The Doctor Is In

Jahnke's Record Collection: In Defense Of Schlock

2011-02-15T15:00:00.000-08:00

If you were to look through my CD collection, you’d quickly realize things are broken down into three general sections. Like a lot of movie buffs, I have quite a few soundtrack albums. Far less than hardcore soundtrack collectors but more than the average person, who typically only has a few of the pop-rock compilation variety. There’s a section devoted to classical music, smaller than I’d like but enough to provide a pleasant soundtrack on Sunday mornings while reading The New York Times in an overstuffed leather chair should I ever decide to completely devote my life to pretentious snobbery.

Before you get to either of these two sections, there’s Everything Else. I don’t segregate my albums according to rock, jazz, country or whatever, mainly because this is my home, not a record store. It’s arranged alphabetically, so the Beach Boys and the Beastie Boys hang out side by side, Johnny Cash rubs shoulders with Nick Cave, and Miles Davis rests comfortably next to Dead Can Dance.

Obviously I have more albums by some artists than others, so if you’re just giving the rack a cursory glance, some names are going to jump out at you. But if you give it a closer look, you’ll run across a few albums, primarily greatest hits collections, that could seriously jeopardize your opinion of me as a hipster douchebag. Here’s where we enter the world of schlock pop, songs of debatable musical value that makes a huge impact on the greater world of pop culture. I am not embarrassed to admit that I own (and play) greatest hits albums by ABBA, Duran Duran, Eurythmics, Tom Jones and yes, even Madonna.

I never owned a Madonna album during her 80s heyday. I didn’t need to. The woman was inescapable. Switch on MTV at any time of the day and if they weren’t already playing one of her videos, wait ten minutes and one would turn up. I didn’t like all of her music. “Borderline” was the only song from her first album that I could tolerate. But I more or less enjoyed quite a few from the years between Like A Virgin and Like A Prayer. When The Immaculate Collection was released, I didn’t hesitate to make it the first Madonna album I owned. (Come to think of it, that’s not 100% true. I attended a midnight screening of Dick Tracy where a local radio station gave away free copies of I’m Breathless. I didn’t buy the record but I didn’t exactly toss it in the garbage, either.)

These days, if Madonna is discussed at all, it’s usually in terms of her style, her image, her personality and her influence. The music has almost become a footnote. Admitting that you like Madonna opens you up to all kinds of ridicule, especially if you’re a heterosexual male. This strikes me as odd. Let’s turn back to my media library for a minute. If you were to scan my DVD shelves, you’d see plenty of movies like Showgirls, Troll 2, Xanadu, and others that can in no way be considered good films. Yet very few people would blink an eye at their presence.

It boils down to a fundamental but often unexpressed difference between music and any other art form. Enjoyment of a particular song or album is pure, unfiltered by any stopgaps or prior awareness of it. Either a song connects with you or it doesn’t. You either like it or you don’t. You can’t enjoy music ironically, the way many of us dig crappy movies like The Room. You can hear a song and on an intellectual level think it’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever heard in your life. But music doesn’t work on an intellectual level, at least not entirely. Music is a drug that taps directly into a primeval part of your brain and makes you happy or sad or romantic or nostalgic or even some magical cocktail combination of emotions that can’t be expressed any other way but through a song.

We cannot predict how we’ll respond to a song and this is one of the things that makes music so thrilling. I can’t stand it when I hear people say they enjoy all music except rap or country or whatever. As far as I’m concerned, these people simply need to dig deeper. If you keep your ears and mind open, you can make some remarkable discoveries. I’ve never heard so much as a second of a Justin Bieber song and, while I may not think it’s very likely that I’ll enjoy his music, if I did, I’d be only to happy to fess up to it.

We live in very strange times. Thanks to Facebook, blogging and whatnot, we’re theoretically sharing more about ourselves than ever before. But like attracts like and it’s all too easy to stay cooped up in our virtual bubbles, discovering more and more about things we already know we like but nothing at all about anything else. Radio and television both now cater to specific individual tastes. I enjoy Pandora quite a bit and I’ve discovered some new bands that way but it hasn’t introduced me to completely new forms of music I’d have never heard otherwise. We’re sharing more but discovering less and this is true across the board, for music, movies, TV, books, you name it. If Madonna was starting out today, I’d probably be dimly aware of her music at best. Why? Because she’d only be played on the radio alongside Lady Gaga and Katy Perry on a station I don’t listen to because I’ve predetermined that I don’t like most of what they play. The only reason I’ve heard anything by Katy Perry is because they play that station over the loudspeaker at my local carwash and I forgot to bring my iPod that day.

The only real shot a recording artist has at expanding beyond their core audience today is nabbing a spot on a talk show like Letterman or Conan O’Brien. I’d have never given a thought to Janelle Monae if I hadn’t seen her bring the house down on Letterman. If I’d missed that performance, I never would have discovered her album The Archandroid, which quickly became one of my favorite records of 2010. I’m glad I found her but how many other acts slipped beneath my radar? How do you convince someone who listens mainly to indie rock to give something massively popular a shot? Even more troubling, where does a hip-hop fan go to learn about jazz? For that matter, how do they even learn they might want to learn about jazz in the first place?

I don’t have any answers to these questions. I wish I did. When my friends post music on Facebook, I listen to it, whether or not I’m familiar with it or my tastes perfectly align with their own. Sometimes that leads me to reconsider bands I’d previously dismissed. Other times, it just reaffirms what I thought in the first place. But no matter what, if there is pleasure to be derived from those few minutes, I embrace it without asking questions and go looking for more. Now if you’ll excuse me, “Material Girl” just started playing and I love that song.

Jahnke's Record Collection: Van Dyke Parks - Discover America

2010-11-19T10:30:00.000-08:00

And we’re back!

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted one of these blog entries. I apologize to those of you who were just starting to get into them. Part of the delay had to do with this year’s Hell Plaza Oktoberfest for The Digital Bits, which effectively wipes out all other projects for the entire month of October. But besides that, Jahnke’s Record Collection had fallen victim to something that happens quite a bit with me. I was overthinking it. I had an idea for an entry back in September which would have been a year-by-year look at albums that had shaped my life since my birth. I still think it’s a neat idea. It’s also ridiculously ambitious and pretty far afield from my original concept for the Record Collection blogs.

So I’m gonna try this again, hopefully on a more consistent basis this time. For those of you who may have forgotten the original idea (like I obviously did), it’s quite simple. Every week, I select an album completely at random from my collection, give it a few listens, then write up my impressions of it, history with it, and in a few cases, attempt to justify why I bought it in the first place and hung on to it all these years. As you may have guessed from the image up above, this week’s entry is Discover America by Van Dyke Parks. And as is the case with several of my albums, my history with this one begins with a list.

I’m a sucker for lists. I love making them and I love reading them. When Rolling Stone or Entertainment Weekly does a list issue, I’m the first to pore over it with a fine toothcomb. I’m also often the first to throw the magazine across the room in disgust. Lists like these are put together by committee. They rarely surprise you or lead you to discover anything you wouldn’t eventually have found on your own. Personal lists, on the other hand, can be a different story. Film Comment, I believe, runs or used to run an annual best-of issue. I always found the most interesting part to be the section devoted to the personal favorites of various critics and filmmakers. This is where you can learn something about the person compiling the list and hear about titles that would otherwise have flown beneath your radar.

Several years ago, Elvis Costello did a list of his 500 essential albums for Vanity Fair. I don’t remember the exact wording. It may have been “essential” or “favorite” or something else entirely. At any rate, it was one of the most interesting and eclectic album lists I’d ever seen before or since. He covered a wide range of genres, including classical, jazz, country, hip-hop and, of course, rock & roll. The list included such out of left field choices as An Evening With Groucho Marx and Noel Coward’s HMV Recordings. Needless to say, the idiosyncratic nature of the list appealed to me and I went on a mission to find as many of these albums as I could.

One of the albums was Van Dyke Parks’ Discover America. I knew Parks’ name from his work with The Beach Boys and Harry Nilsson but had no idea he was a recording artist in his own right. This also happened to be during the heyday of Napster, so it was no problem to jump online and download a song or two to get a taste. Unlike apparently most of the world, I would actually use Napster to help me decide whether or not I wanted to buy an album. I’d get a couple songs and, if I liked them, I’d go buy the album. So if your name is Van Dyke Parks, don’t sue me for downloading one of your tunes. It actually led to a sale you wouldn’t have got otherwise.

Anyway, the song I selected was a little ditty called “Jack Palance”, which I obviously chose because of the name. It was absolutely not what I was expecting. It’s a short and sweet calypso number and despite being barely a minute long, it made me grin uncontrollably. It was just fun. I enjoyed it a lot but half assumed it was a goof. It would sort of be like if you heard The Beatles’ “Maggie May” and assumed it was representative of Let It Be. So I was very surprised when I bought Discover America and learned that yes, in fact the entire album is like that one song. It’s a warm, jaunty calypso record and most of the songs are only about two or three minutes in length.

In addition to Jack Palance, Parks’ subjects include Bing Crosby, J. Edgar Hoover, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and The Mills Brothers. But the high point begins with a cover of Allen Toussaint’s “Occapella” and continues with “Sailin’ Shoes” and “Riverboat”. It’s a string of great, infectious songs and if they don’t make you happy, you may want to see a shrink. Get on some antidepressants or something, man, because this is fun, fun stuff.

I was pleasantly surprised that in 1972, the year of Watergate and so much other turmoil, a nostalgically happy album called Discover America was released. It does not surprise me that it seems to remain something of a cult record cherished only by a handful of people. I don’t know anyone who actively dislikes calypso music, although I suppose it’s possible. But I also don’t know many people who like it enough to groove to an entire album of it. A lot of people seem to look at it as background music, enjoyable enough if it’s there but not something they seek out. Their loss. Discover America is a burst of tropical sunshine on a cloudy day and it makes me smile every time I put it on.

Jahnke's Record Collection: Bruce Springsteen - Nebraska

2010-08-13T11:45:00.000-07:00

Cast your mind back to 1982. MTV had just celebrated its first birthday and was already beginning to change the way we heard music. Artists as diverse as Pat Benatar, Peter Gabriel, The Pretenders and Billy Idol had already started experimenting with this new music video thing. In May, Duran Duran released Rio, becoming arguably the first major group to owe most of its success to MTV. Even The J. Geils Band had popped up their signature blues bar-band sound, hitting the top of the charts with “Centerfold”. By the end of the year, Michael Jackson would release Thriller and the music industry would never really be the same again.

In the middle of all this, on September 30, Bruce Springsteen defiantly released Nebraska, a stark, stripped-down, unpolished collection of songs about murder, unemployment, loneliness and desperation. Recorded by Springsteen alone in his bedroom on a cheap four-track cassette recorder, Nebraska wasn’t even supposed to be an album. They were demo tapes meant to be played for the E Street Band, fleshed out, re-recorded and then released as a record. But everyone agreed that the full-band versions weren’t nearly as effective as the originals. Supposedly Springsteen carted the tape around in the back of his car for a few weeks while trying to decide what to do with the songs. That may be an apocryphal story but it’s a good one. Regardless, the demos were eventually released as the final album, technical limitations, tape hiss and all.

Considering that Springsteen had just enjoyed the biggest pop success of his career with “Hungry Heart” two years earlier, it’s a bit shocking that Columbia Records let him release Nebraska at all. There were no singles off the album in the US. Springsteen did concede to releasing a video for “Atlantic City”, although it’s really more of an anti-video, consisting entirely of grainy, black-and-white images of the city at its bleakest. The whole thing looks like it was shot from a car in about half an hour and the vibe is downright post-apocalyptic. Needless to say, it made strange bedfellows alongside the likes of “Hungry Like The Wolf” and “We Got The Beat”.

The no-frills approach resulted in one of Springsteen’s most enduring and cohesive albums. The individual songs are brilliant and often beautiful but the total is much greater than the sum of its parts. Nebraska is an intimate, poignant record that demands to be heard from start to finish. The album has inspired countless writers, filmmakers and other musicians. “Highway Patrolman” alone was covered by no less than Johnny Cash and provided the basis for Sean Penn’s film The Indian Runner, while “State Trooper” served as the end credits music for the finale of the first season of The Sopranos. Coincidentally, that was the first episode of the series I watched and I became addicted to it the second I heard that familiar, ominous guitar riff start to play.

If Nebraska isn’t my favorite in the Springsteen catalog, it’s definitely in the top three. Depending on my mood on a particular day, there’s a good chance I will cite Nebraska as my favorite Springsteen album. Back in my college days, I took a cross-country road-trip from West Virginia to Montana with my friend Andrew Hansen. (These days, Andy’s a big-time composer and sound designer in the Chicago area. That doesn’t really have any bearing on this story but it is pretty damn cool.) Our route took us through the great state of Nebraska and there was really only one choice of music to play across those rolling plains. Springsteen’s songs transformed what could have been a deadly dull stretch of empty road into a starkly beautiful American landscape. Suddenly every farm house and small town we passed had a dozen stories to tell. I’d wager we both could have criss-crossed the state a dozen times listening to that album. That’s a pretty good legacy for a record that could have been lost under the passenger seat of Bruce Springsteen’s car.

Jahnke's Record Collection: John Zorn - Filmworks III 1990-1995

2010-05-28T11:30:00.000-07:00

Of all the artists in my music library, none is more challenging than John Zorn, both musically and simply in terms of output. I dare you to keep up with Zorn’s staggeringly prolific discography. John Zorn is an intimidating artist for the uninitiated. According to Wikipedia, the man appears on over 400 albums as a composer and/or performer, including work with the bands Masada, Painkiller, Naked City, and more. His work has roots in jazz, neo-classical, klezmer and much more. Where does one even begin to delve into a musician like this?

I was introduced to Zorn through two albums in the late 80s: The Big Gundown, a tribute to legendary film composer Ennio Morricone, and Naked City, a mixture of originals and covers including John Barry’s James Bond Theme and Henry Mancini’s A Shot In The Dark. I enjoyed both quite a bit, although the avant-garde shrieks ‘n’ bleats tracks on Naked City didn’t exactly get played over and over again. I looked for more of Zorn’s work, still a manageable task back then. That began to change in 1995 when Zorn formed his own record label, Tzadik. Finally allowed to release whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted, Zorn threw open the floodgates, releasing so much music that I found it impossible to keep up.

I knew I’d have to focus my interest down to just a few key areas unless I wanted to move into a larger house and officially dub one of the closets The John Zorn Room. Since I had first discovered his music through his reinterpretations of Morricone, a safe bet seemed to be collecting his Filmworks series. I’d bought the first volume when it was released on the Nonesuch label in ’92 and enjoyed it. Surely this small corner of Zorn’s music could be easily digested.

Yeah, right. As of this writing, the Filmworks series is up to its 23^rd volume. That’s about two albums per year of music for movies, mostly underground and documentaries you’ve never heard of and will probably never get a chance to see. The most well-known film Zorn has worked on is probably Trembling Before G-d, the acclaimed 2001 documentary about gay and lesbian Orthodox Jews.

As much as I liked Zorn’s work, even the most difficult-to-listen-to avant-garde stuff struck me as interesting, he wasn’t someone who received much in the way of media coverage and I wasn’t passionate enough about him to follow his work obsessively. He was one of those guys that, if I was in a record store, once or twice a year I’d go over to the John Zorn section to see if he had a new album out. Usually, he would have about five or six new albums out. Over time, I became overwhelmed by all this and I stopped buying his work. I always tell myself that I’ll return someday but it’s daunting trying to decide which of the 200 or so albums he’s released in the meantime I should start with.

Filmworks III was the last Zorn album I bought, over ten years ago now. It’s divided into four sections, representing Zorn at his best and his most challenging. The music for Thieves Quartet and Hollywood Hotel are both top-notch. It’s jazzy, moody music that evokes a distinct noir mood. It’s virtually impossible for me to listen to the main titles of Hollywood Hotel with its delicate guitar work by Marc Ribot and dreamy alto sax by Zorn without feeling a cigarette between my fingers, the pleasurable burn of whisky at the back of my throat, and the red glare of a flashing neon sign outside the window, no matter where I am or what I’m doing. Zorn’s Music for Tsunta is more schizophrenic, nine cues sequenced back-to-back as one track featuring odd sound effects, turntable scratches and an occasional hesitant banjo from Bill Frisell. It’s good stuff but I can understand why most people would wonder what the hell was going on.

And then there’s the music for Weiden and Kennedy. W+K is a Portland-based advertising agency responsible for iconic campaigns like Nike’s Mars Blackmon spots with Spike Lee. It’s difficult to imagine Zorn’s music accompanying commercials but then again, it’s difficult to imagine some of the filmmakers Zorn works with on these spots, including David Cronenberg, Jean-Luc Godard and Sven Nykvist, making commercials in the first place. These are short little musical sucker punches, ranging from 14 seconds to just over a minute. Again, not the most relaxing music to have playing in the background on a Sunday morning. But Zorn gets his ideas across quickly, immediately conjuring up solid images and moods even if you haven’t seen the commercials. It’s a fascinating study in the specific needs of film composition. If I taught a class in film music, I’d have a day where we listened to these tracks and tried to dissect what they were used for.

Obviously John Zorn isn’t for everybody. I admit that I’ll rarely pull out one of his albums and listen to it from start to finish, although several of his more accessible tracks get played repeatedly on my iPod. But every so often, I enjoy giving my ears a bit of a workout and Zorn fits the bill perfectly, bleating saxes, crashing drums, guttural screams and all.

Jahnke's Record Collection: The Return!

2010-05-21T13:15:00.000-07:00

I have not been very diligent about keeping this blog updated, though in my meager defense, it hasn’t been from lack of trying. This is the third time I’ve started writing this entry over the past few weeks. Each time, I’d get a few paragraphs into it and realize that the place I’d started from didn’t really have much to do with where I wanted to go. Some interesting ideas came out of those false starts and I’ll probably end up recycling them at some point. But their time has not yet come.

All I really wanted to do was talk about a band I’d been enjoying lately. Not really a big deal, right? But in my previous efforts, I was overthinking how to lead into that and ended up going down paths that had nothing whatsoever to do with that band. But now, since it’s been awhile since I’ve updated this blog, I thought I’d just catch you up on a number of different bands and albums I’ve been listening to since last time. Some of them are new, some are new to me, and some I’ve had for awhile. And we’ll kick things off with the band I’ve spent the past three weeks trying to write about…

Heartless Bastards – The Mountain

If you’re as lucky as I am, you have several friends whose taste in movies, books or music you trust implicitly. If they recommend something to you, you get it, no questions asked, confident that you will enjoy it as much as they think you will. Not that their tastes mirror yours exactly.But they are extremely knowledgeable and can recommend things based on your specific likes and dislikes. I have two go-to guys for music, one of whom is MusicTAP’s Matt Rowe.Matt’s really good at this kind of thing and so far, he hasn’t steered me wrong once. So when Matt started raving…literally raving, like a man possessed by demons…about Heartless Bastards, I knew I’d have to check them out.

Glad I am that I did, too. The Mountain, the trio’s third album, is a country-blues tour de force. Erika Wennerstrom leads the band with a grungy guitar and deep, authoritative, bourbon-flavored voice. Listening to songs like “Out At Sea” and the title track, you’d think the band had been playing together for decades. In fact, the band’s lineup has changed a bit since their 2005 debut. You’d never guess it from listening to their three albums back-to-back. Both Stairs And Elevators and All This Time have much to offer, including great tunes like “Done Got Old” and “Came A Long Way”. But from album to album, you can hear Wennerstrom honing their signature sound, expanding from simple guitar, bass and drums to incorporate mandolin and violin. In a short time, Heartless Bastards have become a band to reckon with and The Mountain is a massively entertaining slab of roots rock. It’s their finest album to date and I can’t wait to hear what they come up with next. Until then, crank this one up loud while you stir your brandy with a nail.

Gogol Bordello – Trans-Continental Hustle

Pandora is just about the best idea for a website in the history of the internets. If you haven’t stumbled across it yet, the idea is that you enter the name of a band or song you like. Then, through some astonishing computer alchemy, Pandora creates a streaming radio station based on the specific qualities of that band or song. As you give the songs that come up a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down”, Pandora refines its parameters and gets better at finding music you like.The really amazing thing is the damn thing actually works. Plenty of websites make computer-generated recommendations but none of them ever come close to getting it right. For instance,Netflix right now seems to think that because I loved the sardonic British comedy In The Loop, I’ll go equally wild for Rob Reiner’s schmaltz-a-thon The Bucket List (the common thread apparently that both are “Comedies on Blu-ray”). By contrast, Pandora runs second only to actual human beings in introducing me to new music.

A few years ago, I created a Pogues station on Pandora and discovered the raucous gypsy punk of Gogol Bordello. It was love at first listen, despite the fact that half the time I have no idea what the hell lead singer Eugene Hutz is babbling about. Their latest album offers up more of the same, despite the presence of uber-producer Rick Rubin and a switch to a major label for the first time. Unlike Heartless Bastards, I can’t say that Gogol Bordello has expanded their scope much over the years. But their unique sound is so much fun, it doesn’t really matter. Trans-Continental Hustle is a loud, loopy good time. It’s a party in your ears and everybody’s invited.

Can You Dig It? The Music And Politics Of Black Action Films 1968-75

This double-disc import from Soul Jazz Records compiles 34 killer tracks from movies like Coffy, The Mack and Petey Wheatstraw from the likes of Isaac Hayes, Curtis Mayfield, Quincy Jones, Willie Hutch and many, many more. And if that was all it had going for it, this would still be one of the coolest CDs you could hope to own. But wait, there’s more! The set includes a lavishly-illustrated 100-page book with informative, well-written essays and bios by Stuart Baker. More than just an album, this is a multimedia history of blaxpoitation cinema.

Duran Duran – Rio

Back when this album was huge, I listened to Duran Duran in a detached, semi-ironic, I’m-too-cool-to-admit-I-actually-enjoy-this way. In fact, I would refer to the band as “Double Duran”, affecting a hiccupy, Martha Quinn-voice, mainly to annoy my friends who legitimately enjoyed them. I heard the record, of course, but was mainly familiar with the singles. It was virtually impossible to avoid “Rio” and “Hungry Like The Wolf” back then. Now that I’ve bothered to really listen to the album, I’ve got to admit…this is good stuff. I won’t go so far as to say there’s more here than meets the eye but songs like “Lonely In Your Nightmare” and “The Chauffeur” are moodier and more interesting than the band is usually given credit for. Could a reappraisal of Seven And The Ragged Tiger be far behind?

Jahnke's Record Collection: In Search Of The Perfect Album

2010-02-19T13:15:00.000-08:00

Over at his MusicTAP website, my friend Matt Rowe regularly posits intriguing discussion topics and music-related surveys. I don’t participate in each and every one, although I do end up spending an inordinate amount of time thinking about all of them. For example, he recently concluded a poll of underrated guitarists. Sure, there are plenty of guitarists whose work I love. John Fahey is way up there, as is David Gilmour. But I don’t really know enough about the subject to know if these guys are generally considered underrated or overrated. Still, I had a good time thinking about guitar players for a day or two.

Every so often, Rowe, magnificent bastard that he is, will casually toss out a question that gnaws at me for days on end. In his innocence, I’m sure he simply thinks it’s an interesting little poser that will illicit several immediate gut reactions. For the likes of me, it becomes an unsolvable mystery not unlike the Riddle of the Sphinx. It starts an internal debate that rages on long after Matt has moved on to other worthy subjects. About a week or so ago, he asked one such deceptively simple question.

What do you consider to be a perfect album?

Now if he’d asked what are your “favorite” albums, there would be no problem. I can rattle a list of those off without blinking. But it’s that word “perfect” that makes things so difficult. “Perfect” means that there isn’t a false note or a mediocre song to be found. I quickly realized that very few of my favorite albums are in fact perfect. Maybe part of the reason that I love them so much is that they are imperfect.

Born To Run is a phenomenal album, one that I return to again and again. It’s the source of many of my favorite Springsteen songs, including “Meeting Across The River”, “She’s The One” and the more famous tracks like “Thunder Road” and the title tune. I wonder if I would love those songs quite as much if the album didn’t have “Night” stuck right in the middle of it. I’ve always thought “Night” was a terribly boring, generic song and whenever it comes on, I either can’t wait for it to be over or I skip it entirely, depending on how charitable I feel. But maybe all those other great songs seem even better in contrast to it. I hate that song but I can’t imagine the record without it.

I suppose I would consider Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band to be perfect, although it’s not my favorite Beatles album. It was, however, the first Beatles album I ever heard and I listened to my mom’s original vinyl LP obsessively when I was a kid. The record even had the Sgt. Pepper cut-out figures still intact. I suspect Mom watched me playing with those with a mixture of panic and delight, though to her credit, she never yelled that those toys weren’t for playing with. It was probably the first album I knew by heart. Even the much-maligned “Within You, Without You” expanded my horizons and struck me as a mystical, transcendent musical journey, which is probably what George Harrison intended in the first place. He just didn’t realize that his ideal audience would be eight-year-old boys growing up in small-town Minnesota in the mid-70s.

Most of my favorite artists, folks like Tom Waits, Warren Zevon, The Pogues, and Nick Cave, don’t have any albums I’d consider to be absolutely perfect. Cave comes closest with Murder Ballads, which is pretty close to an absolutely pure distillation of everything that makes him and the Bad Seeds so compelling. From Mr. Waits, I love Rain Dogs, Bone Machine, Mule Variations and Swordfishtrombones but I’ve never felt the urge to listen to any of them exclusively for any length of time. Zevon’s last album, The Wind, is made perfect by its imperfections. They are constant reminders of the ticking clock Warren was working against to complete the record before his death. As for The Pogues, part of what I love about the band is how one second they can be completely in control of their sound and the next, they sound exactly like the bunch of unruly drunken Irishmen they appear to be.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized I don’t care much for perfection in music. Music is both universal and deeply personal. If you can record one song that means something to people, you’ve done something to be proud of. If you can put five or six of them together, it’s downright remarkable. But an entire album where every song hits you in just the right way?That may be nothing short of miraculous. And that’s when I realized that there was one album like that for me. One album that still grabs me from start to finish, sounds constantly fresh but can also transport me back to when I first heard it. The first time I heard it, it was like nothing else I’d been exposed to before, and its arrival in my life did strike me as something of a miracle.

I came late to London Calling. When the album was first released, I was all of ten years old, so the British punk scene wasn’t exactly high on my radar. If I had to guess, I’d wager my first exposure to the band came somewhere around 1983, most likely by seeing a video for “Rock The Casbah” or “This Is Radio Clash” on Night Flight. Even then, it would be another couple years before someone specifically steered me toward London Calling. The first song hooked me, filling my head with apocalyptic visions. But it was the way the album built on that foundation that really grabbed me. I’d never before heard an album that felt so electric and spontaneous, but also so perfectly controlled. Every song leads into the next with laser-sharp precision. Even today, if I hear one song off this album, I immediately want to listen to the whole thing so I can place it in its proper context. Hearing “The Card Cheat” by itself without “Koka Kola” leading in to it seems somehow wrong.

London Calling was a revelation for me and a gateway album to countless other bands. I’d never heard a voice like Joe Strummer’s before. I’d never heard a band use instruments this way before. After this, everything I’d been listening to sounded too slick, too professional, too controlled. It led me to explore punk music more in-depth and while I liked much of what I heard, it often sounded too chaotic, like a lot of these bands honestly had no idea what they were doing and if they recorded something great, it was kind of by accident. There was nothing accidental about London Calling. It’s a passionate, sprawling record full of songs I’m always tempted to listen to again as soon as they end, but before I have the chance, the band has already grabbed my attention with something even better. It’s an album I can’t listen to just once and I can’t listen to in pieces. It’s all or nothing. Death or glory. And that, to my ears anyway, is perfection.

It Was Twenty-ish Years Ago Today...The 100 Best Movies of the 90s!

2010-02-01T18:00:00.000-08:00

In my recently completed 100 Best Movies of the 00s feature over at Jahnke’s Electric Theatre, I made a couple references to a similar project I’d undertaken ten years earlier. Much to my surprise, several people asked to see my 100 Best Movies of the 90s. Unfortunately, the complete essay has been lost to the vapor of defunct computer storage. I probably still have it somewhere…most likely on an unlabeled floppy disk. One day I’ll go through all that stuff and if the essay turns up, I’ll post it in all its glory (with the caveat that it was written with an intended audience of about five).

But even without my scintillating prose to jazz it up, I thought it might be interesting to post the list of titles. Looking at my picks today, I still think it’s a pretty strong lineup. Primarily though, it helps put the whole idea of these lists in context. There are some major omissions here, including Audition and Being John Malkovich, neither of which I’d seen when I originally came up with this list. If I were to redo the list now, some titles would move up (notably Magnolia and The Big Lebowski), others down (I still think The Rapture is a great movie but is it really top ten material?). There’s nothing on here that embarrasses me, as in, “Gawd, did I actually try to argue that The Phantom Menace was a great movie?” (For the record, no…I never did.) I could still make a case for every movie on this list, even those that would have to fall away to make room for new favorites.

What interests me the most about this list is how it transports me back into my early 2000 mindset. Back then, I didn’t have a cyber-soapbox for my half-baked ideas. I was just a movie fan working a job that left him with waaaaaaaay too much time on his hands. Looking at these titles in this context, I can instantly remember the way I felt about them at the time. Those feelings have changed over time but it’s valuable for me to remember what my feelings were then. Obviously you won’t get that but I hope seeing this list will be of some interest nevertheless.

Since I already revealed the number one pick, I’m dispensing with the whole countdown schtick and presenting the list in order. For the record, my pick for the top spot has not changed in all this time. And I apologize in advance to Elijah Olson and anyone else who feels I should not have grouped all three Lord Of The Rings movies into one. This list is really gonna drive you up the wall.

1. The Three Colors Trilogy (Blue, White, Red - 1993-94, Krzysztof Kieslowski)

2. Barton Fink (1991, Joel & Ethan Coen)

3. Edward Scissorhands (1990, Tim Burton)

4. Ed Wood (1994, Tim Burton)

5. Babe (1995, Chris Noonan)

6. Breaking The Waves (1996, Lars von Trier)

7. The Rapture (1991, Michael Tolkin)

8. Fight Club (1999, David Fincher)

9. Heavenly Creatures (1994, Peter Jackson)

10. Joe Versus The Volcano (1990, John Patrick Shanley)

11. The Double Life Of Veronique (1991, Krzysztof Kieslowski)

12. Unforgiven (1992, Clint Eastwood)

13. The Reflecting Skin (1990, Philip Ridley)

14. Magnolia (1999, Paul Thomas Anderson)

15. The Big Lebowski (1998, Joel & Ethan Coen)

16. JFK (1991, Oliver Stone)

17. Husbands And Wives (1992, Woody Allen)

18. Out Of Sight (1998, Steven Soderbergh)

19. The Straight Story (1999, David Lynch)

20. The New Age (1994, Michael Tolkin)

21. Bullet In The Head (1990, John Woo)

22. American Beauty (1999, Sam Mendes)

23. A Simple Plan (1998, Sam Raimi)

24. Chasing Amy (1997, Kevin Smith)

25. Fargo (1996, Joel & Ethan Coen)

26. Babe: Pig In The City (1998, George Miller)

27. Pecker (1998, John Waters)

28. La Belle Noiseuse (1991, Jacques Rivette)

29. Lone Star (1996, John Sayles)

30. Run Lola Run (1999, Tom Tykwer)

31. The Fisher King (1991, Terry Gilliam)

32. GoodFellas (1990, Martin Scorsese)

33. Reservoir Dogs (1992, Quentin Tarantino)

34. Queen Margot (1994, Patrice Chereau)

35. Paradise Lost: The Child Murders At Robin Hood Hills (1996, Joe Berlinger & Bruce Sinofsky)

36. Thirty-Two Short Films About Glenn Gould (1993, Francois Girard)

37. Fast, Cheap & Out Of Control (1997, Errol Morris)

38. The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993, Henry Selick)

39. Delicatessen (1991, Jean-Pierre Jeunet & Marc Caro)

40. King Of The Hill (1993, Steven Soderbergh)

41. Mars Attacks! (1996, Tim Burton)

42. Lost Highway (1997, David Lynch)

43. Flesh And Bone (1993, Steven Kloves)

44. Twelve Monkeys (1995, Terry Gilliam)

45. Brother's Keeper (1992, Joe Berlinger & Bruce Sinofsky)

46. There's Something About Mary (1998, Bobby & Peter Farrelly)

47. Last Night (1999, Don McKellar)

48. Crumb (1994, Terry Zwigoff)

49. La Femme Nikita (1990, Luc Besson)

50. L.A. Confidential (1997, Curtis Hanson)

51. Schizopolis (1996, Steven Soderbergh)

52. Grosse Pointe Blank (1997, George Armitage)

53. Darkman (1990, Sam Raimi)

54. Army Of Darkness (1993, Sam Raimi)

55. The Quick And The Dead (1995, Sam Raimi)

56. The City Of Lost Children (1995, Jean-Pierre Jeunet & Marc Caro)

57. Bitter Moon (1992, Roman Polanski)

58. Waiting For Guffman (1996, Christopher Guest)

59. The People Vs. Larry Flynt (1996, Milos Forman)

60. Hard-Boiled (1992, John Woo)

61. Olivier Olivier (1992, Agnieszka Holland)

62. The Iron Giant (1999, Brad Bird)

63. Proof (1991, Jocelyn Moorhouse)

64. The Grifters (1990, Stephen Frears)

65. Men With Guns (1997, John Sayles)

66. American Movie (1999, Chris Smith)

67. Smoke / Blue In The Face (1995, Wayne Wang & Paul Auster)

68. Crash (1996, David Cronenberg)

69. Secrets & Lies (1996, Mike Leigh)

70. Big Night (1996, Stanley Tucci & Campbell Scott)

71. Boogie Nights (1997, Paul Thomas Anderson)

72. L.627 (1992, Bertrand Tavernier)

73. Dead Man (1995, Jim Jarmusch)

74. Wag The Dog (1997, Barry Levinson)

75. Wild At Heart (1990, David Lynch)

76. Strangers In Good Company (1991, Cynthia Scott)

77. Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990, Joe Dante)

78. Ruby In Paradise (1993, Victor Nunez)

79. Naked Lunch (1991, David Cronenberg)

80. Cemetery Man (1994, Michele Soavi)

81. The Silence Of The Lambs (1991, Jonathan Demme)

82. The Player (1992, Robert Altman)

83. Pulp Fiction (1994, Quentin Tarantino)

84. The Usual Suspects (1995, Bryan Singer)

85. eXistenZ (1999, David Cronenberg)

86. Dead Man Walking (1995, Tim Robbins)

87. Leon - The Professional (1994, Luc Besson)

88. Shakes The Clown (1991, Bob Goldthwait)

89. Defending Your Life (1991, Albert Brooks)

90. Simple Men (1992, Hal Hartley)

91. Exotica (1994, Atom Egoyan)

92. Election (1999, Alexander Payne)

93. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992, David Lynch)

94. Matinee (1993, Joe Dante)

95. Summer Of Sam (1999, Spike Lee)

96. The Matrix (1999, Andy & Larry Wachowski)

97. Frankenhooker (1990, Frank Henenlotter)

98. Freaked (1993, Alex Winter & Tom Stern)

99. The Kingdom / The Kingdom II (1994-97, Lars von Trier)

100. The Wrong Trousers / A Close Shave (1993-95, Nick Park)

Sorry Haters

2009-09-18T10:30:00.000-07:00

Jahnke’s Record Collection will return soon but this week, I’d like to turn the blog over to more serious issues. Namely, language. I recently read an article that stated that thanks to social networking, email, blogging and what-not, people are reading and writing more than ever. This is wonderful news indeed. However, much of what is posted online is written in haste. This means that once a phrase enters the collective consciousness, it quickly gets repeated ad nauseam until you never, ever want to see or hear it again. At least that’s the case with me. Your mileage may vary. (See? Aren’t you sick of that?)

There are five of these language-killers that especially annoy me. Every time I see them, it’s like a tooth-ache that you can’t help sticking your tongue in to make it hurt a little more. I can’t stand these things and so, in the vain hope of making you equally tired of them, I spotlight them this week. With your help, we can make the internet a better place.

“Haters”

This one really drives me nuts. Anytime someone feels the need to defend something they like, whether it’s a movie, singer, president or their own blog, the quickest way to end all discussion is by describing everyone who feels differently as a hater. First off, nobody’s asking you to defend yourself. We’re not all going to enjoy the same things. If you like Britney Spears, isn’t it enough for you to just enjoy her music without trying to convince the rest of us to do likewise? I also hate the term “guilty pleasure” for similar reasons. If you like Xanadu, like Xanadu! Don’t be ashamed about it. I sure don’t.

What’s troubling about “haters”, though, is that it implies that people who dislike whatever you’re defending do so irrationally. You have essentially refused the possibility that there may be some very good reasons why people don’t like the movie, singer, president or blog in question. And in so doing, you have just become as closed-minded as the people you’re against are supposed to be. Nice work, Mr. or Ms. Hardcore Fan! You’ve just discovered the topsy-turvy world of the paradox. Hope you enjoy your stay.

“Fail!”

OK, time for English class. “Fail” is a verb, not a noun. Something CAN fail but it can only BE a failure. You can’t have an epic fail or a pile of steaming fail and you can’t load a dumptruck full of fail.

“Gobsmacked”

Americans have a terrible habit of picking and choosing whatever British slang they find amusing and trying to use it themselves. When they do, they always sound stupid and vaguely pretentious. Here’s a test. Unless you naturally and without thinking tell people to “shut their gob” as opposed to “shut the fuck up”, you have not earned the right to use the term “gobsmacked”.

“Frak”

James Gunn pointed this out awhile back on Facebook and it drives me just as crazy as it seems to him. “Frak” equals “fuck”. We all know that. So just say “fuck”. The same thing with self-censoring words by putting asterisks or other symbols in them. We all know what you mean when you say “sh*t” or “@$$hole” and just because you’ve lamely disguised it, doesn’t make it any less offensive to people who are going to be offended. So either just use the words themselves or, if you’re worried about breaking a commandment, don’t use them at all.

“Cheers!”

I’ve hated this for years now, so I know I’ve lost this battle and the word is here to stay. That doesn’t mean I’ve got to be happy about it. If someone is handing you a drink and you say “cheers” instead of “thanks”, that’s just fine. No problem. But now it’s everywhere! People use it at the end of emails or to say goodbye. What the fuck are you talking about? Frankly, I don’t think you even know yourself any more. “Cheers” has been used for so long to mean so many different things, it no longer means much of anything. We may as well get rid of it altogether and replace it with a nonsense word that can mean whatever you want, like “geef” or “zoon” or “qwerty”. That’s a good one. It’s easy to type and is fun to say. Go into your email signature right now and replace “Cheers!” with “Qwerty!” The world will be a happier place in no time.

OK, I feel much better now. More music next time out. Until then, pay attention to what you type. Your readers will thank you for it.

Qwerty!

Jahnke

Jahnke's Record Collection: Whitney Houston

2009-09-11T10:15:00.000-07:00

Usually with these blogs, I can jump right in and pinpoint when the album in question entered my life, what it meant to me at the time, how my relationship to the music changed over the years, and other such burning questions. But occasionally, we’ll have an album like this one: Whitney Houston’s 1985 self-titled debut. In a case like this, there’s really just one question to answer right off the bat.

Why the hell do you have a copy of this in the first place?

Please believe me when I say that in this instance, I really don’t remember. I can justify owning all sorts of weird crap. Say it was a present or I was interested in exploring a specific musical style at the time or whatever. This was not a gift. I bought it my own damn self in ’85 and, if I’m to be completely honest, this back cover probably had a lot to do with my purchase.

Hot-cha-cha! Hey, I was 16. Teenagers, both boys and girls, are allowed to make musical decisions based purely on hormones. How else can you explain the career of David Cassidy?

Anyway, I was obviously aware of the fact that this alluring package included a record album and Ms. Houston’s music was pretty good for its type. “Saving All My Love For You” was and is a perfectly enjoyable radio-friendly tune. “How Will I Know” is dopey fun. In fact, of all the big hits on the album, the only one that I never liked was probably the biggest. “The Greatest Love Of All” does absolutely nothing for me…never has and never will.

This is not a style of music that necessarily appeals to me but what I enjoyed about this album, and what has been all but forgotten thanks to Whitney’s very public downward spiral into crazytown, was her voice. Unlike so many other pop stars past and present, there has never been any question that Whitney Houston can sing. She has a remarkable voice and typically uses it to good effect. “You Give Good Love” shows her at her best. The song itself is kind of a forgettable mid-tempo ballad. But Houston sings the hell out of it. Significantly, she’s in control of her instrument. This doesn’t have the kind of show-offy vocal acrobatics she’d later have in hits like “I Will Always Love You”.

I never bought another Whitney Houston album, although she’d continue to churn out well-crafted, very listenable hits for the next several years. But they were all very similar to each other and I felt this one album was the one example of her work I really needed.

Whitney’s on the comeback trail now, older, wiser and cleaned up, but even with Oprah on her side, I doubt she’ll ever hit the levels of cross-pop-cultural phenomenon she once did. This is no slight against her. I don’t think Michael Jackson would have either had he needed to rely on new music. He had to die to become the biggest star in the world again and I think we can all agree that Whitney is better off than MJ in that respect. Rather than trying to reach out to all audiences, I’d like to see the new, mature Whitney Houston try to reconnect with her original fans by continuing to record the slick, slow ballads that defined her debut, maybe get back into movies eventually. Her career’s second act could mirror that of Barbra Streisand. She might not win a lot of new fans but, as Barbra will tell you, catering to your core fan base can be very, very lucrative.

Jahnke's Record Collection: Best Of The J. Geils Band

2009-08-21T12:00:00.000-07:00

This one’s for Matt, since he asked.

In the early 80s, my mother moved to New York to pursue her lifelong ambition of becoming a professional actress. I know, I know…her and about a million other people, right? Unlike some of those others, however, my mom had some reason to be confident. She had just received her graduate degree from the University of Michigan and was by all accounts an extraordinarily talented performer. Of course I’m going to say that, being her son and all. But I’m just repeating what I’ve been told. I only saw her act a handful of times.

Anyway, to pay the bills she took a job working for a guy named Ken Kragen. Kragen was (and still is, as far as I know) a music manager. He’s apparently one of the folks who helped put together the roster of talent on the USA For Africa song “We Are The World”. I’ve no idea what my mom’s job actually was. Kids in their early teens don’t often trouble themselves with details like that. I assume she was an assistant or something like that.

She was never particularly happy working this gig, which should surprise absolutely no one. I think it’s written in the Struggling Artist Bylaws that you must despise your soulless day job, no matter what it is, how much it pays or how much freedom it allows you to pursue your own dreams. But for me, living thousands of miles away with my father in Montana, it was the coolest job ever. For one thing, she was in New York City, which may as well have been Mars to me at the time. Even more important, I got free records out of the deal. Lots and lots of free records.

A lot of these freebies were 45s, promotional singles sent out by record companies to radio stations and apparently everybody else who worked in the music industry. It seemed like I’d get a new batch of 45s every couple weeks. I hoarded them at first but when I realized how many I was getting, I started a new routine. I’d listen to each new batch and separate them into two piles. The ones I liked, I kept. The ones I hated became target practice. If you want to feel like Hunter S. Thompson, go into your backyard and play skeet with a stack of crappy REO Speedwagon singles.

I also got free albums from acts that Kragen represented. At the time, these included the likes of Kenny Rogers, Naked Eyes and…The J. Geils Band. The J. Geils Band was at the height of their commercial popularity when my mother worked for Kragen. The album Freeze-Frame came out and the single “Centerfold” was inescapable. Mom sent me a copy of Freeze-Frame and I must have mentioned that I liked it because the next thing I knew, a large box arrived with about half a dozen catalog albums on vinyl and cassette.

Now I liked Freeze-Frame just fine but it wasn’t as if these guys were my new favorite band, so I didn’t dig into the records immediately. But my mom kept asking if I’d listened to any of it during our weekly phone calls. This was unusual. She hadn’t cared one way or another if I listened to any of the Kenny Rogers albums she’d sent me. I figured I’d better give it a shot and decided the best place to start was a greatest hits compilation, 1979’s Best Of The J. Geils Band.

As soon as the needle hit the vinyl, I was taken aback. It was unquestionably the same band that I was familiar with. Certainly Peter Wolf’s distinctive growl of a voice was instantly recognizable, albeit even growlier. But the 80s pop sheen of “Centerfold” was gone. This was grungier, looser and steeped in R&B and the blues. My ears perked up from the first track, “Southside Shuffle”, but I stopped whatever else I was doing and really paid attention when “Give It To Me” came on. It starts as a perfectly enjoyable pop-rock song, then shifts gears midway through to become a fierce, funky band free-for-all. From then on, I was hooked.

In retrospect, Best Of The J. Geils Band is kind of an awkward and clumsy compilation. There’s virtually no flow to the track sequencing and live cuts appear with no warning next to studio tracks. But the album still holds a special place in my heart. This is where I first heard great songs like “(Ain’t Nothin’ But A) House Party”, “I Do” and “Musta Got Lost”. It also showcases some of the best harmonica work ever, courtesy of Magic Dick. One listen to Dick’s virtuoso performance on “Whammer Jammer” will make you forget everything you think you know about the harmonica.

After the success of Freeze-Frame, Peter Wolf left the band and Seth Justman took control for their follow-up album, You’re Gettin’ Even While I’m Gettin’ Odd (more on that curiosity in a future installment of Jahnke’s Record Collection). After that, the band broke up, unfortunately before I had a chance to see them live. However, there is hope. The full band, including Wolf, has recently reformed to play a few gigs, mostly out east. It sounds as if they’re enjoying being back together and, more importantly, their live performances are just as powerful as ever. My fingers are crossed for a more extensive reunion tour. If they come out to LA, you can bet I’ll be in the audience, getting down with “Detroit Breakdown” and thoughts of my mother dancing in my head.

Jahnke's Record Collection: Metallica - Ride The Lightning

2009-08-14T13:20:00.000-07:00

This may come as a shock, considering my well-known reputation as the hardest of hardcore bad-asses, but I was never much into heavy metal growing up. I liked some of it but I was mainly interested in bands with monster connections: KISS, Alice Cooper, Ozzy Osbourne, that kind of thing. I dismissed most of the 80s hair bands out of hand and only tuned into MTV’s Headbanger’s Ball when I was more than usually bored.

Metallica didn’t enter my life until I started dating a young woman named Tisha in the early 90s. Tisha was, and is, a bona fide hardcore bad-ass. She grew up on metal and Metallica was her favorite band. She was such a devoted fan that, in high school, she had a personalized license plate with the band’s name. For most bands, I’d think that was a really stupid thing to do. But somehow, with Metallica it’s beyond cool. I even thought so at the time when I didn’t really know much about the band.

The first Metallica album I heard was their self-titled 1991 blockbuster, known familiarly as The Black Album. The success of that album made it kind of difficult to avoid if you were listening to any popular music at the time. Still, I was impressed. I’d unfairly dismissed most heavy metal as an impregnable wall of noise and Metallica was definitely not that. This was a controlled, precision aural attack. I liked it.

I worked backward from there, familiarizing myself with the band’s earlier albums and generally found that I enjoyed them even more. Naturally, I soon gravitated toward the band’s 1984 album Ride The Lightning. I looked at the track listing, saw the album closed with a tune called “The Call Of Ktulu”, and my monster-lovin’ brain got all excited. As it turned out, the song is an epic instrumental and I may have dug it all the more for that. I could shut my eyes and easily envision Lovecraft’s Elder Gods being summoned to spread hell across the planet.

I continued to be impressed by the seriousness of Metallica’s lyrics. While other metal bands I was familiar with tended to sing about the most primal urges in the most idiotic way possible, these guys wrote songs about suicide, war and capital punishment. Sure, it didn’t have the literary aspirations of Nick Cave but compared to most of what was out there, it was downright poetic.

More important than the words, I was learning to listen to the music. Songs like “Fight Fire With Fire” and “Fade To Black” still had the sonic overload I was familiar with. But a closer listen showed method to the madness. Everything was tight, precise and done with purpose. The music was primal yet sophisticated, hitting a part of the brain that had gone untouched for too long.

My appreciation for metal has continued to grow to this day, although once a band gets too close to sheer noise I tune out. As for Tisha, she eventually became my wife, then amicably my ex-wife. Learning to appreciate Metallica is probably the least of the valuable life lessons I learned from her but I thank her for it nevertheless. I still go back to these early Metallica albums, turning the volume up as loud as I dare. Of course, a real fan would turn it up as loud as they could and never mind the neighbors. I guess I’m just more of a soft-spoken, considerate bad-ass. I hold the door for chicks at the biker bar and if I have to shove a broken bottle into somebody’s face, I always ask before I grab yours.

Jahnke's Record Collection

2009-08-07T14:30:00.000-07:00

There is no “Frequently Asked Questions” section on the Electric Theatre website for the simple reason that I am not asked questions very frequently. However, one that has come up on more than a few occasions is, “Why don’t you write music reviews more often?”

The question always surprises me since, if you’ve actually read any of the few music reviews I’ve done for my buddy Matt Rowe’s MusicTAP site, I would think it’s fairly obvious why I don’t do more of them. I’m not very good at it. Don’t get me wrong. I love music with a passion. All kinds, from classical to country to rock to the hippity-hop that’s so popular with the kids these days. I recently did an iPod purge. I tend to listen to the thing on shuffle, so I got rid of hours worth of music that didn’t really work in that style. That still left me with over 5,000 songs.

I feel as though I know a little bit about music. I’ve co-written a few songs, there are a couple of instruments I can pick up and make sound like something (although I’d never say that I know how to play them), and I’ve immersed myself in a relatively diverse range of music over the years. In other words, I know just enough about music to realize that I don’t really know shit.

Movies are a different story. I can review a film and explain why I liked or disliked it. If someone asks how I’d improve it, I can come up with an idea or two. I can’t do that with music nearly as well. If someone asked me how I’d make a song that I didn’t like better, I’d just shrug my shoulders. I can do fairly well if the topic is someone whose work I admire. I could explain why Bruce Springsteen’s Darkness On The Edge Of Town is a better album than Lucky Town, for instance. But I’m not sure that I could tell you why I think Lucky Town is a better album than Garth Brooks’ No Fences, other than to say I like Bruce Springsteen and hate Garth Brooks. Why do I hate Garth Brooks? I dunno. I just think he sucks, that’s all. That’s not exactly an insightful critique.

Recently, I’ve wanted to experiment with more music reviews. Sure, part of the reason is because I like getting free CDs. But the bigger reason is it’s a challenge and gets me out of my writing comfort zone. Since I clearly haven’t been able to come up with a better use for this blog, this seemed like the best place to do it. But these aren’t going to be your ordinary music reviews.

Jahnke’s Record Collection is meant to be a magical mystery tour through all of the recorded music I’ve accumulated over the past few decades. Every so often (ideally once a week but we’ll see how that goes), I’ll pull an album at random off the shelf and give it a listen. Occasionally I’ll be talking about the music but primarily, I want to explore why I have this crap and what it means to me. I’m fascinated by how our relationship to music changes over time. An album can require repeated listenings before it begins to grow on us. Contrarily, a record that was once a favorite can suddenly turn into utter garbage. I have a tendency to hold on to stuff for…oh, pretty much ever, so I’m sure there’s going to be some truly embarrassing gems in here.

One more thing. Most of my collection is on CD but some of it is still on vinyl and cassette (I used to have some 8-tracks but regrettably got rid of them years ago). Regardless of the format, I’m still calling this Jahnke’s Record Collection. As far as I’m concerned, the word “record” is simply an abbreviation of “recording”. So yes, CDs are records too. Go split hairs someplace else.

Now then, let’s begin with one of the worst albums by one of my favorite artists…

Bruce Springsteen - Human Touch

I’ve been a die-hard Bruce Springsteen fan since my early teens. Even so, the early 90s was a tough time to remain among the faithful. Bruce had broken up the E Street Band, moved to Los Angeles, and hadn’t released an album since Tunnel Of Love back in ’87. So in 1992, when it was announced that he was releasing not one but two albums of new material, I was understandably excited. Sure, he was using session musicians instead of the venerable E Streeters but it was Bruce! How could it be anything less than awesome?

As it turns out, it could be considerably less than awesome in quite a number of ways. I was never one of those fans who thought Springsteen was incapable of writing a bad song. But up ‘til now, he hadn’t recorded anything quite so…bland. Human Touch committed the worst sin an album could make: it was forgettable.

Which isn’t to say I hated the whole thing (or its companion, the aforementioned Lucky Town). Between the two of them, you could put together a reasonably decent album. No classic, by any definition, but at least something you could listen to and enjoy. But far too much of Human Touch was taken up by mediocre songs that barely resonated in your ear even as you were playing them.

At the time of the album’s release, I was about to get married. Consequently, it should come as no surprise that songs like the title track and “Cross My Heart” appealed to me quite a bit. They still do, truth be told, even if they now seem a little bit more boring than they once did. And Springsteen does offer up at least two keepers here: the truly sad and painful “I Wish I Were Blind” and “The Long Goodbye”, a strong rock song with lyrics that are almost shockingly bleak.

But by and large, Human Touch is dominated by some of the most boring songs Springsteen ever committed to tape. Tracks like “Soul Driver” and “With Every Wish” are just about as dull as music can get before it turns into white noise. And then there’s “57 Channels (And Nothin’ On)”. “Weird Al” has written better songs on this subject before. No slam against Mr. Yankovic, whom I admire quite a bit, but when Bruce Springsteen can’t out-do “Weird Al”, something’s out of whack with the musical universe. To be fair, Little Steven did the best he could with his remix of this song and he joined Bruce for a blistering live version on Saturday Night Live. It’s the only performance of this song I’ve ever enjoyed.

Human Touch was still an important album in my musical development in that it was one of the most disappointing records I’d ever heard up to that point. It and Lucky Town were released on the same day but I was so underwhelmed by what I heard here that I didn’t bother to pick up the other one until months later. The album made me consider perhaps for the first time what it was that I responded to in Springsteen’s music in an attempt to figure out what was lacking here. The fundamental element was passion. For the first time, I was hearing Bruce Springsteen simply go through the motions. It would happen again. I’m still a fan and have found much to enjoy in later albums like The Rising and Working On A Dream. But I’m still waiting for another album of all-original songs that blows my mind the way Darkness On The Edge Of Town or Born To Run did. It may never happen but that’s part of being a fan. The hope that it might.

Classics Illustrated

2009-05-05T19:30:00.000-07:00

You may be familiar with the urban legend that Orson Welles had planned on making a Batman movie back in the 1940s. If not, learn all about it at Brian Cronin’s excellent Comic Book Legends Revealed site, a weekly must-read for yours truly. Yeah, the story is a hoax but it’s a good one that sets any movie and/or comic book fanboy’s imagination on hyperdrive. The story popped to mind recently as I was reflecting on the mind-boggling number of superhero movies that will be racing to a theatre near you over the next few years. Just ten years ago, the idea of Kenneth Branagh directing Thor would have been dismissed as ridiculous but it’s on its way.

The whole thing got me to thinking. What if some of the greatest directors of all time suddenly found themselves resurrected in Hollywood today? And what if the only thing they could get a studio to agree to finance was a superhero movie? What would they do? Nobody can say for sure, obviously, but I’ve come up with a few ideas that make a weird kind of sense. If nothing else, they’d make for good companions to Welles’ Batman.

The Defenders directed by Robert Altman

It stands to reason that Altman, director of such ensemble classics as MASH and Nashville, would be attracted to a team comic. But his contrarian nature would prevent him from warming up to titles like Justice League of America or The Avengers. Enter Marvel’s non-team from the 1970s, the mighty Defenders! The Defenders was a rotating group of heroes (and anti-heroes) who occasionally banded together to combat a common threat but more often were looking out for themselves. The “core” group, such as it was, consisted of Dr. Strange, the Sub-Mariner, the Hulk and the Silver Surfer, four guys generally known for not playing well with others. Altman most likely would have cast Elliot Gould as Dr. Strange, Donald Sutherland as the Silver Surfer, Keith Carradine as the Sub-Mariner and Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Hulk. Altman’s Defenders would be alternately praised as a masterpiece and dismissed as unwatchable garbage, mainly because there would be virtually no action sequences and lengthy scenes featuring all of the heroes talking over each other.

Dr. Strange directed by Luis Bunuel

A Doc Strange solo flick, on the other hand, could only be directed by someone who understands the power of image over dialogue. Enter the master of surrealism, Luis Bunuel. The movie would be even better if Bunuel dragged his old partner-in-crime, Salvador Dali, back from the dead along with him. But even without Dali, Bunuel would come up with a mind-bending Dr. Strange flick like none other. I’ll bet he could even take such nonsensical terms as the Orb of Agamotto, the Dread Dormammu and the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak and turn them into a weird kind of poetic dialogue. Interestingly enough, back in the 80s Repo Man director Alex Cox was working on a Dr. Strange movie that obviously never came to pass. Now THAT would have been a superhero movie worth getting excited about!

Wonder Woman directed by Federico Fellini

Off-hand, I can’t think of another director who appreciated women in all their forms more than Fellini. Pick pretty much any random movie from his filmography and you’ll be treated to some of the strongest, most complex women portrayed on film. Fellini’s Wonder Woman would probably be the sexiest superhero movie of all time. The only difficulty would be convincing him that at least some of the movie should take place outside of the Amazons’ Paradise Island home.

Captain America directed by John Ford

One of the quintessentially American filmmakers tackling the quintessential American superhero? Kind of a no-brainer, don’t ya think? Ford made some great war movies like The Long Voyage Home and They Were Expendable in addition to countless classic westerns. I envision Ford’s Captain America as a cross between those war pictures and the Technicolor splendor of movies like The Searchers. Sure, John Wayne would probably want to play Cap but I’ll bet Ford would have had the good sense to go for Henry Fonda instead.

The Phantom Stranger directed by Alfred Hitchcock

It’s hard to come up with a superhero concept that would interest Hitchcock since he seemed to have little use for supernatural stories when he was alive. The farthest he ever veered from reality was The Birds and even then, he had absolutely no interest in explaining why the feathered little creeps went bonkers. So how about the Phantom Stranger? His origins and even his agenda are vague. He turns up wherever strange forces lurk, sometimes debunks them as hoaxes and sometimes has to call upon his mysterious powers to defeat a truly occult threat. But most likely, Hitchcock would realize that The Phantom Stranger already sounds like the title of one of his movies, keep that, ditch the rest and come up with something that has absolutely nothing to do with the original concept. Hey, Hitch did what he wanted. Who are you to argue?

Superman directed by Leni Riefenstahl

Why is everybody always so eager to turn Superman into an all-American, boy scout next door type? I say let’s bring him back to his Nietzschean ideal by recruiting the director of Triumph Of The Will and Olympia to craft his next screen adventure! In Riefenstahl’s hands, we’d see just how super Superman really is, with soaring flight sequences and statuesque images of his physique. Hell, if she could convince the German people that Hitler was basically a demigod, making us believe a man can fly should be a piece of cake.

Spider-Man directed by Francois Truffaut

One of the things that makes Spidey so unique and so beloved is that he’s matured a bit as the character has grown older. He’s gone from high school nerd to college geek to married man (and back again, thanks to Marvel), all the while wrestling with the great power and great responsibility of being Spider-Man. Sam Raimi’s done a pretty decent job with the character but imagine if Truffaut were around to apply some of his 400 Blows magic to the web-slinger. Picture a five-film cycle like The Adventures Of Antoine Doinel, following Peter Parker from high school to middle-age. Heady stuff for a superhero franchise perhaps, but Spider-Man at his best lent himself to this kind of treatment.

Man-Thing directed by Edward D. Wood, Jr.

Best superhero movie ever. Think about it! Ed’s got experience with swamp creatures (see Lugosi vs. the octopus in Bride Of The Monster). He’d milk the screams of those who know fear (and therefore burn at the Man-Thing’s touch) for all they’re worth. He’d wrap it up on time and under budget. And we’d get dialogue like this, delivered without a trace of irony or double entendre:

“What was it? That scared you. There in the swamp.”

“It was…a giant-size man-thing! It was hideous!”

‘Nuff said!

Excelsior!

Jahnke

My Blog And Welcome To It!

2009-04-21T13:54:00.000-07:00

I recently finished re-reading Peter Bagge’s remarkable 30-issue run on the comic book Hate, many of which I hadn’t read since they were first published over a decade ago (!). Hate was the first “underground” comic I ever picked up. Growing up in Montana, underground comix were buried so far underground you’d probably dig straight through to China before you found one. Consequently, my journey away from Marvel Comics was a slow one, marked by more adult but still genre-based fare like American Flagg! and Alan Moore’s run on Swamp Thing. I stumbled across Hate #3 on a trip to Minneapolis to visit family. I don’t think I’d even heard of it before. But something about it called out to me. Hate led me to discover other titles like Eightball, American Splendor and Maus, all of which conspired to make me the twisted comix-hording freak I am today. Thanks, Pete!

As opposed to the fancy, square-bound collected editions of Hate that are readily available, I dug out all thirty of the original dog-eared pamphlets from one of the cardboard comic boxes that clutter my home. I still read and buy comic books but I’ve come to realize lately that the number of titles I buy in their serialized form has dwindled to less than a handful. Part of this is the changing nature of the form. Something like 100 Bullets for instance, which I started out reading as a monthly, is so intricate and dense that the story makes more sense when read as a whole. But a far bigger reason is that most publishers aren’t giving us a good reason to pick up the monthly anymore. While re-visiting Hate, I also re-read the editorials, letters columns and backup features. Letters are virtually non-existent in comics anymore and editorials are falling by the wayside themselves. The few titles I do follow on a month-to-month basis (or would if they were published that consistently), such as Criminal, Doktor Sleepless, Casanova, and Fell, all have additional text features that are at least as interesting as the stories themselves. I can’t imagine I’m the only one that misses these backups.

Interestingly (to me anyway), while I was a religious follower of letter columns, I never once submitted a letter to a comic. On a trip back to the ole Montana homestead a few years back, I discovered my one and only attempt at being a letterhack, a short missive in reference to an unremarkable issue of The Amazing Spider-Man written when I was about 11 years old. I remember thinking at the time that this would be my opening salvo in a concentrated letter-writing campaign to Marvel. I had my sights set on being the T.M. Maple of Montana (give yourself a No-Prize if you get that reference, Effendi!). However, I wisely decided that my observations on Aunt May were not especially profound and the letter remained unsent.

One of the most laudable elements of Petey O’Bagge’s Hate editorials was how he used his bully pulpit to recommend work by other cartoonists, especially self-published mini-comics and ‘zines. Reading these editorials again got me to thinking about the way the internet has forever altered the publishing world. Self-publishing is easier than ever. Once I hit “post” on this blog, I’m a self-publisher my ownself, pally! That’s all well and good but there’s something missing from all these blogs and websites. Producing your own ‘zine required ambition, persistence and skill (if not necessarily talent). Besides writing, you had to design it, lay it out, create a cover and at least put some effort into making it look like something a passerby would want to pick up. After that was done, you had to make copies, talk record stores and coffee shops into carrying it, send out copies to people like Peter Bagge in hopes of getting the word out about it…in short, it was a lot of work. I put out a ‘zine of my own when I was a kid, though I didn’t realize that’s what it was at the time. It was a fledgling attempt at writing stories and movie reviews, illustrated primarily with cartoons stolen from MAD Magazine. Its circulation was limited to theatre students and co-workers of my dad at Montana State University. I don’t have any copies of it anymore, for which I’m sure I am eternally grateful. I’m embarrassed enough by reviews I wrote two years ago, much less twenty.

These days, the ‘zine has essentially morphed into the blog which leads us to this one you’re reading right now (finally!). If you’ve read this far, odds are you either know me personally or through my work for The Digital Bits and/or Troma. I’m lucky enough to have a little cyber-corner at the Bits where I can spout off about movies and DVD (and, sigh…Blu-ray). Lately though, I’ve had ideas for articles, commentary or what-have-you that don’t fit the Bits. Thoughts about comics, books, the (gasp!) real world, etc. That’s why I’ve decided to start blogging here. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about the way my stupid brain works, it’s that once it gets fixated on an idea, it has a helluva time switching to another one before that first one gets worked out. I figure that instead of just suffering from mental constipation, I’d work those other ideas out here.

I don’t have a clue who will be reading this, if anyone, especially since I won’t be able to count on the Pete Bagge Seal o’ Approval in the back pages of Hate. If you do choose to invest a few precious minutes of your life reading this thing, I will do my utmost to make it at least a wee bit entertaining for you. I have no clue when I’ll update it or how frequently, but I’ll announce new blogs on Facebook so if you want to keep up with it, you should find me there and count me amongst your close, personal friends.

Until next time, thanks for indulging me in this new experiment. See ya soon!

Your pal,

Jahnke