Rediscovering vinyl

This past weekend, they were calling for an ice storm, so Don finished setting up my new Ion turntable that allows me to transfer songs from vinyl records to mp3 files on our computer, so I can play the songs on my iPod. Finally, I could go down to the basement and dredge up the hundreds of songs I have only on vinyl and hear them again after roughly 13 years without a working turntable in the house. Yay!!

However, it turns out that I have far more songs from my past already on CD or mp3 than I realized. I could only come up with a sparse little handful of LPs and 45s to scuttle upstairs with. (I have hundreds more records living in my mom's basement, and when I visited her on Sunday, I grabbed one more handful; I'm sure I'll find more when she deigns to let me into my old bedroom, which has become her "stuffed with crap" room, where most of my vinyl is.) The first thing I transferred (is "ripped" the right word?) was a double album by Kenny Rogers & The First Edition called The Ballad of Calico, more about which I will write another day.

Then I did a few 45s, including the single of Loggins & Messina's "Thinking of You," which is a re-recorded version of the album song and unavailable on CD. I also did my 45 of "The Court of the Crimson King," a 3-1/2 minute single version of a 9 minute album song--I have the album on CD (pictured), but I wanted the short version just for kicks. The ripping is very easy to do and went quite smoothly. Right now, I'm using the standard software which does not allow for altering the sound quality, so the vinyl pops and hisses transfer right over to mp3 with the music, but I don't really mind; I kept my records in fairly decent shape so the noises aren't distracting, just enough to remind me that I'm listening to vinyl. An advanced software is available if I need to become a mad sound scientist someday.

I still cling to the belief that vinyl has a warmer, richer sound than CD, and if I want, I can use the turntable and software to simply listen to my vinyl at the computer. While I'm not planning any wholesale re-ripping of songs I already have on CD or mp3, I may test my theory about Motown 45s: I find that the Motown hits of the 60's and 70's have never sounded as good as they did on vinyl 45's. I know that their singles were mixed for a crisper, brighter sound for maximum enjoyment on AM radios, and I truly believe that the Supremes, Temptations, Smokey, et al. have never sounded as good on LP or CD as they did on 45s. Same with Altantic's Aretha Franklin songs; I own her 2-disc hits collection and the songs just don't sound as full and rich as they did on my old 45s. So next up, as soon as I find them: "Love Child," "I Can't Get Next to You," "Tears of a Clown," and "Until You Come Back to Me"!

Books of 2008, such as they were

I complained last summer about my reading habits, saying I was reading "fairly undemanding non-fiction books, mostly about movies or music." Things didn't get better in the second half of the year. I used to read a wide range of fiction: literary, popular, midlist (the stuff in between), fantasy, SF, mysteries, and gay novels. Now, apparently, I read only light non-fiction about the movies and music that I consume when I'm not reading.

I am just geeky enough that I keep a blank book journal of everything I read, with comments. Back in 2002, to pick a year at random, I read 74 books: 45 non-fiction, 29 fiction. 8 were mysteries, 6 were SF/fantasy/horror, and 17 were about movies. In 2008, I read 45 books: 37 non-fiction, 8 fiction. I didn't bother to do a genre breakdown, but I can tell you that I only read one mystery, The War Against Miss Winter by Kathryn Miller Haines. I didn't finish The Underground City, the WWII novel I'd been reading back in August when I made my last book post here. And I didn't bother to make a best-of list for the year; everything seemed so-so. If I had to pick standouts, I'd pick The Star Machine, a book about the old star-making machinery of the movie studios in the 30's and 40's, Pictures at a Revolution, about the movies of 1967, and Bright Boulevards Bold Dreams, about black Hollywood of the 30's and 40's.

I also enjoyed Reagan: The Hollywood Years by Marc Eliot. I like Reagan's scrappy little B-movies of the 40's, especially the Brass Bancroft series, and this book was stuffed with information about his acting career and the womanizing he did back then. The author has an irritating habit of including lots of movie info and gossip that isn't germane to the subject--he seems to include it just to show that he knows his stuff--but as a light movie-star bio, it's one of the better ones I've read lately. I also liked The Defining Moment, by Jonathan Alter, about FDR's first 100 days in office. It got some press in the fall when it was mentioned as one of Barak Obama's reads. Obama could do worse than pick FDR as a model, though this book doesn't treat Roosevelt as a saint. It stops at the end of the 100 days, and makes me want to read a more encompassing bio of FDR soon.

In the first 9 days of this year, I've finished 2 books, both more or less mysteries: The Lying Tongue by Andrew Wilson is about a young man who finds himself in Venice, working as a companion for an older man who wrote one book for which he became famous, and never wrote another one again. The narrator decides to pry into his life and write a tell-all bio, but first he has to: 1) get the old man talking, and 2) do something about the pesky woman who is already working on a bio. The book works well as a "literary" thriller, though things were tied up a bit too neatly at the end (though the last plot twist is a good one). I also read Bone By Bone by Carol O'Connell, about a man who returns to his hometown to solve the mystery of the disappearance of his younger brother some 20 years earlier. Her writing style makes the narrative feel rather oblique; I kept thinking I was missing something, grasping at straws to get the plot to come clear. I finished it and I guess I didn't miss anything because it all made sense, but it's a rather convoluted plot with lots of blind leads and characters who are thrown in just so there will be a lot of folks as suspects. But hey, that's 2 novels so far, so maybe I'm off my non-ficiton kick for a time.

2 PBS surprises

I rarely channel-surf these days: too damn many channels! And too damn much "reality" TV, not just silly shows like Survivor, but DIY shows on cooking and cleaning and exercising, and even "documentary" shows on driving big trucks along ice highways (who the hell knew?). But by happy happenstance, I stumbled on 2 PBS shows in the last week that I enjoyed. One was Grey Gardens: From East Hampton to Broadway, about how the 1976 Maysles Brothers documentary film Gray Gardens, which chronicled the life of two formerly rich women, who were blood relatives of Jackie Kennedy, who lived in squalor in a broken-down house in the Hamptons, became a hit, Tony-winning musical in 2006. The movie became something of a gay camp sensation, perhaps because Edie Beale was a theatrically larger-than-life person who was clearly having fun in the limelight. The film could even be seen as a forerunner of some of today's "living on camera" reality shows. The musical, which I haven't seen, looks like it was a showcase for Christine Ebersole (pictured), and when she left, the show closed despite having played to big audiences, both off- and on Broadway for over a year. This 45-minute documentary (about a play based on a documentary) was not much more than functional, but it piqued my interest in seeing the show, and the composer of the show's score, Scott Frankel, seemed articulate and interesting.

The other show was Cinema's Exiles: From Hitler to Hollywood, about the actors and filmmakers who fled Nazi Germany and came in a steady stream to the United States to form a little film colony of their own. Many, like Fritz Lang, Billy Wilder, Peter Lorre, Conrad Veidt, and S. Z. Sakall, had solid careers here, though many more, some of whom were respected stage actors in Europe, became bit actors (most of the supporting cast of Casablanca) or found no show biz work at all. Much of the info here will not be new to classic film buffs, though I did not that two of the most famous film music composers of the 40's, Franz Waxman and Erich Wolfgang Korngold, were German exiles, as was Henry Koster, director of one of my favorite moves, The Bishop's Wife. The doc gives short shrift to Edgar G. Ulmer who is known today as a B-movie auteur, but otherwise this was good viewing, with good narration by Sigourney Weaver.

iPod Archives: Random "H" songs

[My iPod is on alphabetical play of its entire contents, so I'm hearing songs in batches by first letter of the song title]

"The Horizon Has Been Defeated" by Jack Johnson (at right): A mellow aging surfer, drifting away on weed, contemplates a philosophical shift in his outlook on the natural world--maybe? I don't think I could listen to too much Johnson (pardon the classic-movie in-joke pun), but I like this one, though I'm not sure I've figured out the title yet--surfer lingo? goodbye, nature? I'm too high to see 10 feet in front of me?

"Housequake" by Prince, from Sign 'O' the Times (1987): One of my favorite Prince tracks, set at a rockin' house party just before the neighbors call the cops; there are lyrics, with Prince's voice sounding like it's been sped up or processed or something, but the most fun is the chanting: "Shut up already/ Damn!" "My Lord!" "Bullshit!!" and "What was that? … Aftershock." Prince was rarely this fun again.

"Hot Rod Lincoln" by Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, 1972: A novelty tune about a guy having fun racing his Lincoln until the cops get him. This was the fourth chart version of this tune which was first a hit in 1951. It's a fun story song complete with sound effects, but oddly I find Cody's (George Frayne's) spoken, almost growled, vocals kinda sexy. I wonder what he sounds like when he's singing? (I know I've heard his '75 version of "Don't Let Go" but I can't remember what it sounds like.)

"Hummingbird" by Seals & Crofts, 1973: I was not really a big fan of the duo; I saw them in concert in '73, but only because Cheech & Chong cancelled their scheduled show and Seals & Crofts was the only other show we could switch our tickets for. This song starts with a nice yearning intro, bursts into the catchy chorus ("Hummingbird, don't fly away, fly away"), midway through has a great sweeping bridge ("Haven't you noticed the day/Somehow keeps getting longer…"), and finally a lovely chord-change coda. My favorite S&C, with second place going to "We May Never Pass This Way Again."

"House of the Rising Sun" by Frijid Pink: This Detroit band's only top 10 hit, from 1970; the vocal can't touch Eric Burden's, but the fuzz and wah-wah guitars give this an apocalyptic grunge/garage sound that works well. The video below looks live, but it's lip-synced.

Milk

This old crank set a new record low for number of visits to a movie theater in one calendar year: I saw exactly 6 movies outside of the house in 2008. That is by far the lowest number ever. Back in the 70's and 80's, I averaged a movie a week and sometimes more; one year back in my college days, I saw over 80 movies in one year. But home video, less well mannered audiences, a big screen TV, and a general disenchantment with Hollywood has led me do most of my movieviewing 1) at home, and 2) of classic-era movies rather than recent ones. I still keep up on some current films, but generally through Netflix, cable TV, or the library.

But I had a good experience on New Years' Day by going out "among 'em," as my mom would say, and seeing Milk. Friends and colleagues who rarely ask me about recent films were asking me, Have you seen Milk yet? I soon realized it was my gay civic duty to see it, so I went not necessarily expecting a lot: I'm not a fan of Sean Penn (the star) or Gus van Sant (the director). But it's a excellent film and Penn gives the best performance by a leading actor that I've seen in years. He fully inhabits the role of Harvey Milk, one of the first openly gay people to be elected to public office, on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, back in 1978 at a time when Anita Bryant was traveling the country, helping get anti-gay legislation passed in a number of states.

The film starts in 1970 when Milk was living a buttoned-down life in New York City, and follows him through the decade when he begins leading a more free-wheeling existence in San Francisco, just as the Castro neighborhood was taking off as a gay mecca. Milk worked hard to become a respected merchant and soon became a politician, trying to represent not just his gay constituents, but minorities and the working class as well. It takes him a few years, but he is eventually elected a City Supervisor; after being in office for a year, he was assassinated, along with the mayor of San Francisco, by Dan White, a disgruntled (that's the adjective that virtually every print source about this guy uses) Supervisor who was certainly homophobic, possibly a latent homosexual, and who claimed that his acts were caused by too many Twinkies in his diet.


Penn is a wonder, resisting the temptation to exaggerate mannerisms or play it campy; after the first few minutes, he totally disappears in the role. Josh Brolin is almost as good as White; he doesn't have as much to work with, as White was and remains a cipher, at least to the public, but he does a lot with his eyes: sometimes angry, sometimes dead, always chilling. The rest of the cast is good, though only James Franco (above) as Milk's long-time partner, who left Milk when the political animal in him took over, gets much substantive screen time. I also liked Alison Pill as Milk's campaign manager, Victor Garber as Mayor George Moscone, and Joseph Cross as a friend of Milk's, who gets one of the few laughs in the film during a brief sexual escapade. I got quite teary at the end in a scene that plays out like the finale of Field of Dreams (which always gets my waterworks going). The film does a nice job mixing in occasional bits of real-life footage, though we don't see the real Harvey Milk until the credits sequence starts. Highly recommended; I haven't seen many of the Oscar-bait films yet, but I hope at the very least that Penn wins Best Actor for this.

No top 10 list??

I don't think I'm going to have time to make up an end-of-the-year top 10 list this year. To be honest, since most of the mass media artifacts out there are no longer aimed at me (I'm too old and too nostalgic), these lists are no longer as fun as they used to be. At least half of my posts this year were about "old" songs or movie or books, and I suspect that ratio will increase this year.

But I will take a quick look at the things I liked in 2008. I think of myself as someone who doesn't watch much TV (except for old movies on TCM or FMC), but a surprising number of my memorable media moments this year were from television shows: Mad Men, Rome, Swingtown, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The Colbert Report, The Middleman, Jericho, and Pushing Daisies. I'm sorry that Pushing Daisies has been cancelled, but honestly, the quality has gone way down this season. The arc story has gotten needlessly complicated, and icky-creepy to boot, with the return of Chuck's long-dead father being a jump-the-shark moment as far as I'm concerned. I'll miss the cast (especially the angelic Kristin Chenoweth, pictured) and the gorgeous and whimsical set design, but I harbor some animosity for Bryan Fuller, the show's creator, for smothering the light (though admittedly somewhat creepy) tone of the first season with silly and unmotivated soap-opera agonies--I never believed for a moment that Chuck would really want to bring her father back--and I kept wanting them to let the wonderful aunts in on the piemaker's secret.

I'm sad to read about Jeremy Piven's odd medical meltdown this season; after scoring a major critical success on Broadway in Speed-the-Plow, he left the show in a matter of weeks after claiming he had been feeling ill for some time. His doctor said he had mercury poisoning (from too much sushi), and I have no reason to doubt that as a plausible scenario, but the press surrounding the incident, including a remark from David Mamet that Piven was apparently looking for a new career as a thermometer, makes me suspect some diva-style behavior from my favorite sexmonkey.

I seem to have quit going to movies this year; the last time we went to a theater was to see Mamma Mia last summer. I'm not saying that movie put me off all movies forever, but there has been very little out that has made me want to get off my ass out of my comfy home and mingle with loud moviegoers. I'm still keeping up with the films I really want to see via Netflix and the library, but I hope I never completely lose the attraction to seeing movies on the big screen, at least partly because popcorn at home is never as good as popcorn at the multiplex.

Maybe I'll have more to say in a day or two about music and books, but honestly, as I was looking over my past posts, I see I've had a tendency to promise to write about certain subjects later, then never following through. So who knows...

Random red & green memories

I've just realized how many treasured holiday memories of mine involve not just loved ones, but loved "media artifacts." Of course, there are the songs and carols that stretch back to my earliest Christmases. My mom had a friend named Joyce, and I remember that in one carol, I thought I heard a line about "the angel Joyce" and thought how cool that was. I now realize it must have a carol like "O Holy Night" with a line like "the angel voices" or maybe some other song with "angel rejoices" in it.

The first Christmas after I quit believing in Santa Claus, Santa actually came to our door on the 23rd. Our family had a tradition of Santa's elves giving us each one present on the two or three nights before Christmas, so my parents hired a Kiwanas Santa to come to the door one night, saying his elves were too busy to come by, so he brought us our early presents himself. I was totally freaked out (what the hell? didn't I just learn that he's an imaginary figure?) and my brother was in total awe. And I still remember the present he gave me: a children's abridged War of the Worlds.

Naturally, I associate traditional Christmas movies with holidays past, but I also have nostalgic associations with other films I saw on or near Christmas, such as Stairway to Heaven, Things to Come, Harold and Maude, and the 70's remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I also remember certain albums I got for Christmas way back when: The Archies first album, Carly Simon's No Secrets (which I fell asleep to Christmas afternoon while listening to it on my new headphones), Lou Reed's Berlin (not a very jolly album, I know), Emerson Lake & Palmer's live album (a 3-disc set, as I recall).

Christmas was also a time for big media hardware updates: I loved my first 8-track car player and my first VHS player, our lasderdisc player and our first DVD player. (This year, my sweetie got me a turntable [see pic] w/software which can convert vinyl songs to mp3s.) I have many rememberances of books and videos as Christmas gifts--each Christmas for many years running, Don's mom got me the lastet season of Friends on DVD as each came out, and now I have them all! I guess it all sounds rather "commercial," but these tangible things all have rosy glows of Christmas pasts attached to them, and warm thoughts of the people who gave them to me. So let part of Christmas remain commercial; would we really want it any other way?