Mary… Poppins? Musical theater isn’t my thing.

FROM JASON’S LONG, SAD AFTERNOON – Andrew and I have often discussed our very different opinions on musical theater. I am not fond of it, while he tends to be a fan.

Two-and-a-half hours trapped today in a balcony seat affirmed why I eschew this particular medium. It’s the singing. And the dancing.

Please don’t misunderstand; both in small doses can be just fine. But the live version of Disney’s Mary Poppins can’t stand against the 1964 film starring Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke. On stage, the actors put so much weight into the song-and-dance routines that they miss out on what I love best about stories — the  characterization.

It was the wife’s idea — or maybe her revenge after I forced her to sit through Star Trek — to hit the State Theater on Playhouse Square in downtown Cleveland. She’s a huge fan of children’s media as long as it’s ripped from a book and in no way contains transforming robots, laser-wielding terrorists, cat-men with magic swords, any manifestation of ninja (mutant or otherwise), or is any way related to either DC or Marvel. Also, science fiction in her eyes is bad, whilst magic is just peachy.

She loves the singing. And the dancing. Sigh.

She must also love being too far away from the action to see any facial acting. And she must love that the actors rush through spoken lines too quickly to get to sing-song ones. She must hate dramatic pauses, establishing shots, and all the dynamism that comes with camera-work. Film editing must be anathema.

But she sure liked the disturbing narcissism and cold shoulder-ing that Poppins embraced in her live role, which if IMDB is to believed is actually much closer to how the character acted in the source material by novelist P.L. Travers. In addition, there were homoerotic living statues, a scene where toys come to life (which was cut from the Disney film), and not a dancing penguin to be seen.

But that’s just the method of delivery. Make no bones about it, I’ve always loved the film version of Poppins, and couldn’t stop whistling the catchy Sherman Brothers songs all the way home. Chim-chim-char-oo indeed! Look, I’m just a guy who likes to drink beer and play video games. Musical theater crosses a line that can sometimes be masked on film. That’s all I’m saying.

Not everything about the theater performance was unbearable. The sets were amazing works of both engineering and art, with some very clever built-in special effects that made the production just as much a magic show as a story. Sometimes the wires were visible, but other times the ingenuity of the builders had me scratching my head and wondering where the trap doors and puppet actors could possibly be hidden, or whether they were using radio controls and servos to accomplish certain effects.

Matter of fact, I spent more time wondering trying to reverse engineer the set than I did paying attention to the actors. Or the singing. And the dancing.

My mind also wandered thematically as Bert mused about the self-reflexive nature of Mary Poppins’ appearance. Cyclism is a time-honored philosophical device… the Norse had their Ouroboros, the snake eating its own tail, and Battlestar Galactica had its refrain of,  “All of this has happened before and will happen again.” Bert suggests in both the stage and screen versions that Poppins works in much the same way, and that this story is just one of many in which she’s involved herself.

Bert’s authority on that matter has always intrigued me. There’s never an explanation for how Poppins knows Bert, or from whence comes his narrative omniscience. I posit that either A) Mary was summoned as Bert’s nanny when he was a child or B) he’s a kindred magical spirit.

I’m glad the writers left the matter ambiguous. Can you imagine the same movie written today? The producers would insist, of course, of sapping the power out of the enigma by creating a concrete backstory for who Mary is, where she comes from, where she returns to. There would be an elaborate scene showing her origin. There might even be a montage showing her popping up in conspicuous places throughout history.

Also left unabashedly unexplained is the subtle romance between Mary and Bert… which Travers allegedly hated. The story goes that she made Walt Disney promise not to slip it into the script (yet there it is, underplayed and remaining a loose string to this day).

Word is that Travers didn’t like anything about the Disney version — hating it to the point of storming out of the premier. She had script approval on the film, but Walt laughed last by clinching final draft approval and giving a firm rejection to her attempted rewrites.

She also didn’t like the singing. And the dancing.

It didn’t matter. It was Disney’s most expensive film to date, but it was also the highest-grossing of the lot from 1965 to 1985. It raked in $102.5 million at the box office and won five Academy Awards.

Read This: VH1’s 100 Greatest Albums

FROM JASON’S HESITANCE – Let’s get this clear up front: Normally, I wouldn’t rely on VH1 as the arbiter of taste. And usually I wouldn’t bother with a coffee table book, let alone recommend it.

But as I thumbed through this one while standing over the $2 clearance bin at Barnes & Noble, I realized that these pastiches were the story of my youth. They were the time-warped-and-faded record covers my dad played over and over as he burned through turntable needles like matchsticks.

In case you’ve never tried, let me explain that writing about music is very difficult. But here are compiled novelists’, biographers’, journalists’, VH1 produces’, songwriters’, and DJs’ insights and warm memories of how everyone from the King of Rock to the King of Pop to the King of Soul changed everything. And in-between, there are odes to Bowie, Aretha, u2,  Radiohead, Bob Marley, Jeff Buckley, NWA, AC/DC, Kraftwerk, Van Morrison, The Beastie Boys, Otis Redding… well, I’m not going to list all of them.

The rankings aren’t arbitrary — they were voted upon (in 2003) by 700 industry insiders “from Art Garfunkel to Britney Spears” and including radio programmers, critics, and disc jockeys.

The unmitigated victors, of course, and as they should be, are The Beatles, who in the countdown seal four of the top 10 spots (with a fifth album ranking in at number 11). I can hardly argue with reviewer Eric Wybenga’s praise of Revolver’s sitar-versus-backmasking eclecticism, or editor Jacob Hoye’s colorful comparisons of Abbey Road to both Dr. Seuss and Shel Silverstein in the same breath.

It’s not a perfect list by any means, but that can be expected of direct democracy. Nevermind is sort of self-consciously thrust into the number two spot ahead of Pet Sounds (a travesty, possibly a capital offense), while Thriller, the dominant force in my life circa 1985-1995, ranks a lowly number 23. I don’t want to stoop to an ad populum fallacy here, but it’s the best-selling album of all time for a good reason; it could have easily replaced Joni Mitchell’s Blue at the 14 spot, or The Joshua Tree at 15. RIP, Michael.

Dark Side of the Moon, which I consider the most cohesive album and certainly the best concept album, didn’t hit the top 50. Crime. Meanwhile, Appetite for Destruction hit number 42 to edge out both Led Zeppelin and Led Zeppelin II (Physical Graffiti also makes the list even further down).

The Pixies — who more than Nirvana birthed the alternative genre — do not even make the list. Enough said. Conversely, Curtis Mayfield’s Superfly and Tina Turner’s Private Dancer cripple the list by even being there.

All that aside, what make VH1’s 100 Greatest Albums work are the stories.

There are the historical looks at Fleetwood Mac’s tragically romantic entanglements (Rumours chronicles the break-ups of John and Christine McVie and of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks). There are musings on how Public Enemy’s potent rhymes about the black expierience really scared white parents on It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. There’s the utter godsmacked-ness over how Stevie Wonder played every single instrument — no outside help at all — on Innervisions. And there’s writer Matthew Specktor’s almost embarrassingly personal essay on how he discovered Tom Verlaine’s “thyroidal singing” on Television’s Marquee Moon.

I could go on, gushing about the treatment of Sex Machine and Mothership Connection and Astral Weeks and Abraxas. But there’s too much too cover — just read it.

Introduction – Rebellious Music

FROM THE DESK OF SAIL – School spirit is lackluster at Mira Costa High. After four years there, I’m convinced that you’ll never find a group more jaded and cynical than us. Really, it’s a wonder someone hasn’t tried to burn the place down by now.

But, then again, it might not be. Our school has but one shining pillar of pride, something that faculty may not recognize but every student does. The fact is, our school is the site of formation of some of the most influential California punk rock bands ever, including Black Flag, Redd Kross, Descendents, Circles Jerks, Pennywise, and now up-and-coming pop-punkers Defense Breaks Down.

And why not? When you take a bunch of rich, spoiled white kids and cram them all together in a scenic and sheltered community, some punk rawkin’ is bound to happen. This music all about sticking it to the man in ways that only someone who grew up protected from the realities of the world could be naive enough to dream up.

But don’t get me wrong, I love punk. I love house shows. I love moshing. I love NoFX, The Clash, and old Green Day (fuck 21st Century Breakdown!). But, most of all, I love all the great new things happening in the scene these days.

Alchohol-free and all-ages artspace The Smell in LA is a frequent haunt for many avant-garde punk bands like Abe Vigoda, Mika Miko, and No Age. The venue is a non-profit, volunteer-run institution. The entrance fee is usually about five bucks, and that gets you into a show with anywhere between three to seven bands performing. Totally punk rock, right?

When caught up with the kind of stuff that’s happening at The Smell, it’s easy to forget how ridiculously mainstream punk has become. The pop-punk, post-hardcore, and emo bands of today make some of the most popular and played rock and roll songs of this millennium. You can’t walk into a mall these days without seeing a Hot Topic store all decked-out in its black and plaid merchandise. When punk rock goes corporate, you know we’re fucked.

Furthermore, I assert to you, ladies and gentleman, that the following track is more “punk” than every band that has been listed above put together:

more about “MTV MUSIC – They Might Be Giants – Th…“, posted with vodpod

Let’s set the scene. It’s 1990. They Might Be Giants have released a hit album entitled Flood. Critics are hailing TMBG the next big thing in music and what the new decade is going to be all about.

Fast forward two years. In space-aged 1992, popular music has changed dramatically. Grunge is heralded as the definitive sound of 90s rock. Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and the rest rein over college radio.

But do They Might Be Giants care? Not a bit. In the midst of this ‘rebellious’ new sound, they released Apollo 18, which contained the lyrically bizarre song you just heard, horns, accordion, and all. It also contained an experimental song made up of 21 separate tracks entitled “Fingertips” to make use of the shuffle feature newly available on many music players at the time.

The truth is, I can go on and on about punk and what it means to be punk, but punk is punk and will always be punk. It’s a style of music that was once innovative and rebellious but now is standard and accepted.

While those LA bands are doing some new things in terms of use of noise in their music, which is the topic of a future post, at its core their music is no different from what you hear playing at Hot Topic. Not spontaneous, not innovative, just plain old punk.

In a series of posts, I will be highlighting artists that I believe are encompassing the true spirit of punk rock: innovation, experimentation, and, most of all, a “fuck you” attitude toward the accepted norms of music. It’s all about disrupting people’s opinions and breaking down the walls that bind you. Soon, you’ll see just how much arranging series of frequencies in particular patterns can really fuck shit up.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Hot Topic is not punk rock.

Elton John and Billy Joel: It’s still rock and roll to me

FROM JASON’S TICKET STUB – We followed the tide of aging men and their clean-cut cougar wives Saturday night from the halls of Cleveland’s Tower City, through the Gateway tunnel, and into The Q.

Everywhere we looked, there were polo shirts.

I quipped at one point that the security guards might single me out as suspicious since I don’t have a bald spot — the one thing almost every other man in the horde had in common. I’m a walking Rogaine commercial; each of my hairs has its own head of hair.

We laughed at the expense of the nearby 50-somethings, but my joke led me to wonder silently whether as 29-year-olds we’d be relevant at this concert. After all, there were very few people under 40 in the mass of 20,000 who crowded into the arena to see Sir Elton John and Billy Joel.

We felt isolated.

That changed when the lights came up and two concert pianos rose through the floor to settle on the stage. Here were two rock gods sitting (about a football field’s length) before us, perhaps the greatest musical geniuses of their era. I had listened to their songs hundreds and hundreds of times. Nevermind that their tunes had been repackaged into greatest hits compilations by the time I was ready to understand their tales of love, loss, pain, and triumph. These two pianists were my bards.

We were perched at the front of the second-floor balcony, a long (as the picture shows) way from the action. But it almost felt like I was stage-side as Sir Elton (at 62 years old) did a risky handstand on his piano. Meanwhile, Joel (50) mixed it up with bawdy jokes and some acrobatic mic stand-twirling drills.

I got my money’s worth. It was all I could do not to mist over in nostalgic elation seeing these legends belt out Benny and the Jets, Rocket Man, We Didn’t Start the Fire, and Piano Man. But I’m a man, so I kept it all inside. I’m also stupidly puritan, so I refrained from the drunken dancing the guppies were engaged in all around the arena.

Besides, I have little to no rhythm.

I like to think that what I lack in body-movin’ I make up for in analysis. When not reveling in the light show — which was amazing — I starting comparing and contrasting John’s and Joel’s performances.

My conclusion: Billy Joel is the winner (if it were a competition).

Joel’s portfolio is more technically dynamic, building on horns and complex counter-timing and overall musicality. John instead presents very simple, heartfelt melodies built on the backs of blues riffs. Johns’ style might be more effective in reaching his audience and building their time-tested loyalty (he received far more applause), but Joels’ sounds were better.

There was also a marked difference between the way the two giants metered out their energy during the concert. Joel compacted his into tight upgrades on the studio versions, while John elongated his standards into captivating, looping jams.

Regardless of who “won,” both men’s styles are remnants of a day when popular music engaged listeners by using something called “talent,” coupled with something called “innovation.” There is a dearth of such novelties in today’s clutch of cloned-sounding FM bar chords, howling vocals, distortion, and pop-princess bubblegum crap.

I just wish that the music of these two heroes wouldn’t be relegated to the murky realms of “adult contemporary” radio. John and Joel used to be revolutionaries. They were the rebellious young rockers. In their time, they were the ones bringing a crude new noise to challenge the old “good” music.

I don’t want them to be oldies.