You Provide the Prose Poems, I’ll Provide the War

Most excellently, the gang recruited 35 stunning music people–and then me, to water it all down–to curate our own year-end mixes, and post them. Needless to say, I’m flattered to be in this company in any form. When they eventually post my mix, I’ll link to it. No doubt you’ll recognize a lot of the tracks from here and here, but not the order (hint: different order).

—————–

As far as 2008 goes, my thoughts on the past two-or-so weeks in new music (none of which is released yet), formatted in handy, faux-Carnac form.

Q: Remember in Citizen Kane, in the first example of Charles Foster’s power-hungry opulence, when he spearheaded the production of a song-based public performance vehicle strictly for girlfriend Susan Alexander to star in, despite her clear lack of singing talent? A: Hello, Blue Roses (sort of related, and sort of great: this)

Q: What do you call Ratatat* with mbiras? A: Mahjongg

Q: You know the archetype of the lonely late-30s dive bar waitress with half-decent smoke-filled pipes (if not necessarily an abundance of taste or ambition) who one night after hours powered up the house PA and made karaoke with the weirdly-stocked record selection? Okay, maybe I’m inventing an archetype, but play along. A: Jukebox

Q: Remember how awesome Cracker was c. Kerosene Hat? Lowry’s snarl and Hickman’s fire? (how ‘bout now?) Also, remember the Joe Strummer song from the opening credits of the batshit/short-lived John from Cincinnati? Now imagine those two interpreted by a gaggle of Plains Country twenty-somethings with a piano and a lady singer. A: Flowers Forever “Dirty Dollar Bill” (mp3)

* Budos Band may also be substituted here. Also, this is not necessarily a bad thing.

In the future, slightly longer things on School of Language, Evangelicals, Atlas Sound, Goldfrapp, Titus Andronicus, and Lil’ Wayne, all of which I like, some more than others.

—————-

Wayne Marshall recently had some thoughts on The Wire, currently entering its 5th season (and for which I, for unknown and completely frustrating reasons can’t at the moment locate a working Torrent), mostly about verisimilitude and jams, which the show has in bunches (for the former) and sporadically (for the latter). By “sporadically” I’m inferring what Wayne himself says: that the show works music into its very core (like ahem, sorry for the ad) atmospherically, yet not meaninglessly, and certainly not overwhelmingly, unlike much of its serialized network kin (hello, Friday Night Lights).

While I appreciate the verisimilitude, I appreciate Simon’s storytelling prowess on a broader level than just formal. Especially reflected in the first episode of the new season (about which after the first episode I share the “inside-baseball” trepidation of these two [Simon, of course, a news vet himself]), I love how he’s able to effortlessly parallel so many taken-for-granted social and industrial institutions–the drug trade, the working class, high-stakes city politics, schools, and now the newspaper biz–and make them look, minus the external frills, like they’re cast from the same frightening ideological mold. Juking the stats, punching up a lede, teaching the tests; all ways of misrepresenting and thus strengthening the otherwise rotten core. He’s cited as inspirations Robert Penn Warren and James Agee, both of whom feel very appropriate. So does this (callback!).

Simon might be our keenest long-form social critic working these days, so I have faith that the Sun season will shake out to be as great as its predecessors (my preference, FYI, in descending order: 4-2-1-3). What seems over-obvious and crudely sketched now (the ladder-climbing white guy, the inexperienced ethnic female/eager student) will hopefully acquire some crags and shadows by the 4th or 5th episode. At this very early stage, a role I particularly enjoy is the crusty old bearded night rewritist whose only function is to juke the copy into Strunk & White-for-newspapers grammatical form (”Buildings can be evacuated. People can’t be evacuated, unless it’s an enema”–I’m paraphrasing, by the way, pretty poorly). A couple bad places this could lead: he could a foil for a narrative thing on formulaicness overriding all other news concerns (too polemic), or he could stand in for the old-guard (corny sepia crap). I have faith Simon won’t lead it there (though lessers certainly would), but will let him be a great little minor and open character, drawn with minimal outlines but colorful enough to not simply hang on the wall. Like the beleaguered assistant principal from last season, or like Norris, most recently from 5.1’s cold open. To a large degree, these tertiary characters are The Wire’s lifeblood.

Tom B. on the recently-released soundtrack.

An interview with Simon by Nick Hornby, recently re-published online for freedom by Believer.

An older profile of Simon in the New Yorker.

Sort of kind of related, the first single from the new Malkmus/Jicks record, “Baltimore.”

—————–

And speaking of verisimilitude, the aforementioned Friday Night Lights, over the past few months, has pretty much spent all of the realist capital it accumulated during the first (wonderful) season. Mostly by the ridiculous (albeit necessary, I’m assuming, to try anything and everything to draw viewers into the show) and completely unbelievable subplot with which it started the season. I won’t get into details here (this post–scroll down but total spoiler, beware–encapsulates my feelings and those of no doubt many others), but I don’t think it made the season a complete loss. There was a high degree of absurdism in the storyline, which when combined with the affinities the first season had led me to develop with the two characters, made me feel a really queasy unease about the whole thing. Very, very uncomfortable in ways probably best explained by psychoanalysis, and not wholly (thought largely) about the dumbness of the whole thing. I strongly identify with Landry more than any other character on the show, and him going though that scenario was just sort of horrifying to watch. Silly, yes, but I can’t deny getting the sort of visceral reaction I never thought FNL would offer.

More subtly, however, the second season lived up to one of the more unfortunate tendencies only latent in the first. FNL is a very well-made and well-acted teen drama, let’s not disguise that point. But man, does every single character have to be motivated by purely carnal urges? And I could probably invent a drinking game for the number of times “character A is making out with someone, and character B accidentally sees it” happens on this show. Which is just on some Three’s Company shit, really. Secondly, the other trap into which shows like this can fall is the time-tested sacrifice of an important character’s backstory for a forced plot twist. Never in a million years would Coach Taylor, the most honest and fervent protector of a daughter I’ve seen maybe ever on television, allow slutty-ass Tim Riggins to stay in his home, with his daughter, unsupervised. Even worse, he’d never write the whole thing off with his concerned wife so cavalierly. Also: the Saracen/Carlotta thing? Have the writers seen Bottle Rocket one too many times or something? And please don’t get me started on the essentializing, after-school specialty/racial parody that is Santiago, either. The WS of him sitting on “his first real bed” that ended one episode this season made me groan aloud, and no one was present.

One really good thing is the continued presence of John Leland’s Buddy Garrity character. Leland gets to chew the exact amount of scenery he needs, and makes the most of his time–his loyalties are way too far in the non-family direction, and he pays for it dearly, but he’s still a pathetic, loveable (and of course rich) loser. Leland has mastered that combination of weasely car-salesman doubletalk with an underlying sweetness; you know he’s going to fuck up, but you still pull for him anyway.

One other good thing, related to the earlier discussion of internal music: in episode 10, during the dance sequence toward the end, the montage that cuts from “Soulja Boy” to Charlie Rich’s tearjerker “The Most Beautiful Girl.” A perfect encapsulation of the musical and emotional poles of such an occasion.