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Skyfall: JB, Hooker

I've been so absent from my first love - film criticism - that I'm really rather embarrassed. I'm still a movie lover, first and foremost, and not getting to write about it hurts my soul. 

And so, perhap, it makes sense to make a fresh start with an old favorite: James Bond, and Skyfall, the latest entry in the saga.

Skyfall marks Daniel Craig's third foray into the Bond mythology, a journey that's been fascinating, and slow, often for reasons beyond creative control (since Quantum of Solace, MGM went bankrupt). The film arrive in time to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Bond films (Dr. No, 1962), and carries the usual weight of these exercise, all the expectations intact, a built-in audience waiting to be delighted... and disappointed.

The big surprise of Skyfall is how solidly the machinery works, how cleanly it wraps up a set of loose ends and puts the story back on familiar ground and known territory. Strikingly well plotted, making the most of its strengths, Skyfall makes the strongest case yet that Craig's Bond is one of the best, a grand reimagination of the genre that's respectful of the past but not bound to it. At the same time, Skyfall is, at worst, a pretentious mess: a low budget act of desperation, hampered by some egregious hammy acting and sloppy scene chewing from talents who really should know better. The balancing act between the best and worst of its impulses, to me, is what makes Skyfall better than most, but a bit a big budget disappointment.

First, the good: Craig's Bond is what makes the film work, and work well, for much of the story. Accidentally "killed off" in the lively opening (a fine,if somewhat derivative chase through Istanbul, ending in a familiar feeling battle atop a moving train), Bond returns home to England when MI6 is attacked, and a list of undecover spies is exposed. Traipsing off to Shanghai, Bond discovers the madman (natch) behind these diabolical schemes, bringing him to justice... only to have the mad genius use just such an outcome in his favor to wreak more havoc. The action culminates in a fierce battle at Bond's childhood home (the titular Skyfall), where a few final twists play out.

Craig's strengths remain readily apparent: his impressive physicality, his solid acting chops, his ability to give a conventional, well defined role a sense of freshness and innovation. Where Connery (and Brosnan) inhabited the part as movie stars - more an act of being than pretending - or Moore played everything as simply dashing and debonair, Craig finds a role to inhabit, an actual part to play. It's marvelous to see what an actor could do with the part, and Craig never makes it simple, or easy.

Well, except for the part where he makes Bond seem... well, easy: as usual, Craig doffs his top at the drop of a hat (or a sheet), making Bond his own Bond girl (who needs Ursula Andress when Craig's there to bound out of the surf topless?). It's a remarkable, respectful Bond world where Craig is, time and again, more naked onscreen than his female costars, at the same time making the obvious point that he's the show, the reason people paid to get in (and really, isn't that being an honest hooker, at least?).

Indeed the film's creepiest, yet slyly sexiest moments are the interplay between Bond and the mad genius Silva, overplayed by Javier Bardem. In their initial confrontation, Bardem gets especially physical, tracing Bond's chest and parting his thighs (no, seriously - it's amazing, in its way), and making suggestive comments about his "first time." It's heartening, I suppose, that Craig has a comeback ("who says it's my first time?"), but there's a subtext here that's old and especially homophobic, a notion that gay is sick and weird, the province of mad geniuses and creepy freaks. Bardem is a mystery to me - I frankly don't get his appeal and I've yet to be truly impressed by him onscreen as an actor - but the problematic role of Silva is ultimately not about him. The bigger problem is the "mad freak genius" aspect of Bond villains, especialy when they don't seem especially menacing, scary or dangerous. Still Bardem's "jamon con queso" performance - all ham and cheseiness - doesn't help. Understated muttering is still scene chewing if you do too much of it.

The rest of the (small cast of) supporting players is fine - obviously Judi Dench's M, but also Ben Whishaw's fine turn as Q, and Albert Finney and Ralph Fiennes, as well as underused Naomie Harris - but there's a sense of using a machine gun to kill a squirrel in the acting talent assembled. Actiually, the machine guns in this film also seem like overkill, too. There's acting aplenty in the supporting cast, often too much to too little effect. Whishaw's too tic-y, Finney is wasted, Fiennes is adequate, but not especially memorable. Only Dench, with and without Craig, seems to have mastered the right balance of hammy and serious needed to make a vast commercial enterprise like this work, proof, as if one needed it, of how seasoned and smart Dench is as a performer. It is, dare I even say it, practically worth another Oscar nomination.

Of the other details, there's not much to be said - Adele's theme song is both one of the best Bond themes ever, and surely one of her best performances as well. The gowns are sumptuous - especialy in the Macau casino squence. The Bond toys, are minimalist but classy (only Craig could make Bond's shaving routine into the sexiest thing imaginable), though Bond's shrunken suiitings are getting to look kind of excessively tight on Craig's yes, impressive, physique. The title sequence is, yet again, top notch.

Visually the film is a feast, and Sam Mendes deserves considerable credit for how good this thing looks, and how solidly he handles elements, like the action sequences, that one might think were beyond him. Mendes is good for not losing sight of his actors in the midst of the derring-do, at his best in moments where the action doesn't just snap and crackle, but actually shows us character development as well. Why, oh why, then can't Mendes seem to get more of a handle on Bardem's messy, psychotic, morass of a performance? Charitably, I'm willing to accept tht Mendes made a bad thing better than it ight have been otherwide; but if there's a next time, Mendes will need to do better on the villain front.

And of course, there will be a next time, a more familiar time with a more conventional MI6, with a reimagined Moneypenney and other details more in line with familiar expectations (how's that for avoiding a siginificant spoiler?). Craig owes us, and Bond, more time, and more films, to see what he makes of his Bond. And, three films in, it seems fair to admit that he's done a pretty decent job of it, so far.

Saturday Singalong: It's Flyte Tyme

Today, I'm all about Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis:

The SOS Band, Borrowed Love. Arguably, The SOS Band was the purest vehicle for the "Flyte Tyme" sound developed by Jam and Lewis, not even so much a "sound" as a whole set of atmospherics, layered synths on top of driving, percolating beats. SOS Band had already enjoyed success with Take Your Time (Do It Right), but the three albums concocted with Jam and Lewis set a new standard, especially on the expansive side ones of each one, the first which featured Just The Way You Like It, and the second, Sands of Time, which featured Borrowed Love. Borrowed Love percolates sharply, whie reveling in the jazzy, slightly mournful lyric sung by Mary Davis, one of the great, undersung lead singers in modern R&B. This song, and much of the Flyte Tyme collaborations came to define "Quiet Storm" radio in the mid to late eighties, a late night jam of torchy ballads, smooth jazz, and acts like SOS Band and Loos Ends who kind of defied easy descriptions. Also, Borrowed Love shows the Flyte Tyme magic with a particular sub genre of Other Woman songs, the Love on the Side story.

Janet Jackson, Love Will Never Do Without You. Jackson's whole rebirth as an eighties pop icon is all about Jam and Lewis, who produced the 4 pivotal albums that define the backbone of her hits (Design of a Decade wraps the story up in a bow). Jackson, of course, ebenfitted mightily from their carefully controlled approach to sound production, and they make some of the best use of what might otherwise be dismissed as a thin, breathy approach to singing, making her into a latter day Diana Ross. The kitchen sink, extended length (in the album version) opus of Love Will Never Do is a big case in point: layered synths, layered vocals, and a propulsive rhythm track tend to mask the almost childlike vocals from Janet, giving the song an almost unearned maturity and depth. But it really, really works.

Herb Alpert, Keep Your Eye On Me. Jam and Lewis were so succesful at turning Jackson into a star for A&M records that it really did seem natural that the label's founder, Alpert (the "A" in A&M), would collaborate with them on a career reviving album. Alpert's role as a sixties star trumpeter who captured pop success was ancient history, but the jazzy revisionist approach to his classic sound was beyond refreshing; it was audacious and daring. Who knew he had it in him? And who, at that point, knew Jam and Lewis were that capable of an artistic leap?

Human League, Human. Turning the top English synth act of the eighties into the next SOS Band may seem easy and derivative, but the collaboration did work wonders for both sides: The League never had quite such an accessible hit, and the track is simply, sheerly gorgeous. The cascading synths of the open, the plaintive lyric (yet another "sorry for my love on the side" message), are indeed a compelling mix of man and machine. Just because it looks easy, doesn't make it so.

Cherrelle, Affair. Cherrelle's career was also built on Jam and Lewis and their effective presentation of Cherrelle as a lusty woman willing to cheat ("Saturday Love", "Everything I MIss At Home", "You Look Good To Me", just for starters). Affair's forthright lyrics - "I don't need commitment, I don't need a man to tell me how to feel" - spoke to a frankness in the sexuality of independent urban women that was impossible to deny.

Johnny Gill, Rub You The Right Way. I was reminded of the primacy of Jam and Lewis and their work when this track showed up on my Sirius XM "Nineties on Nine" station ("Eighties on Eight" is also pretty awesome). Gill never was the biggest R&B star, but this track is a showstopper, from its explosive opening (a shouted "Pump Up the Bass!" followed by a signature Jam/Lewis zig zag of synths) to its sexy close ("your every wish is my command"). Your average song about a sexy massage would seem pretty silly. Not this one. 

Boyz II Men, 4 Seasons of Loneliness. Any of a number of their ballads would make the point, but I like the old fashioned, even gimmicky appraoch to a "4 seasons" song, subverted by BIIM's jazzy inventiveness in layered harmonies, and the Flyte Tyme magic in a sound curtain. The instrumentation is barely noticeable; it's the singing that really does the work, but even that is treated as a multilayered instrument in the Jam/Lewis mix, which gently softens what could be an overwrought lyric - "This loneliness has crushed my heart" - into a gentle, plaintive testament to love and loss.

Saturday Singalong: Hep Cats And Gossip Girls

...and I was accused today of being too attached to old, classic looking clothes, too:

Ella Fitzgerald - Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone. This is a fairly rare track, compiled as part of a collection for my coffee house job, and one of my favorites, because it's such a great opener - for an album, a concert, or a mix tape. I particularly like when usual ballads from the "singer/songwriter" era are given spiky, peppy arrangements. I had a friend who pointed out that Ella had a tendency to "sleepwalk" through drowsy arrangements; this one has none of that, giving a real sharpness to her attack. By the end, you will do exactly as she asks.

Lena Horne - Do Nothing Til You Hear From Me. Horne's career was all about a series of reinventions, including her late life transformation into the great jazz interpreter she was always meant to be. This is from one of her last albums, inspired in part by her friend Billy Strayhorn, who helped shape her singing. The remarkable thing isn't just that she's in amazing voice, it's the incredibly light, playful, downright sexy way she plays with the lyric. She weaves the spell so seamlessly that you can almost miss the "...and you never will" she appends to the title lyric. She's that convincing.

Nat King Cole - I'm Gonna Sit Right Down And Write Myself A Letter. One of my favorite, and wisest, album purchases is this collection of Cole's work with Billy May, one of the greatest arrangers of all time. May was instrumental in creating the fifties-era jazz style of slamming, chatty horn arrangements, which require some similarly strong singing. The apex of this may well be May's work with Sinatra, but Cole's arguably the better singer. The way he crashes into the final "make believe it came, make believe it came... frooom yoooou" is amazing. 

Sammy Davis, Jr. - That Old Black Magic. I tend to think that time has not been kind enough to Sammy Davis, practically the Michael Jackson of his era, a star from the time he was small, and one of the most natural performers and entertainers ever. Something about "Candyman" and "Mr. Bojangles" and his later apearancs in the seventies overwhelms the crucial role he played defining the sound of sixties jazz-pop and set the standard in most ways for a Vegas performer. This track is but one easy example, pure performance magic with some of the most amazing singing attached. And his final "under that old black magic called love" and the way he jumps high-to-low and back again on "called" is indeed magical.

Frank Sinatra - Luck Be A Lady. The remarkable thing about Sinatra, or one of many, is the span of his career. Just when you think his voice is finally giving out, he pulled yet another amazing trick: think "New York New York" in 1977 or even "Teach Me Tonight" in 1982. Luck Be A Lady was an amazing track when it premiered in Guys and Dolls, and when it entered the American songbook. But Sinatra recorded it fairly late in his career, at the height of his powers as a Vegas headliner, and his version drips with the late sixties, early seventies rhythm track of High Vegas. But it's his vocal attack that's just breathtaking; he's aging, there's definitely smoke in his chords, it's almost flat in spots, but how he soars on the peaks! Stick with me baby... I'm the fella you came in with. You can just see the chorus girls with the feathers all around him.

Frank and/or Sammy and/or Lena - The Lady Is A Tramp. This is less about the singer, and more about the song - "She gets too hungry to wait for dinner at eight" is about the best opening ever, a clear definition of a person and a lifestyle choice in a sentence. Frank's version is classic, Sammy's is all sass and the tightrope between black and white in the era of integration ("she likes the free fresh... wind in her wig."), Lena's is all about reclaiming your power and finding yourself - "That's why this here lady - is a tramp." Indeed. 

Worst Song Ever: Let Go. No Seriously, Let Go.

And now, a round of "it's just too easy":

Justin Bieber, Boyfriend. There's a rhythm track these days that just plucks my last nerve: it's this kind of very spare, very slow beat box, often accompanied by a high pitched whistle, and it's really popular with rappers, and I think it came from Timbaland and the only person I've heard use it effectively without killing me is Missy Elliott. And that, my friends, is the signature hook to "Boyfriend," the lead single from Justin Biber's "Now I'm a Grown Up" second album. Bieber's got a serious case of Timberlake envy (all Justins are a problem: discuss), and just as Timberlake pursued an awkward melange of blue eyed soul, rap beats and techno edginess until a world cried out "enough already and take sexy back where you left it!", Bieber is similarly poised to wear out his welcome, and fast. Tween girls will, no doubt, lap this stuff up with a spoon (through radio has been curiously slow to dive into it), but with the usual amount of stalker lyrics and PG 13 sexiness, Bieber's both dull and dishonest, rather than sly and sexy, traits I'm pretty sure he enturely lacks. It's hard trick, drifiting from pre-teen bubblegum to young adult serious pop stardom (Leif Garrett, anyone?) and even Timberlake has fled to film acting (where, sadly, I think he's probably going to fulfill his promise). Here's hoping Bieber gets acting lessons. Or a fresh approach to songwriting.

Fun, We Are Young (featuring Janelle Monae). A song with a chorus so annoying, I've literally turned away every time; except one, when I decided I had to listen all the way through, just to be sure about my sense that it is indeed a Worst Song. Nope... I was right all along. My only question is who thought the reasonably interesting, if downbeat, verses of the song ought to marry up to that inane, loud, chant-like chorus (and sub question: can anyone find Janelle Monae in this)? Dopey, meaningless, yet somehow perceived as deep, We Are Young makes actually being young sound far worse than it is, or was. And this, from a group named Fun?

Train, Drive By. For me, Train exists on this knife edge of pop kitsch: in their bombastic, middling way when they shoot for the moon they often get further than they rightfully should, and it really is pop magic (Drops of Jupiter, Calling All Angels, Hey Soul Sister, Marry Me). Too clever by half, the lyrics are often just short of treacle and musically, the band is workmanlike without necessarily being revelatory (the Glee arrangement of Hey Soul Sister for The Warblers actually imroves the song's dynamics, just as a f'rinstance). Drive By is a good example of how that all looks when it goes wrong: the lyrics are a mush of cheap sentiment and couplets that try too hard, while musically there's no payoff (it doesn't help that Patrick Monahan has a voice nearly as high as Adam Levine's, and is scraping the ceiling, much like Payphone). There's even less payoff in comparing love to a "drive by" - which usually refers to shootings, IIRC. All of which is a creepy reminder that Train tends to look daring singing about reinfocing social norms and standard expectations (Gee, Drive By seems to say, I hope you don't think I only screwed you once and walked away, cause that would make you look really bad). Still, I'm in a forgiving mood, and I suspect this was just a random misstep. So don't go proving me wrong, tramp.

...And All The Other Boys

Okay, maybe this I gat:

 

Rock Of Ages: Sticky Sweet

Rock and Roll has a long, checkered history on film; in part, I suspect, it's because the anarchic rebel heart of rock can't really be subsumed or captured by Hollywood's embrace of the most "conventional" conventions. So much of what defines pop culture - the very structures of our popular entertainments - are the hoariest notions of storytelling enshrined onscreen. From HIgh School Confidential to The Girl Can't Help It, through Help! and the counterculture apex of Easy Rider and Midnight Cowboy, into the seventies era morass of Streisand's A Star Is Born and Midler's Rose.... Hollywood's history is littered with attempts to use "rock" as a way to give voice to a "youth culture" as a way to challenge a "status quo" that fails on all counts. 

If Rock of Ages is a dreadful dud - and it's surely one of the most dreadful, duddiest attempts out there - it would be a mistake
to isolate it as a lone example of the "rock musical" gone bad. "Rock musicals" are, in fact, generally problematic, the good ones (I'd say, well, Hair... and then what? Grease?) not so far from the bad, and all struggling with, as I said, trying to square a circle of presenting youthful rebellion in a clean, neat Hollywood package.

Sloppy and lazy, Rock of Ages pulls together a fairly random set of eighties "rock" songs, packages them up with a fairly limp familiar plotline of "I wanna be a star!" and flails around in search of a conclusion. Originally created for the theater, Rock of Ages - still running - is mostly a tired excuse to pull in kids my age with a vaguely familiar soundtrack of songs from our youth, packing them in even if, under even mild examination, the show is illiterate and incoherent. One of the most obvious problems is the show's soundtrack, which  vaguely assembles  eighties "hair metal" songs, a genre which, I'd argue, isn't really a genre at all: the real story of the eighties is how the notion of "rock" splintered apart after a seventies era apex of Album-oriented rock (AOR, in radio parlance) and hard rock ubiquitousness. By the mid-eighties, "rock" was, in many ways, nearly dead, with hair metal and other sub-genres simply serving as the dead end for diehards - who, it could be noted, amount to a white working class of mostly men holding out against the resurgence of dance and urban music that was really changing the face of pop.

That whitneness is a large chunk of Rock of Ages' dilemma onscreen, only partially solved by the late appearance of Mary J. Blige, in what appears to be the show's second act. By then we've been introduced to Sherri, a young aspiring singer who leaves Oklahoma to come to LA and pursue her dream. She quickly gets mugged (this happens in more Broadway shows than you might think), and meets her male counterpart, also an aspiring singer who works in The Bourbon Room, a larger scale club space that has a long history of launching and promoting up and coming rock acts. Drew, the young man, brings Sherri to the cliub, gets her a job, and the two begin a fairly conventional romance.  The club, meanwhile, under pressure from Moral Majority types, is struggling to stay in the black, and the owner pins his hopes on a desperate plan to revive the club's fortunes with a concert by popular band Arsenal, fronted by the charismatic, yet odd, Stacee Jaxx.

Tom Cruise, as you may have heard, plays Stacee Jaxx, and the performance is, by now, classic Cruise: a true movie star, Cruise may not be the strongest actor, but he plays Tom Cruise really, really well, and to the extent that Stacee Jaxx works, it's because Cruise exudes the star quality needed to pull it off. Say what you will, but Cruise has never been one to just phone it in, and he's not starting now. There's an intensity and determination to his performance that goes a long way to lifting this material above where it might be otherwise, and Cruise deserves credit, as he did in Magnolia, with proving that he's at his best, often, in these supporting roles where he can dare to be less than entirely likable.

But Cruise is no singer, and it shows. As much as he swaggers and stomps through his backstage drama, once he's onstage as Jaxx, Cruise's studied approach to "Rock God" reveals his limitations. Compare Cruise, for instance, to Blige, and the contrast is obvious: Blige, as usual, inhabits her singing with a passion that's almost impossible to bottle. Cruise, by contrast, gives the impression of moving across the stage, striking pose after pose, vaguely reminding us of other stars (Jagger, Tyler... you know the drill), without a real feel for how these stars found their stage presences in the songs they sang. It doesn't make him a failure in the part, but it's a reminder, however subtle, that Cruise is, in some ways, enitirely miscast in this role, struggling to make it work.

Much of the casting is similarly head scratching: actors with no real musical background, like Cruise, Alec Baldwin and Paul Giamati (who makes the film's irredeemable villain so irredeemable as to be a cartoon), against more traditional musical theater types like Catherine Zeta-Jones, Diego Boneta and Julianne Hough, and more rock and radio based types like Blige and Russell Brand.  That the musical theater types fare best (CZJ, however thankless her role is as the uptight antirocker, can't hide her ways with a good number) gives away the game that for all its claims to a rock and roll heart, Rock of Ages is grounded, really, in terribly conventional musical theater cliches: this is a showbiz, backstage musical with "rock songs" where 42nd Street should be, which goes a long way towards explaining why it doesn't really work.

As the young leads, Hough and Boneta are pretty enough - too pretty, really, on both counts - but they're both saddled with some of the worst of this film's material, particularly Boneta, mouthing words to Foreigner and Journey songs that seem, in context, like gibberish. Hough, as she demonstrated in the Footloose remake, is tougher and smarter than the limited, good girl in trouble business she has to put over here. Her character's hardest choice is going from waitress to stripper, and Hough radiates the kind of unreality that she's too sweet to get too jaded from it all, but even she's too smart to buy it.

The film struggles, really with the challenge of being "Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll" while being the more PG-13 "Smooches, Occasional Drinking and Pop Rock" family friendly alternative. No one in the movie gets stoned, never mind the odd absence of coke or heroin, even in an ostensible mess like Stacee Jaxx (Cruise is no one's idea of a hardcore alcoholic, no matter how he strolls around, scotch bottles in hand). And while the film pants with a kind of soft porn leeriness, the sexual situations are mostly tame, even in an obvious over the top number like the version of "I Want to Know What Love Is" that Jaxx sings while laying Malin Akermann's patently unbelievable Rolling Stone reporter on the back room pool table. Raunchy sex never had it so sad.

Most everything is this film is a pale carbon of other, not necessarily better, but still more committed rock films. Mark Wahberg, I think, can rest easy knowing that his own turn in Rock Star - along with Jennifer Aniston's - has more heft than anything Hough or Boneta can produce. Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous is way more true to the seventies era ethos of groupie/rock god, Rolling Stone excess than anything here. Blige's turn as a strip club owner with a heart of gold is essentially Cher's role in Burlesque, and both women have the star power to exceed weak material, but even Burlesque feels more ultimately authentic than anything Rock of Ages can conjure. 

Perhaps most weirdly, the flm can't shake the odd homoerotic undertone of its material; there's a whole lot of creepy male bonding on display here, too much crotch level interest in the men's leather pants to be ignored (Cruise, ever the tease, can't resist parading around in codpiece, jockstrap and assless chaps, and even his twin gun tats aimed at crotch level are really gay porn iconography). The film's cringiest, yet oddly sublime scene has Baldwin's club owner finally admitting his dirty desires for Brand, as the club's manager, to the tune of "Can't Fight This Feeling" the REO Speedwagon tune rock fans are most likely to call "That's so gay." That Brand has the verve to do the number in his best Freddie Mercury impression only adds to the subtlety, and to his credit, Baldwin is actor enough to sbubsume his "straight stud" history and commit to the moment at hand.

Fundamentally, though, that psychotic number is, in a nutshell, all the Vegas-y, trashy incoherence that sums up everything wrong with Rock of Ages: the wrong material, the wrong performers, the wrong (and false) emotional notes (as a runner up, among a "hard to choose just one" field, let's nominate Blige's strip club ode to "Any Way You Want It"). Director Adam Shankman can't begin to find a sustaining tone for this material, veering between satire, leaden humor, and melodrama without ever touching passion, intensity or ecstasy in any real way. Shankman managed to make sense of all of this with Hairspray (and try not to imagine how Blige could have steamrolled the Queen Latifah role there, either), but that just underlines where pop rock conventions and Hollywood work best in familar frames. Rock of Ages can either fit in the box and be denuded of its real danger and pathos... or it can soar. This film decidedly doesn't, with it's feet firmly on the floor, however strewn with used beer cans.

Finally, this film deserves two final slaps: one for the shoddy score, which is too lazy to include either Def Leppard's title track or Steve Perry's "Oh Sherrie", despite the obvious references to the lead character. Too many of the numbers smash together incongruous pairings (Harden My Heart and Shadows of the Night? We're Not Gonna Take It and We Built This City?), and find little musical payoff. Too many of the songs, especially the Foreigner material, turn out to be full of weak lyrics (making Mick Jones his generation's Jerry Herman, I think). Even the moments that work - especially Cruise's actorly reading of "Pour Some Sugar on Me," which was already all about sex, but becomes all about sex and Tom Cruise - have a sleazy obviousness that's trite. And yet more insulting, if that's possible, is the sleazy costuming which make the eighties look even worse than we all might remember them - from Zeta Jones' ill fitting suits to Hough's hooker streetwear, to Boneta and Cruise in tight jeans and nothing to the imagination tops, this film makes a whole era into a sleazy looking cartoon. And that, I suspect, is its real point. Hot and sticky sweet... those used to be good things. I swear.

It's Hard To Look Right, At You Baby...

 

 

I have to admit... I don't entirely get this; the phenomenon of Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe" as a YouTube/lip-synch/cover item just mystifies me. The song is tuneful enough (which, among several reasons, is why I wouldn't call it a Worst Song Ever), but pulling out the video camera and shooting a lip synch video with my frat/cheerleading squad/co-workers... not really, no. I suspect that this YouTube phenom is actually the culmination of several trends in pop music that have been bubbling under the radar for a while (the lip synchs, the cover versions, the flash mobs, your nephew, her grandmother...), and ultimately, this may be the New Milennium equivalent of the Mix Tape - remember when you thought you were the only one making mix tapes? And then it turned out everyone did it?

Yeah, kind of like that. 

Now, who can take this to the next level?

Sunday Singalong: You'd Be Amazed How Much I Love You So

From the time spent reminiscing:

Donna Summer, Dim All The Lights. It's not even my favorite song, but it's a prime example of the kind of disco music that came to define the era: the slow jam opening to an extended sped up note, the percussive rhythms, the connecting bridge, followed by repeats of the chorus to the end. It's Summer's longest held note (a pop music record at the time for number of bars held), and lyrically, it's arguably one of the best of her songs from that era, sexy without being sleazy, a clear idea expressed from start to finish. For me, it's a reminder of the weird, wonderful sophistication of my childhood: the things we were exposed to at 11, 12, 13... gee whiz. They played this at junior high school dances, for goodness sake. I keep saying we were the generation that was 40 before we were 25. One other thing - it's this song, in many ways, that also turned the "disco" concept into pure formula; in many ways, this song is simply an improvement on the structure, lyrics and instrumentation of Last Dance. From there... you could list a raft of songs that essentially did the same thing (for artists such as Cher, Streisand, France Joli... I could go on). And that, as much anything, goes a long way to explaining why disco kind of wore itself out.

Donna Summer and Barbra Streisand, No More Tears (Enough Is Enough). Neither of these women did all that many duets; even more rarely were they ever paired with a singer anywhere near as strong (Summer may have married Bruce Sudano, but she could sure outsing him). Aretha Franklin has always had a similar problem. So this duet is remarkable, if nothing else, for how well matched these two are, both technically and in terms of range. Indeed, it's rare to have a duet where both the voices are fairly high sopranos. And the song is a marvel - never mind the pyrotechnics, just listen to them harmonize on "and we won't waste... another tear," with complete care and precision. Technically, I'm among those who think Summer wins this one, if we have to judge a contest; she's more naturally suited to the material, and Streisand can get strident. But it's a close call, and calling it a contest is to miss the point: this is just an amazing song, a remarkable duet, and it holds up amazingly well (consider how theatically similar it is to "I Will Survive" and how that song has been more or less been played into the ground.

Donna Summer, Last Dance. There's this moment, towards the end of every version (Casablanca edited the song a number of ways over the years), when Summer is doing the final repeat of the refrain "I need you by me, to guide me, to guide me..." (she apparently forgot "beside me"), and it's a long song and she's working it hard... and still, she sounds amazing. More than that, over a complicated orchestral arrangement (listen to the way the strings swirl, and the horns climb), she never gives the impression of the arrangement leading her, instead she's focused, in control, and very much in charge of where all this energy is headed.There's a reason this song became, commandingly, the song that sums up the end of an evening of dancing: it's not just the universal notions of the lyrics, or the obviousness of the title; it's that Summer gives it the authority it deserves. When she says "I need you..." and all the rest, the sense of need is actually palpable, and only one more dance can possibly satisfy. And so, come on baby... there's that dance. Yeah....

Donna Summer, Love Is In Control (Finger on the Trigger). J, my best friend, was the first person to point out to me that thinking of Summer as a "disco died" casualty was a mistake: even as disco vanished from radio and clubs, Summer was back in the Top 40 with The Wanderer, a fairly adventurous album that was actually well received. That was followed by a self titled album, including this single. Objectively, Love is in Control isn't necessarily great - you can hear the heavy hand of Quincy Jones in the instrumentation which borrows heavily from the similar work he was doing for Michael Jackson, and I realized, today, that Summer's voice is barely present for half the track. But she wins again, because her growling, fearsome delivery of lines like "you better raise your sights up high..." offer no room for hesitation. 

Donna Summer and Musical Youth, Unconditional Love. It's also easy to forget that Donna Summer was actually a very versatile singer who could easily handle a wide variety of genres and styles; on top of disco, she was actually one of the artists to help bring reggae into mainstream pop musical culture, both with State of Independence, and with this charmer, done with the then trendy, kind of a flash in the pan act Musical Youth. The song lopes along genially, and Summer's "ya mon" diction may be somewhat mannered, but underneath it all... she gets it, and it shows. Plus, the duet softened her image tremendously, taking her from the saucy siren image of the seventies into a more wholesome, Earth Mother type presentation (which was probably the most natural fit).

Donna Summer, This Time I Know It's For Real. When word began to drift out that Donna Summer was in London working with producers Stock, Aitken and Waterman, the anticipation, especially among knowledgable gays, was palpable. Proven hitmakers, S-A-W had already made dance music stars out of Rick Astley, Bananarama, Kylie Minogue, and a number of others. And when "This Time" showed up, the wait was worth it. However lightweight lyrically, the song was a revival of the kind of upbeat dance music not seen since disco's heyday, and as it turned out, lots of people liked it, and missed it. Summer's so in her elements, it's hard to know where to begin about why this song is simple perfection. You'd be amazed... how much I love you so. 

Donna Summer (with Bruce Roberts), Whenever There Is Love (the Junior Vasquez mix). In the early days, a disco track wasn't really a "remix" effort, not in the way we see them today. Producers started out recording long tracks, and simply cut them down for radio, editing out instrumental breaks, and even verses. Go back, and you can hear an enormous difference from the seventies era songs (they're fuller, more fully arranged), then a lot of the early "remixes" where songs were lengthened or sped up artificially after the fact of their initial recording. That means that much of Donna Summer's hits were never touched, at the time, by the deejays who became remix stars. It was years before Summer joined the ranks of artists with multiple remixes of one song by different deejays... and naturally, they all wanted the chance to work with the Queen. This song, for the forgettable film Daylight, was the first time Junior Vasquez (legendary, dear) worked his magic... and magic it is. At his best, Vasquez plays with the dynamics of the singer, but never loses sight of the song's overall structure, and here, he's in top form. So is Summer, and it hardly matters that Roberts (who wrote it) is more or less blown away as a result.

Donna Summer, Love Is The Healer (Thunderpuss mix). But the part that kind of defies explanation is buried, deep down, in Summer's success: it's the connection she made, on the dance floor, with the dancers, in their hearts, down to their souls. Oh sure, maybe you just danced to Last Dance at your cousin's wedding. Fun... right? That's not the half of it. It's that late night, 2 in the morning moment when a group of ecstatic revelers - probably gay men, but whoever - were lifted that much higher by the voice of a Goddess who spoke to their deepest feelings. The place where love is eternal, we are all one, and everything is possible. This is not stuff for amateurs. It's dance as a religion, the communion of true believers. I am on a mission... a mission of love. "Love is the mission, baby," Summer says in this song's spoken break, and it's the priestess, speaking to her flock, open and ready to receive. Thunderpuss, a remixing duo, are naturally up to the challenge of translating this into the realm of anthem - there's similar ecstasy to be found in their remix of Whitney Houston's "It's Not Right, But It's Okay" - but it's Donna who reigns. That's why she was Queen.

Forever Donna

Somehow, I never expected to live through one year where two of pop music's greatest singers died.

Donna Summer was the lifeline of my childhood, the Queen of Disco who made the world safe for teen age gay boys yet to come out. She was beautiful, insanely talented, and she put dance music on the top of the pop charts. 

Of course she was much, much more than that. She was a stage performer. She was a survivor, one of the brightest examples of a seventies cocaine casualty rising from the ashes. She survived the "death" of disco and rode the return of dance music wave of the late eighties and early nineties back to her rightful place in pop history. 

I am blessed, in my life, to have known one of her most ardent fans, my best friend. His love became my love; his joy in her music became mine. I am chocolate... but I don't like the heat.

She was the greatest of gay stars, a career created and supported by gay men, who managed to say "Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve"... and still managed to make it right in the end. It helps that, you know, she wasn't necessarily a genius... but man, could she sing. So that's mostly what she did.

People will talk about Last Dance and MacArthur Park and Dim All The Lights - the longest sustained single note in a number one song by a singer - but my two favorites are earlier and simpler. No one has, or will ever improve on "I Love You" and "Heaven Knows."

I am a dancer. I love to dance, to feel the rhythm on the dance floor. I have been dancing to Donna Summer since I was 12, and almost consistently ever since. And we will dance again to her music. And it will all be all right.

 

 

Articles We Never Finished Reading (Except For The Pictures): The Rocks That I Got

"The house, a classic white brick manse, is huge—nine bedrooms—and sprawls out from the center hall with two giant wings. The interior is echt J.Lo: luxe, modern, and sexy—dark floors, gray curtains and walls, pastel-colored furniture. Her assistant, Gilly, deposits me in Lopez’s office and says, “Jennifer will be down shortly.” I hear kids shrieking somewhere upstairs. Like Lopez herself, the office is both masculine and feminine. There are wood-paneled walls and wingback chairs, a killer sound system, and a fur throw draped over a sofa. There’s a huge plaque (30 MILLION ALBUMS SOLD WORLD-WIDE); a ledge full of various film- and music-industry awards; and on her desk, nude shots of J.Lo for the advertising campaign for her forthcoming perfume, Glowing (the sample fragrance bottle actually lights up). A quick glance at the shelves reveals a taste for the classics (The Grapes of Wrath, Shakespeare); memoir (Arthur Miller’sTimebends); and self-help (Lies at the Altar: The Truth About Great Marriages). On the glass coffee table there is a big, lush book on Pucci, which somehow seems perfect."

"Venus Rising", a profile of Jennifer Lopez by Jonathan Van Meter, in the April 2012 Vogue

I just wanted to prove that not everything I put down is in New York, and also that not everything is a political or intellectual diatribe. I don't (generally) buy People or Us (though I admit a weakness for the sleazier Star) or other mags with fawning celbrity profiles... but Conde Nast can get me to read them anyway, posing as fashion (Vogue, GQ) or deep thought (Vanity Fair, which isn't). At this late date, I know what I'm in for: a quick tour of the Star's Lovely Home, a few bites of Our Star at a Meal, the old "they're just like us" anecdote, and another few thousand words about how, really, they're not (multiple divorces, million dollar lifestyles, blah blah blah). Sometimes they're interesting (Julia Roberts, Charlize Theron), even thoughtful (Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway)... but sometimes you can't even fake the necessary interest, which appears to be the case here. I kept putting this issue at the top of my pile, even after the new one came out, determined to read the Lopez piece all the way to the end. But I just couldn't do it; I'd get hung up on descriptions, like the one above, which illustrate both the absurdity of her wealth and the vapidness of the profiles like this (and, by extension, the vapid prose of writers like Van Meter). Then there's the fact that Lopez, still, is the odd kind of nondescript star only America can quite produce: she's not exactly good, her career is kind of middling, she's the third chair on a reality panel show whose recording career has been modestly succesful. Although she seemed a promising actress, that hasn't really worked out either. So why does she get Vogue covers? I mean, obviously, she's attractive, but that seems to be about it, and even there, there are more striking brunettes and women of Puerto Rican descent. So mostly, I've given up, the Vogue goes into my back issue pile, and I'll never know Jennifer's beauty secrets. Oh well. Life, I suppose, must go on.