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June 30, 2008  Making a good album is harder than it used to be. Donna Summer's "comeback" CD, Crayons, was recently released as part of Summer's much-hyped new major label deal, and I can't imagine something being less appropriate of a career-revitalization vehicle for her. It sounds like no one associated with the project has ever listened to a Donna Summer song before, let alone actually figured out what elements people might like to hear in a new Donna Summer track. By making her run through the paces of a lot of really bland, overproduced tracks in eight or nine different dancey genres, it comes off as a cloying, tuneless mess. I mean, she's singing about iPods on track 2; who wants to hear that? The beauty of Summer's successful, towering Giorgio Moroder disco records is that they had a singular, brilliant production focus. (Even the Stock-Aitken-Waterman stuff arguably can be included in that category with less emphasis on the "brilliant.") But here, I can't overstate the bad choices made by the producers on this album. It can all be summed up in the title track, a would-be reggae stomper on which Ziggy Marley appears, and on which Summer sings with a Jamaican accent. Whoever thought it was acceptable to include that on the album, and as the title track no less, was not thinking very clearly. (For a more charitable review of the album, see the fantastic blog Disco Delivery, with which I must respectfully disagree.) And Madonna's new CD, Hard Candy, a production blessed with unlimited resources, fares little better. It's easily Madonna's worst album, and I'm including American Life in that calculus. A bunch of warmed over Timbaland beats of the variety that have showed up literally everywhere for the past three years--from Justin Timberlake to Bjork to Duran Duran--can simply not be considered fresh. And there is nothing compelling going on over the beats; what happened to the songs? May 31, 2008  I recently bought Jean Michel Jarre's 30th Anniversary Oxygene: New Master Recording and find that the set, while interesting, is not entirely successful. Oxygene is an iconic 1977 album in the field of 70s progressive Euro instrumentalism, a genre also occupied by Vangelis, Mike Oldfield, and Tangerine Dream, to name a few. Its most famous bit, "Oxygene IV," is a jaunty synth number that, while not instantly familiar in America, has popped up all over the place for the last thirty years, including in GTA IV. For the 30th anniversary, Jarre, who is the son of Lawrence of Arabia composer Maurice Jarre, recreated the entire album: every blip, every wind noise, every synth voice, and every arpeggio sound (almost) exactly like that on the old recording, and were allegedly created with the original instruments. Of course, the new recording is a bit meatier because it was recorded with modern equipment. For true fans, Jarre has also included a DVD that contains a "live" studio performance of Oxygene by Jean Michel and his buddies, as well as a surround mix of the album. The Oxygene 30th Anniversary project owes more than a little to Mike Oldfield's very similar recreation of his legendary Tubular Bells, which Oldfield did for its 30th anniversary in 2003. I always suspected the Oldfield project was inspired mainly by record company feuding; Oldfield famously hated Richard Branson and Virgin, with whom he signed a bad 13-album deal to get the original Tubular Bells released in 1973, and making an entirely new Tubular Bells master seemingly gave his new record company a way to sell the old album without violating Virgin's license on the sound recording. Similarly, Jarre has switched labels and may have been looking for a way to get sales of his most famous album--and perennial back catalog favorite--into his new deal. But what's also interesting is the way the two artists tried to recapture the successes of their most famous albums in the 90s before cynically giving up and simply recreating the original albums in their entirety. As I have described before, Oldfield did Tubular Bells 2 and Tubular Bells III in 1992 and 1998, respectively. Jarre, for his part, did Oxygene 7-14 in 1997. In Oldfield's case, the Tubular Bells sequels were attempts to completely rework the original with more modern styles, and revitalized his career after a couple pretty bad would-be pop records at the end of his Virgin deal. For Jarre, Oxygene 7-14 was a return to form after some rather crappy DX7-sounding new age albums. In my opinion, the sequel projects were vastly preferable to the "recreation" projects, because they showcased the artists doing interesting things. Counting these recreations as new albums is a bit dissonant to me, because there's not much fun in sitting around trying to spot the subtle differences between the originals and the re-recordings. For Tubular Bells 2003, Oldfield added some obvious digital junk--especially near the end of Part I--that sucked, but at least it gave the fan something to listen for. Oxygene is even less interesting because it is faithful to the original to a fault. May 06, 2008 April 19, 2008  Mike Oldfield's most recent album, Music of the Spheres, was released in March. It's fantastic, and immediately recalls a "classical" version of Tubular Bells, with a little bit more thematic development and a focus on rich melodies. Mostly orchestral, Spheres hits many of the highlights of Oldfield's career, such as a gorgeous Incantations-flavored bit in "Shabda" and some Ommadawn-style classical guitar virtuosity in "Silhouette." When I heard that Music of the Spheres was to be a "classical" orchestral release, I was ready to be annoyed and bored. Mike's previous experiments with orchestra, a long track on the pleasant-but-inconsequential Voyager and the embarrassing Millennium Bell, were fairly syrupy, dull and underwhelming. But the arrangements on Spheres are uniformly energetic and fresh. I have to say, it was about time Mike did something good. One of my favorite all-around musicians, his last great achievement was Tubular Bells III, which was ten years ago, and I was really worrying that he'd lost his touch. While I loved the electronica flavor of TB III, I thought Mike's subsequent forays into dance music were pretty pathetic, especially 2002's Tres Lunas and 2005's Light + Shade, parts of which sounded dangerously like background music for The Weather Channel. In an unrelated tidbit, the biggest news in the film score community recently is the release, after 23 years, of Jerry Goldsmith's thundering score to Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend. The 3000-copy limited edition sold out within two days, a powerful testament to Goldsmith's continued drawing power. The Baby score is an absolutely classic iteration of the Goldsmith formula: take a crappy genre movie, write a complex, percussive, beautiful score that absolutely puts the movie to shame, and have the movie and score go completely unnoticed. March 30, 2008  As promised, I've produced, shot and edited an online minidocumentary, "The King of America." It features my friend John, who just wrote a book about the Rev. Sun Myung Moon and his surprising influence in Washington. The documentary has appeared on Boing Boing and Wonkette, and we had a blast making it. The best version is online at www.thekingofamerica.com, and it's also available in two parts on YouTube. Enjoy! March 06, 2008  My good friend John Gorenfeld's new book, pictured here at the Barnes & Noble in Tribeca, has just been released. Several years in the making, it is the definitive look at the astonishing empire of Rev. Sun Myung Moon and its influence in Washington, and I suggest you pick up your copy at Amazon. John and I spent two weeks in January filming some entertaining promo videos for the book at Moon-related sites in New York and Washington; those videos will be available soon when the promotional effort for the book gets fully underway. March 04, 2008
One of the most amazing stories I have read in a long time is the stunning tale of Love and Consequences, a fake memoir written by a white woman who claimed to have grown up in a black foster family in South Central L.A. The story has many interesting angles, but the one that is most troubling is the idea that you don't even have to put on blackface anymore to have a minstrel show. This woman supposedly snookered the entire New York literary world into believing that she was biracial and had been a gang member. In reality, she grew up in the Valley and, obviously, suffers from some serious problems. The Times posted an excerpt of the book, which is pretty offensive when viewed in light of the fact that it isn't true. Even more amazing is this breathtakingly pompous NPR piece where she talks about growing up in the ghetto.
February 23, 2008
I imagine Pennsylvania law students held extraordinary celebrations when this happened. Sadly, the Rule Against Perpetuities is alive and well on the MBE, which is such a terrible, maligned test that the organization responsible for it has a hilarious "myths and facts" section offering a rather limp defense of it.
January 20, 2008  So there's a new Star Trek movie coming out. There's a teaser trailer for it that actually impressed me. Considering that this new movie is a huge-budget re-envisioning of the franchise set before the first episode of the original series, it got me thinking: One of the more interesting underreported battles in the history of Trek is the one in the late 80s and early 90s between Eileen Roddenberry, Gene's first wife, and Majel Roddenberry, his second wife and the executor of his estate, over whether the 1969 divorce settlement between the original Roddenberrys gave Eileen royalties over future Star Trek projects, or just royalities from profits derived from the original 1966-1969 series. The trial court found that Eileen should get royalties from The Next Generation and Deep Space 9, but not from The Animated Series, the movies, or any Trek merchandising. This was because, the court said, The Next Generation and DS9 were "continuations" of the original TV show. The appellate court, in an oft-cited opinion, determined that Eileen Roddenberry was entitled to royalties from the original TV show only, because the divorce settlement did not contemplate the future projects. (These royalties had amounted to, at the time, "only" $13.8 million.) Here's the court opinion, which amusingly dissects the Trek franchise, and also reveals that Shatner has a small piece of royalities in the original show. So, if I were an enterprising California lawyer, I'd be wondering whether Eileen Roddenberry or her estate would be entitled to a piece of the new movie, considering that it is essentially a remake of the 60s show using the original characters. Under this opinion, the answer is probably no. December 22, 2007  As I make my annual preparations for Life Day, I had a frightening thought: The Star Wars Holiday Special will not enter the public domain until January 1, 2074, assuming that there aren't any more questionably constitutional retroactive copyright extensions. Will it be officially released or re-broadcast before then, and, if not, will anyone in 2074 care about it? I looked up the Copyright Office registrations for the legendary program, and found two funny character copyright registrations, one for "baby wookie," described as having a "ghoulish face with animal's nose and long hair," and one for "grandfather wookie," described as having a "ghoulish face with protruding gums and long hair." |
