That Sounds...Comforting

If you have ever 1) read this blog, 2) met me, 3) been anywhere remotely near me, 4) ever heard me talk about anything, you're at least a little familiar with the movie High Fidelity. For those of you who aren't at least a little familiar with the movie High Fidelity, here's a brief synopsis:

High Fidelity (2000). Based off a Nick Hornby novel. John Cusack plays a record store owner and pop music aficionado. Prompted by his most recent break-up, he meets all his former flames to find out what's wrong with him, and why he can't find love. Pop music--and bad decisions--are his guide. Also, Jack Black works in his record store and makes fun of him and Catherine Zeta-Jones looks good for the last time.

Cool? Cool. Well, at one particularly mopey moment for Rob, our protagonist, he decides to re-organize his record collection. Not chronologically, or alphabetically, but autobiographically. When his employee sees this master plan, he responds, "No fucking way. That sounds..."

"Comforting? It is."

...And what I'm trying to tell you is this, Blogworld:

I just finished the Complete and Definitive 96X Anthology, Volumes 1-13.

Okay, let's back up. I grew up in Memphis in (for all intents and purposes) the 1990's, four years younger than my brother. When grunge broke in 1992, he was 12, I was 8. For the next 6 years, we learned about pop music by listening to one radio station: 95.7FM, aka 96X, aka Your Modern Rock Alternative. 96X existed from (roughly) 1992-1998, then changed formats to the Oldies. For those 6 years, it was single-handedly responsible for my entire musical education. There were three things that 96X played:

1) Completely awesome alternative rock as it came out.
2) Completely awesome alternative rock that had already come out, but still during the station's lifespan ("Jeremy" and "In Bloom" were still in heavy rotation in 1995, three years after their release.)
3) Completely awesome alternative rock that pre-dated 96X, but was now retro-actively discovered by the public at large.

This meant that, by 1994, a twenty-minute listen to 96X could reveal "Alive," "Smells Like Teen Spirit," "Give It Away," some new single called "Basket Case," That Old Spin Doctors Song and (yes, somehow) "I Am Superman" (which was now, four years later, a successful single, because people weren't listening to Warrant anymore).

But here's the kicker: not only was 96X exceptional at juggling all the alt-rock heavyweights, it was the best at finding quasi-singles by marginally popular bands and giving them major rotation. Do you know about Tripping Daisy's "I Got a Girl"? Because in 1995 96X did. And so did 12 year-old Milam.

Anyway, 96X played everything that anyone ever wanted to hear during the 90's, all at a time when I was first discovering 1) music 2) girls. It was (if this is possible to say) quite literally the soundtrack to my youth and adolescence.

My friends, my brother, and all his friends, have always enjoyed throwing old "96X Staples" onto mixes, making a run of "Cumbersome," "Found Out About You," "Breakfast at Tiffany's," etc. I always talked about what an undertaking it would be to compile every song that got heavy rotation on 96X from 1992-1998...all the failed Bush singles, all the incredibly obscure one-hit-wonders, all the bizarre alt-rock gems that we know by heart.

Then one day last month I got bored and DID IT. The process--at its outset--wasn't too difficult, because I'd already been stockpiling 96X Staples for years, unofficially cataloguing it all for future use. Lots of Amazon-based research later, and suddenly I had a complete chronological listing of every noteworthy song 96X ever played. 13 Volumes-worth.

If it sounds comforting, it's because it was. Now I can put in Volume 1 and remember my brother singing along to "Jeremy," mimicking Eddie's frantic "woo's," and thinking, "I don't know who this band is but they're annoying me." Four years later they had retroactively become my favorite band, due largely to 96X's heavy rotation, due somewhat to the fact that Justin had, by then, stopped singing "woo" falsettos.

I can put in Volume 3 and remember my mom turning vetoing a Beck purchase in Cat's Music, because half the songs on the back cover featured some version of the word "fuck." Soy un perdidor, I was seemingly the only kid in 2nd grade who wasn't a loser, baby, and so was a loser, baby.

I can put in Volume 7 and remember hearing "Say It Ain't So" for the first time at a 6th grade dance, and how my friend and his girlfriend had just broken up at the dance, and he was telling me about it as "Say It Ain't So" was on, and how breaking up at a 6th grade dance while the final chorus of "Say It Ain't So" blasts is maybe the most intense experience an eleven year-old can have (we didn't realize, or care to, that the song was about alcoholism).

I can put in Volume 8, hear "Hey Man Nice Shot" (Filter) and "Mighty K.C." (by, you guessed it, For Squirrels) back-to-back and remember how I didn't feel the impact of Kurt Cobain's death until it was already way too late. And how sad it made me that I wasn't old enough to appreciate Nirvana when they were around, and now I just had Filter and For Squirrels to pay homage for me.

I can put in Volume 10 and hear "Pepper" (Butthole Sufers) and "Popular" (Nada Surf) and remember how incredibly bizarre pop music became in the mid-90's.

I can put in Volume 12 and hear "Semi-Charmed Life," one of the last big singles during the 96X era. I can remember calling 96X to request "Two Princes" by the Spin Doctors (Volume 3), high-fiving my friend Jay when "Semi-Charmed Life" played 5 minutes later, because we thought it was "Two Princes," and cursing this awful band called Third Eye Blind when we realized they were not, in fact, the Spin Doctors. They were no Spin Doctors at all.

I can validate years of saying, "I don't know...that probably came out in 95 or 96" by looking at the track listing chronologically and realizing, "holy crap, everything actually did come out in 95 or 96" and wondering if 95-96 might rival 65-66 for Best Two Years in the History of Pop Music, then realizing that 92-93 were actually better than 95-96, but I'll be damned if 95-96 weren't at least the Funniest Two Years in the History of Pop Music.

For the next few weeks, I'll be taking one song from each volume and talking about it, or its impact on me as a music fan and, later, musician. At the end I'll release the track listing for the entire anthology, for all you 90's nostalgists who want/need to recreate it.

For now, put in Purple and put on your Doc's and spazz yourself out. Trust me...it's comforting.

--CM

P.S. Who can name that band in the picture?

One Way Trip to Somewhere

Maybe four or five times a year, I anticipate a movie's release. This number might sound low, but it's not because I don't like movies. I actually go see fifteen or twenty movies a year, and wouldn't spend the $11 if I didn't want to enjoy what I'm about to see. I love movies and--maybe more so--I love going to see new movies. These days there's just less to look forward to. The film industry (not unlike the music industry) is more invested than ever in making predictably lucrative movies. So, the vast majority of "new" releases are either:

1) Sequels. (Some still worth checking out.)
2) Prequels. (Few still worth checking out.)
3) Re-makes. (Rarely worth checking out.)

That comprises (to my estimation based off no actual research or facts) about 77% of the new releases. Add in another 15% for "Iraq-based" foreign affairs flicks (Hollywood's misguided attempts at being, um, "relevant"? "Important"? "SMART"???) and another 3% for moody interpersonal stuff starring Zach Braff in which the girl leaves and the guy cries...you've got a 5% window for something that I'd type into my calendar and make plans to go see a week before opening weekend.

The most noteworthy of these last year, The Departed, was the rare release that actually exceeded my expectations and ruthlessly kicked my butt. This year's crop has been semi-disappointing:

1) Oceans 13 - Alright.
2) Pirates 3 - Eh.
3) American Gangster - TBD.
4) The Darjeeling Limited

Which brings me (finally) to my point: Wes Anderson is the only American film-maker whose new releases I greatly anticipate, and will continue to until he 1) dies 2) goes into a coma or 3) starts to suck in ways I can't yet imagine. I guess if Coppola made something new I'd have to check it out. And, now that I think about it, I have seen every new Lucas and Scorsese release for the past ten years. But that was more due to my interest in those films individually, or in a franchise collectively, not the career and unifying vision of one writer/director.

I did not come to Wes Anderson immediately. Like most, I saw Rushmore (his second film) first, then retroactively viewed Bottle Rocket. It's fashionable now to call Bottle Rocket "the best" because it's so clearly not. It's precocious and funny and smart and well-acted, but remains a film with a smaller scope. The folks who favor Bottle Rocket are saying more about themselves than the movie itself--these are the same people who would accuse a band like the Counting Crows of "selling out."

Rushmore, introducing Jason Schwartzman as the underachieving overachiever Max Fischer, established both Schwartzman and Anderson as unique and remarkable talents. Anderson really debuted his directorial style in this film--theatrical framing, single, sweeping shots, colorfully vivid photography, etc.--one that has become as influential as any in the past ten years (Napoleon Dynamite, Little Miss Sunshine, etc.). Combined with his gift for deadpan quirkiness, idiosyncratic characters, and (if there is such a thing) intentional unintentional comedy, Anderson had carved out and nurtured his own incredibly powerful niche--The Aesthetic of Quirk.

The Royal Tenenbaums took the successes and themes of Rushmore further and pushed them harder. This story of a family's faded glory (the patriarch now broke, the parents now divorced, the three "genius" children now grown and comically failing) fulfilled every promise made by Anderson's first two films. His unique style as a writer and director--previously alluded to, or not fully developed--was now in its best form, straddling the line between absurdist comedy and understated tragedy with effortless grace.

Tenenbaums was, and remains, my favorite film of the last ten years. It is the rarest of accompishments--a flawless work of art, whose substance transcends its own scope, and whose style becomes inescapably influential. In this old blog, I called Anderson's brilliance "Shakespearean," and I still believe that. This film was so effortlessly ingenious, and the nature of its perfection so humbling and apparent, that was the only thing I could compare it to.

Now a devoted fan and hopeless fanboy, I anticipated Anderson's fourth film, The Life Aquatic, with schoolboy impatience. I can't say it disappointed me because I didn't expect Tenenbaum-ian perfection, but it was obviously less-great than the two films preceding it. While Anderson's greatest gifts reveal themselves in punchy dialog and precocious characters, Life Aquatic relied too heavily on silence and subtext to do its heavy lifting. What remained was an occasionally moving and beautiful film that lacked real color.

The Darjeeling Limited, accompanied by Hotel Chevalier (a short film that precedes the feature as its "Part One"), continues this progression. Anderson has taken his Aesthetic of Quirk and pushed it once again further--perhaps too far--to a point of aloofness. His gifts for tightly-framed story-telling, vibrant dialog, and paradoxical behavior are largely missing, leaving only his trademark visual style and familiar themes (e.g. three siblings, now adult, try to reconcile their family's broken past) for fans to recognize and enjoy. The film, set in a cross-country Indian train-ride, is maddeningly elusive. Sure, the performances are good. Sure, the film looks beautiful. Sure, India itself is a wonderfully integral part of the story, and as a setting is treated with respect, thoughtfulness, and familiarity. Sure, the best parts of the movie are still better than basically everything else out there.

But there aren't enough of them. And, what's worse, the film doesn't seem interested in creating them. The dialog itself is spare (one scene even vocalizes this, as the characters attempt to communicate their problems non-verbally), and the actions often limited. The story--like the train--has a destination in mind, but doesn't ever get there. In fact, it literally gets lost, despite being on rails. This is all clearly intentional by Anderson...my complaint is with the decision itself. For the most part, the film's strengths lie with Anderson's trademark directorial style, but never with his typical substance as a writer. Also, it's just not very funny.

But here's the problem: too many people will like this film too much. Or, at the very least, they'll proclaim to like this film too much. They already do. Because it's fashionable to unconditionally love Wes Anderson, criticism of his latest release would risk being "un-smart" or much worse, "uncool." And because it looks like a Wes Anderson movie, it must be as smart and relevant and hilarious and resonant as a normal Wes Anderson movie. But it unfortunately isn't there. Not nearly enough. Anderson himself is a loquacious guy--and his greatest characters, most revealing scenes, funniest moments, and best lines have always come from equally verbal people. This movie pushes the silence too far, but without the subtext picking up the slack.

But Part One, the short Hotel Chevalier, gives hope: a man is in a hotel room. He gets a call from a girl. She wants to come up. He resists, then consents. Then he showers and puts on a suit. He queues up a hopelessly goofy-yet-beautiful love ballad on his IPod. It plays on constant repeat, in anticipation of her arrival. "Tell me the thoughts that surround you/I want to look inside your head..." She comes up. They talk, wary of each other. There is a past here that is slowly becoming apparent, but never through the dialog itself. Finally she approaches him, things begin to happen. They stop briefly. He notices mysterious bruises on her body and asks about them (Anderson often uses physical scars to infer a painful past). She ignores his comment. Music continues in the background. Then:

Her: "Whatever happens in the end, I don't want to lose you as my friend."
Him: "I promise I will never be your friend, no matter what."

I want to look inside your head, yes I do...

This is a moment of remarkable clarity and complexity. In one climactic exchange, we know their past, their troubled present, and their doomed future. It's the kind of dialog an entire movie can stumble around but Anderson so often delivers with breath-taking precision. It's Anderson saying, "Yeah, I can still do this...I'm just choosing not to." Wes Anderson has always aspired to look inside his characters' heads--his greatest gift is getting inside people, their mixed motivations, their complex behaviors, their desires and demons. The problem with Part Two, The Darjeeling Limited, is that the audience itself is rarely let inside, too.

You dance like Zizi Jeanmaire,
CM

P.S. One of my favorite sports writers occasionally comments on pop music and the result is almost always embarrassing and disastrous. All this to say, I'd hate to be the musician who writes pathetically inaccurate things about movies. I'm an admitted film ignoramus. I invite all you film buffs out there who know better to disagree with me/put me in my place. Am I wrong about Anderson's latest? Lord I hope so. Please tell me I am.

Cinemusic

Before you can say "Kevin, you're such a disease," I'm back with another uncomprehensive list:

Top Moments in Cinemusic: When Film and Pop Music Collide

Per the title, we're not dealing with orchestral scores, although that would merit its own discussion. These are the points when, almost more than the dialogue or action, the music tells the story in a poignant and especially memorable way. Sometimes the writer has specific song cues in the script, sometimes it's the director's call. Rare is the writer or director (or writer/director) who has a keen enough understanding of and appreciation for popular music to employ it best--Stanley Kubrick, Quentin Tarantino, Cameron Crowe, and Wes Anderson are a few noteworthy examples.

Also, the bulk of this list (just as an extension of my own age limitations) will reference movies that are relatively recent. Not to exclude the older films--I've just seen less of them. So, if you've got some broader perspective, by all means comment and help me out.

Here tis....

Fight Club - "Where Is My Mind?" (The Pixies):
When I asked a few friends if they had any suggestions for this list, every single one of them mentioned this moment from Fight Club's final scene. With good reason. The movie's soundtrack, as a whole, is fairly negligible--only "Where Is My Mind" sticks out as a piece of recognizable and memorable pop music. Thus, its placement in the final scene makes it all the more significant. Beyond the basic implications of a song asking "Where is my mind" during a movie largely about multiple personality disorder and, subsequently, self-definition, the Pixies' haunting melody does more than echo the movie's preexisting questions.

As "The Narrator" (appropriately anonymous) finally faces Tyler Durden, and his own sense of identity comes crashing around him (symbolized by the falling buildings in the downtown area, courtesy of his terrorist group Mayhem), there's no grandiose symphonic swell, no hardcore rap to "toughen" the scene. Instead, the Pixies' gorgeous guitar work and eerie harmonies provide the perfect sonic backdrop for thie destruction of a post-postmodern man.

Hustle and Flow - "Baby, Please Don't Leave Me" (Buddy Guy):
If Fight Club knew how to end a movie, Hustle and Flow knows how to begin one. After the first scene, in which DJay tries to pimp Nola out of his broken-down, air-conditionless Buick, Buddy Guy's slow and ominous drumbeat kicks in as we ride through their Memphis neighborhood. Of course, Craig Brewer (a Memphis native) knows his city well-enough to begin his movie about Memphis music with the blues, specifically Mississippi-to-Chicago bluesman Buddy Guy. His song, "Baby, Please Don't Leave Me," doesn't just set the proper tone of rising desperation, it establishes a musical dichotomy that the rest of the film develops.

Later in the film, Shelby (the token white guy and, unpredictably, beat-maker extraordinaire) draws parallels between blues and rap. So, it's no coincidence that DJay's first successful studio outing produces "Whoop That Trick," composed by Three Six Mafia and Al Capone in real life. "Whoop That Trick" painstakingly revisits the gutteral howl of "Baby, Please Don't Leave Me," right down to the arrangement (percussion, bass line, then melody). If Buddy Guy perfectly illustrates where our protagonist starts his journey, Three Six shows us where he's headed.

Say Anything - "In Your Eyes" (Peter Gabriel):
Most children of the 80's would expect to see this on the list. Although Say Anything was really before my time, I've seen it enough to get why it's such a cult favorite: quintessential 80's, right down to the cheesy soundtrack, sad-eyed loverboy (played by, you guessed it, John Cusack), and female lead that is in no way attractive. Check, check, check.

But, this moment deserves mention, not because of what it does but because of what it doesn't do. Although there's no real indication as to why Lloyd Dobler picks this song to blast outside Diane's window, the song itself doesn't matter so much as Cameron Crowe's commitment to let it fill the scene. Rather than having Lloyd play the song, press pause, climb up a ladder to her room, and have the two teens talk about their feelings, he lets the scene exist completely devoid of dialogue, but plenty of telling action. Guy makes his grand gesture, girl privately responds, they never see each other, and the music fills the rest. The first of many cinemusic moments for Cameron Crowe, but this is possibly his most memorable.

Back to the Future - "Johnny B. Good" (Chuck Berry):
Moving from one 80's classic to another, this moment cheats a bit because the song is actually performed in the movie itself, rather than existing on a soundtrack. "Sung" by Michael J. Fox, and backed by the fictitious Starlighters, this Hollywood version of "Johnny B. Good" isn't remarkable for musical merit, rather its placement in the film.

Clever screenwriters Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale play up the irony of a kid from the future playing a past hit before it's become a hit. Fox has unintentionally tongue-in-cheek lines like, "Watch me for the changes and...try to keep up," and "You might not be ready for that yet, but your kids are gonna love it." Of course, a band member in the back just happens to be Chuck Berry's cousin, who immediately phones Chuck himself and holds the receiver up to the band. At the song's end, Fox gives an 80's guitar-solo outtro to a 50's classic, horrifying the conservative crowd and prompting his high-school mother to remark, "Marty, that was very interesting music." Clever, fun, and memorable screenwriting from one of the 80's most popular films.

American Beauty - "The Seeker" (The Who):
American Beauty's soundtrack is famous for its own brilliantly quirky score, but "The Seeker" stands out as the one true "rocking" moment of the film. Interestingly, Alan Ball places the upbeat rocker at a point where most filmmakers would opt for melancholia: the song is played as Lester (narrating the story from the dead) tells us that this is the last day of his life.

As the camera swoops over the town, echoing the opening shot of the film and inviting the viewer to compare Lester's life then and now, The Who's bombastic power-chord progression gives the story the boost to carry it to its finish. Of course, the song's lyrics ("I won't get to get what I'm after/till the day I die") couldn't be more appropriate, as Daltrey sings about a misguided man whose personal development has come too late. But it is essential to watch this moment as a microcosm of the film's tone: tragic, yes, but also light-hearted, fun, and, most importantly, beautiful.

Pulp Fiction - "Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon" (Urge Overkill):
Of Tarantino's cinemusic moments, my brother prefers the famous "Stuck in the Middle with You" scene from Reservoir Dogs, in which a cop's ear is cut off by his sadistic captor while Stealers Wheel sings in the background. This is a great pick in terms of Kubrick-ian weirdness ("These Boots Are Made for Walking" during Full Metal Jacket being one example of perfectly incongruent pieces working together), but Urge Overkill's occupation of Pulp Fiction's "overdose" scene serves its movie better, I think.

As Marsellus Wallace's wife (Uma Thurman) puts on some music to make Vincent feel more at home, he's in the bathroom talking himself into not sleeping with her. Of course, her musical choice only makes things worse: "Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon" is seductive beyond its title. But, as the scene progresses, it becomes clear that Mia Wallace isn't losing her sexual innocence--she's about to "grow up" because of a drug overdose. The music develops the irony of the scene perfectly and, by the time it kicks into double-time, it pushes the scene into full-on desperation, as Vincent tries to save her life. Little did she know (but Tarantino did), that she picked the perfect soundtrack for her near brush with death.

The Graduate - "Mrs. Robinson (reprise)" (Simon and Garfunkel):
The Graduate's soundtrack just might be the best in a major motion picture, and it's far and away some of Simon and Garfunkel's best work. While "The Sound of Silence" and "Mrs. Robinson" are absolute classics, their reworked "Scarborough Fair" and pitch-perfect "April Come She Will" are highlights of the movie. But it's the reprised version of "Mrs. Robinson" that seems the film's best moment to me, if only for its variation on the original.

Right when Benjamin realizes he's racing against time to stop the wedding of the woman he's pretty sure he loves, an alternate version of "Mrs. Robinson" kicks in, only this time the sleepy upward melody of the original is replaced by up-tempo strumment and a keen sense of urgency. It is, as near as I can tell, as close as Simon and Garfunkel ever got to rocking. Even when the opening chord pattern is played repeatedly, percussively, almost to the point of monotony, it pushes the sequence forward and tellingly illustrates Benjamin's mindset. He's going somewhere, and fast--he's just not sure where yet. Appropriately, this forecasts his similar mindset after his goal is accomplished: he's stolen away the bride and set out with her down the road, only neither of them have a clue what to do next. And it's this reprise that encapsulates the immediacy, youthfulness, and anxiety of the scene.

The Royal Tenenbaums - "Needle in the Hay" (Elliot Smith):
Wes Anderson straddles the invisible line between ludicrous and poignant with almost Shakespearean grace. Every fan of his movies knows how imminently peculiar, hilarious, and strikingly sad his stories can be, and he develops his characters with expert precision. Such is the case with Richie Tenenbaum, the eldest Tenenbaum son and former tennis star whose unrequited love for his adopted sister devestates his personal and professional life. And if that sentence sounds ridiculous, it's because it is: Anderson illustrates that, although the circumstances of our relationships can be absurd, our feelings about them can be nonetheless real and complex.

So, when Richie locks himself in the bathroom and shaves his head, beard, and takes the razor to his emaciated arms, it's somehow not surprising, yet entirely resonant. As Elliot Smith (who later committed suicide himself) begins the chord progression to his amazing acoustic piece "Needle in the Hay," Richie tells no one in particular "Tomorrow I'm going to kill myself." Then, in a piece of expert screenwriting that doesn't let the viewer in on the character's inner monologue, he decides to do it right then. Beautifully shot, alternating between the deep blue of the bathroom and quick golden flashes of Richie's past with an almost violent quickness, the scene explores how one man can completely break down. And "Needle in the Hay" is the only sound, filling the scene with its own quiet tension. The song itself isn't so much about reaching the breaking point as anticipating the breaking point, which makes it all the more poignant when played next to a man who has clearly gone well past it--an insight into what has been going on in Richie's mind all this time. Though Richie's suicide attempt fittingly fails, the scene itself is arguably the most successful piece of filmmaking Anderson has produced, showing that even his comedies can run (as well as anyone's) the complete emotional gamut.

That's what you've come to expect,
Chris