLE: “Put It All On Me” featuring Ella Mai.

Ella Mai is the true star of “Put It All On Me,” and the slight growl in her voice when she sings the line, “grab my waist,” is a pure knock-out. Riding off the magical spell she cast on us all with “Boo’d Up,” she can help Sheeran keep the momentum of his Cool Uncool Guy image. It’s got the perfect tempo for the radio and has “make me into a club remix” wisely written all over its DNA. 

***

As Sheeran has released his past 3 solo major studio albums, + (2011), x (2014), and  ÷ (2017) (seemingly having a thing for math), he has evolved yet always stuck to his strengths. All artists should experiment, bend genre boundaries, collaborate, and step out of their comfort zones. But No. 6 mostly makes the listener feel like Sheeran is trying to prove that hip-hop is his comfort zone and strength, as he laments “I wanna try new things, they just want me to sing / Because nobody thinks I write rhymes” on “Take Me Back to London,” apparently backtracking from the x deluxe track “Take It Back” opening assertion, “I’m not a rapper / I’m a singer with a flow.” Well, it turns out 2014 Ed was correct. Ed sounds great when he sings with a quick “flow” and sticks to what he knows. The most effective way for any artist to successively evolve is by utilizing their strengths to create something different. In the few moments on No. 6 when Sheeran does so, his spark glimmers through and we’re reminded of why all these artists jumped at the chance to work with him, though he should feel just as (if not even more) lucky. Hopefully, his next release will leave behind the numbers by subtracting a bit and return to the basic equations. Grade: 2/5

DISCLAIMER - REVIEWER’S BIAS: I have been an Ed Sheeran fan since his debut release in 2011; I remember watching a video livestream for the American release of + that only 12 other people joined. I love all of +, a majority of x (which hold, in my opinion, his 2 best songs, “I’m A Mess” and “Nina”), and very little of ÷. I was very disappointed by ÷, but still consider myself a fan. I really wanted to love No. 6 and went in with an open mind and heart, but it just felt like a conglomerate of failed crossover attempts that just didn’t do it for me. I truly believe Ed is talented and has the potential to make an album in the future that I can proudly call myself a fan of, but No. 6 doesn’t quite qualify.

[vinylexams]

Heavy Heavy Low Low - Courtside Seats to the Greatest Fuck of All Time⁠

⁠ @heavyheavylowlow38 #heavyheavylowlow #hhll #deathwish @deathwishinc⁠ ⁠ I’ve been lucky as hell recently to snag insider info on some killer reissues and this one is no exception. You all already know how much I love HHLL, especially Turtle Nipple…, and through serendipity I got connected with Robbie from the band a few months back. I got to hear about how they are coming back to life after some years focusing on other projects, growing up and growing out, and evolving as musicians and artists in the process. They’ve worked with Twelve Gauge Records to put Courtside Seats on vinyl for the very first time and after they announced it on their platforms and immediately sold it out, they’re pressing another batch that you and the HHLL lovers in your life can and should snag before that pressing sells out, too!⁠ ⁠ What’s even more exciting is that I got to pick Robbie’s brain in typical VE fashion and he’s indulged me with all sorts of info about what they’re up to, whether or not we can expect new music, and some feel-good stories about huffing air duster and ripping shit up in an old warehouse on the California coast. Here it is in its unedited glory, but first…head to the website to pre-order your copy and then head to Robbie’s Indiegogo campaign to learn more about his upcoming short firm that’s scored by Nick from Tera Melos! ⁠https://deathwishinc.com/products/heavy-heavy-low-low-courtside-seats https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/morning-deliveries-short-film#/

INTERVIEW

First and foremost, it’s been a minute since we’ve heard from Heavy Heavy Low Low and then out of nowhere you sprang back to life in 2019. What motivated you all to pick up this project again? I’m not sure what motivated it. We had always been trying to jumpstart the whole thing again for some time and I think that it might have been a case of everyone’s lives slowing down and examining that time with a weird reverence. I can only speak for myself. The boys are all in school or doing their own thing.

I imagine you’ve all been working on different projects since HHLL went on hiatus. Do you have anything that you or the rest of the band have worked on that you’d love us to know about? Danny has gotten pretty popular in the Kendama world. Chris is studying various forms of martial arts. Roo is endlessly going to school and currently scoring independent films. Chip is heavily involved in competitive fishing. I’ve been making short films when the situation and my wallet allow it. We’re all crazy excited about finally owning Courtside Seats on vinyl for the first time. Aside from bringing that album onto the vinyl medium, the pre-order page notes that there’s new artwork, too. What can we expect from that? When we made the CD we weren’t expecting to sell any really.. I did the art and Matthew printed them all at his job. Him and I folded every crease, glued the o-cards and vacuum sealed them all. I think it sold out almost completely at the record release show. We made the same amount of records as we did the original cd (500). The artwork for the original CD pressing was done on sketch paper without any comprehension of what could be done with drawn art and a scanner. Matthew was the computer wizard and back then, young and silly, it was all done on the cuff. The new art is a bit more modern and plays with mortality. Court-side Seats to The Greatest Fuck of All Time being a front seat view of a an ordinary, bumpy ride through life. I’m proud of it. What’s it like to bring back an album from the earliest parts of the band’s career? Do you still identify with the music? It is odd. It was a truly surreal time and place. We were out of our fucking minds. We recorded it in Mountain View, Ca in this giant warehouse that tapered into gutted office spaces. It was a weird white collar tomb on the outskirts of Silicon Valley right before the real tech boom. In the big part of the warehouse where we’d enter there were giant mounds of clothes meant to be donated to some third world country. We’d burrow tunnels in them and do huge dramatic flips from pike to pile. There was an aisle of outdated medical equipment waiting to be sent that we’d stalk through in the dark. It was a strangely magic place. Once you got through the warehouse you’d get to these office stations that had been fashioned into recording studios and that’s where we birthed this thing. We were so misguided. The amount of compressed air that we inhaled should have killed us. I contribute a significant drop in IQ to that shit. Smoking copious amounts of weed from gravity bongs. Recording with a hip hop producer, Deegan. Never a disagreement. It still feels like it was some strange purgatory of youth. I don’t miss it, but it was beautiful. Does this mean there’s hope of having Everything’s Watched, Everyone’s Watching on vinyl sometime, too? So, there was a guy who was very adamant about putting that record out on vinyl. We had a dialogue going for the better part of a year and apparently he had been in contact with Rhino Music and Warner, the two companies that hold the licensing to that album. He had received word that it’d cost an impressive amount of money, but he still wanted to shoulder it. Mind you, this dude didn’t have a label, he just wanted to put this thing out and apparently hadnt thought that all out. Time goes by, I’m waiting, not worrying one way or the other. One day I get a link from a friend, a Christian college website detailing that dude had been arrested for kidnapping and assault. Very sad situation. Dude seemed semi normal. Anyway, that was the last effort I’d seen put into that. I’d love to contribute new art to that release if any go-getter wants to try their luck. I’ve loved everything HHLL put out, but Turtle Nipple is in my top 10 list of favorite albums of all time. What was the writing the recording process for it like and how did the band feel about the new creative directions on it? EWEW was half previously recorded material re-recorded and half material written a year prior, kind of forced into a studio with producers we had no previous rapport with. Those producers/engineers were incredible human beings (RIP Tom Pfaffle! See you in the mindfog) but we were very young punk kids thrown into a foreign land where we had our agents visiting and there were platinum records on the wall and it was a total barrage of privilege and excess. It was beautiful, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t feel soul in that record. Turtle Nipple is a dense trip through time and the record I’m most proud of in our discography. I don’t remember how long we had to record it, I do remember that it was the only time we’d been given to experiment and layer our sensibilities in an environment that catered to them. Sam (Pura) was a perfect conduit to that vibe and time and space and it really came out just how it should have. I think about that album as a 70s exploitation directors filmography.. it veers violently from genre to genre and while most of the stories are fiction and far from personal testimony, theirs a peek into some shared insanity contained throughout. George Cosmatos wandering through a punk club on an edible. I think that that album is our bands true personality. Sam is a member of our band whether he’s playing with us or engineering for us. He gets us. I love the idea of an alternate reality where we had lasted a bit longer and did an album with Steve Albini. He’d probably hate us, but I love those ‘What If?’ Scenarios. I’ll ask the question EVERYONE has been asking so it’s on the record somewhere: Does this mean we can expect new material or a new album soon? Maybe even a tour? We have a new EP in the works. We have some of it recorded with Sam. We’ve posted a couple clips on Instagram. We’re incredibly busy and spread out in our personal lives. Chip in TX, Dan in FL, Roo in OR, Rob and Chris in CA. Adulthood is a bitter, pulpy drink! We are going to be playing again. We won’t be leaving the West Coast. We had our fill of middle America and the travel involved. We have talked to some of our buds from our early days of touring about playing alongside (opening for) them for a limited run in 2020. I think that qualifies as a tour. Also, if anyone wants to fly us to Europe to play a festival in 2020, we’d like that. It’ll be an interesting year. How does it feel to be welcomed back by so many adoring fans who still love your music and are hoping for more after a long hiatus? It’s incredibly humbling. I have heard from people throughout the years about how we had affected them and it was always just strange to me. I’m pretty self deprecating, so I just don’t understand how some shit I wrote could mean much to anyone. My mind is just a shotgun blast of panic. I guess all of ours are? I love my band mates and their talents, though. So I understand the sorta sirens draw to the greater extent. I think they only got to show themselves slightly, too. Weird existence. Give us a piece of band trivia you’ve never shared in an interview before! Gees. There is a step-in part to most 15 passenger vans. It is a black, hard plastic. It meets with where you close the sliding door. When we had no bottles to pee in, we would just piss in ‘the step’. This thing was a den of germicidal activity. Trash and piss I don’t think we ever truly cleaned that thing. What’s odd is that we so rarely got ill on tour. The Step kept us healthy on a steady diet of trash and piss and general scum. Finally, this isn’t a question but the hidden track on Turtle Nipple is a fucking masterpiece and I wanted you to know. Thank you! I think that may have been my idea to add some weird 70s funk into an old track of ours. I think it turned out cool, but I think it betrays our vibe on that album! I wish it’d have devolved into some weird, primitive Altered States shit.

[theculturedmarxist]

     By    Barry Grey    

       26 September 2019  

On Monday night, the New York Metropolitan Opera opened its 2019-2020 season with a new production of George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. This production has a particular distinction in that it is the first ever based on a critically researched and authoritative performance edition of Gershwin’s score, the product of 20 years of work led by musicologist Wayne Shirley, who is currently at the University of Michigan’s Gershwin Initiative.

There is no doubt that the poignant love story of the crippled beggar Porgy and the beautiful but abused and addicted Bess, and the suffering and struggle of the African American working class community of Charleston’s Catfish Row, is among the world’s most beloved operas and Gershwin’s masterpiece.

Yet the fact that the current production is the first in 29 years to be staged by the country’s most prestigious opera house is indicative of the trials and tribulations that have confronted the work since it premiered on Broadway in October 1935. These have come not from the broad public, which has embraced the opera (and many of its numbers) since its inception, thrilled by its glorious and complex music and moved by its deeply democratic ethos, but from within certain more privileged constituencies—the American classical music establishment, academia, sections of the black professional upper-middle class, including certain African American artists, composers, writers and actors.

Gershwin, the prolific composer—along with his lyricist brother Ira—of hit Broadway musicals and dozens of memorable songs that have become part of the Great American Songbook, rejected the artificial separation of popular music from “serious” or “classical” music. He wrote concert classics that incorporated elements of jazz such as Rhapsody in Blue, the Concerto in F and An American in Paris, which have become part of the symphonic repertoire the world over. He called his Porgy a “folk opera” and deliberately had it debut on Broadway in order to appeal to a broader audience. But what he wrote was a musically dense and dramatically powerful opera in the full sense of the word.

One example of the dismissal of Porgy by much of the American music establishment was a savage review of a production at the New York City Opera written in March of 1965 by the then-music critic of the New York Times Harold C. Schonberg. He wrote:

“Porgy and Bess”—Gershwin, you know—seems to have taken root as an American classic, and everybody accepts it as a kind of masterpiece. It turned up last night as given by the New York City Opera Company. All I can say is that it is a wonder that anybody can take it seriously.

It is not a good opera, it is not a good anything, though it has a half-dozen or so pretty tunes in it: and in light of recent developments it is embarrassing. “Porgy and Bess” contains as many stereotypes in its way as “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”

In more recent decades, with the domination of racial and identity politics on the campuses and within what passes for the American intelligentsia, its promotion by the Democratic Party and elevation as an ideological bulwark of bourgeois rule, the opera has been repeatedly accused of denigrating and exploiting black people. It is, according to the terminology of African American Studies departments and a well-funded industry that—with the aid of pseudo-left organizations—churns out racialist propaganda, a prime example of “cultural appropriation.”

We will deal with the retrograde concept of “cultural appropriation” further on. First let us examine how this racialist approach to Porgy and Bess is reflected in the media reception to the new Met production.

The table was set, so to speak, by the New York Times, which led its Sunday arts section with a full-page photo of the two leads, Eric Owens and Angel Blue, and the headline “The Complex History and Uneasy Present of ‘Porgy and Bess.’”

Taking pains to raise the standard racialist arguments against the opera and its composer, while simultaneously acknowledging the greatness of the work, the author, Michael Cooper, wrote:

More urgently, is “Porgy” a sensitive portrayal of the lives and struggles of a segregated African-American community in Charleston, SC? (Maya Angelou, who as a young dancer performed in a touring production that brought it to the Teatro alla Scala in Milan in 1955, later praised it as “great art” and “a human truth.”)

Or does it perpetuate degrading stereotypes about black people, told in wince-inducing dialect? (Harry Belafonte turned down an offer to star in the film version because he found it “racially demeaning.”)

Is it a triumph of melting-pot American art, teaming up George and Ira Gershwin (the sons of Russian Jewish immigrants) with DuBose Heyward (the scion of a prominent white South Carolina family) and his Ohio-born wife, Dorothy, to tell a uniquely African-American story? Or is it cultural appropriation?...

Or is the answer to all these questions yes?

The first wave of reviews published Tuesday (the WSWS will publish its own review of the Met production at a later date) have generally been highly favorable. All of the reviewers, however, feel obliged to qualify their enthusiasm for the performance by cataloging the opera’s supposed “baggage,” viewed from the standpoint of race. It seems they allow themselves to be moved by the piece only reluctantly, and sense its humanity and truth despite themselves.

George Grella, for example, writes in New York Classical Review:

Since its debut, Porgy and Bess has been consistently hectored by two questions: is it an opera and is it some combination of condescension and racial exploitation (lately termed cultural appropriation)?

The debut of a new production of Porgy and Bess, which opened the season at the Metropolitan Opera Monday night, could leave no objective listener with any doubt as to the answer to the first question. And based on the excited responses from the audience during the performance, and the rapturous applause and shouts at the end—from the kind of patron mix one sees in everyday life in New York City but rarely in a classical music venue—the work has gone quite a ways toward settling the latter in a heartening and beneficent way.

There are charges of stereotyping and caricature of the inhabitants of Catfish Row, but the real problem of the opera, the irredeemable original sin of Porgy and Bess that every reviewer is duty-bound to raise, is the fact that its creators were white. (Even worse, three of the four—George and Ira Gershwin and Dubose Heyward—were men.)

Thus, the Washington Post ’s Anne Midgette writes: “Like so many operas, ‘Porgy’ is dated: written by white men and rife with stereotypes of its time.”

Anthony Tommasini of the New York Times writes: “But ever since its premiere in 1935, the work has divided opinion, and the debate lingers. … ‘Porgy’ was created, after all, by white people. … That ‘Porgy and Bess’ is a portrait of a black community by white artists may limit the work.”

Justin Davidson of Vulture.com notes: “True, the only depiction of African-American life that makes it to the opera stage with any regularity was written by three white guys.”

The very fact that the race, gender or nationality of the artist is today uncritically presented as a central issue in evaluating a work testifies to the degeneration of bourgeois thought in general and the terrible damage inflicted over many years by identity and racial politics. The use of such criteria in past periods was associated with the political right, which employed them to promote anti-democratic and racist agendas.

While today the attack on Porgy and Bess on grounds of the “whiteness” of its creators is cloaked in the supposedly “left” trappings of Democratic Party politics and post-modernist (that is, anti-Marxist) criticism, the earlier practitioners of such an approach were more frank in giving vent to its ugly sources and implications.

Reviewing the premiere of Porgy and Bess in 1935, the prominent American composer and music critic Virgil Thomson wrote:

The material is straight from the melting pot. At best it is a piquant but highly unsavory stirring-up together of Israel, Africa and the Gaelic Isles. … [Gershwin’s] lack of understanding of all the major problems of form, of continuity, and of serious or direct musical expression is not surprising in view of the impurity of his musical sources. … I do not like fake folklore, nor fidgety accompaniments, nor bittersweet harmony, nor six-part choruses, nor gefilte fish orchestration.

Most critics and professors who attack the opera for the “whiteness” of its authors are not anti-Semites, but, whether they like it or not, there is an objective link between their approach and that of Richard Wagner, one of the pioneers of anti-Semitism in the field of music. In 1850, he authored the infamous tract “Das Judentum in der Musik” (“Jewishness and Music”), in which he denounced Jewish composers in general and Felix Mendelssohn and Giacomo Meyerbeer in particular.

A racial approach to art has a definite logic. It leads in the end to abominations such as the Nazis' Aryan art, with its book burning and banning of Jewish- and black-infected “degenerate art.”

It is a historical fact that the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants who fled tsarist persecution composed an opera that expressed in a powerful and beautiful way both the poverty and oppression of blacks in the segregated South and their nobility of spirit and burning desire for genuine freedom and equality. What is so strange or problematic about that?

George Gershwin was a genius and without doubt the greatest American composer of his time. That is an important factor to reckon with. There were and are many talented black composers—Duke Ellington and William Grant Still, to name just two—who produced great music, but none has to date produced a musical piece about the black experience in America that compares to Porgy. Unfortunately, in the attacks on the opera by some black artists—initially including Ellington, although the great jazz composer later changed his opinion—there was an element of jealousy. The same applies to composers of the academy who dismissed Gershwin’s work as technically deficient and low-brow.

How many jazz greats have performed and improvised on Gershwin tunes, including his opera? Miles Davis produced an entire album based on it. The list includes Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holliday and many more. It also includes country and pop artists such as Willie Nelson and Brian Wilson.

More than 80 years after its premiere, history itself has demonstrated the universality of Porgy and Bess. It is about black people, but, more fundamentally, it is about the human condition. Its basic themes are universal. It is a love story. It is a story about oppression, community, struggle, loss and the will to fight.

Do not songs such as “Summertime,” “I Got Plenty of Nothing” and the exquisite love duet “Bess, You Is My Woman Now” express the most profound and universal of human aspirations and emotions? Those who attack the opera for its “whiteness” generally avoid discussing the music.

Nor can there be any doubt that Gershwin’s own background, in the context of the convulsive social and political conditions of the Depression 1930s—the spread of fascism in Europe, revolutionary upheavals internationally and mass struggles of the American working class, and the approach of the Second World War—played a significant role in inspiring him to write Porgy.

During the summer of 1934, Gershwin stayed on Folly Beach, located on a barrier island near Charleston, South Carolina, collecting material and ideas for his opera and visiting revival meetings of the Gullah blacks who lived on adjacent James Island. He wrote to a friend: “We sit out at night gazing at the stars, smoking our pipes. The three of us, Harry [Botkin], Paul [Mueller] and myself discuss our two favorite subjects, Hitler’s Germany and God’s women.”

Dubose Heyward, who spent part of the summer with Gershwin on Folly Beach, published an article in 1935 in Stage magazine in which he described Gershwin’s interaction with the people who became the prototypes for the characters of his opera. “To George it was more like a homecoming than an exploration,” he wrote. “The quality in him which had produced the Rhapsody in Blue in the most sophisticated city in America, found its counterpart in the impulse behind the music and bodily rhythms of the simple Negro peasant of the South.

“The Gullah Negro prides himself on what he calls ‘shouting.’ This is a complicated rhythmic pattern beaten out by feet and hands as an accompaniment to the spirituals, and is indubitably an African survival. I shall never forget the night when at a Negro meeting on a remote sea-island, George started ‘shouting’ with them. And eventually, to their huge delight stole the show from their champion ‘shouter.’ I think that he is probably the only white man in America who could have done it.”

Gershwin himself was not overtly political, at least in his public life, but his sympathies and associations were with the liberal and socialist left. He penned Broadway shows of a broadly anti-war and socially dissident character, such as Strike Up the Band, Of Thee I Sing and Let ’Em Eat Cake. The impact of the Russian Revolution, only 18 years prior to the debut of Porgy, contributed to the generally optimistic and democratic impulse behind his music. The sister of Ira Gershwin’s wife Leonore, Rose Strunsky, translated Leon Trotsky’s Literature and Revolution into English.

The singers who worked closely with Gershwin on Porgy, including the original Porgy and Bess, Todd Duncan and Anne Brown, spoke with affection of their interactions with the composer, insisting he never evinced the slightest prejudice or condescension. They were always among the most ardent defenders of the opera.

The Gershwins insisted that the singing roles go only to black performers, in part because they wanted to break down the exclusion of African American artists from the concert hall and because they did not want the opera to be performed in blackface.

As for the element of caricature in Porgy and Bess, what opera does not have caricatures? The vengeful dwarf in Rigoletto, the seductive gypsy in Carmen, the tubercular seamstress in La Boheme, the rascally but clever servant in The Marriage of Figaro. One could go on and on. The issue is: Do the inhabitants of Catfish Row transcend their “types” and express genuine humanity? The opera’s audiences all over the world have answered in the affirmative.

And what of the charge of “cultural appropriation?” Could there be a more banal, reactionary and anti-artistic concept? What is art, if not the interaction of multiple influences of many origins, conditioned by social and historical development and distilled in the creative imagination of the artist to produce works that have universal significance?

Should we denounce Shakespeare, a male, for inventing Ophelia? Should we reject Verdi for writing operas about Egyptians? Should we ban blacks from playing white characters? What about that racist Mark Twain who had the impertinence to create the escaped slave Jim?

The balkanization of art is the end of art.

Here is how Gershwin, who aspired to create a genuine American idiom, described his own development. In an article titled “Jazz is the Voice of the American Soul,” published in 1926, he wrote:

Old music and new music, forgotten melodies and the craze of the moment, bits of opera, Russian folk songs, Spanish ballads, chansons, ragtime ditties combined in a mighty chorus in my inner ear. And through and over it all I heard, faint at first, loud at last, the soul of this great America of ours.

And what is the voice of the American soul? It is jazz developed out of ragtime, jazz that is the plantation song improved and transformed into finer, bigger harmonies. …

I do not assert that the American soul is Negroid. But it is a combination that includes the wail, the whine, and the exultant note of the old “mammy” songs of the South. It is black and white. It is all colors and all souls unified in the great melting pot of the world. …

But to be true music it must repeat the thoughts and aspirations of the people and the time. My people are Americans. My time is today.

[callunavulgari]

TOP 25 FICS OF 2018

1. A Cornstalk Fiddle by @notbecauseofvictories | Devil Went Down To Georgia | The Devil/Johnny | 17k

Where Johnny goes, the Devil follows; where Johnny goes, the Devil is already there.

Heather Says: So. I never thought that my favorite fic of the entire year would be a fic written about a song - and one that I don’t even particularly like - but here I am. I read this fic the same night that I finally broke down and watched Moonlight, and ended up listening to Moonlight’s End Credits and Hello Stranger by Barbara Lewis on repeat while I finished that first chapter on my back porch. This is that perfectly atmospheric fic that you’ll find maybe once every ten years and could probably sustain you on its memory for just as long.

2. Work of All Saints by @kaikamahine | Coco | Imelda/Hector/Ernesto | 210k

Imelda Rivera (b. 1899 - d. 1969), a story that includes but is not limited to: the finest music school this side of the Santo Domingo, three traveling musicians and the mess they made of love, the twice-cursed assassination of Venustiano Carranza, all the patron saints, and ninety-six ways a man can try to cross a bridge.

Heather Says: This story blew my entire mind. It was lovely, and tragic, and hilarious, and everything that a good novel should be. The parts of this fic that map out the unseen lives of Imelda, Hector, and Ernesto, that hidden backstory that a movie can only hint about, were exquisite to the point that I was afraid getting to the point where, well, they die, would be a letdown. It really wasn’t. If anything, the story managed to get richer as it went along, until suddenly you’re in a room sobbing into a pillow at four in the morning and have to be awake in four hours. No regrets.

3. Under the Covers by @toast-ranger-to-a-stranger | Stranger Things | Billy/Steve | 87k

Steve is (maybe) a little bit still in love with Nancy Wheeler and (maybe) trying to figure himself out-- between the night terrors and the babysitting and the general weirdness that is Hawkins, Indiana-- before he graduates.

Billy Hargrove fits in there somewhere (probably).

Heather Says: Under the Covers was the first Harringrove fic that actually kicked me over the edge from ‘eh this ship looks like it would have good hate sex’ and into full-fledged believer. It’s an intricately crafted look into the world of Billy Hargrove and Steve Harrington post-season two and it is absolutely glorious.

4. Bloody Ruin by esama | Castlevania | Alucard/Trevor | 37k

Vampire hunter and a vampire try to get along.

Heather Says: Written before season two came out, this was one of those fics that I clicked on because the pairing interested me and I wanted to see how it worked. It did not disappoint, and even after I delved through the tag on ao3 after I marathoned season two, this is still my favorite.

5. a road less traveled and a life less led by Azzandra | Dishonored | Billie & The Outsider | 9k

She took him out of the Void, as promised. And then she kept him, she supposed.

Heather Says: You know all that fanart that started cropping up after Death of the Outsider came out? The ones where Billie and the Outsider crept around Dunwall or Karnaca stealing fish and safes and graffiti-ing buildings? The ones with that found family vibe? Yeah. This fic scratches the same itch that all that art did.

6. But I’m Not There Yet by sarahyyy | Yuri On Ice | Yuri/Otabek | 71k

“Are you not going to read the article?” she asks, flopping onto his bed. “Look who ranked second, just after Phichit Chulanont.”

Otabek reluctantly scrolls down, and oh. #2 - Yuri Plisetsky

In the embedded Instagram photo just under that subheading, a very grumpy Yuri is cuddling a very grumpy-looking cat. The caption reads: I found the cat version of me at the shelter today. #iknowisaidnomorecats #canyoublameme

Heather Says: And here, in the stupid cute category we have teenagers navigating love through social media. What’s more, there’s a companion fic.

7. flowers start to bloom in every different hue by orphan-account | Coraline | Coraline/Wybourn | 1k

Coraline grows up, gets a tattoo, and falls in love. In that order.

Heather Says: I read this fic on a slow day at work, often in quick bursts while I was waiting for the kitchen to finish my table’s food. It’s short. It’s sweet. It’s perfect. And honestly? It’s everything that I was looking for when I ventured into the Coraline tag on ao3 because I was curious.

8. Victory Conditions by @astolat | Transformers | Megatron/Optimus Prime | 37k

“Do you want me to tell you a story?” Megatron said mockingly. “You won’t like it, Prime. It’s not a very nice one.”

Heather Says: Fun fact, I’m not even in this fandom. I haven’t touched the Transformers fandom since the first movie came out in 2007 and I spent a very confusing week shipping a boy and his car. But Astolat has literally never lead me wrong, and I was having one of those bored days where nothing quite itches the right spot, so I sat down on the couch and spent two hours reading this. Worth it.

  9. just in it for the game by grim_lupine | Thor | Thor/Loki | 6k

“It's excellent rehabilitation for my image,” Loki says, widening his eyes. “They love you, and because of that they'll trust me. You wouldn't ruin this for me, would you?”

Thor glares at him.

Loki’s mouth twitches. “Also, it's the funniest thing that's ever happened to me.”

Heather Says: The Thor/Loki bug never really bit me until after Ragnorak came out. I mean, sure, I read it and it was good, but hella’s Frostiron fics basically destroyed me for any other Loki pairing. HOWEVER. Ragnorak happened and screwed that all the way up. Also, you know, this fic is absolutely lovely and was just what the doctor ordered.

10. so this guy walks into a bar by MasterOfAllImagination | Pacific Rim | Newt/Hermann | 2.5k

“Bourbon,” Hermann says, hooking his cane on the edge of the bar and sliding by degrees onto a stool.

“Straight up?” the bartender asks.

“Please.” Does he look like the kind of man who enjoys having his nostrils fumigated by undiluted whiskey? “On the rocks.”

Heather Says: I coped with Pacific Rim 2 by reading a couple AUs and a couple very, very long fics full of tragedy and math. Weirdly, the AU of a chance meeting in a bar was the one that stuck.

11. cherry pie by @brawlite & @toast-ranger-to-a-stranger | Stranger Things | Billy/Steve | 133k

Billy Hargrove lives for summer. Endless sunshine, heavily chlorinated pools, roaming ice cream trucks, and unencumbered freedom? There’s nothing better.

Even being stuck in Hawkins can’t ruin the summer for him. He eats it up, devouring every day whole.

Heather Says: Yeah, okay, but this is the fic that made summer worth it. Highly recommend reading at the pool or with your feet hanging off the back porch. Every piece of this fic was dripping in summertime nostalgia. It was fan-freaking-tastic.

12. the ghost and the good queen val by Wildehack (tyleet) | Thor | Thor/Valkyrie/Loki | 27k

“What,” she says, her heart racing, “was that.”

“What was what?” Korg asks, frowning up at her. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Valkyrie squints suspiciously at the ship.

“Oh my god,” Korg says. “You did! You saw a ghost!”

Heather Says: So, remember how I coped with Pacific Rim 2 with copious AUs? This is how I coped with Infinity War.

13. For Better or Worse by DragonBandit  | The Bright Sessions | Mark/Damien | 22k

All Damien ever wanted was someone who wanted him. All Damien deserves is to die alone, stripped bare of any of the comforts or affections of humanity, a title he willingly shed.

Mark Bryant seems to be the Universe's compromise.

Wherein Damien and Mark are soulmates, and this changes enough.

Heather Says: I think I’ve read this one three or four time this year? It’s 22k of well-written fic for a fandom that has a max of like 100 fics all with lengths that tend to vary between a couple hundred words to 2 or 3k, max. This fic is the one that really catapulted me into the fandom. 

14. in waves by @lymricks | Stranger Things | Billy/Steve | 38k

It’s March and it’s too cold for Billy to be shirtless and wearing shorts, but he hadn’t noticed until Harrington appeared and made him hold still. Harrington can’t seem to stop looking at the bruises. “What’s it to you if I miss a little school, Harrington?” Billy asks. He feels goosebumps rising on his skin.

“I don’t know,” Harrington snaps back, looking uncomfortable. He shifts his weight from one foot to the other. Plant your feet, Billy wants to scream at him. I’m going to bowl you over.

Heather Says: And here we have the first fic that wasn’t written by either @toast-ranger-to-a-stranger or @brawlite that made me realize that this fandom was gonna be a good one. So fantastic.

15. the cure by aquaexplicit | The Flash | Cisco/Harry | 43k

“I guess I don’t really get what you need to fix? Harrison Wells is a hot, rich genius that pays you to make cool stuff with his daughter and is totally into you. If you guys boning is the biggest problem you have, I think this officially qualifies as your best relationship ever.”

When Barry puts it like that, everything sounds so simple and not at all as angst ridden as Cisco has been suffering the past few months.

Cisco hangs up on him.

Heather Says: I remember a couple years ago, I fell absolutely head over heels for this one Sterek fic where Derek had twin toddlers and Stiles was the hired babysitter. So I think there’s something about dad + babysitter fics that get me, even if this one in particular the ‘baby’ in question is a fifteen year old genius. Still. Dad + babysitter. I don’t even know, but apparently it works for me.

16. pull out the insides by SpineAndSpite | The Bright Sessions | Mark/Damien | 3k

“Stop,” Damien says again, more insistent this time.

“I’m not doing it on purpose.” Mark's heart pounds in his ears and he sees Damien’s hands shaking. God. They shouldn’t have started talking about sex. Shouldn’t have filled in the colors and shadows to this pencil outline of a sketch forming between them. They shouldn’t have given it a name.

Heather Says: This year seems to have had a theme when it comes to fics that I’ve liked and it seems to boil down to: people who are bad for each other have sex and catch feelings. Mark/Damien is not the healthiest ship. But it also hurts in this stupidly tragic way and hell if I didn’t fall head over heels for it.

17. tell me, get my shit together by paperclipbitch | Star Wars | Han/Lando | 5k

“I thought we were actively avoiding each other after the Trandosha Shitshow,” Han says.

“We’re actively avoiding each other after the Iridonia Shitshow,” Lando corrects him, “the Trandosha Shitshow is That Which We Do Not Speak Of.”

Heather Says: So, guess what I did in the two to three hours after seeing Solo? If you guessed: ‘combed through ao3 until you ran out of fic’ ding ding ding, you are 100% correct. This one was very, very good, which makes sense, because paperclipbitch has some good shit.

18. chases, escapes, true love, miracles by pepperfield | The Flash | Cisco/Harry 55k

Just because the timeline has been restored, doesn't mean things are back to normal. Cisco's got 99 problems, and Harry Wells is approximately 38 of them.

In which Cisco makes a bunch of plans, fails most of them, narrowly avoids being disintegrated, receives a hug or two, finds his groove, and gets his man. More or less in that order.

Heather Says: This one was long and wibbly wobbly, because it was basically what season 3 should have been. But it was also really great, and had some super quality Harrisco interactions.

19. Your Pretty Little Heart by Ever-so-reylo | Star Wars | Reylo | 64k

Modern day AU in which Ben is an Alpha, Rey is an Omega, and they are way better at having sex than at communicating with each other.

Heather Says: Speaking of people who are probably a little bit bad for each other... This particular fic was new to me, not because of the um, extensive sexual content, but because I’m usually not a fan of A/B/O. But this one was extremely good, enough that I actually liked it for a/b/o aspect rather than in spite of it.

20. Draconia by perceived_nobility | The Bright Sessions | Mark/Damien | 4k

"So I was driving. One ex wife and one ex husband later, stopping at the same fucking gas stations you and I stopped at."

Heather Says: This fic actually prompted a 3 hour long conversation on the ‘adult’ Mark/Damien discord where we basically outlined an entire fic that I never got around to writing where Damien is raising a child, has a farm, and runs into Mark ten years down the ride. One day, I might write it, because vaguely domestic, meet-again-ten-years-down-the-road fics always bowl me right the fuck over and just. There needs to be more fic like this one in the world. But until then, the world can marvel at the beauty that is this one.

21. Artifice by buttpatrol | Wolf 359 | Hera/Eiffel | 23k

A story told in parts about colour palettes, identity, robot uprisings, sensational trials, space, and messy love.

Heather Says: As I’ve recently finished relistening to Wolf 359 I have a fresh appreciation for this fic, which is one of the only longer fics on ao3 that just grips you by the heart and squeezes the same way that the series does. It might have been written before the end of the series, but it’s honestly just as perfect.

22. (shoot the lights out, hide) till its bright out by lipgallagher | Stranger Things | Billy/Steve | 93k

The most dangerous thing walking around Hawkins goes by the name Billy Hargrove.

And he fucking knows it.

Heather Says: I’m kind of cheating here, because this is a series rather than a single fic, but I’m not picking just one part. I read the first four or so parts of this fic when I was visiting my family in South Carolina and spent the next few days wandering around the place half-in Steve Harrington’s headspace. It was an incredibly surreal experience, which lead to a pretty strong combination of mania, depression, and an indescribable craving for ice cream. So like, maybe don’t read this fic if you’re in a bad head space? But also it’s very good and features one of the most fucked up and intriguing Steve’s that I’ve seen yet.

23. Until My Feet Bleed and My Heart Aches by Reiya | Yuri On Ice | Yuuri/Viktor | 197k

‘…Of all the rivalries in the world of sports over the years, perhaps none has become so legendary as that of Russian figure skater Viktor Nikiforov and his rival, Japanese Yuuri Katsuki…’

Heather Says: I actually read this one on the plane ride down to South Carolina, and kind of didn’t like it at first? I’m not sure if it was just the act of putting Yuuri and Victor into the position of rivals that made me uncomfortable or the goddamn delays that turned half a day of travelling into a full one, but eventually I was able to get into and enjoyed it quite a bit. I really like the rivals to lovers trope, so I’d been looking forward to this one a lot.

24. Traveling Far by @astolat | Game of Thrones | Jaime/Brienne | 24k

Three weeks into their delightful slog across Westeros, during yet another charming day of shitting in the woods, eating half-raw squirrel, and trudging his feet bloody, the single most dour and uninteresting woman Jaime had ever met in all of Westeros stopped in the middle of a field, drew a deep breath, and said, “When I was seven, my aunt came to visit with her son. My father told me that as the daughter of the house, it was my duty to show hospitality to my guests and to be gracious to them. I wanted to make him proud. So for three weeks, I let my cousin follow me around and talk to me about spiders.”

Heather Says: I’ve become very fond of astolat’s Jaime/Brienne fics, and I think this one is my favorite yet. Featuring Starks, found family, and a whole lot of walking.

25. lilies of the valley (cover me with kisses, make my garden grow) by diasterisms | Star Wars | Reylo | 8k

Every girl is entitled to the mistake. That one colossal fuck-up that permanently alters the terrain of who you are. You'll either learn from it or you won't, so might as well have the time of your life.

Heather Says: I just. I really like flower shop AUs, and the idea of a Kylo Ren who owns a sleek flower shop being menaced by a tiny gremlin in a leather jacket just. Kills me. It was really sweet and all kinds of wonderful.

[daggerzine]

Just after 7....Andy Giegerich of The Swindon Lot fills in the gaps.

I had met Andy Giegerich nearly 20 years ago after moving to Portland. The guy’s always been a super intelligent music fan with great taste and a very talented musicians as well. His first project that I was aware of was the Honus Huffhines who released a few records for the Braxeling label in Portland. Then, out of nowhere, a month or so ago Giegerich unleashed a solo album to the world under the name The Swindon Lot (The Scariana Trench is the title). I had no idea where the band name came from (he explains it below) but not surprisingly I heard some ultra-fine pop songs mixed in with some oddball, quirky sounds (the Elephant 6 world looms large in the Giegerich household) to create a whimsical world. Give The Scariana Trench a listen (or 3) and you’ll be happily sucked into a world where tubas and cornets are best friends with guitars and drums and everyone is enjoying themselves.

 Before I dive into the solo record,  I have to ask, are the Honus Huffhines still active?

Thanks for asking. The Huffhines remain hiatused (if that’s not a word, it really should be), coming up on seven years. We (Eric O’Connor and Ben Alberts and I), after our drummer Joe left, talked about it and decided we’d be one of those groups that will likely record and play out at some point, but there’s no timetable. In the meantime Eric and Ben play together in both Magnetic Health Factory and Lions of the Interstate, both of which continue to record. And I’m doing this as well as playing in a West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band tribute act that, I really hope, can play out once everyone can, well, play out. We’re called The Poorest of People.

 When/why did the idea come about for doing a solo record?

I recorded and loosely released (digital only) a Swindon Lot EP in the week leading up to the 2017 inauguration, as both a way to escape the horrible realities about to be unleashed on the U.S. As I’d needed an outlet with the Huffhines on hiatus, it made sense to do a full-length. I actually started recording this in 2019, got busy with a new job and a few other here-and-there musical doings. So, yeah, long-ass labor for such a short (it’s only 32-plus minutes) record.

 Where did the name come from, The Swindon Lot?

It’s an homage to my favorite band XTC and what for a while was my favorite TV show (the British Office). In the second season, a branch from Swindon merges with the branch from Slough, and the new workers are referred to the Swindon Lot. I kept waiting for XTC references when I first watched it, to no avail.

 How did the songs come about…had most of them been written for a while or did they come about quickly?

It was a pretty wild mix. “(Oh) Beautiful Mountain” came to me in 2009, while I was hiking in the Steens Mountain area, while Luke Strahota and I sort-of threw together the last track, I guess it’s effectively the title track, while trying to put together a group wave. I’d sent him some files, but didn’t time them right, so they all came up together at the beginning of the track, and we thought it sounded freaky. Come to think of it, I should’ve given him a songwriting credit on it. I’ll get you on the reissues, Luke.

Anyway, some of the other ones, like “Reminded,” “Paper View,” “Tracey’s Child” and even “Teri Waters/Terry Watters” were songs I’d written that the Huffhines could tackle when we returned to the studio.

 …and the recording of it? Was it more one shot or piecemeal?

I wish it were one-shot, because then I’d have a good excuse for how shoddy some of my playing is. But, Dave Berkham, from the Reverberations, mixed a bunch of the songs and did a good job hiding the mistakes (same goes for Kirk Larsen, who mastered it: I wasn’t there while he did it, but I’m guessing he found some workarounds that helped out a ton).

 I definitely see/hear an Elephant 6 influence with the oddball bits here and there (and some of the song titles). Who else influenced the record?

There are four piano-driven songs that I wrote as I increasingly played more piano. Two of them (“Porter, Poster, Potter” and “Sunblocks”) were inspired by the great songwriter David Ackles while “Unrequiteds” is my attempt at a Wizzard song. I think I came sort of close, at least in spirit. Then, “Don’t Laugh,” which was also one of the last songs written for the project (around the end of 2019) is my go at a Rod Argent piano line. I drew heavily on “If It Don’t Work Out.”

But, yeah, you’re spot on. I’ve always loved the tweener stuff, the fragments, that Oliva Tremor Control used so well, and we tried to replicate that with the Huffhines second record. I got a few in here, and other than placing them a little better, I think they kind-of work.

Andy G. on a tour stop. 

 How do you feel about the final product?

It definitely could’ve have been better. I wish I’d had more confidence to enlist a real drummer to play on more songs: I’m hoping Luke will play on my next effort, a concept album I’ve had ready to go for about a decade now (it’s about the recent history of print journalism in Portland, although the longer I wait, the better chance it’ll become more of an ancient history). Quite often, I would play a part and let it go, rationalizing it as a lo-fi credo sort of thing. Those are the parts that bug me the most. Oh, and I’ve apparently lost the ability to sing. That’s by far the worst part of this effort. I’m pitchy, my dynamics are off and, fuck, I’ve gone in the past two years from nasally to super-nasally. I’m likely going to ask other people to sing my songs from now on. I’ll keep harmonizing, though: It’s way more fun, and I can focus on playing guitar or keyboards more than when I’m singing lead. But, yeah, those singing lead days, at least on all the songs, are over.

That all said, the Scariana songs are pretty good.

 What are some current Portland bands that you like?

Oh man, the latest local act I’ve gotten is called Maita, and they’re, hmmm, kind-of psych-folk but with a tremendous singer who writes incredibly smart lyrics. Eyelids, of course, can do no wrong. The bands within the Nuggets Night community — the Reverberations, the Zags, the Cool Whips, the Pynnacles (RIP, Dave Busacker) — are always must-sees. Alison Dennis’s Dr Something is one of the city’s most entertaining and melodic acts. And, yeah, on our label, Braxeling bands — Josh Mayer just came out with a Fabulous 464s set that’s stellar, Lions of the Interstate, Metropolitan Farms, Magnetic Health Factory, Lodge Club — are brilliant, one and all. We’ve added the Harmony Motel, which is Stan Hall’s solo act, to our stable, and will put that out pretty soon. (Tosses the marketing cap to the side) OK, I’m back.

 Top 10 desert island disc?

Your list and mine has at least one, maybe two, in common! Man, in looking at these, I feel fairly pedestrian…nothing like “Emergency” by the Tony Williams Lifetime (Andy Partridge’s favorite record). Fuck it…In no particular order:

Love, “Forever Changes”

Olivia Tremor Control “Dusk At Cubist Castle”

XTC, “Skylarking”

The Zombies “Odessey and Oracle”

Sly and the Family Stone “Stand”

The Turtles “Battle of the Bands”

John Coltrane “A Love Supreme”

Neutral Milk Hotel box set (that’s cheating, I know, but it has both On Avery Island” and “Aeroplane” in it, and I can’t live without either)

Barbara Manning “One Perfect Green Blanket”

Dave Giegerich “It’s About Time”

 Your all-time 5 favorite record labels?

Spinart, Matador, Merge, Orange Twin, Sundazed

 What’s next…more solo recordings? Another Huffhines record?

Most immediately, I’ll try to line up some willing Portland musicians for this concept record. I’m guessing studio time will be hard to get once herd immunity lands (hopefully, that last sentence will look hopelessly data in the matter of months.) Once Lions and Mag Health empty their new songs into the world, I’d like to get with those Huffhines fellows and co-write songs with them, which we’ve never done (always been the Huffhines primary songwriter…I miss writing with people). Also, I’m going to unleash a Major Healeys (my D.C. band) compilation into the world. I’m lining up ways to transfer the songs to a mastering format as you read this.

 Closing words? Final thoughts?  Words of wisdom?

Nah, platitudes breed attitudes. Hey, those might qualify as words of wisdom! Leaving it there…

 www.theswindonlot.bandcamp.com

www.braxelingrecords1.bandcamp.com

The Braxeling crew.  

[nitrateglow]

A response to Rob Ager’s “WHY POST-MILLENNIAL MOVIES ARE SO BAD“

After reading his borderline conspiracy theory take on A Clockwork Orange, I told myself I would avoid Rob Ager’s other work. I lied. A few weeks ago, YouTube recommended a 50-minute video by Ager in which he outlined why he thinks modern cinema sucks. I thought this would be good for a laugh and clicked it. Surprisingly, what he had to say intrigued me-- not because I agreed with all of it, but because I could see where he was coming from at times. I recently read his print version of this video, hoping he would go more into depth-- he really doesn’t.

I’ll give credit where credit’s due and say I think there is validity to some of his points (mostly non-distinct musical scores, ideological conformity, length, dominance of spectacle, internet piracy and streaming’s effect on box office numbers); however, I feel like much of this is personal taste. I don’t care for the common aesthetic of a lot of modern Hollywood blockbusters and I too cannot stand an endless stream of mumbled dialogue—but this all feels like cherry-picking. And badly argued cherry-picking at that.

Let’s start with how Ager begins the print version of his argument:

If you are of the opinion that post-millennial movies are generally as good as movies of the preceding half century of annual film releases then there's no purpose in you reading this article. It is written for readers who already agree that post-millennial movies are comparatively poor and who wish to gain a little more insight into why it is the case. Each major argument in this article could be made with a lot more detail along with extensive movie examples, but it would result in the article being a very long read. Meanwhile, I'm not particularly interested in attempted counter arguments from people wishing to persuade me, against my experience, that good movies haven't become a rarity. I may, further down the line, produce in depth articles and videos that expand on certain basic arguments made in this article. Thanks and enjoy.

Basically, “Don’t argue with me because I’m right.” A great way to make yourself seem non-biased and open-minded.

For his first argument, Ager claims he could come up with more numbers of great films in the past as compared to anything made after 2000. His definition of great movie is laid out as features that “had rewatch value or at least being movies that somehow pushed the boundaries of cinema in some memorable way.” This is SUPER subjective, especially when Mr. Ager puts movies like Oliver! or Halloween 3 on his great movies list. Once again, we all have different ideas of what is or isn’t a “Great Movie,” and a movie doesn’t need to be groundbreaking or brilliant for me to give it a 10/10—but Ager is claiming precious few new movies have rewatch value. Now I know I mostly prefer pre-1980s movies and am severely behind on anything made after 1990, but hell, even I can come up with several 21st century films I think have rewatch value (to name a few: Spirited Away, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Lost in Translation, Moon, Ida, The Prestige, The Dark Knight, Super, Inside Llewyn Davis, The Neon Demon, Marie Antoinette, Black Swan, Hot Fuzz, The Tale of Princess Kaguya, The Wind Rises, Millenium Actress, The Game, Frances Ha, Up, LOTR trilogy). Also, Ager seems to mostly ignore foreign movies and animation; the whole world isn’t Hollywood.

I taught a college freshman composition course earlier this year and above all, I wanted my students to leave that class knowing one thing: if you are going to make an argumentative claim, you must back it up with sufficient evidence. Without evidence, the claim is useless, empty. Mr. Ager does not seem to realize this. He claims the protagonists in most modern Hollywood movies are morons, but he only cites Drive as an example—and even then, he doesn’t state why he thought the hero there was dumb. He calls Christopher Nolan boring, claims The Revenant was a terrible movie, and that most of Tarantino’s post-2000 movies are poor—all valid responses, mind you, seeing as art is subjective (what moves you might bore the hell outta me and vice-versa), but he never states WHY. He claims many movies are miscast these days—but never cites enough examples to convince me this is a trend. He says in the preface that if he did name examples, “the list would be too long,” but sometimes length isn’t a bad thing, especially when you are at the risk of making VERY sweeping generalizations. As a result, many of his arguments lack credibility; it feels like hearing your grandpa complain about movies he doesn’t watch. And considering how Ager claims he turns most modern movies off “after 20 minutes,” I have to wonder if he’s even qualified to talk about modern cinema as a whole at all.

I reiterate: he does have his points and I sympathize with his frustration with big Hollywood movies (part of the reason I barely go to the cinema outside of revival screenings is because I’d rather not pay ten bucks to see forgettable Hollywood schlock), but he’s being a touch—well, unfair, to put it nicely.

However, one point he made particularly interested me. Ager claims that in a world dominated by mass media, art has become “redundant” in conveying themes and messages:

Art tends to thrive when free speech is stifled. It provides an alternative means of expression for what  isn’t allowed to be spoken. But with the onset of the internet there is now  massive scope for anybody to say what they want to say to however many millions  of people are willing to listen. This sort of puts a lot of artistic expression   on a bit of a back burner. Isn’t it easier to just state your thoughts clearly  in words instead of wrapping them in fiction? It’s not a total redundancy  though because verbal statements are confined to the limited logic of language.  Human experience has facets for which we don’t yet have sufficient words to  describe and this is where art can still strike a chord with people.

Mass media has had a big impact on our lives, sure-- but the idea that art serves no moral function of any kind now does not sit well with me. What do you guys think? (Particularly you @aclockworkfilmsnob, considering you’re an aspiring filmmaker and all.)

Here’s the article, if anyone’s interested in reading it for themeselves:

http://www.collativelearning.com/Why%20movies%20so%20bad.html

[lydiaplain]

before turning 30

...................Things in my mind...................

getting older: 

it’s something that never stops actually. but somehow, it’s a phrase tied up with ‘stop making mistakes’ or ‘only responsibilities now, you’re a grown up’... you know, like ok, you did it, it’s complete, you’re done.. you’ve grown up.. now you don’t have rights for mistakes, there’s no room for that... ....although, I don’t remember myself as a kid being allowed to do mistakes! I did mistakes constantly, always being punished for not being a ‘good kid’.. but always wondering ‘why isn’t what I did a good thing?’.. and now that I’m 29 I think, none of those things was a bad thing.. it’s just that in the ‘grown-up world’ kids are the ones that make mistakes, and the grown ups are the ones that know what’s best.... ...now I understand, parenting is not the easiest thing.. (I still want to adopt a cat, but haven’t felt ready yet for the responsibility of another living creature...) ...no parent has a ‘hack-book’ to know how-to-do-the-best... they’re just kids that were told no mistakes allowed anymore, because they’re done growing up...? ...but they still do grow up... ...it’s not about AGE.. it’s about LEARNING! mistakes.. what are mistakes? when you hurt other people? when you hurt yourself? how do we determine where to stop ‘hitting’ ourselves with absurd rules that don’t make any sense? ...responsibilities is something that we learn as we grow up... I imagine older people that I see ‘hurting’ other people ‘by mistake’ as the ones that haven’t admitted yet the learning process of the years.. they want to be kids.. and maybe they’re just freaking out... because life goes such quickly.. ...I’m not sure if the ‘grown up’ thing as a state of mind is something that is a 100% realisable... 

friendships:

there are people I know for so many years are still my friends. and also people I met recently... and I appreciate the love and respect between us, as human beings. because above all the thoughts we make in our heads about the people that surround us, there is something that holds the relationships together... (no it’s not love.... love is something very personal and very intimate, you feel it, you give it.. not demandable, not negotiable) ... it is COURTESY. (nobility, politeness, civility, gentleness, kindness).... I remember my grandmother saying about a relative person that had no good relationships with the family: “If I see them in the street, I’ll say hello, or goodmorning, or goodevening, as a fellow citizen.” I always admire her for these noble thoughts of hers... she taught me how to love other people as human beings... even if in some cases you have to keep yourself away, just to stay safe from some people (because they may do stuff that are harmful to you).. even then, you want them to be well, you wish them a good life. ... human relations are hard. many try to manipulate others... tactics and tricks on ‘how to make others’ do something (using specific words, specific actions, specific silence)... such a disappointment these people are to me... no respect to the freedom of the others.. ... you prove your love to the other by respecting their right to freedom... ... you don’t like someone? ..it’s ok... just, leave them alone. 

my art, my music, my job: 

...I get lots of good comments and love from people that listen to my music and the ones that support my art.... and this helps a lot with the self-critisism-thing... because there are times you don’t believe in yourself, and there come people and tell you things about you, and how your work helps them, and how much you already are offering to their lives... and then you feel that there’s a beautiful and honest communication here that comes through art.. and becomes real love.. and you feel so much better, and you find the strength to keep going and ... smile.. :) ...Well, ok, the first reason you make art is YOU. You do it because ... you CAN’T not do it. Your life is bonded with art. You live through art. You breathe in music... You create art to BE. You exist through art.... And then, there are all these people coming to you and telling you all these wonderful words.... and you receive this GIFT of communicated art. You learn that YOU ARE NOT ALONE. :) ...I also, get enough ‘hate-messages’ (mostly male-’musicians’, some of them seem to be involved in music...) from people they disagree with my views and prefer other paths to follow.. so they choose to send hateful messages that often contain sexist-misogynist comments about how I do my art and why I should stop... (they’d like that, wouldn’t they?) ... Of course, I often feel insecure about my choices.. (well, yeah, I know, everybody is insecure about their life choices...).... why? ...surely not because of the critisism I get.. (critisism with legitimate arguments is always welcome, because it opens healthy dialogs upon arts and culture, and expression, and humanity and philosophy)...  ...mostly because of myself... you know, self ambitions, dreams, plans... aaaand also watching other people’s choices and every-day lives (some of them in the music industry, some of them in arts, some of them doing ordinary jobs)... because you know, we like to compare ourselves with other people... ...and I have these existential-crisis-situations that always (till today) have lead to this point, with me keep doing what I do, and being satisfied with my choices (which I’ll re-think soon as usual) ...and I keep being inspired from artists like @amandapalmer​ and I keep going on my independent road, accepting the fact that money is veeeery limited, but artistic FREEDOM is not!..and I enjoy that freedom, I keep being myself..  ...there are things I’d like to do, and always they come up like ‘unsatisfied dreams’ and they ...’ruin’ my mood... and then, I realise again that maybe some of them choices I’ve turned down because I didn’t really wanted them.. and that where I am today is where I chose to be...  ...and then I say to myself: “it’s ok to choose what you want to choose, and it’s also OK to change your mind..”... because, you know, we beat ourselves up for things we chose in the past but we are afraid to LET GO, and we keep being miserable.. it’s not right.. self-hatred doesn’t lead anywhere. and ourself is the ONLY things that belogs totally to us. 

...taking care of yourself doesn’t mean being selfish. :) 

creativity: 

I’m in a time when there are not any ‘huge’ projects planned.. (although I’ve already thought of starting a 3rd zone in some point, because I have songs for it.. but it’s still a draft idea conceptually.. )... however there are MANY ‘small’ projects that I haven’t completed yet and I’m trying to manage to put them in line... because, I admit, for most of them time is passing by and “I’m very late”... I should have completed at least 2-3 of them by now: 

...the “WRITE A SONG WITH ME” project: it’s a song co-written with people that joined my patreon until January 1st, 2017. I have the ‘starting’ music. I have my lyrics. I have my patrons lyrics. I just have to keep it going... and COMPLETE it..! 

...the “WATERED BODIES” project.... it’s a music video I’m making for my same-titled song.. I’m gathering tumblr-artist-artworks for it.. (I’ll make a related post about this soon, so I’ll call you guys that make art here on tumblr again for action)... it’s not a forgotten project... it’s stil there.. and it still needs artworks!..

...the “Live from the Black Hole (vol.1)” album + the bonus song with a video for YouTube....! it’s a celebrative album about the 1 year of ‘Black Hole’ live videos I’ve been uploading on YouTube since March 2016. I’m already uploading videos for the 2nd year of the series, and I HAVE to make the video for the bonus song... !... I’ve started it... but there’s a lot of work to be done there too.. (this bonus song is not published anywhere yet, ONLY shared with my patrons on patreon.com/lydiaplain)

...2/3 artworks in canvas I still haven’t done yet. they’re paintings I wanted to make as gifts for my first patrons, when I completed 1 year on patreon. (another celebreation). 2 patrons still haven’t got their artwork-gift... (which they didn’t ask, but I want to give... haha :D I’ll let them know as soon as these gifts are ready) 

...another music video for one of the songs on my “Lights” album... 

...more video-shootings: I have to send some frames to Influence (hip-hop artist from the US) for our collaboration in a song included in his upcoming album.

...I want to make another collection-album with experiments / cover songs of other artists. I already have the first one: them, artists (vol.1).. (my patrons have it already as a free download)... I’ve noted down some songs I like.. and there are also some songs that are suggestions from other people (patrons and friends)

...piano progress: I’ve already re-started to practice regularly, and also, I’m uploading updates about it on patreon for people that would be interested to follow my routine and thoughts.. it’s actually blogging about my life as a pianist. 

...I also added another tier on patreon where people can send me their performances so I can send them my comments and advice from my point of view and my experience as a qualified piano teacher and musicologist. It’s the one called “I will listen to you”. ...I get many messages from people asking me to listen to their work and give them a review with my opinion, and I really don’t have the time to listen to all of them. But I’m a teacher. So for now, patreon seems the best platform for this kind of lesson-requests.

Did you manage to read it all? :D  if you did THANK YOU!! I appreciate the time you spent.. time is precious.. I’ll turn 30 years old soon...  We’ll always wonder ‘how did time pass so quickly’... like it’s something we can catch... well, we’ll never UNDERSTAND it fully... we always live the NOW...  all the yesterdays are stories, all the tomorrows are dreams... 

life is now. live it now. 

[theplaguezine]

BORKNAGAR

Interview with Øystein Garnes Brun by Daniel Hinds

(conducted September 1999)

Never keen on fitting comfortably into pre-defined categories like 'black metal' or 'Viking metal,' Norway's Borknagar has chalked up three albums and a highly-respected reputation for producing unique, progressive music that is as extreme and brutal as it is epic and melodic.  Formed and held together over the years by guitarist Øystein Garnes Brun, Borknagar has seen various members come and go, including members of Enslaved, Arcturus, Ulver, Immortal and Gorgoroth.   Currently, the band is a trio, consisting of Øystein, vocalist Simen Hestnæs and guitarist Jens F. Ryland, and they just finished a U.S. tour (with the aid of Nick from Cradle of Filth behind the drumkit), opening for Emperor.

As the tour came to an end, the band did a press day from Century Media's offices and I had a chance to pick Øystein's brain about a thing or two…

You guys just finished up a US tour.  How did it go? Quite cool, actually.  At the end of the day, it turned out really good for us, I think.  We had a couple of excellent shows and, in general, the shows were pretty good.  We had some bad, of course, but generally good.

Did all the bands get along pretty good? Yeah, we had a really nice time.

Was this your first time playing in the U.S.? Yes, it was.

What was the biggest surprise for you about it? I don't know, I didn't really know what to expect, so I came over here pretty open-minded.  I think the audience was quite good.  Sometimes, we had problems with the audience during the intro music, because we're kind of atmospheric and the U.S. audience is tied up in this death metal stuff.  That's fair enough, but I think I was expecting them to be a little bit more open-minded.  [Øystein followed this with a qualifying statement that unfortunately got lost due to our poor phone connection--ed.]

Did you have any problems with Christian groups protesting the shows? Oh no, nothing like that.

Do you write while you're on the road? Not music, but I write some lyrics actually.  I'm not that creative, just took some notes and stuff, so when I get home I can [work on them].  We wrote most of the next album before we left, so when we get home we'll probably start arranging the songs and write some more.

How is the new material shaping up compared to your previous work? Of course there will be some progression, but I think we'll keep the same mood, the same vibe so to speak.  I think this new album will be a little bit more 'rock' maybe.  For instance, we're going to use a little bit more of the grim vocals than we did on The Archaic Course.  We have to go to the studio and see what it comes out like.

Do you have a studio and producer lined up yet? Yeah, we're going to go to The Abyss Studios with the guy from Hyprocrisy, Peter [Tatgren].

Have you found a permanent drummer or bassist yet? No, Simen is probably going to do the bass, at least on the albums in the future, as he is really enjoying playing the bass.  I guess we'll leave it like that with the bass situation.  When it comes to the drums, we're probably going to work with Nick [from Cradle of Filth], he suggested doing the new album with us.  We'll see, I don't really know what's going to happen yet.

Could you explain a little bit about the title The Archaic Course? It's basically a following-up title to The Olden Domain, to give the audience the impression that we're keeping on with what we're doing.  I think a lot of people expected us on The Archaic Course to completely sell-out, do something commercial and wimp out, so we wanted to kind of state the we're doing what we've always done and will keep on doing.  Also, I think it's a perfect title to give people the idea about the whole approach of the band.

Do you have a title for the next record yet? Yeah, but we're a little bit unsure at the moment so I can't really say…

You mentioned that you've written some lyrics on the road and I was curious what it is that usually inspires you to write? I usually write lyrics when I feel relaxed and stuff.  When we did all this driving by bus, I was just looking out at the desert when we drove from Texas to Arizona, I got a lot of ideas and just wrote things down.  That's basically it, nothing too complicated.

Religious themes have always been a big part of metal lyrics over the years and I was wondering what your take on organized religion is.  Your lyrics seem to deal a lot more with individual spirituality rather than any kind of socialized religion. My view on religion is that I really dislike all kinds of religion and organized beliefs.  I see myself as kind of an extreme individualist and I think that is reflected in the lyrics as well.  I think bands that always think about religion, that's fair enough and I respect that, but it's not my way of doing it.  I want to avoid being any kind of preacher and just do my own thing.  I don't want to tell people the 'right' and the 'wrong' way, I want to just have a pure form of art or something like that.

Most of the reviews I've seen of The Archaic Course have been really positive and I was wondering if you at all surprised by the success you guys have had? It's cool…  I'm here at the offices of Century Media and we're getting to read a lot of reviews and stuff and a lot of it does seem very positive.  It's flattering, of course, but at the end of the day if we get some bad reviews, I really don't think it's going to affect me.  I just do my thing, as long as I feel comfortable with the music and the band, that's good enough for me.

When did you first get into music and start playing guitar? Well, I've listened to it all my life.  My father was a great collector of music from the 70s, like Black Sabbath and Pink Floyd, so I've always been around it.  I didn't get my first guitar until I was fifteen-years-old.  I listened to stuff like Maiden, Metallica, and eventually got into death metal and black metal, Bathory, Venom - stuff like that.  But I've always been open-minded and listened to all kinds of music.

Did you have any lessons? No, I was self-taught.  Actually, [laughs] my mother bought me a few hours of lessons, but it didn't really work out.  I was too much into metal…  [laughs]

Have you had pretty good luck from a business perspective? Yeah, but it seems like when we have to go tour, go to the studio or whatever, there is always some major problems we have to go through.  But at the end of the day, we do pretty good.  I've come to realize that this is a shitty business, but as long as we keep ourselves focused on what we're doing, we're okay.

Where do you tend to do the best, as far as album sales? I think it's Germany still.  Mid-Europe seems to be the best - Germany, Italy, Austria, stuff like that.

Looking ahead, what do you hope you'll be doing ten years from now? I don't know…  I hope to do some movie soundtracks, something like that.  That's my big dream to make music for film, more that kind of thing.  Of course, I hope to keep this band going, but I don't see myself playing black metal.  I don't know really, I don't have any definite plans.

borknagar.com

[camomility]

So in case anyone didn’t know, I am a theater major (specializing in technical theater and design, rather than acting/directing) at a smallish women’s liberal arts college. Our theater department is small and underfunded and under-appreciated, and I know almost everyone in the department and call all the faculty and staff by their first names and have been an assistant costume designer on two mainstage shows. It’s great.

Because we have to struggle with budgets and resources for bigger shows, the department doesn’t get a chance to put on musicals very often. Our resident director(/directing professor/acting professor) has been pushing for us to do one at least every few years to give the acting students that opportunity, though, and since the last musical the department did was Rent in the spring of 2014, we started talking last year about doing another one this spring.

The committee originally settled on Chicago, but there were some issues with licensing costs as well as with collaboration with the music department’s jazz band. Into the Woods was suggested instead, until it was discovered that approximately five other theaters in the area were also doing it this spring. So they chose Cabaret.

I was not a fan of this choice. I wasn’t really familiar with the show apart from the song ‘If You Could See Her’, and I swear to god I thought until very recently that the plot was another one along the lines of Moulin Rouge/Rent/La Boheme and that Sally died of syphilis or something at the end.

(can you see why I was confused)

And given all that, especially in the wake of the election and with rising racism and antisemitism fucking everywhere, I really did not think that it was a good time to be putting on a musical about Nazi Germany with songs comparing Jews to gorillas. I mean, I was still gonna work on costumes for the show, but I wasn’t happy about the choice of play. I wasn’t gonna make Ernst’s armband, but I’d make garters for the Kit Kat Girls. Fine.

(I was wrong, I realized as soon as I actually read the damn script, about this not being the right time to put on this show. This is exactly the right time to put on a show like this.)

It ended up being a damn good production. We sold out more than once during the run (which ended today), I think. Everyone involved is really damn talented -- the choreographer is a former Broadway dancer who did some very interesting Fosse-like things with the numbers, the costumes (so many damn costumes) are beautiful, even our 80-something-year-old set designer came through. 

The Kit Kat dancers are great. Cliff is very endearing and very bi (we’re using the 1998 script, and how). There’s an adorable first-year playing Herr Schultz opposite a Fräulein Schneider who came back to college for acting many years past traditional college age. Sally is fantastically enthusiastic and oblivious and, by the end, broken. She shakes all the way through the title song, sings the last third as dead Elsie like some kind of haunted doll (’come hear the music play...’) and it’s creepy and heart-wrenching as fuck. We didn’t do the concentration-camp ending, which I think is a good call, but it’s haunting and quiet and the last thing you see is the lights and curtain going down on the whole cast as they come up on Herr Ludwig and Fräulein Kost on the sides in the Nazi salute.

Because musicals tend to be tough to transpose for all-female casts (and because the director was very enthusiastic about putting the Kit Kat Boys in as little clothing as possible), the auditions were open to students from other colleges in the area. We ended up with an all-female cast anyway, apart from some of the musicians and the trans guy from this school who plays Cliff, but three of the actresses are from different colleges: two of the Kit Kat Girls, and the Emcee.

A few of the senior actors from here were not happy about the Emcee’s casting. We do musicals so rarely, it isn’t fair to give one of the lead roles to someone who doesn’t even go here. And they have a point. But the actress was cast for a reason, that reason being that she’s really damn talented. 

Her Emcee is... something new, I think. They are androgynous, charming, a little awkward (the pre-’Don’t Tell Mama’ introduction very quickly and clearly becomes ad-libbing to cover for Sally being late for her cue), with a Marcel wave and heavy stage makeup. They’re more Joel Grey than Alan Cumming, a thick layer of childish glee over cynical darkness in an endless variety of mostly sleeveless tux jackets.

They are also, like the actress, a wheelchair user.

This is not directly commented on by any of the characters at any point in the show, but it’s not an aspect of the character that can be ignored. The Emcee has choreography along with all the other Kit Kat performers, waltzing with a gorilla and all. 'Kit Kat Club’ is written on the back of their chair’s seat. 

I think there are some interesting things to be said about disability, desexualization, and the entirety of ‘Two Ladies’ (moaning sheet silhouettes and everything), although I don’t think I’m the most qualified person to say them.

It all works. And the whole production is great, but my favorite scene in it is about thirty seconds long.

Blue light. Empty stage. Halfway through Act I.

A Kit Kat Girl brings a wooden box onstage, sets it down. Opens it, revealing it to be a compact record player. Leaves.

The Emcee wheels onstage, quiet, holding a cigarette. They’re wearing thigh-highs and a medical corset. It could look quite kinky, if you’re into that kind of thing; it’s a real piece from the period, belonging to the costume shop manager, who runs a side business selling things like it on Ebay to well-paying medical fetishists.

It does not look kinky now. It’s a medical device, designed to support the torso and treat scoliosis. And the person wearing it is, for the first and maybe only time in the show, not performing for anyone.

You get the sense that this scene is happening in their apartment, sometime late at night. Certainly after hours. Certainly they are alone.

The Emcee leans down to the record player, turns the hand crank on the side to wind it up, puts the needle in the groove. Listens to the boy’s high voice singing alone, minimal accompaniment.

“The sun on the meadow is summery warm

The stag in the forest runs free

But gather together to greet the storm

Tomorrow belongs to me.”

The Emcee looks older, tireder, more relaxed than they did in the Club. Leans forward with elbows on knees, takes a drag on their cigarette, stares at nothing. Breathes out. Listens wistfully (or uneasily?) at first, then swaying slightly along with the music.

“The branch of the linden is leafy and green

The Rhine gives its gold to the sea

But somewhere a glory awaits unseen

Tomorrow belongs...”

The Emcee lets the song play almost all the way through the second verse before putting a finger on the needle. The record scratches jarringly and stops.

The Emcee slams the top of the box shut. Looks straight at the audience. Says, “To me.”

Lights down.

[dustedmagazine]

Listed: Michael Chapman

When Michael Chapman called his second album Fully Qualified Survivor, it seemed a tad brassy; after all, he was only in his 20s. Now that the singer-songwriter-guitar picker is turning 76 and celebrating his 50th year as a professional musician, that title just seems prescient. Ever since he secured his first gig in a Cornwall pub in exchange for free admission (after one set they hired him for the summer), he’s charted a maverick course. Chapman’s early records pulled together teams that would subsequently do well-compensated things with Elton John and Davie Bowie. Despite being characterized as a folk musician, probably because he usually performs alone with an acoustic guitar, Chapman’s more of a jack of all trades—there’s a lot of jazz and blues in his picking, blunt story-telling in his songs, and gruff humor in his stage patter. In the past decade folks like Jack Rose, Thurston Moore,and Steve Gunn have toured with him and he has released a stream of excellent instrumental records for Tompkins Square, Blastfirst Petite, and VDSQ. Gunn just produced 50 (Dusted review here), Chapman’s first album of songs in about a decade.

THREE BOOKS:

Probably my favourite book of all time is Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee and Walker Evans. The prose by Agee is just absolutely stunning—there’s one piece in the book where two white guys are out walking in small town Alabama on a Sunday and come across a young black couple who are just on their way to church and the black couple are terrified cause in those days, back in the 30’s when this was written, anything could happen—and Agee just gets it, you can sense that these two people are really scared coming across these two white guys even though they’ve done nothing wrong. Walker Evans’ photographs are equally amazing for their elegance and simplicity. I’ve always wanted to write a song as good as a Walker Evans’ photograph. Initially this was a commissioned piece by Life magazine on the state of the sharecroppers down in Alabama but both guys realised that the story was so much greater than that and it turned into a two year sojourn down there with this book the result.

The next book is Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy and the first of his books that I ever read. The language is absolutely extraordinary. It’s an extraordinary tale about the area that came to be Texas, in about 1830 and is one of the few books that I can quote from, “and whales haul their vast souls through a dark and seamless sea…….” His use of language to describe landscape as well as characters is so powerful in its dimensions, and his ability to evoke the sense of that era in all its blood and guts as well as beauty, they put him right up there with the previous writer.

The third book is L’Etranger or The Outsider by Albert Camus which was my introduction into French Existentialism at the tender age of 18, which had a lasting influence on me, from Descartes through to Camus and on through to just about anyone since you care to mention.

THREE FILMS:

Probably the most influential film musically was Jazz on a Summer’s Day which is how I heard Jimmy Giuffre for the first time playing the title track. I saw it in a little News Theatre at a railway station in Leeds. These theatres back then in the 50’s showed short films, newsreels and cartoons just repeating the programme throughout the day and I stayed in there all day just waiting for it to come round again and again and again. Totally transformed my life forever.

Visually probably the best film I ever saw was The Third Man—it was in black and white and the lighting was amazing—the Viennese sewers were not a place I’d have liked to have been. My painting at Art college and later my photography I like to think was influenced by this black and white epic  and maybe it worked into my songwriting too—my songs are probably more chiaroscuro than colourful some would say.

As a Hollywood movie—well actually it was anti Hollywood—there was Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate which bankrupted United Artists—put them completely out of business, and it was only about five years ago that it started to make a profit and now it’s one of the best arthouse films you’ll ever see—you need to see the director’s cut.

FOUR TRACKS OF MUSIC:

Yeh, firstly “The Train and the River” obviously—by the Jimmy Giufffre Three which taught me to think in a totally different way, how to play it, how to write it, how to put it all together—an astonishing piece. The fact that you could play jazz without a rhythm section was a total revelation to me.

Next would be Bach’s Dorian Fugue—at some point early on when I was still teaching, me and some of my students were so hooked on this piece of music that we even managed to get it onto the juke box in our local pub—which might be a first for JS. Sensational piece of music.

Then there’s Django Reinhardt—well there are so many Django recordings  but I’ve chosen Django playing electric—a track called “Minor Swing”—from an Everest Records Django Reinhardt compilation which a friend of mine, Josh Burkett, kindly tracked down for me. He plays electric and he’s like the forerunner of Hendrix, because basically he was a gypsy and he wanted to know how loud it would go for one thing!

Duke Ellington invited him over to America in ’51 and gave him this very expensive Gibson jazz guitar—God knows what happened to it because as soon as he got back to France he went back to that horrible old Selma and a threepenny tin can pick up and an amplifier turned up to 12 and his playing is just extraordinary—the speed the melody and the rhythm—it all just sings and shouts and when he just plays chords it sounds just like a brass section—that’s what I wanted to do on guitar too.

And lastly Howlin’ Wolf’s “Smoke Stack Lightnin’”—it’s probably one of the blackest records ever made ha—yeh I remember when I heard this for the very first time. I just went “whoa here we go!”

And so to quote Charlie Rich—“that’s it”

[redbootsthetimetraveller-archive]

Bea and I, With the Beatles Fanfiction Chapter 2

Same disclaimer as on the previous chapter.

About ten minutes later, this extraordinarily loud fart came from the back of the hall, halfway through the speech, and magnified because of the eerie quietness. It took two seconds for the entire hall to be laughing their socks off. There were even teachers trying to not die from not laughing up the front. The principal, though, was going a shade of purple with anger and embarrassment.

‘RIGHT! WHO WAS THAT?’ he yelled at the top of his voice, still going purple. The room fell dead silent, and I hid my book in case I was caught with it. Everyone was tense, and there was an air that we would be kept until someone owned up, and the person would not. But alas, a hand was held up, right at the back, and they immediately had every pair of eyes in the room upon them. ‘Jasper Kitchen. My office, at morning tea.’ Principal Summers snapped, and turned on his heel and walked back to the front. It seemed like every student wanted to burst into applause at that moment, but didn’t want trouble. Principal Summers went back to his dreary monologue.

‘He’s not in our year, is he?’ Paul whispered to me.

‘No, I think he’s a few grades below us or something. He’s no older than Arthur.’ I replied, also in whisper. Principal Summers finished his speech, and had still not turned back to a natural colour. A few announcements were made, and we were dismissed for first class. For Bea, Paul and I this was Geography, and for Ringo and John Mathematics, and George had English. We bid each other farewell until morning tea, and headed to different parts of the school. Rather than having Mr Putnam, we had a substitute called Miss Russel. She clearly didn’t know much more than us about it, and looking at her we could tell she was probably a sports teacher. She read out the roll and had trouble with my surname.

‘von Harreson… no that’s not right. Elizabeth von Ha…?’

‘It’s von Harrelson, Miss.’ I corrected her.

‘Rightcha.’ She said, and continued on with the roll. I began drawing in my book.

‘She might see that. She’s gonna be more observant than Mr Putnam.’ Bea said to me quietly, as she sat to the right of me. We had worked out how to write without bumping into each other; right-handed on the right, left on the left. And then switch hands when the teacher is looking, because if I don’t I’ll get the cane. Unfortunately, as I was pretending to write notes I didn’t notice that Miss Russel had turned around.

‘Miss von Harrelson, come up to the front please.’ She said while turning a page over. The room took a breath at that moment, and I paused before standing up and walking from the mid-back of the room to the teacher’s desk at the front. ‘Hold out your hand.’ I instinctively held out my right. ‘No not that one, the one you were using.’ She said, sounding slightly flustered. I did, and she hit me hard with the cane eight times. Eight has always been my unlucky number. I tried not to swear lest I get more caning.

‘Fuck she’s got a strong arm.’ I said quietly to Bea. ‘If she sees my handwriting she’d not be able to read it.’

‘Which hand?’

‘Either, they’re both illegible.’ I said slightly smirking. Class went on another long, boring fifteen minutes, and then we were released from that hell of a class. I grabbed out my morning tea of chocolate brownie, hiding my prized treat. It was the first thing I didn’t burn or undercook, which is why I don’t cook, but we needed morning tea this week and Amy was working. I put my coat on, and braved the cold with the gang.

‘Paul here says you got caned!’ Ringo said. ‘What for?’

‘Got caught writing.’ I replied.

‘I getcha. Bloody annoying, isn’t it? You two can’t help it.’ he said.

‘Hm.’ I replied, and tried to unwrap my brownie with my frozen fingers.

‘Hey, lemme help you with that.’ Paul said.

‘Err… thanks.’ I said, hoping he wouldn’t try and steal it.

‘Ah, lucky you!’ he said with a wink, handing it to me.

‘What’s she got?’ George asked. ‘Is that BROWNIE?!’ he exclaimed. George loves his food.

‘You’ve got brownie? You gotta share, man!’ John said.

‘No! My food!’ I said, trying to be serious, but failing and we all ended up wandering around the school. We were nearing the football pitch, and a few hardy souls were trying to have a match amongst the snowdrifts. Suddenly, one of them didn’t quite stop the ball and it came rolling towards us. I stopped it, and kicked it. It went quite far, but the goalie hadn’t really been paying attention and so didn’t realise until it was fractionally too late that the ball was actually going to go into the net. It hit the back net and bounced out again, and several people cheered, and I high-fived everyone. It was time to go back inside again, and the heaters barely heated the rooms, but we weren’t allowed to wear our coats. Bea and I had Sewing, my definitely least, and worst, subject. I would try and fix my gloves in this class, it wasn’t like I was going to finish the handkerchief set we’d been assigned to do anyway. That half hour dragged on for way too long, but it got slightly better because next we had English with Mr Wright, whose profession used to be an author until the war, but now he just settles on teaching English and making bad puns. His classes were always quite enjoyable, as the first twenty minutes were always reading, and the next forty minutes were usually interesting. He’s one of the more popular teachers. The next hour long class was Civics, which could be interesting but was generally boring. Once again, Paul was in our class for this. It was one of the ‘mildly interesting but boring’ lessons. As soon as we were released for lunch, we sprinted as fast as we could to put our stuff back and get in the queue for lunch. Fortunately, Paul, Bea and I got into line rather quickly, and got the measly ration of four fish fingers, fried bread, some chips and a bottle of orange juice, a rare luxury. We sat at our usual canteen table, waiting for the rest of the gang. George got in not too long after we sat down, and came to sit with us, but in silence as he was already eating. Ringo and John came rushing in two minutes later, and as they came over to sit down, Jasper Kitchen walked in, to immediate applause. John even went and patted him on the back. Turns out, he only got off with twenty cane lashes and extra homework for a week.

‘That’s not too bad for what he did, lucky bastard.’ John said as he sat down. ‘What’ve you got next?’

‘Well, it’s German for us, and then we all have Music until the end of the day.’ Bea said. ‘And I think George has Sport, and you?’

‘Well, I’ve got a free lesson, and I’m buggering off somewhere.’ John said. ‘But poor Ringo here has Science with Mr Gibbs!’ Mr Gibbs was this grumpy old shit of a teacher who was only still teaching because Principal Summers doesn’t want to lose his twin, or so the joke goes. We managed to get through our lessons, trying to work out how to swear in French (we’d already worked out German), or trying to work out how to get out of the class. One thirty came around, so Bea, Paul and I started running to Music, which is one of the only classes we ran to. Not many people were in the class, so the classes comprised of two grades. There was Bea, Paul, Ringo, George (who got special permission to join us, there weren’t enough in his grade), John and I, as well as Cyril Acker, in John and Ringo’s grade with Terry Garfield. In our year there was Belle Seward, Errol Hawkins, Graham Carpenter and Derrick Streets. Then the teacher, by far the best teacher in my opinion, and I guess the gang’s, and probably was the most qualified, Mr Eldridge. The class was in the new ‘Arts Wing’, which was much better than the shitty 1920’s classrooms of the ‘Academics Wing’ or the post-war slap-dash updating of the gym, and was actually not crap. Basically what happens in that class is we bugger around, doing stupid little songs and practicing for a gig or something, because we (I say we, because we sometimes go on stage with the boys and we’ve gone on one tour with them, over in Blackpool) were a band called the Silvers. It’s not the best name but it works.

‘So, what’s the lineup for Saturday?’ I asked, fiddling with my flute. The Silvers had scored a gig at the Cavern Club on my birthday.

‘So there’s a few songs…’ John showed me the list, as he was the band leader. He just was.

‘That’s not going to cover a night’s worth! You’ve gotta play for four hours!’ I exclaimed.

‘There’s one song we haven’t shown…’ Ringo started, but was glared at by George.

‘Y’know, if you’re short of songs, we could write some!’ Bea suggested.

‘That’s not a bad idea! Paul and I have already written some, so we’ve had experience, and you’re good at poetry, Lizzy, so it won’t be too much of a stretch for you, but I dunno about you guys though, just have a crack.’ John said, sounding slightly excited. ‘Use your books and rip it out later.’

We all sat with half the school’s guitars, three of them, and Ringo grabbed out his sticks, Paul tried to claim the piano but didn’t quite get it as Cyril Acker pushed him out of the way. John immediately began strumming away, George was experimenting with riffs and Paul began writing away. Bea also began busily scribbling. I put my pen to the paper, and soon started writing.

Some days, I hope to be far away.

Not right here or near, not today

If I stay here my mind might fray,

How I long not to stay.

‘That’s shit.’ I said to myself.

[hellofastestnewsfan]

This movie was not supposed to be good. Here’s the plot: A middle-aged cardiovascular surgeon’s wife is killed by a one-armed man, and said surgeon is sent to death row. But his bus crashes on the way to prison, then a train crashes into the bus crash, then Dr. Richard Kimble escapes to go on the run with five U.S. marshals on his heels. This is literally the opening 20 minutes of The Fugitive.

Not even the actors themselves were convinced The Fugitive was going to be good. Harrison Ford thought it would be his Hudson Hawk, Bruce Willis’s $51 million flop from 1991. Tommy Lee Jones, who plays the lead marshal, thought The Fugitive marked the end of his career. But then this action thriller, the one that was written off as quickly by its stars as its hero is by the law, became the third-highest-grossing film of 1993. And then it was nominated for seven (seven!) Oscars—including Best Picture. And then it actually won one of those Oscars (well, Jones did). Perhaps even more surprising is that this piece of $70 million popcorn amusement from the ’90s is still a cultural touchstone 25 years later, largely because action movies like it are so rare now.

A year before The Fugitive arrived, its director, Andrew Davis, didn’t think much of the genre. “The basic underpinnings don’t have any soul or value,” he told The New York Times. “They’re totally incredible so you don’t believe them. They’re dumb stories.” He himself had worked with Steven Seagal twice and Chuck Norris once, two icons of black-belted brawn that sparred with Hollywood for a spell, until they were knocked out by the metastasizing blockbuster industry. As Ty Burr wrote in his 2013 book on fame, Gods Like Us, “To protect that opening weekend and the larger investment, the [movie] business needed stars to be inclusive rather than divisive.” This, he notes, was “one reason why there was a gradual move away from the bulging ’80s cartoons like Stallone and Schwarzenegger toward more believable Everyman action heroes like Bruce Willis in the Die Hard films.” And, though Burr does not name him as an example, like Ford in The Fugitive.

The writer points to Ford as the first modern-star brand: “the action figure with attitude.” Whether as the rumpled and roguish Han Solo or the hunky scholar Indiana Jones, Ford had imbued the genre with sardonic sexiness. And by the early ’90s, he had appeared in no fewer than two thrillers—Presumed Innocent (1990) and Frantic (1988, as another Dr. Richard)—about men mixed up in crimes they were racing to solve. It was this man who eventually handpicked Davis to adapt the ’60s TV series The Fugitive after seeing his work in Under Siege, a film that prompted the Times to identify Davis as the “Director Who Blends Action With a Bit of Art.”

“Does this guy ever quit?” one of the marshals asks toward the end of The Fugitive, and the answer is no—both for Dr. Richard Kimble and for Davis. For two hours and 10 minutes, this film does not relent. Not even for a cup of coffee (that scene was cut), not even for some shopping (cut), not even for romance (also cut). There is no hanging out here. Everything rushes. If it isn’t the actors, then it’s the camera with a Where’s Waldo? view of Chicago, the hometown of both Kimble and Davis; if it isn’t the camera, then it’s the swelling orchestral music. And the urgency is a good thing because every pause introduces a new threat—a passing cop, a skeptical doctor, a nosy guard. Even the exposition speeds by. The instigating murder itself, presented in slo-mo monochrome over the opening credits, unravels in concert with Kimble’s interrogation and his conviction, a simultaneous chronology that compresses time. As Matt Zoller Seitz wrote of The Fugitive on rogerebert.com last year, “The multilayered, at times prismatic way that it delivers information feels like an evolutionary leap forward for thrillers.”

The Fugitive’s success relies as much on plausibility as it does on velocity. Despite the soaring set pieces, the film somehow manages to remain grounded in a kind of palpable reality. “It is just so nice to watch a movie about normal smart people instead of insane super geniuses,” The Washington Post’s Alyssa Rosenberg tweeted in 2016. And though the characters’ antics could scarcely qualify as “normal,” significant portions of the film’s budget were spent on bypassing CGI in favor of creating real sets—like for the train crash ($1.5 million) and the dam jump ($2 million). Ford also insisted on performing his own stunts despite having a double and being 51. That is him flying through the air as if to jump from a train (on ropes, but still), that is him standing on the edge of North Carolina’s Cheoah Dam (a rope attached to his leg, but still), that is him limping through much of the film because he tore a ligament and refused to treat it. And that is him acting the hell out of everything in between.

“It’s the moments between actions that I think are really important,” Ford says on The Fugitive’s 20th-anniversary disc. With so little dialogue, the actor essentially resorts to silent-film acting, which is only buoyed by his hangdog handsomeness. “Rare among action heroes, Ford is believable both in control and in trouble, someone audiences can simultaneously look up to and worry about,” Kenneth Turan wrote in his 1993 Los Angeles Times review. Watch as Kimble, about a quarter of the way into the movie, painfully deliberates on the lip of that dam as U.S. Marshal Samuel Gerard (Jones) points his gun at him, waiting for Kimble to surrender because, Gerard posits, there’s no way this guy would do “a Peter Pan.” Right before that, their positions are reversed when Kimble grabs Gerard’s gun in the confusion of the dam’s water-logged tunnels. Face to face with the marshal for the first time, the doctor points the pistol at his pursuer and proclaims, “I did not kill my wife!” Gerard, his hands up, half-kneeling in water, a look of bafflement on his face, responds: “I don’t care!” To this, Kimble issues a faint smile: Game on.

While Kimble speaks through his actions, the man chasing him has all the best lines. Gerard was supposed to be a solo Javert-esque force, but Davis gave him an entourage to accentuate his leadership, and the result is some of the best banter in any contemporary action film. Jones, a Texan who graduated from Harvard with an English degree, had worked twice before with Davis, who knew Jones did a lot of rewriting and improvising. The cast—which was ethnically diverse because the director wanted to reflect the demographics of his birthplace—established their characters alongside Jones, coming up with dialogue on the fly. The four marshals include Jones’s right-hand man Cosmo, played by Joe Pantoliano, whom Davis told he cast because he needed “somebody who’s gonna have the stones to banter with Tommy Lee Jones.” Cosmo and the others highlight Gerard’s humanity and tenacity while also gift wrapping the film’s exposition in wit. One of the movie’s more frequently quoted lines, which Jones conjured the morning of the shoot, has him telling a marshal who claims he is “thinking”: “Well, think me up a cup of coffee and a chocolate donut with some of those little sprinkles on top, while you’re thinking.”

Gerard and Kimble’s symmetrical relationship is enunciated by the film’s six editors (all of whom were nominated for Oscars). Each chase scene cuts back and forth between the two characters. Even when the pursuit lets up and Kimble is contacting old friends and crisscrossing Chicago to find out why his wife was killed, Gerard’s investigation parallels his. As the film progresses, Gerard’s affinity for Kimble grows, too. “What makes their relationship fresh is that it is constantly evolving,” Gene Siskel observed in his Chicago Tribune review. Twenty minutes before the end of the movie, a neat flip occurs in which Kimble goes from being followed to being the leader. He directs Gerard to one of the men responsible for his wife’s death—Dr. Charles Nichols, Kimble’s colleague who actually wanted him dead in order to cover up a failed drug trial. Another flip takes place in the climactic showdown where Kimble confronts Nichols: Kimble saves Gerard’s life, despite believing that Gerard is intent on taking his. In the end, the marshal escorts Kimble out of the building as his protector.

Though The Fugitive established Chicago as the place to shoot, it’s perhaps more notable for being the best of a genre that no longer really exists: the character-driven Hollywood action movie for adults. As Davis told Mandatory in 2013, the industry has gotten to a point such that if a film “doesn’t have tons of eye candy where a 22-year-old in some other country can just enjoy watching it, then [it] hardly get[s] made.” This is the world of tentpoles and franchises and event cinema, a world in which everything must bow to the demands of accessibility.

While “old-man action” movies like Taken and The Equalizer could be considered descendants of The Fugitive, they lack its character development. Those thrillers that are character driven—say, No Country for Old Men or Hell or High Water—are less popcorn, more art. The Fugitive acts as a placeholder for a time when adults could be entertained by action heroes without being condescended to (see Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, The Firm, Patriot Games), which is why many viewers who saw the movie as kids in the ’90s, and who are adults now, wield it as a nostalgic marker of taste.

In 2015, the same year a Fugitive sequel was announced, the comedian John Mulaney released a special called The Comeback Kid in which he digressed mid-joke into an explanation of the original film’s plot. “Why does Kimble confront Nichols?” he asks. “Well, I know we all know this, but … ” And then he goes on to rehash it anyway because The Fugitive is the kind of movie that can be rehashed voraciously over and over and over again. Siskel watched it twice before reviewing it in 1993 and already wanted to see it again; Seitz saw it 10 times in the theater upon its release; and I have replayed it upwards of 30 times over the years. What I once believed to be a guilt-ridden affinity for a mindless puff of Hollywood excess, I now understand as an appreciation for a kind of modern-day moveable feast. As Gerard’s relationship with Kimble transformed, so too has mine. I thought I didn’t care, but I do.

from The Atlantic https://ift.tt/2LZYMVJ