Thursday, August 28, 2008

Weekend roundup

Of course it's non-stop-magic every day in Southern California, but Labor Day weekend 2008 is one of those times where so many awesome things are happening so many places it makes one happy to be alive, and in such an awesome place.

Movies:

If you haven't seen the very very good Tropic Thunder and The Dark Knight (both perfect Summer Holiday movies) yet, then I don't know what to suggest. Except these:



1. The previously-recommended-on-this-site Ratcatcher.



2. Maybe get inspired by Patti Smith: Dream of Life.



3. Maybe get something else at What We Do is Secret.



4. Could there be any more perfect summer pastime than seeing Close Encounters of the Third Kind under the stars?



5. DO NOT MISS THIS! Sometime between Friday and Sept 8, go see Beautiful Losers at the Nuart. It features Geoff McFetridge and Margaret Kilgallen, two of 'our' best artists, and lots of other great artists and artwork too.

Music:



1. Pre-listen to Brian Wilson's surprisingly/delightfully good (and perfect soundtrack to your sunset-lit backyard barbeque) new album That Lucky Old Sun.


2. Figure out how and where to see the incredible No Age at this weekend's F Yeah Fest, and maybe check out Past Lives. You should also donate to the Festival due to it's recent financial burdens, but you may not want to socialize with the founder without bodyguards present. If you're not particularly attached to your dignity you might also want to take part in the (literal) Scavenger Hunt.



3. If you're the type, you could also swoon to John Williams music in the cool evening at the Hollywood Bowl, which was built from Summer's genetic material.

4. It looks like the (also) incredible Jon Brion is back to his regular twice-Friday shows at Largo. The Nasty Surprise: it's now $20-$30 to get in! How can this place not afford to get a phone line separate from their fax line? I suspect someone's smoking the door money.

5. Hustle hustle hustle in pursuit of tickets to see Vampire Weekend at the Glass House on the sixteenth.

Performance



1. It's closing weekend for Cabaret at the Hunger Artists Theater in Fullerton, which has great Goldstar reviews. Speaking of Goldstar, they've still got some regularly-$20-tickets to Saturday and Sunday's shows for $10.

2. Insomniacs who are not afraid of wasting $5 (or Largo club owners still high on door-fee dough) might want to check out the mysteriously-described Up All Night with the Dark Knight at UCB Theater Midnight Saturday night. Less daring individuals can't be let down by their always-perfect ASSSCAT ($8 Saturday, Free Sunday), but get there early to the Sunday show because Holiday weekends seem to double the lines.

Shopping

1. The Delicious Daily Candy suggests the pretty-good-sounding Corey Lynn Calter Sample sale. Maybe you'll find something to wear to the Late Night Art Flash at LACMA next weekend.

2. Save the Earth one outfit at a time at the Green Threads Fashion Show Friday night.

Art



1. It's almost certainly worth stopping by the Merry Karnowsky Gallery on La Brea Saturday between 8-11, for the opening of Mercedes' Helnwein's new awesome-drawings-show Whistling Past the Graveyard.



2. Fans of conceptual art should not miss MOCA's show Index: Conceptualism in California from the Permanent Collection featuring works like John Baldessari's delightful photo collage above.


Events



1. Head over Saturday at 3 for the Grand Opening Party of Skylight 1814, Skylight Books's new Art/Design books annex (Private Beef: They had a naming contest for this place and my friend Lisa and I proposed Skylight 2: Eclectic Boogaloo, which I think is a lot more memorable than Skylight 1814.)

2. Celebrate the old (movie) days where each race/culture had their own neighborhood at the Orange Street Fair.

FRIDAY -- Lynne Ramsay's Ratcatcher


Tomorrow at the Silent Movie Theater the Cinefamily will be screening Ratcatcher, Lynne Ramsay's little-seen first film (which is not to say that her second film exactly tore up the box office either). The last film in Cinefamily's "Female Gaze" series is also its best. Ramsay has an uncanny eye for detail; it plays more like a series of compelling still-photos than a traditional narrative.

Quoth the Cinefamily website: "Ratcatcher is a grim coming-of-age tale set in working-class Glasgow during a sanitation strike, but director Lynne Ramsey's imaginative flights of fantasy and masterful filmmaking seem to help her characters transcend the world of garbage and grime they inhabit. She selects her details with the taste of a great short-story teller, just a couple at a time; each image and sound is beautiful in some way, rich with potency. Ratcatcher ... represents the best of a trend towards a modern poetic realism -- films trying for hyper-realism in location and characters, but seeking to create a strange, mysterious quality, rather than just a gritty documentary world."


WHERE: The Silent Movie Theater on Fairfax
WHEN: Friday, August 29, 2008 @ 7:30pm
COST: $10
MORE INFO: The Cinefamily Website
Or you could just buy it on Criterion DVD

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

The Register Profiles the Orange County Undergound Burlesque Society

Photo by Armando Brown

The Orange County Register
has a great article on the Orange County Underground Burlesque Society (founded by our very own MEG), which captures the group's appeal nicely:
OCUBS' most recent show, "Once Upon a Corset: A Tale of Two Pasties," played last week to sold-out houses at Fullerton's Hunger Artists Theatre, the group's regular home. The crowd was astonishingly varied: a retired couple, a group of boisterous middle-aged women, kids in their early 20s. There were a few loudly appreciative young men, but they were a small minority. Just in case anyone got out of line, a refrigerator-sized bouncer who calls himself Joe Smash sat conspicuously near the edge of the stage, looking comically menacing.

Those interested in skin and raw titillation would be well advised to go to the beach rather than an OCUBS show. There's no R-rated nudity. And for these women, the sexiness is just one part of a far more ambitious entertainment package that combines clever writing, verbal as well as physical comedy, and creative costumes...

"Humor is one of the top priorities," said Fox, who -- more modestly dressed and without her plummy British accent -- is known by day as Melanie Gable, an Idaho native and the group's founder. "That's not the case with a lot of other burlesque shows. I think the cleverness and the humor are what we have to offer above all."
LINKS:
"Burlesque Performers Strip for the Fun of It" by Paul Hodgins of the O.C. Register
OCUBS Slide Show at the Register
OCUBS Website
OCUBS MySpace Page

Thursday at the Largo -- HUMAN GIANT


Everybody's favorite latter-day MTV comedy trio Human Giant -- Aziz Ansari, Rob Huebel, and Paul Scheer -- will be performing live at the Largo this Thursday night. Wikipedia claims that they're also a staple of the New York stand-up scene, and since we're loathe to question the veracity of mob-oriented reference works we'll assume that must be the case. Hopefully, this means they'll be every bit as funny in person as they are the small screen.

If you've yet to see a Human Giant episode then I can but pity you, and direct you forthwith to the YouTube clips embedded within this very article.


Need another reason to go? How about guest appearances from Mindy Kaling (Kelly from The Office) and Thomas Lennon (of The State and Reno 911 fame). Also "very special guests," which tends to be stand-up comedy-speak for "people you've never heard of but who are friends of the guys on stage so why not invite them up and maybe they'll be funny too."


WHERE: The Largo at the Coronet Theater
WHEN: Thursday, August 26 2008 @ 9pm
PRICE: $25
MORE INFO: Largo Website

Monday, August 25, 2008

MUXTAPE MIXTAPE MONDAYS: Melodramatic Melodies / Variegated Vocalities

(Every Monday at Tragically Hipster we'll feature a look at a band, performance, or vague musical concept, with an accompanying virtual mixtape for your listening pleasure. Muxtapes will be kept online only until the next week's column is up, so listen while you can. There's no need to thank us; it's just one more service we like to provide for you, our dedicated readers. Most of whom also write for this site.)


Thanks to Muxtape's unfortunately-timed run-in with the RIAA, we've switched temporarily to the 8tracks service (take a wild guess at how many songs they allow you to upload at a time). Unfortunately, 8tracks provides a lot less functionality than Muxtape, so today's might be the last Mixtape Mondays column for the foreseeable future.


But on to this week's abbreviated mix. This time out we're highlighting songs that feature melodramatic narratives in conjuncture with unusual vocal performances. Starting with a theatrical appropriation of marketing terminology applied to delusions of religious grandeur in Sophe Lux's "Target Market"; moving on to the cabaret-esque performance of Antony & The Johnsons' "Hitler in My Heart" (surely the first song to use the holocaust as a metaphor for the arrogance of unrequited passion); on through the paranoiac high school mini-epic "Teenage Wildlife," one of the few songs to make full use of David Bowie's vocal range; and climaxing with a cover of Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart" sung by Tuvan "throat singer" Albert Kuvezin.


In between, we detour through Robert Smith's out-of-body nightmare; Björk's collaboration with flamenco guitarist Raimundo Amador, detailing her reaction to a fan's 1996 attempt to murder her; and avant-garde performance-vocalist Diamanda Galás' surprisingly restrained rendition of "Dark End of the Street," the quintessential adultery soul-ballad.


As for Wild Beasts and the falsetto soar of lead singer Hayden Thorpe, words don't really do it justice. But do yourself a favor: after you've fallen in love with the sheer melodic texture of his voice, hunt up the lyrics to "Brave Bulging Buoyant Clairvoyants," and develop a whole new sense of appreciation for the band's theatricality of vision.


On the Mixtape:

1) "Target Market" by Sophe Lux

2) "Brave Bulging Buoyant Clairvoyants (Single Mix)" by Wild Beasts

3) "Piggy in the Mirror" by The Cure

4) "Hitler in My Heart" by Antony & The Johnsons

5) "At the Dark End of the Street" by Diamanda Galás

6) "So Broken" by Björk

7) "Teenage Wildlife" by David Bowie

8) "Love Will Tear Us Apart" by Yat-Kha

LINKS:

Melodramatic Melodies w/ Variegated Vocalities Mixtape

Waking the Mystics by Sophe Lux

Limbo, Panto by Wild Beasts

The Top by The Cure

Antony and the Johnsons by Antony & The Johnsons

La Serpenta Canta by Diamanda Galás

Joga (CD Single) by Björk

Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) by David Bowie

Re-Covers by Yat-Kha


Saturday, August 23, 2008

Guest Post: The happy curmudgeon’s guide to surviving Sunset Junction

by Lisa Boosin



Photos from http://www.sunsetjunction.org/streetfair_photos.html


Once again, it’s time for Sunset Junction. The good news is, this year, it may not be Heatstroke Junction. The weather’s been (comparatively) mild all week; if we’re lucky, we’ll see temperatures in the low 80s, which is tolerable.

Maybe it’s not bad news, but apart from the weather, everything else about Sunset Junction will be the same as last year, which was the same as the year before…not the bands, obviously, but the crowds, the drunkenness, the stench-ridden port-o-potties – even the vendors tote out the same old tired crap year after year.

Sigh…

But don’t let my pissy attitude ruin your fun.

Instead, consider the following so you can get maximum enjoyment:

Disregard all parking advice on the website.
Do not even waste your time trying to park anywhere near the actual event. Especially on Saturday. Park somewhere residential, off of Silver Lake Blvd, Micheloterena (not too high up, because walking up that hill after a long day of sun and partying will suck), or Los Feliz Village. Watch the signs yo, you will get ticketed. Walk or take a cab. When I used to live out of the area, I would park by Wacko on Hollywood Blvd, and walk down. (but do not park on Hollywood Blvd. on Saturday). It’s a 15-minute walk. And on the way back, you can do your own mini pub crawl and stop at Tiki Ti’s the Good Luck Bar and then up Hillhurst to the Drawing Room and the Rustic.

Bring money.
“Suggested donation” means if you don’t pay $20, you don’t get in. If you’re planning on doing some eating and drinking – not all-out Bacchanalia, but enjoying yourself in moderation, you can probably skate by on $50 for the whole day (including admission). There are little sidewalk vendors who will have bottled water for $1, God bless them. The festival always features a good assortment of food from some of the popular restaurants and taco trucks in the area, but it’s all overpriced, like any other fair or concert. If you’re kinda cheap and you really get hungry or thirsty, keep walking down Sunset and go to the 99 Cent Only store. Actually, there are a ton of good restaurants on that side, including Alegria, Tantra, Dusty’s, and Baskin-Robbins (technically not a restaurant but still, who doesn’t like ice cream, I ask rhetorically even though I, myself, am lactose intolerant).

Take only what you can carry in your pockets securely.
Keep it simple, keep from getting pick pocketed…and keep from being that asshole that bumps everyone with his backpack.

Wear appropriate footwear.
Not just for walking. Invariably, your feet will get stomped on. You will probably step in puddles of liquids of indeterminate origins. Wear what’s comfortable, but probably stay away from sandals or flip-flops, anything white, or shoes that you’re really deeply attached to.

The show opens at noon. The port-o-potties will be distressingly heinous by 12:30.
Even though there are a lot of restaurants in the area, it’s always…ahem, a crapshoot as to whether or not you’ll be able to use those facilities. Plan ahead. If you can hold it for 10 minutes or so, go to Circuit City and pretend to look at car stereos and use the bathroom there.

Don’t get there too early.
In all seriousness, there really isn’t that much to do. You will burn yourself out way before any of the good bands play.

If you’re really bored, want to kill time or need to get out of the sun for a couple hours, go see Tropic Thunder at the Vista, which is a lovely theater.
Showtimes are at 1:40, 4:20, 7:00 & 9:40 P.M

If you see a tall, scowling redhead with a lot of tattoos who’s probably wearing at least one pink article of clothing, go say hi to her. She’s not as mean as she looks.
There will probably be at least 20 girls who fit this description. But hey, you’ll make a lot of new friends.

Try not to gawk at the studded-codpiece clad leatherdaddies.
Self-explanatory.

Avoid drinking too much late in the day.
When the festival lets out, the whole area is teeming with cops just itching to bust people for DUIs. I know a couple of people who’ve been popped for riding a bike under the influence, so cut yourself off early.

Avoid hooking up too much late in the day.
Fatigue + alcohol + too much heat = Really bad judgment

This isn’t Disneyland. This is someone’s neighborhood.
Be respectful and as you’re leaving: don’t urinate, vomit or fornicate on people’s lawns or burn anything. Lot of regular folk live in the neighborhood, and they sure as hell aren’t going to appreciate your drunken caterwauling as you walk back to your car, or to a party, at 11 pm on Sunday night.

And above all, have fun, yo!



-Lisa Boosin is a copywriter from Los Feliz whose writing has appeared in OC Weekly and The Orange County Register. For more info on Sunset Junction, visit http://www.sunsetjunction.org/streetfair.html

Friday, August 22, 2008

Vote Now

TONIGHT -- 2-for-1 Tickets to Worst Date Movie Ever


In a move of either subversive brilliance or perverse deviance -- or hell, why not both? -- the Cinefamily is offering a two-for-one deal on tickets to confrontational auteuriste Catherine Breillat's Fat Girl tonight as part of their "Female Gaze" series. Breillat has long had a reputation for making films dealing with sexuality and gender power-dynamics that are in the words of the Cinefamily's website "shocking masterpiece[s] of provocation," or what the rest of us might call "fucked up." If you've never seen one of her films -- and really, what's wrong with you? -- Fat Girl is an excellent place to start... but maybe not the best choice for a first date.

Quoth the Cinefamily website: "Anaïs is the eponymous 12-year-old lead, a would-be Cyrano whose stifled sexual awakening coincides with her beautiful sister Elena's first experiences with desire and seduction. Subtle tension escalates between the sisters as they navigate Breillat's signature sexual terrain, an ominous landscape fraught with the constant potential for delusion, deception, violence, and tragedy. Not surprising that Breillat was a best-selling novelist by the age of 17 -- the storytelling in Fat Girl decimates the conventions of teen dramas in favor of a daring explication of lust and loyalty, with an ending that famously shocked and polarized international audiences."

(Afterward, if your relationship is still intact, you can hang around for Fuego!, a film which appears both less serious and more entertainingly misogynistic than Fat Girl:)


"The authentic story of a real person,
told with integrity and stark candor."

WHERE: The Silent Movie Theater on Fairfax
WHEN: Tonight, Friday August 22, 2008 @ 7:30pm
COST: $10 for two tickets
MORE INFO: The Cinefamily
Fat Girl Criterion Collection DVD

Thursday, August 21, 2008

The Sea Will Crush You, If You Don't Know How to Swim


Last weekend I caught the Rude Guerrilla Theater Company's production of Nocturne by Adam Rapp. It's maybe the best play I've seen all year: dark and tragic, involving and moving. It's a monologue-play -- here expanded to include brief speaking roles for two additional actors -- in which an unnamed narrator simply and eloquently describes the deterioration of his family following a tragic accident when he was a teenager. Scott Barber's performance in the lead role is note-perfect, never overplaying scenes which in lesser hands could devolve into melodrama. What keeps the play from becoming a depressing morass is both the inherent wit of Rapp's script and Jay Fraley's even-keeled direction -- just stylish enough to keep you engaged, but not so flashy as to be distracting.

Eric Marchese of the Orange County Register puts it well: "Nocturne doesn't ask for our empathy -- it just is what it is. Were it to press harder for emotion, we might not feel much. Because Rapp's writing is so restrained, he lends the play power, making it easily the equivalent of the biographical fiction of Tennessee Williams and Truman Capote."

WHERE: The Rude Guerrilla Theater in Santa Ana
WHEN: Saturdays August 23 and 30 at 4:30pm; Sundays August 24 and 31 at 7:00pm

PRICE: $20 general admission / $15 seniors / $10 students
MORE INFO: Rude Guerrilla Theater's Website (scroll down for info.)
Orange County Register Review

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

"I Am the Least Difficult of Men. All I Want is Boundless Love."


Meditations in an Emergency
Frank O'Hara


Am I to become profligate as if I were a blonde? Or religious
as if I were French?

Each time my heart is broken it makes me feel more adventurous
(and how the same names keep recurring on that interminable
list!), but one of these days there'll be nothing left with
which to venture forth.

Why should I share you? Why don't you get rid of someone else
for a change?

I am the least difficult of men. All I want is boundless love.

Even trees understand me! Good heavens, I lie under them, too,
don't I? I'm just like a pile of leaves.

However, I have never clogged myself with the praises of
pastoral life, nor with nostalgia for an innocent past of
perverted acts in pastures. No. One need never leave the
confines of New York to get all the greenery one wishes -- I can't
even enjoy a blade of grass unless i know there's a subway
handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not
totally regret life. It is more important to affirm the
least sincere; the clouds get enough attention as it is and
even they continue to pass. Do they know what they're missing?
Uh huh.

My eyes are vague blue, like the sky, and change all the time;
they are indiscriminate but fleeting, entirely specific and
disloyal, so that no one trusts me. I am always looking away.
Or again at something after it has given me up. It makes me
restless and that makes me unhappy, but I cannot keep them
still. If only i had grey, green, black, brown, yellow eyes; I
would stay at home and do something. It's not that I'm
curious. On the contrary, I am bored but it's my duty to be
attentive, I am needed by things as the sky must be above the
earth. And lately, so great has their anxiety become, I can
spare myself little sleep.

Now there is only one man I like to kiss when he is unshaven.
Heterosexuality! you are inexorably approaching. (How best
discourage her?)

St. Serapion, I wrap myself in the robes of your whiteness
which is like midnight in Dostoevsky. How I am to become a
legend, my dear? I've tried love, but that holds you in the
bosom of another and I'm always springing forth from it like
the lotus -- the ecstasy of always bursting forth! (but one must
not be distracted by it!) or like a hyacinth, "to keep the
filth of life away," yes, even in the heart, where the filth is
pumped in and slanders and pollutes and determines. I will my
will, though I may become famous for a mysterious vacancy in
that department, that greenhouse.

Destroy yourself, if you don't know!

It is easy to be beautiful; it is difficult to appear so. I
admire you, beloved, for the trap you've set. It's like a
final chapter no one reads because the plot is over.

"Fanny Brown is run away -- scampered off with a Cornet of Horse;
I do love that little Minx, & hope She may be happy, tho' She
has vexed me by this exploit a little too. --Poor silly
Cecchina! or F:B: as we used to call her. --I wish She had a
good Whipping and 10,000 pounds." --Mrs. Thrale

I've got to get out of here. I choose a piece of shawl and my
dirtiest suntans. I'll be back, I'll re-emerge, defeated, from
the valley; you don't want me to go where you go, so I go where
you don't want me to. It's only afternoon, there's a lot
ahead. There won't be any mail downstairs. Turning, I spit in
the lock and the knob turns.

LINKS:
New York Times Freakonomics blog on Mad Men's use of Frank O'Hara
The Mad Men scene in question
Meditations in an Emergency at Amazon.com, still on back-order

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Return of the Urban Haute Bourgeoisie!


Whit Stillman's "Metropolitan"

Hulu.com seems determined to prove itself an unexpected asset to the human race. First, they agreed to provide hosting services for Joss Whedon's amazingly amazing supervillian musical Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog ; now, they've put up the entirety of Metropolitan, Whit Stillman's 1990 comedic masterpiece, free for your viewing pleasure.


"You don't have to have read a book to have an opinion on it."
(The guiding philosophy of most of my college essays.)

Stillman has thus far only directed three films, what he calls his "comedy of mannerlessness" trilogy, each of which chronicles the waning days of a particular social schema. Barcelona, set in the 80's, is about the end of the Spanish sexual revolution; The Last Days of Disco, set in the 70's, kind of lets you know what you're in for right in the title; and Metropolitan, set in the 60's, details the final years of the bourgeoisie "debutante" culture.

The appeal of these films lie with Stillman's own particular brand of comedy, which is like a cross between a Woody Allen film, a Jane Austen novel, and a particularly observant New Yorker cartoon. It's a dry wit that plays upon the intelligence and self-awareness of its viewer, as in this scene, where one of the New York "preppies" bemoans the inappropriateness of that descriptor, and proposes what he believes to be a more dignified alternative:


"The term is brilliant, and long overdue."

LINKS:
Metropolitan on Hulu
Metropolitan Criterion Collection DVD
Barcelona DVD
Whit Stillman Interview at IFC.com

Monday, August 18, 2008

Live / Free / Tonight -- DUSTY RHODES AND THE RIVER BAND


Dusty Rhodes and the River Band, arguably the best live band currently on the local scene, will be playing a free show tonight at Detroit bar in Costa Mesa.

If you haven't yet picked up their debut album "First You Live," then I feel equal parts pity and revulsion towards you. Perhaps you should look at tonight's gig as a chance to build up some much-needed Hipster karma for yourself, as well as, you know, an opportunity to see an incendiary live band at the top of their game. If that's the sort of thing you're into.

WHERE: Detroit Bar in Costa Mesa
WHEN: Tonight, Monday August 18th. Dusty Rhodes hit the stage at 10pm.
COST: Free
MORE INFO: Dusty Rhodes' MySpace Profile

MUXTAPE MONDAYS: U2's Boy / October / War (Deluxe Editions)

(Every Monday at Tragically Hipster we'll feature a look at a band, performance, or vague musical concept, with an accompanying virtual mixtape for your listening pleasure. Muxtapes will be kept online only until the next week's column is up, so listen while you can. There's no need to thank us; it's just one more service we like to provide for you, our dedicated readers. Most of whom also write for this site.)


(Since this is a longer-than-normal column this week, you may just want to skip on down to the actual Muxtape portion toward the bottom. Go ahead. We won't judge you.)


It can suck, falling out of love with a band.


The first single I ever bought was a double A-side of U2's "New Year's Day" and "Two Hearts Beat as One"1. I didn't know much about the band -- this was in their pre-Joshua Tree mega-stardom days -- I just knew that "New Year's Day" had a lot of bass in it, and I've always had a strange kind of love for that frequently under-appreciated instrument.


I took the single home and played it so often that I all but wore out the grooves. At the time I knew nothing about the Polish solidarity movement that inspired the song (and truth be told, I still don't know much about it), but I knew that there was something haunting about its darkly aggressive opening notes. I doubt I was more than seven or eight at the time -- certainly not old enough to have a real handle on my feelings -- and yet something in me responded instinctually to Bono's yearning croon


Say it's true, it's true

That we can break through

Though torn in two

We can be one


And for the next fifteen years or so, U2 was my band.


In a very real sense, U2 taught me how to love music. After I played the "New Year's Day" single down into near-incomprehensibility, I moved on to the album that it issued from, War, and was delighted to discover that the version of "New Year's Day" contained therein was a full minute-and-a-half longer than the one found on the seven inch. The idea of a "single edit," that a song could be cut and cropped for distribution to different mediums, seemed enticingly exotic to me, like I had discovered some secret about how musicians worked that no one else was privy to. I listened to each one of their tracks with an intensive concentration, studying every note lest they should betray some larger, heretofore unhinted-at secret.


There were no further technical revelations to follow, but my attention to detail paid off in other ways. After a while it occurred to me to think about why they would use certain instruments in one song but not in another, to question why a turn of phrase in the lyrics of War's first song would be repeated in its last. And slowly over the years that followed, I began to put together an understanding of music that went beyond gosh I like how this song sounds and delved into issues of intent and meaning, of purpose and art. It was an autodidact's music appreciation course, centered on the albums of four lads from Ireland.


I became a rabid fan, consuming everything the band released. Not just albums and singles, but guest appearances, charity compilation albums, movies soundtracks with slightly alternate mixes; my selection of U2 bootlegs is larger than my collection of most other bands' albums. In the days before artists' discographies were exhaustively cataloged on internet websites, I became my own sort of mini-expert on the band2.

My musical love-affair with U2 lasted for their next seven albums, each one more interesting than the last, until it finally came to an unceremonious halt during a 2001 concert at the Anaheim Pond in support of their then-latest album, All That You Can't Leave Behind. It wasn't the first U2 concert I'd seen -- it wasn't even the tenth -- but it would be the last.


The set that night had consisted of a hodge-podge of "classic" U2 tracks, mixed with a healthy smattering of tunes from Leave Behind, the first U2 album that I would have defined as "sub-par," but which had proven itself to be inexplicably popular. Just before the evening's mid-point, they launched into "New Year's Day" to a tumult of applause, when a unbidden revelation struck me: U2 wasn't a band any more. They were a nostalgia act.


With a strange, stark clarity, it became suddenly apparent to me that they weren't dusting off old tracks from their previous albums and giving them a healthy workout as they had in tours past; this time they were simply working their way dutifully through the back-catalog, much like a Vegas revival act or, more charitably, a second-generation Rolling Stones. Like the album which the tour was accompanying, this was U2 on autopilot; a giant, pulsing two-hour version of a high school reunion "remember when?" conversation, where you sit around rehashing the details of a shared past not because it was such a glorious time in all your lives, but because otherwise none of you would have a thing to say to one another. There was something achingly depressing about this realization, as though I were one of those stifled housewives in Victorian novels who wake up one day and finally see themselves to be leading a loveless, oppressed existence.


I couldn't listen to U2 for a long time after that. I just didn't see the point.


Every time I put on one of their albums it felt like I was vainly trying to recapture the magic of those early years of infatuation. Maybe U2 was just a phase, and I had finally grown out of them, like being love-sick over an oblivious girl in high school. You grow up; learn not to waste your time on those who don't return your affections; and hopefully move on to fuller, more mature relationships that are still alight with passion, though perhaps not that unique brand of passion that so controlled your world during your teenage years.


When U2 announced last year that they were re-releasing their first three albums in deluxe remastered editions, I wasn't particularly interested. I hadn't listened to a U2 album in six years, and while both Boy and October were interesting records, they were never amongst the best of the band's output to begin with.


But War had been an immensely formative album for me, and my CD copy was scratched and skipping from years of abuse. Almost on a whim I put in a pre-order on Amazon.com. When the album came a few weeks ago, I put it on out of fiscal obligation more than anything else, expecting to hit the stop button before I reached the end of the first track.


I listened to War twice that night, all the way through.


The next day, I listened to it again. And then the day after, once more.


What a fucking great album.



Like every band worth the trouble, U2 evolved over the years through a number of distinct phases. Their first three albums form what I like to think of as their "Christian Warrior" trilogy. These albums feature a kind of passionate aggression not seen on U2's later albums, fueled in large part by Bono and The Edge's intense faith, not simply in religion as a personal experience, but in religion as a transformative political force.


Here "peace" is not an idea or a restive state of being, but a breathing, beating thing that must be fought for, a teething philosophy that is sometimes a struggle to accept, with the easy allure of violence readily at hand. Though it's tempting to dismiss U2's politics as pretentious or eye-rollingly simplistic, I'm struck, listening to these albums decades later, by just how cynical the band really was. Indeed, most of their early songs spit and howl at the injustice of the world around them, and what optimism there is to be found comes not from the naïve belief that activism will make the world a better place, but from the decision to fight on anyway, if only so as to go out kicking:


I believe in the third world war

I believe in the atomic bomb

I believe in the Powers That Be

But they won't overpower me3


Lyrically, Bono has always had a gift for album-long metaphors that he plays with and expands upon in each track, without falling into the trap of making a direct "concept" album. On War, he uses a motif of divided lovers as a stand-in for a divided Ireland, which then expands to encompass a divided Cold War world; and the act of singing as a rough analogue for political action ("How long must we sing this song?" forms the chorus of both the rebel-rousing opening number "Sunday Bloody Sunday," and the hopefully meditative closer, "'40'").


I doubt I'll ever see U2 in concert again. Their last album, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, was if anything even less impressive than All That You Can't Leave Behind. When I can bring myself to check out the set lists for their recent shows, they seem filled with the same "hey folks, you might remember this little ditty"-type mentality that finally broke me seven years ago.


But that's alright. Even if my fandom is only an echo of what it used to be, I'm delighted to find that I can still take immense joy from their earlier albums, not as a remember-how-good-it-once-was nostalgia trip, but as works in their own right, still as vital and pulsing today as they were when first released.


And my breathe still catches, just a tiny little bit, every time I hear the opening bass line to "New Year's Day."


On the Muxtape:

1) I Will Follow (%)

2) A Celebration (#)

3) Seconds (&)

4) 11 O'Clock Tick Tock (Single Mix) (%)

5) New Year's Day (7" Single Edit) (&)

6) The Electric Co. (%)

7) Like a Song... (&)

8) Trash, Trampoline and the Party Girl (#)

9) Gloria (#)

10) Two Hearts Beat as One (&)

11) October (#)

12) "40" (&)


% = From the Boy Deluxe Edition reissue

# = From the October Deluxe Edition reissue

& = From the War Deluxe Edition reissue


Quick Notes on Select Songs:

*Though I defy you to guess it without checking War's liner notes, Seconds features lead vocals by The Edge.


*Martin Hannett was one of the most innovative producers of the post-punk period, putting his indelible stamp on everyone from Joy Division to the Psychedelic Furs. "11 O'Clock Tick Tock" is the only U2 song to be produced by Hannett, and one of only two songs (the other being "A Celebration") that were released as singles but which never made an appearance on any album.


*The original plan for October was to record a series of modern psalms, paeans of faith in a modern world sorely lacking in direction and values. But then the notebook containing the only copy of the as-yet-unrecorded album's lyrics were stolen by a fan during a concert in Seattle, and Bono was forced to improvise new lyrics live in the studio. The result was a mostly-lackluster disc, musically strong but meandering in theme and content. One of the few bright spots is the opening track "Gloria," a song which U2 had debuted on the road, and which consequently Bono had already memorized. The chorus to "Gloria" is the Latin invocation "Gloria in te Domine / Gloria exultate," which translate as "Glory in you, O Lord / Glory! Exalt him!", taken from the thirtieth Psalm.


*"40" is based on the fortieth Psalm, and hence the title. The Edge and Adam Clayton swapped places for its recording, with Edge playing bass and Clayton the guitar. Back when "40" was a staple of their live act, the two would repeat the swap for the show's finale.


--------------------------
[1] I also purchased a seven-inch of Huey Lewis' "The Heart of Rock and Roll" the same day, but there began and ended my flirtation with The News

[2] Even today, I barely have to reach into my memory to pluck out dozens of tidbits of meaningless trivia, the kind of pointless minutiae that only seems to really matter to you when you're young and in love. With only a cursory look at the tracklistings for the new Deluxe Edition reissues of Boy, October and War, I can tell you that they seem to have left off the instrumental and remixed versions of "October" done for the documentary They Call It an Accident, and that the versions of "Seconds" and "Like a Song..." featured on War are both slightly shorter than the ones on the MFSL "gold" CD pressings done in the mid-90's. I can tell you that in the nearly 30 years since its release as a single, "A Celebration" has never before been issued on compact disc, and that the "remix" version of "Tomorrow" found on October is actually a re-recording done in 1998 for the Common Ground compilation. There are only a handful of bands whose discographies I can claim to have such an intimate familiarity with, and almost without exception they're all bands I started listening to in high school or earlier, back in the halcyon days of my youthful passions.

[3] From "A Celebration," on the October rarities disc.

LINKS:
U2 Muxtape
Boy Deluxe Edition
October Deluxe Edition
War Deluxe Edition
U2 Deluxe Edition Box Set


Friday, August 15, 2008

THIS WEEKEND -- Hitchcock Double Bill at the New Beverly


This weekend, the New Beverly Cinema is hosting a double feature of two of Alfred Hitchcock's best middle-period movies, Notorious and Rebecca, both tales of perverse love affairs.

In Notorious, Cary Grant all but forces Ingrid Bergman into the arms of another man so that she can spy on his operations while Grant, an apparent cuckold fetishist, seethes with jealousy (somewhat improbably, John Woo later paid homage to Hitchcock by using this same conceit in his not-so-beloved, less-than-classic film Mission: Impossible II). By contrast Rebecca is an adaptation of Daphne Du Maurier's excellent novel about a young woman who marries the perfect man (Laurence Olivier) -- except for the part where he's still obsessed with the memory of his dead first wife, the titular Rebecca, who seems to be haunting our unnamed heroine from beyond the grave. (But at least he's rich.) Both are classic Hitchcock, though for my money Rebecca is the one not to miss.

If you go tonight, you can even hang around for a midnight screening of Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, which is also about relationships and betrayal and lies and double-agents, but without any on-screen double-X chromosomes to speak of.

WHERE: The New Beverly Cinema
WHEN: Friday and Saturday, August 15 & 16, at 7:30pm and 3:30pm (Saturday only)
PRICE: $7 gets you into both flicks.
MORE INFO: www.newbevcinema.com

Thursday, August 14, 2008

THIS WEEKEND -- Belletristic Bibliophile Burlesquers

This weekend sees the return of the Orange County Underground Burlesque Society, a secret coven of burlesque artisans who, despite their name, practice their craft in an above-ground well-lit performance space, readily accessible to the public.

Their current show, "Once Upon a Corset... A Tale of Two Pasties," is billed as a loving tribute to all things bookish in nature. Via sexy dancing. Which is, frankly, a method of commendation that I feel should be more widely practiced in the literary community (New York Times Review of Books, please take note).

And no, the show doesn't feature any nudity. Pervert.

(Disclosure: Tragically Hipster's very own MEG is OCUBS' founding, er, father. We would have featured it here anyway, though, because it's awesome.)

WHERE:
The Hunger Artists Theater in Anaheim
WHEN:
This Friday and Saturday, August 15 and 16, 2008, @ 11pm.
COST: 15 smackers.
RESERVATIONS (heavily recommended):
(714) 680-6803
MORE INFO: OCUBS Web Site
OCUBS Official MySpace Page

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Download "For Emma, Forever Ago" for Just $3, Today Only


Amazon.com is offering Bon Iver's haunting and beautiful debut album, For Emma, Forever Ago, as an mp3 download for a measly $2.99 for the next twelve hours or so. It's an album that every semi-, anti-, and tragical- hipster should own.

Quoth Steven Haydn of the A.V. Club: "The album evocatively conjures the loneliness of a long northern winter, placing Vernon's lovely songs in a distant, blurred vacuum of physical and emotional isolation. ... The power is in how these songs sound rather than what the opaque lyrics don't quite spell out, perhaps because some things are just too tough to say. "


"The Wolves (Act I & II)" by Bon Iver

LINK: For Emma, Forever Ago Amazon.com download