Grow up or die

Watched the Bill Maher documentary Religulous last night, and for the most part it was exactly what I was expecting: Bill humorously preaching to the converted (so to speak) about how silly organized religions are. He uses a milder version of Michael Moore's strategy of engaging folks from "the other side" in dialogue, poking and prodding and getting them to say things that might sound normal in other contexts, but which, in Maher's context, sound irrational, bizarre, and ridiculous. What I liked was that he subjected all religions to the method, not just the born-again creationists and the Mormons and Muslim extremists, but also mainstream Catholics and Jews. He ridicules Scientology, a pretty safe tactic, but then turns that around at those who are laughing and says, "Hey, your religion has tenets that are just as crazy!" One of my favorite bits was his ridiculing of a guy who has built a religion around smoking dope; you might expect Maher to be sympathetic to him, but his agenda here is clear: anyone who thinks they've found the answer to the meaning of life in an external force or thing is a little bit crazy, and maybe dangerous.

The bulk of the film is made up of these encounters from across the world, in churches, in sacred sites, at the Kentucky creation museum, and at a Holy Land Experience theme park in Orlando (I'm a little scared that my partner Don was serious when he muttered something about wanting to go there--see Bill with Orlando Jesus at right). Maher uses humor to make the situations lighter than they would be under Michael Moore, and most of the interviews are short enough that they don't get too uncomfortable--I am not a fan of the Daily Show feature story interview style in which folks sometimes get roasted to the point of viewer discomfort. If Maher truly doesn't know the answers and is just asking questions, as he keeps proclaiming, than he's a glutton for punishment, as trying to get any religious people to enter the realm of rationality is doomed to failure (since the very definition of faith is belief in something without rational evidence, as I have faith that Woody Allen will again make a really good movie someday).

But even though the interviews get to feeling a little same-old, same-old, it's worth sticking around to the end, when Maher gets serious about the destructive role of religion in history and in society today. I believe that on an individual basis, religion can be a force for "good," but too often on a mass level, religion has been responsible for so much hatred and war and death. Maher has lots of quotable quotes in the harsh last minutes of the movie, but I got a chill when I heard the following: "Faith means making a virtue out of not thinking. It's nothing to brag about. And those who preach faith, and enable and elevate it, are our intellectual slaveholders--keeping mankind in a bondage to fantasy and nonsense that has spawned and justified so much lunacy and destruction. Religion is dangerous, because it allows human beings who don't have all the answers to think that they do." Maher says it's time to "grow up or die," and though I can't imagine he or anyone else really thinks that's going to happen, it's bracing to hear such words.

OK, so you want the short version...

A friend who is a Less-Than-Faithful Reader, reading my blog only when boredom sets in and every DIY and reality show on cable is a rerun, tells me my previous post on long versions of songs vs. short versions is, well, too long. She wants the short version. As she would have known if she'd finished the post, so do I. Here goes: when I was young, I liked hearing the 5-minute album version of a song rather than the 3-minute single, or the 8-minute dance remix rather than the 4-minute radio version. Now, with practically the entire history of recorded music at my digital disposal, I generally want the short versions, except for "Layla" or "American Pie." That's it.

Do you want the long version or the short version?

In my younger days, when the radio was about the most important thing in my life, one of my greatest joys was hearing the "long version" of a song on AM radio. I'm not sure this concept is still one that has wide currency. Back then (1960's-80's), the single (45 rpm) version of a song, the one that got played on the radio, was often a shortened version of the complete song as it appeared on the album. The reason: the shorter the song, the better a chance it had of getting played on the radio.

My love affair with radio started in the summer of '69 when I was, well, still a kid, and the first time I was aware of this distinction was the song "Let Me" by Paul Revere & The Raiders. The single, which I owned, was 2:41, but the album version, which I could hear occasionally after dark on the radio, was almost four minutes. The difference, as often was in these cases, was in the ending: on the single, the coda was either simply faded early or, in the case of "Let Me," was actually re-edited so that it was, to my ears, substantially different. Of course, because the long version was so hard to catch (and if you did, it was late at night, like 10 p.m., or even, gasp, midnight!), it seemed a sign of hipness to say, casually to your friends, that you liked the long version.

The other early example of this I remember is "Spinning Wheel" by Blood Sweat & Tears. The 45 had a calliope snatch at the end, then ended cold. On the album, the music repeated after the calliope into a longer fadeout. Sometimes a middle verse was edited (I'm pretty sure that's the case with the single of Deep Purple's "Smoke on the Water"). Sometimes the reverse happened: with Tommy James' "Crimson and Clover," the single was the original version, and for the album, a long, meandering "psychedelic" middle section was added. I even heard a long version of Bob Dylan's very short song "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" which a DJ produced by simply repeating one of the verses.

Of course, there were also the instances when songs were shortened due to content rather than length. Sometimes they were bleeped, as in Johnny Cash's "A Boy Named Sue," or awkwardly snipped, as when our local station cut the word "crap" out of the first line of Paul Simon's "Kodachrome." Over on the FM dial, I would get positively giddy when I would hear Grace Slick sing, "Up against the wall, motherf**ker!" uncensored, in the Jefferson Airplane's "We Can Be Together," or when I'd hear Mary Balin sing about the taste of the real world he got when he went down on her in "Miracles"--that song got trimmed for both length and content.

By the 80's, radio was more open to playing longer songs, though even today, you will still find shorter "radio edits" available on iTunes. The disco movement led to the phenomenon of incredibly long remixes intended for the dance floor which were issued as 12" singles; here's where my love for long versions first stumbled. I found these cool in the beginning, especially during my discobunny days, but soon realized that they were repetitious to the extreme, usually padded out to 8 or 9 minutes by long passages of thumping drums and bass. Now I find them tedious, some exceptions being "Savin' Myself" by Eria Fachin, New Order's "True Faith," and the glorious eight minutes of "Forbidden Love" by Madleen Kane (pictured below)

My obscure point: it's weird now that when I can choose the long or short version of a song, I typically go for the short version. I've pretty much gotten rid of all my Erasure remixes (too much chopping up and not enough hooks) and when I went through some of my 12" vinyl disco singles this weekend to see which ones I might want to rip to mp3, there weren't that many. Even "Turn the Beat Around" is preferable in the short version. And I've grown to dislike the extended "Crimson and Clover" with a passion. Still, give me the full LP versions of "Miracles" and "Layla" and "American Pie." Life's too short for bad remixes, and it's too short for bad editing jobs on long songs that are perfect.

Wallowing like a sophomore

This morning, the iPod had me practically suicidal. First of all, I was thinking about my poor sick kitty who has been acting strangely the last day or so. Secondly, I needed coffee. Then "The Last Resort" by the Eagles came on the iPod. This song, from Hotel California, always makes me choke up, though I feel a little silly about that. It's a message song told in incomplete narrative chunks. Without actually going to look up the lyrics, let me tell you what I think it's about.

First verse: A young woman from Rhode Island goes out West to seek the American dream because she's heard that California is "paradise." Second verse: The young woman drops out of the song and the singer sings about the dirty little history of Manifest Destiny, and how we knocked down the mountains to build elite, swinging communities, how we raped the land and called it "paradise." Third verse: With California exhausted, missionaries headed to the paradisaical further frontier of Hawaii, bringing a neon sign saying "Jesus is coming." Then there's some talk about our endless needs and bloody deeds in the name of claiming a frontier. At the climax, the music swells into hymn territory with these words:

"And you can see them there, on Sunday morning
They stand up and sing about what it's like up there
They call it paradise; I don't know why
You call someplace paradise...
Kiss it goodbye."

...and as I sing along, I always choke up. It's what I think of as a "college sophomore" feeling--you know, when you're discovering all the wrongs of the world and how art can express them so well. I'm not surprised the song made me sad and furious when I was young--I was quite susceptible to message songs--but I am always a little surprised when I still react that way at my age. I think it's partly because it's long and majestic-sounding--even if you couldn't understand the lyrics, you'd still know something "important" was being said. Henley also sounds quite sincere, though I do I wish the lyrics were a bit more coherent. One way or another (either because I'm gay or I don't believe in the Christian god), I've already kissed paradise goodbye, but I really like the juxtaposition of hopes and dreams of the Frontier with hopes and dreams of Heaven.

If that wasn't enough, next came Joni Mitchell's "The Last Time I Saw Richard," from her wonderful album Blue. In a cafe, the singer meets up with an older friend who has met the fate of all aging romantics, winding up "cynical and drunk and boring someone in some dark cafe." Disillusioned with romance, he has settled for a sterile marriage. At first, Joni thinks there's still hope because he's playing romantic songs on the jukebox, but by the last verse, she's sitting alone:

"Hiding behind bottles in dark cafes, dark cafes,
Only a dark cocoon before I get my gorgeous wings
And fly away"

Though I don't choke up, I do like to wallow in the remembered sensation of thinking of myself as a cyncial romantic already at the tender age of 20 (when a slightly older boyfriend introduced me to the genius of 70's Joni Mitchell) even though it was really just a pose. I'll say it again, I love my iPod, but I hope it delivers some more upbeat tunes this afternoon.

The return of the album

Just kidding! No way! See my old post on the death of the album for more details. But still, once in a while, I'll find something worth having as an album, even as a physical artifact (CD). It's usually something that sounds like an organic whole. It might be a concept album (such as Sgt. Pepper) or just a collection of songs that sounds perfectly right as one piece (Joni Mitchell's Blue). Most recently, I bought the first album by Seattle rock band Fleet Foxes. The sound, as I described rather flippantly on Twitter and Facebook, is like a drunken Beach Boys led by Neil Young. Now I would add the influence of The Band in there as well. They describe their music as "baroque harmonic pop," which is a good start, though I'd say sort of lo-fi pop/folk. Not sure what the lyrics are getting at (no lyric sheet), but they seem a bit emo-John Denverish at times, with lots of references to nature and emotions. Like the songs on Brian Wilson's Smile, some of them are like mini-suites, with melodic and rhythmic changes within songs. The critics seem to have anointed "White Winter Hymnal" as the song everyone should buy on iTunes, and it is does have lovely round-style harmonies, but no one song has jumped out at me yet; the songs all work together nicely to create a lovely soft rustic mood that doesn't lend itself to iPod shuffling.

A band I've mentioned on my blog before but never discussed is The Decemberists. They have in common with Fleet Foxes a somewhat folkish sound, but their arrangements are fuller and more indie-rock oriented. Their songs often sound like strange old ballads, full of death, war, and star-crossed love. The Crane Wife, from 2006, sometimes has a 70's "progressive rock" sound, like Emerson Lake & Palmer crossed with British folkies Fairport Convention. And like Fleet Foxes, they are a band best heard via album, though I do have a few of their songs on the shuffle. My favorite, from an earlier album, is "16 Military Wives," a much more straightforwardly rockin' tune than usual for them. "Sons and Daughters" on Crane Wife is another that stands up well on its own. Singer Colin Meloy has a distinctive New Englandish voice (and for some reason, I picture him looking like Rainn Wilson, though I don't think he does). They recently released a song called "Valerie Plame," and I was shocked to find that it really is a mid-tempo pop song about Valerie Plame! A new album is due in March, and I'm sure I'll need it on CD rather than from iTunes.

How songs chug

Thanks to my iPod (forget same-sex marriage, when can I marry my iPod?), I had a dumb little epiphany this morning on my way to work. First the iPod played "Islands in the Stream," an innocuous little pop ditty by Kenny Rogers & Dolly Parton. I realized as I was singing and bopping along in the car that I like the song largely because it does something I've always thought of as "chugging along." I've never quite known what I meant by that phrase, but another song I love for its chugging is Dionne Warwick's "Heartbreaker"--I love Dionne's Bacharach period in the 60's but don't have much use for the rest of her output, except for this early 80's number with Barry Gibb.

Then came George Harrison's "Isn't It a Pity," a much slower and statelier number with a kind of "Hey Jude"-like chant at the end. And by gosh if I didn't realize that this song also "chugged along," causing me to thump a steady if slow rhythm with my entire body in the car seat. Next was The Babys "Isn't It Time" (sorry, but I count all Babys hits as guilty pleasures). Eh, voila, this song didn't chug. And I figured out what the hell I mean by "chugging."

In most pop songs (like "Isn't It Time"), after the first chorus, before the second verse begins, the background rhythm (bass, drums, rhythm guitar) stops or changes tempo, often slowing down, then picking up again once the verse starts. But in "Islands in the Stream" and "Isn't It a Pity" and "Heartbreaker," the background rhythm keeps going, it doesn't stop or slow down like in the average pop song. In other words, it just keeps on chuggin' along. Maybe this difference is obvious to everyone else, and with the current pop rage of stop-start rhythms, this may be a thing of the past, but I am at last pleased to know what the hell I'm talking to myself about in the car between bursts of singing along.

Dead and buried and stabbed in the eye on horror movie night

For our traditional Friday night horror/mystery movie last week, we watched Dead and Buried, a film from 1981 which has picked up a small cult following. Normally I'd probably review this over on my Moviepalace site, but I try to adhere to a pre-1980 cutoff for that blog, so here we are. In the opening, on a misty New England beach, a photographer flirts with a hot local lady who rips her top off for him. Unfortunately, their naughty little idyll is cut short when she and a bunch of townies beat him up, tie him up, and burn him up, snapping pictures of him the whole time. They put his body in a car and make it look like he was the victim of an accident. When the new local sheriff and the (very) old undertaker investigate, it turns out the poor guy is still alive (in a startling scene inspired by a shot from Jaws) though horribly charred and unable to speak. Thus begins a string of mutilation killings; we know that the bulk of the townspeople are doing them, but we don't know why, or who the mastermind is. Even weirder, the eventually truly-dead picture snapper winds up alive and well, working as an auto mechanic at the town's garage.

The plot is fairly predictable, and the unmasking of the major villains is not surprising at all, but I must admit a number of gory setpieces did make me jump and/or yell: the charred man's unexpected scream, a nurse stabbing a man in the eye with a hypodermic needle, and a twitching, severed arm stuck in a car grille, all in the first half of the film. The plot itself has so many holes that it's way too frustrating to try and think it all through, but still things move along nicely to an OK wrap-up. James Farentino, a handsome if craggy-faced actor I know mostly from TV, is fine though he does tend to go over-the-top in the last half as his character keeps finding out nasty secrets. Melody Anderson (who played Dale Arden in the 1980 remake of Flash Gordon) is similarly OK as the sheriff's wife, who may have a secret or two of her own. Best is Jack Albertson, the Man from Chico and the Man (pictured w/Farentino) in his last screen role. He looks quite frail, but his role is fairly substantial and he does a fine job. The script was co-written by Dan O'Bannon (Dark Star, Alien) and I wish it had been a bit tighter; several relatively minor points that could be explained either aren't or are explained so subtly that I didn't notice. Still, a nice low-budget mainstream shock fest for a Friday night.