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Every month, Cosmik Debris brings you many CD and record reviews, but the writers manage to find a little time for other pursuits, like reading, going to movies and watching videos. That's where Everything Else In Review comes in.
MOVIE: O BROTHER WHERE ART THOU
Directed by Joel Coen
Written by Joel and Ethan Coen
Starring George Clooney, JohnTuturro, Tim Blake Nelson, John Goodman, Holly Hunter and Charles Durning (Touchstone Universal Pictures)
Reviewed by Rusty Pipes
At the outset of O Brother Where Art Thou the Cohen Brothers tell you that the film is loosely based on Homer's The Odyssey, the ancient epic poem of Ulysses's ten year return to Ithaca, his home, after the battle of Troy.
The operative word here is "loosely." I never would have guessed if they hadn't flashed that up on the screen, but it does show a deeper level to what most people would consider a fine comedy in any case.
Ulysses Everett McGill (Clooney), is trying to get home like his namesake, but from a Mississippi prison farm, not a battlefield. Unfortunately he is chained to two numbskulls, Pete (Turturro) and Delmar (Nelson), but on the other hand he is fortunate to be blessed with the gift of being able to talk people into most anything. McGill's tragic flaw? A fondness for Dapper Dan hair creme. In this role Clooney looks rather like a grimy Clark Gable, what with the thin mustache, and his erudite worldliness chained together against Turturro and Nelson's dim credulousness is particularly endearing. Clooney's been in danger of being typecast as a leading man hunk for years now, but as long as he keeps making films like this and Three Kings, he'll be fine.
Chained together, the three are off on to find Ulyssess' treasure, buried somewhere in Ithaca, Mississippi, meeting up with analogues of the soothsayer (a blind old Negro on a railroad handcar says they will find a fortune, but not the one they seek!), Sirens and the Cyclops found in Homer's tale along the way. At the same time they are the hunted--a mysterious bountyman called Cooley always seems too close. Then they come across Tommy, an analogue of Robert Johnson, at (where else?) a crossroads in the middle of nowhere. Tommy's guitar playing allows them to record a song at a country radio station (I don't remember any country music in the Odyssey!) as "The Soggy Bottom Boys" which becomes a hit. Eventually McGill is reunited with his wife Penelope (Hunter), but the Soggy Bottom Boys also play a hand in deciding the governor's race!
My synopsis doesn't do this film justice, but I don't want to give too much of the plot away. The Coen Brothers, who are responsible for other films like Fargo, don't get overly dark here. There's some violence, but it does not rise to lethal levels. It's more like the quirky comedy of Raising Arizona set into a 1930's context and with a Homerian twist. Rest assured there's nothing quite like it and Clooney especially is wonderful. It's well shot and edited but other real standouts are the costumes and the immaculately produced period music. All in all a quirky, eclectic, thoroughly enjoyable flick, worth seeing twice.
(C) 2001 - Rusty Pipes
BOOK: DRINKING WITH BUKOWSKI - Recollections of the Poet Laureate of Skid Row
Edited by Daniel Weizman (Thunders Mouth Press)
Reviewed by Shaun Dale
L.A. poet Daniel Weizman has collected over three dozen remembrances of the late Charles Bukowski, who began submitting poems to small presses while working at Los Angeles' Terminal Annex Post Office and became one of the pre-eminent men of letters of late 20th century America, almost, it often seemed, despite his own best efforts to maintain a level of drunken obscurity.
Those efforts were, as the selections in this book make clear, largely part of the pose he presented. Buk wanted, even craved, the credit that was undeniably due him, but he wanted it on his own terms. He was not about to enter the world of the literary dilettante, make the hypocritical bow to academia or give up his pursuit of fine women and strong drink (and vice versa) in order to meet someone's conception of a poet or novelist. No, the world was going to have to adapt its conception to adjust to the reality of a Charles Bukowski, and over time it did.
These pieces - poems, essays, reminiscences and an previously unpublished interview - show the genuinely multi-dimensional man who was behind the besotted Bukowski image. Friends, lovers, students, admirers and critics are on hand to give praise and pass judgment, and the net result is a portrait of the artist that can only enhance appreciation of his art.
(C) 2001 - Shaun Dale
BOOK: TOM WAITS
by Cath Carrol (Thunder's Mouth Press)
Reviewed by Shaun Dale
This new volume in the Thunder's Mouth Press "Kill Your Idols" series lives up to the high standard I've found in previous releases. This time the subject is Tom Waits, the enigmatic performer whose reputation and influence has always outstripped his commercial success.
As in previous KYI editions, the book is divided into three sections - The Story, The Music and The Legacy. The story in this case is an excellent brief biography with some of the oft-told tales of Waits early tenure at Hollywood's Tropicana Motel with Rickie Lee Jones and Chuck E. Weiss, and more information than is generally available on the course he took after those fabled days. As he grew out of the wild years and settled into a more routine family life, Waits became increasingly jealous of his privacy. Cath Carrol has done a fine job of gathering the generally available information about his more recent life and career and fleshing it out with fine journalistic research.
The Legacy does a good job of putting one of the most unpredictable performers of popular music into current context and provides some interesting speculation on possible future trends. It's The Music that provides the most fascinating part of the book for me, though, with solid critical analysis of his entire catalog, including song by song insights and stories.
If Waits life and work have been to some degree a purposeful puzzle, Cath Carroll has provided, if not the entire solution, some valuable clues and insights.
(C) 2001 - Shaun Dale
BOOK: THE ROLLING STONES - Rip This
Joint: The Stories Behind Every Song
By Steve Appleford
272 pages - Thunder's Mouth Press
Reviewed by DJ Johnson
This is turning into a great series, and it was already pretty high on my list. There are volumes on Led Zeppelin, The Doors (a great one I covered a few months back), U2 and a long list of others I can't think of at the moment. Of course I don't care at the moment, because I've spent the last two days reading the details of every song by the greatest rock and roll band in the world.
Steve Appleford has talked to everybody but the Stones themselves in gathering information and quotes for this book. (Wouldn't have mattered if he had talked to the Glimmers, ya know... Mick mumbles and Keith slurs. Best to get the story from people with wicks still in the candles. And yes, I'm kidding.) Unlike so many books, this one isn't filled with quotes from doormen and hangers on. We hear from the engineers and producers, from the people who worked side by side with the band, who recorded their instruments and voices on these classic tracks. We even hear from Maryanne Faithful again, still sore over Mick ripping "Sister Morphine" off from her. Well, I'd be pissed too. We hear from a lot of people about some very important moments in rock and roll history, and if you're like me, you'll find that even when they're talking about how mundane some of the sessions were, hearing the details is riveting.
I know people who know every fact there is to know about The Rolling Stones. They piss me off. Mainly because I know a fair amount and they make me feel like I don't know a thing. In the last two days I found out I knew far less than I thought I did. I'm willing to bet I'm one of the last people to learn that Tattoo You was not your typical "let's go cut an album" album. After the success of Some Girls, The Stones took a creative nose dive with Black & Blue and Emotional Rescue, capping it off with self-loathingly titled greatest hits package, Sucking In The Seventies. Then an engineer started messing about with leftover songs and bits of tape from the previous three albums, and after some phone calls and a bit of studio work, the press was hailing the creative comeback of the great Rolling Stones. Since there hasn't been anything approaching Tattoo You's quality since, that means the last great Stones album was Some Girls. 1978. 23 years ago. Damn. Puts it into a different perspective, doesn't it?
That's not the point of the book, though. This is an examination of each song, of the circumstances and the tensions or joys that gave them birth, and through quotes from older magazine interviews we learn how the band felt about many of the songs. We get to join Keith in wondering why Jagger did twenty practice takes of "Far Away Eyes" perfectly straight, to the delight of Keith's country heart, only to go into a disrespectfully campy accent for the final take. There's even more insight into the decline of Brian Jones than usual, or at least it seems that way, because it's condensed into the stop-action viewpoint of a song-by-song summary. "What can I play, Mick?" "Yeah, what can you play, Brian?" Who was present and who was absent for this song and that song? Who came up with the riff that saved a nothing tune and made it a hit? Which hapless Jagger girlfriend was the victim of which nasty anti-female song? It's all here in Rip This Joint, and for a real fan of the greatest rock and roll band in the world, it's a very hard book to put down.
(C) 2001 - DJ Johnson
ZINE: FUZ #2
Reviewed by Shaun Dale
Editor In Chief Seth Wimpfheimer is back with a second issue of his publication Fuz. Officially, it's a zine. In terms of the volume and quality of content, though, it's on par with an academic journal of popular music.List time it was fuzz guitar king Davie Allan and B-movie diva Mimsy Farmer under the spotlight. Issue two is devoted to some influential, if obscure, British rockers. The Deviants, Pink Fairies and Hawkwind are the subjects, and the coverage is thorough. Extended essays, full discographies and archive-quality illustrations fill every available space of the 48 glossy pages of Fuz #2. US readers can get a copy for $8 payable to Seth Wimpheimer at PO Box 1211, Mountainside, NJ 07092- 0211. It's worth every nickel.
I can't wait to see what #3's about!
(C) 2001 - Shaun Dale
BOOK: ELVIS COSTELLO
by David Sheppard (Thunder's Mouth Press)
Reviewed by Shaun Dale
This entry into the "Kill Your Idols" series provides a fine, if rudimentary, overview of Elvis Costello's life story and career path, but the emphasis is laid where it really belongs. 70 of the book's 133 pages are devoted to a thoughtful analysis of Costello's music. David Sheppard did his homework, and searched out not only all of the official Elvis Costello releases, but all the various tributes, overviews, soundtracks, offshoot releases and other recordings of interest to give as complete a picture of the music as is possible in a book like this. The result is a book that sent me to the record racks to listen again and again as I gained a new insight into an old track. If there's an essential companion to and Elvis Costello record collection, this is it.
(C) 2001 - Shaun Dale
CONCERT: THE DEREK TRUCKS BAND
WOW Hall, Eugene, OR - 2/2/01
Reviewed by Tim and Ananda Owen
Slide guitarist extraordinaire Derek Trucks and his band graced the WOW Hall stage in Eugene, OR., February 2nd. Sharing the bill with Eric Johnson and Alien Love Child, they closed the night with a solid 2 hour set.
Due to such an interestingly notable background, it would be a disservice to readers to go on without a bit of history....
Derek Trucks, nephew of Allman Brothers co-founder and drummer, Butch Trucks, embarked on his musical journey at a remarkably early age, playing coffeehouses in his hometown Jacksonville, Fla. by age 9, cross country gigging with his own band by early teens, touring with his uncles band (Allman Brothers), and sitting in with the likes of Bob Dylan and Buddy Guy by his late teens. He has recently been named among the top slide guitarists, as well as best blues guitarists, by prestigious music publications.
At 21, with already a decade of band leadership and touring under his belt, Derek Trucks has shown a measurable amount of wisdom in regard to musical creative direction. Shunning the trappings of a meteoric rise to fame and fortune easily obtainable for such a prime candidate with his youth, talent and connections, Derek has chosen instead to forge his way by following the muse through a journey that keeps "creative" in bold emphasis, building a fan base with endless touring and keeping control by releasing the band's material through small labels.
Trucks' five piece ensemble consists of himself on lead slide and rhythm guitar, Todd Smallie on bass, Yonrico Scott on drums, keyboardist-flutist Kofi Burbridge, and newest member, vocalist-percussionist, Javier Colon. With the addition of Javier's strong, soulful R&B vocal style and Latin influence, the bands sound has become even more ethnically diverse and yet another step removed from Derek's southern rock roots.
As bandleader, Derek is a confident 10 year veteran, but don't let the bands name fool you. Rather than a backing band for a hot shot center stage lead guitarist, Derek has put together a very talented group of musicians and given them free rein to co-create and develop their unique sound- whatever it may be at the moment.
Opening with the instrumental "Chameleon", by Herbie Hancock, they mixed it up with eclectic stylings of originals and covers, an ever expanding melting pot of sounds and influence that would boil over and spread infectiously throughout the hall. From southern rock, to blues, funk, jazz to Eastern Indian raga inflected numbers, they wove a tapestry of sound, often fusing together these influences in a number of combinations.
Derek, in his laid back and obviously playful demeanor, shares the stage generously as bandmates equally take turns jamming through melodically captivating solos. Javier's vocals were often accompanied by impressive three part harmonies, particularly on an exuberant version of Stevie Wonder's "Too High". Other songs included a kicking version of Bill Withers' "Use Me Up", and originals such as "For My Brother" and "Evil Clown".
By the nights end, despite his inherent background, Trucks had made it clear that he plans to make his impact with his own band and his own music.
(C) 2001 - Article by Tim and Ananda Owen (Photos by Tim Owen (c) 2001)