Ian Fitzgerald

I don’t generally consider this blog a place to write about my television habits, so consider the following an aberration.

The Cosby Show is generally credited with resuscitating the family sitcom (or the sitcom in general), a genre that seemed to be on its last legs in the early 1980s. The show debuted in 1984 and ran until 1992; now in a state of perpetual reruns, the show has effectively been on television my entire life. When I run into an episode of The Cosby Show now, I react the same way I would to hearing a Steve Miller Band song on the radio: they’re generally good but not outstanding; that combined with an almost overwhelming sense of familiarity will almost always lead me to turn the channel.

There is one episode, however, that never fails to capture my attention and remind me just how good this show could be (consider it the “Jet Airliner” of Cosby episodes). In this episode (the fifth of the series’ first season), Theo (Malcolm-Jamal Warner) spends $95 on a shirt by designer Gordon Gartrelle to wear to a school dance. When Cliff (Bill Cosby), discovers how much Theo paid, he orders him to return the shirt. Theo, desperate to look good for his date, agrees to allow his sister Denise (Lisa Bonet) to replicate the shirt for $20. The result (courtesy of spartantailgate.com):

That is what instantly sprang to mind last night when watching Project Runway. While I did not begin watching Project Runway entirely of my own accord, I do consider it worthwhile nearly each week. Besides the comedy the producers/editors are able to produce from among the designers, it is impressive to watch these people produce designs and completed pieces within the given time, budgetary, and artificial constraints. (Incidentally, I’ve often wondered if this kind of show could work with songwriters instead of fashion designers. While many songwriters are unable to produce songs on demand, there are plenty who can do just that and make a fine living off of it. Of course, listening to a batch of completed songs from a number of contestants would take quite a while, and there is nothing visually compelling about songwriting, so the idea may have its limits.) Regardless, the designers were faced in last night’s episode with designing menswear for the first time in the series’ four seasons. Most of the participants had little to no experience in that field, so the results were mixed at best (some finished three-piece suits, while one contestant draped a piece of cloth over her model to suggest the presence of a shirt). One designer known as “Sweet P” (not to be confused with Popeye’s adopted son Swee’Pea) completed a pair of pants and the world’s longest tie, but the heart of the design was the shirt (courtesy of bravotv.com):

Thus, we have television’s funniest shirt since Theo and Denise.

I promise my next entry will be chock full of music talk.

The only other decent music biopic I could come up with is Amadeus, and some may disallow that from my list. Conclusion: this is a genre that has obvious restrictions but plenty of directions in which to be taken by the right directors.

Now, on to the week that was. I spent my Thanksgiving week in Tucson, Arizona. Among the highlights:

-a trip to an Oriental market/music shop apparently owned by Harvey Brooks. For those unfamiliar, Harvey played bass on Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited and was a member of Dylan’s band through autumn, 1965 before giving way to Rick Danko. Brooks’ stint included the infamous Forest Hills show, which featured Dylan’s first full electric set (following the abbreviated performance at Newport). Apparently, i wasn’t familiar enough with Harvey’s work, as I have now learned that he went on to perform with Richie Havens, The Doors (who otherwise used organ as their sole bass sound), and Miles Davis among many others. Apparently, he is still performing.
-ate at Jack In The Box.
-ate at In-N-Out Burger.
-ate at Sonic.
-saw The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada which, along with No Country For Old Men, had me on an impressive Tommy Lee Jones kick until I ran into Men In Black on TNT last night. That thing was like a buzzsaw.

As promised (and even sooner than promised): a new feature. Thanks to the hard work of our loyal webmaster, we now bring to you my first podcast. If all goes well (and I have things to talk about), this will become a regular feature on the site. Podcasts will be posted here in the blog and archived right on the site (under the Archives tab).

Enjoy.

Speaking of music movies, the release of Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There is one week away. If there’s one genre that needs a shot in the arm, it’s the biopic, specifically the “rock star” biopic. Ray was overhyped, Walk The Line was underwhelming, and Mike Myers is about to turn Keith Moon into more of a cartoon character than he actually was.

It’s disappointing, of course, because these are some of our most creative public figures, and they’ve lived remarkable lives. The challenge of distilling those lives into two hours is impossible, but that is the job of great filmmakers. Though it may seem counterintuitive, directors might find it easier to place less emphasis on the work itself. The public, for the most part, knows what these people have done. Trying to connect these people’s lives too directly to their work leads to scenes like the one in Walk The Line where a lovelorn June Carter sits down to write “Ring of Fire” for Johnny. Now, Johnny may well have been the inspiration for this song, but June didn’t sit at her kitchen table with an autoharp and pour her heart out onto the nearest pad of paper: she sat down with Merle Kilgore and tried to work a song out of a shred of an idea just as she had seen the rest of her family do. There are too many biopic traps to mention, and I have high hopes that I’m Not There can avoid some of them. That said, here are a few worth looking into:

Your Cheatin’ Heart (1964): What could go wrong with George Hamilton (yes, the George Hamilton starring as the greatest country music singer ever? Well, all of the songs are sung by Hank Williams, Jr for starters.

The Buddy Holly Story (1978): Gary Busey as Buddy Holly makes no sense. This is the kind of thinking we need in these movies.

Since I’m having a hard time thinking of more than two, I’ll mull it over and post more later.

Meanwhile, we’ve been cooking up something new for the blog. Check in over the next few days for a new feature to end all features.

In my last entry, I noted that I never became fully enamoured with the music of Led Zeppelin. While I don’t want this blog to become a list of bands I don’t really listen to, I guess I could say the same about The Clash. For some reason, I have always had a bit more respect for the latter than the former: maybe it’s the sense of a mission and principles apparent in The Clash’s music (though that hasn’t affected my tastes elsewhere); maybe it’s my distaste for Zeppelin’s appropriation of blues music without credit (though that is not at all uncommon and, again, has not upset my affection for other artists.

Whatever it is, the difference is slight: instead of a greatest hits compilation, all I own is London Calling. This brings me to my greater point: why have The Clash become the go-to band for concert venue music. At no less than five concerts this year have I heard either London Calling, “Rock The Casbah,” or Joe Strummer’s cover of “Redemption Song” playing before or after a show. Are other people picking up on this trend? Have venues signed some licensing agreement? Is there a pact among artists that I don’t know about to keep The Clash alive?

In other zeitgeist news, Julien Temple’s new Strummer documentary is making its away across the country (New York last week, Boston today) and getting great reviews. I hope the theatres are playing “Brand New Cadillac” as I enter or exit.

Concrete Mirror
New Song (to be updated when titled)
Labour Day Parade

A pair of audience members approached me after to tell me my voice was like “a more sonorous Bob Dylan.” They then insisted that it was a compliment.

Today’s article of interest comes from some manner or newspaper and/or magazine called Cleveland Scene. The article takes stock of the current state of protest music. Besides the quality of the protest music being produced, the piece addresses the absence of protest music from mainstream radio: “Besides, radio in general is less likely to play something by relatively unknown artists - some of whom have created the very finest protest music of our times….[Former Marine Dave] Collins says the situation was not so different when he was young. ‘There was pretty tight control of what was on the AM radio then,’ he recalls. ‘But in ‘66, ‘67, and ‘68, so-called underground radio came around to blossom on FM. And that was all anybody I knew listened to.”

Now I don’t care about protest music, but the current state of radio as compared to its structure in the late 1960s is interesting. At that time, as Collins states, AM radio was the dominant broadcast band. FM radio was first used in the U.S in the 1940s but did not become a mainstream broadcast band until the late 1970s. In the interim, specifically in the late ’60s, FM radio was home to underground radio playing what was then alternative rock, much of which we now know as classic rock. The lack of corporate control meant that DJs had the freedom to choose the music they wanted to play, often resulting in cross-genre radio that would not be possible on either AM or FM radio today. Major corporatization in the music industry throughout the 1970s meant that FM, with its loyal rock audience, became big business, and artists not signed to major labels were pushed to the margins.

Fast forward to the present: AM is now the home of talk radio and little else. FM has a number of stations throughout the country offering a limited number of genres and a narrow array of artists within those genres. Satellite radio is more akin to cable television than early FM radio: the nature of its technology limits its accessibility, and though it offers a much wider selection of genres and artists, there is little crossover among genres within the confines of a single station. In other words, there is more available, but the subscriber/listener has to go looking for it.

The apparent modern parallel to late ’60s FM radio would seem then to be internet radio. Notwithstanding the ongoing and very real threats to internet radio made by a music industry in search of higher royalty rates, internet radio seems to be failing what could be its higher function: to bring lesser-known artists to a much wider audience. The problem here seems to be volume: not the level at which the music is listened to, but the amount of music out there to be heard. The democratization of the music industry, such as it has been so far, has meant that anyone with a computer can both make music and make that music available to anyone else with a computer. From MySpace to Pandora to any number of independent radio streams, there seems to be little or no organizing force determining what “deserves” to be heard. Wider availability of sub par music means that, unless a listener is lucky, there is a discouraging amount to sift through to find good music. On the reverse of that, the mountain for an artist to climb is even higher, as audiences are inclined to skepticism of any artist because of the overabundance of music.

In order for internet radio to make the shift from its current listlessness to something resembling FM radio of the late 60s, some entity, be it a single station or a group of diverse but likeminded stations, must step forward to organize the chaos and bring attention to music of quality that would not be able to breach the boundaries of mainstream radio. How does all of that happen? I have no idea. Until then, independent music will remain available on an admirable but fractured collection of stations, streams, and sites.

From Spinner.com comes this article about the recent collaboration between Robert Plant and Alison Krauss. When I heard about this project a few weeks ago, I was intrigued but not altogether excited. I have only a cursory knowledge of Led Zeppelin’s work: I’ve heard the songs that still crowd classic rock radio, but I’ve never felt inspired to delve too deep into the catalog. I found the timing odd, given that Led Zeppelin had just announced that they would be reuniting for the tribute to Ahmet Ertegun. More importantly, Alison’s recent work (specifically the new tracks on her recent collection of work minus Union Station [specifically her cover of “Missing You” with John Waite]) is crap. Alison has a disconcerting fascination with ’70s soft rock that creeps ever so subtly into her music (and the music of others) from time to time. Obviously, Robert Plant’s work in the ’70s was not soft rock, but the combination left me wondering, nonetheless.

All that said, the project is receiving wide acclaim and even made it to No. 2 on the Billboard chart this week. I have gone from skeptical to intrigued, and the Spinner article has only served to heighten my interest. Noteworthy bits:

1. the pair shows some well-deserved respect for Gene Clark.
2. Plant talks about turning down an offer to collaborate with Pink.
3. the pair talks about plans to tour next year and continue the project with more records. This would seem to dampen the constant speculation that the tribute show will lead to a full-fledged Led Zeppelin reunion barnstorm. (This just in: the tribute show has been postponed.)

There’s much more to read in the interview/article, but I should probably save any more opinions until I actually hear the record. Sound promising, and I’d even be interested in seeing the two of them live, but I sure wish Alison would sit down and make a good country record. It’s been a while.