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The Descendants: You know from the start how it’s going to end, but the journey to get there is so fresh and engaging that the lack of surprise doesn’t matter. Proving again (and again) that subject matter is neutral, it’s either done well or done badly. YES.

Martha Marcy May Marlene: The younger sis of the Olsen twins is getting rave reviews for her performance, which is what reviewers always say about an actress playing a troubled person. Think Angelina Jolie in “Girl Interrupted” or Natalie Portman in “Black Swan.” But the movie is fabulous. Just chilling. YES.

“El Camino” by the Black Keys: It’s 70s rock that your indie friends will dig. LOVE it. Also appreciate the way these guys are a little dorky and self-effacing, meaning their drama and personalities don’t get in the way of the music. BIG YES.

“Homeland” on TV: Wow, this show is blowing me away. Smart, with lots of twists. YES.

“Dexter” on TV: This is one of my favorite seasons because of all the creepy religious stuff and the character development on Deb as the new lieutenant. YES.

Oh look, straight As. Excellent report card dears.

masculine

feminine

Reading Just Kids with my book club, and it brings back memories. These two albums above, Horses and Easter, were important to me when I arrived in Los Angeles for a weekend and never left. I was lost with nowhere to go so L.A. was as good a place as another. Got a job at Brentano’s and listened to a lot of Miss Smith. Found out from the book that upon arriving lost in New York, she too worked at Brentano’s for a bridge job.

A vignette from the book. She went back to a former apartment to claim her things but decided to leave it all there. “I was too curious about the future to look back,” she wrote.

Sorry, but I miss Esa Pekka

When we took our seats for last night’s symphony at the Disney Hall, most noticeable was the massing of percussion instruments on the stage. “Oh, God,” I groaned, “an audience torturer.” Garth, who is much more open-minded than I, gave me a stern wait-and-see look. Dudamel took the mic and explained that this was the first piece he ever commissioned and when he first got the score he was lost. Evidentally he never got found because the piece was dreadful. Over 40 minutes of “experimental” completely atonal percussion — musicians playing the side of cymbals with a violin bow, hitting giant hubcap-like instruments with drumsticks, at one point shaking a gourd.

“I never thought I’d hear the soundtrack to Jurassic Park at the Disney Hall,” Garth whispered archly. Clearly the audience agreed because the performance only got half a standing ovation instead of the usual audience jumping to their feet at the lowering of the baton, and applauding for at least 20 minutes.

NO NO NO

The revenge of testosterone

Game of Thrones on HBO. Pop culture lately has been filled with slacker and stoner guys: think of the Jackass series or any of the deadbeats from the Judd Apatow movies. GT hearkens to a medieval fantasy world drenched in testosterone, where men take whores, drink ale and march into battle, where it’s acceptable for a man to arrange a marriage for his unwilling sister, saying: “I would let all 40,000 men in his army fuck you and their horses too if it would get my kingdom back.”  It’s visually cool but the woman-shaming aspect might be too much to take. There’s only been one episode so far, so I’m going withhold judgment.  NOT SURE

The Escort at the Geffen: Flat-out brilliant theatre from a playwright who understands the complexity of human motivations, especially in the area of sexuality. She has an ear for dialogue between the professional woman and her teenage son. My friend Amy and I both have boys that age and kept giving each other knowing glances — my kid does that.  BIG YES

Win Win. A small film with Paul Giametti which doesn’t have the Hollywood ending that might be expected from the title. Rather, it’s about the small and large sacrifices necessary to make it through the day. This is real life, not processed pap like “The Blind Side.”  BIG YES

Steve Wynn and the Miracle 3; Northern Aggression. As a monster Dream Syndicate fan during the 80s, I was thrilled to read a positive Rolling Stone review about this new album, and immediately hit download. It’s as if 20 years never happened and this is Wynn’s solo project after the break up of Syndicate. On heavy rotation now as my running music.  YES

The “Friday” video and all its parodies are charming in a silly way. She’s only 13 so how can you expect the sophistication of PJ Harvey? Then my kids showed me a clip of Rebecca Black on the Leno show and it all became clear. Her mother paid $2,000 for her to show up at a studio, where a music company handed her the song and shot the video. Presumably that’s her singing, but it’s so autotuned who knows what she really sounds like. Travesty! The whole thing is a prefab fake!

I originally thought that she had written the song and her friends shot the video with a Flip and edited it in iMovie. I was giving her abundant credit, even if the writing was dreadful. Realizing she showed up and paid for package sends it way out into the vapid-o-sphere.

MORE PROCESSED THAN CHEEZ WHIZ

It’s a sad commentary that nothing on the Top 40 charts sounds real. Does Britney sound different than Christina than Rhihanna? Does anyone actually play an instrument? And what’s with autotune — they all sound like Watson on Jeopardy.

Which is why I’m listening to bluegrass. I recently discovered it while watching my new favorite show Justified. The characters are hillbillies from Kentucky  who sit on their front porch on wooden rockers and kick out the bluegrass jams, and I love it. The music speaks to me. I bought the soundtrack of Cold Mountain, which is Jack White and Allison Krauss doing their take on the genre, and an album by Steve Martin, the uber-talented comedian/actor/writer/banjo player.

The music sounds so authentic that the craft of the playing and the strength of the emotion in the voices shines through. My kids make fun of me, I don’t care. Sure beats the hell out of “Friday” any day of the week.

Last night, my three teenage children and I braved the rain to attend a performance at the Disney Hall. It was a piano concerto by Mozart and a Hadyn symphony. There were very few teenagers in the hall, so I’m thinking that the parents either don’t want to spring for tickets for their kids or they can’t wedge them away from YouTube for an evening. Here are some tricks that have worked for me:

1. Have a great attitude about it yourself. Let them know it’s a special (read: expensive) event and they are lucky to be able to go.

2. Expect resistance. That’s a job requirement of being a teenager, to be the loyal opposition. My response is always, “It’s 90 minutes out of your life for this amazing cultural experience. If you can tell me what you’re going to be doing during that time that’s more important, I’m all ears.”

3. Driving home, say, “I know it’s not really your thing, but thanks for going. It’s good to introduce yourself to new experiences.”

You know you’ve won them when you overhear a phone call to their friends reporting how cool it was. The last rule is: Never gloat. Never say, “I told you so.”

Was listening the an interview with My Chemical Romance on KROQ this morning, and one of the guys made a good point.

The record execs and musicians blame the download technology (starting with Napster) for the piracy that’s killing the industry. Even with people who pay for the music, consumers have the option now to download songs rather than a whole record, leading to the death of the album as a concept.

Artists need to take a share of the blame. For decades they knew they could put out an album with two or three great cuts that would make it into radio rotation, and the rest could be filler. The kids would have to buy the album because it was the only option. Sure, let the bass player write a song, sure we’ll cover some esoteric swami music, whatever.

When iTunes with the option to buy one track came available — along with stolen copyright-violating music — of course the consumer fought back after being underestimated for so long.

Still bringing it

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Gary Numan had a monster new wave hit in the early eighties, “Cars.” Don’t pretend you don’t remember, I can hear you humming the melody. Turns out that was about his experience coping with his undiagnosed Aspbergers: “Here in my car I feel safest of all…”

What’s interesting about Gary Numan is that rather than recreating his successful single over and over or dropping out of the scene altogether, he evolved as a musician and at 52, is still vital in the darkwave/industry territory worked by Nine-Inch-Nails. My sister Sara (much, much younger than me) said they played a lot of Gary Numan at the goth clubs in Seattle.

I was looking around the audience at the El Rey show last week, a mix of young and old hip LA, and thinking, the more mature members of the crowd have evolved in their musical tastes along with Gary Numan. Most people stay with the popular bands of their youth their whole lives. But c’mon people, how many times can you listen to the same 100 classic rock songs? Think “Hotel California,” “Wish You Were Here,” “Sweet Home Alabama” — those songs were brilliant when they were released but after 30 years of continuous play, they have lost their power. They are wallpaper now. In order to have a visceral experience with music, it needs to be fresh.

What is most fresh is when an artist from one’s youth releases such interesting new material that after three decades he still qualifies as indie.

A big YES.

She's fabulous

Cover story in Cosmo about that ultra fabulous Lady Gaga. I was puzzled by this snippet:

We offer her a cocktail, but she has a soldout concert in a few hours, and she doesn’t want to drink before the show.

WTF? She doesn’t want to have a cocktail hours before a show? I’m wondering what happened to the spirit of rock n’ roll where the crowd waited hours for Axl Rose to sober up enough to be pushed onstage for a Guns n’ Roses show. This millenial generation is so careful, so tofu, so condom. I suppose it’s progress, but there’s a piece missing.