JUST TESTING IMEEM: DAYTON FUNK ASIDE

I think I'd post to this blog more if embedding MP3s weren't virtually a thing of the past. Maybe iMeem could change that. For instance, if I wanted to share the results of a playlist I created from Dayton funk bands and needed to share, say, the awesome Lakeside track "Fantastic Voyage," which later provided the foundation for a Coolio hit, would that work? Let's see:

Fantastic Voyage (2006 Digital Remaster) - Lakeside

Hmm... Apparently yes.

UNFORTUNATE JUXTAPOSITION FOUND AT USWEEKLY.COM TODAY

TWO CORNERS
Erich Von Stroheim's 1922 films Greed can make many claims to greatness. Among them: it's the first great butchered movie masterpiece and the first great movie about dentistry. It's also a great city movie. Adapting Frank Norris' novel McTeague, Von Stroheim lets the commonplace moral themes of folk tales and murder ballads play out in a San Francisco that's still coming into full flower as a metropolis.

Von Stroheim insisted on shooting on location, one of the many reasons his movie became a money-sucking monster taken out of his control. But it was the right decision capturing, however accidentally, an American city still shedding the 19th century as it covered itself in the 20th. Some of my favorite shots, well, ever come when Gibson Gowland's sort-of dentist works on patients from his Polk Street office.





The novel places this at 309 Polk Street above a post office. Later it would serve as a real dentist office, which must have confused readers of the novel. Now it's overshadowed by city hall. I'm not sure Von Stroheim used that exact address. Maybe someone in San Francisco could tell me.

Here's the shot that I love (and, as above, pardon the poor image quality. I'm working from YouTube since the film is, confoundingly, not on DVD.



Imagine for a moment being in that chair. If you could get past the anxiety of having dental work done by a man without a license (though you wouldn't know that) who looks a bit like a half-wit (which you undoubtedly would know), would you see a city in transition? If you were older, would you take a moment to note the Model Ts and cable cars that have nudged the carriages off the street? Could you imagine for a moment the San Franciscos to come from the neurotic, obsessive streets of Vertigo through the Vietnam-era anxieties of Dirty Harry and beyond? Could you see the present for what it was and imagine the future?

I think about that corner every time I pass by a bank here in my Chicago neighborhood. It was my first bank when I moved here, chosen as much for aesthetic qualities as any other reason. It has a classic look, complete with an old-fashioned giant vault in the back. (What it didn't have at the time was online banking, thus necessitating an eventual switch.)



A few years ago it added a tacky-looking LCD screen as a concession to modernity, which disappointed me, although I'm guessing others were just as bothered when they added the classic-looking stainless steel clock however many decades past. Around the same time they added something else: A neon sign in the second floor office. Squint and you can just make it out in the photo below.


It says "Dentist." Now I find myself wondering what the patients getting work done up there see looking out on our corner of the world. And what they can't possibly know to look for.

THE FACEBOOK AD-BOT KNOWS ME SO WELL
Yes! So very tired of waxing. That's me.

NOT ON DVD, NOT IN THEATERS, NOT ON TELEVISION
Assembling next week's Inventory feature made wish, once again, I could see Thom Andersen's documentary Los Angeles Plays Itself, especially when I found an excerpt from this reputedly excellent, three-hour look at depictions of L.A. as created by L.A.'s most famous industry on YouTube.

I KNOW THIS ISN'T NEW BUT IT'S NEW TO ME AND I LOVE IT

IF YOU NEED TO KILL TIME AT WORK TOMORROW
Hulu now has episodes of Elvira's Move Macabre in their entirety. I did this movie, Monstroid for Films That Time Forgot a while back. It's wretched. But kind of entertainingly wretched.

RARE SEAN CONNERY APPEARANCE INSPIRES HISTORY'S VAGUEST HEADLINE

The story over at Reuters is about a promotional appearance for Connery's new book at which he restates his commitment to stay retired from film but adds, "I've a feeling there is something cooking. I don't know what it is yet."

Alternately: CONNERY PROMISES NOT TO DO NOTHING.

WHAT I'VE BEEN LISTENING TO: THE RAIL BAND

With pieces by A.V. Club contributor Michaelangelo Matos as my guide, I've been using a portion of my eMusic downloads for the last couple of months to pick up some knowledge of African music. It's such a huge field, fitting for a huge continent, and there's a lot to here. Basically I've just been cherry-picking a few acknowledged classics here and there and I've yet to find something I didn't like. (Which tends to happen when you just cherry-pick classics.)

But, anyway, Le Rail Band: Where has this music been all my life? They're a Mali act formed in 1970, sponsored by the National Railway Company, and given a home at the Buffet Bar at Bamako's Sation Hotel. (I'm using this as my source.) Their formation was apparently part of a government initiative to preserve traditional Manding music.

I know how to find Mali on the map but know little of Manding culture. I know this singer's name—it's founding singer Salif Keita, who would later pass the baton to Mory Kante—but I have no idea what he's singing about. All I know: These guitars kill me and I've been listening to Le Rail Band (a.k.a. Super Rail Band, a.k.a. Bamako Rail Band, a.k.a. Super Rail Band of the Buffet Hotel de la Gare, Bamako) almost every day lately.

Here's why:

Boomp3.com

HULK SLEEP!

I've been reading Marvel's massive Hulk Omnibus, which reprints all the Hulk stories published between 1962 and 1968. (It's pretty big.) During most this period Hulk was popular enough to keep publishing but not popular enough to justify his own book during a period when Marvel could only publish a limited number titles in any given month thanks to a fairly crappy distribution deal. Thus, once his own title bit the first after six issues, Hulk ended up sharing space in Tales To Astonish first with Giant Man then with Sub-Mariner.

The stories are entertaining and filled with the Jack Kirby/Stan Lee spirit—and for a few strange issues, the Steve Ditko/Jack Kirby spirit—even if the plotting seems a little seat-of-their pants than over in, say, Fantastic Four. After a while it just becomes a question of who's kidnapping Hulk in any given month. Late in the run, Kirby starts sharing art duties with Bill Everett that includes one of the weirdest two-panel stretches I've ever read in a comic book:

"Even his sleep is too powerful to shatter!" Are we to be impressed by Hulk's superhuman sleeping abilities or is this an example of Lee's spirited prose overcompensating for a lull in the action? And could this particular gamma bomb side effect be marketed as a sleep aid? As far as I know, Hulk's super-sleep remained unexplored in subsequent issues.

SOMETHING THAT MADE ME LAUGH
E!'s The Soup is always good. Sometimes, however, it's transcendent.

RECENT STUFF I WROTE

Music review: The Final Solution: Brotherman

This is the soundtrack to a blaxploitation movie that never got made (and may not have even been scripted.) Good stuff.

Box Of Paperbacks: Ed McBain, Vanishing Ladies

Early McBain, writing under yet another pen name. Not bad but problematic and protracted.

NEWS FROM HOME

I like to check in on my hometown paper The Dayton Daily News from time to time. But I rarely find anything as amusing/disgusting as this headline:

"Bath In Sink Costs Xenia Burger King Employee His Job"

But wait, how did they know? Was their proof? Oh yes. He posted this video to his MySpace page:

"It's my birthday, and I'm taking a bath," he says. But the best line comes from the videographer, trying to coax an older, less easily amused co-worker to come look: "You can't see his penis or nothin'."

Or maybe the best quote belongs to the health commissioner who spoke to the paper. "They had already discarded about $10,000 worth of equipment and completely sterilized the sink twice," he said. "We just hope no one else follows through with (a behavior) similarly bizarre."

ROAD-TESTING A DIFFERENT MP3 EMBED SITE

Hey, the new Damien Jurado song is pretty good

Boomp3.com

PRESENTED WITHOUT COMMENT



Isaac Hayes (1942 - 2008)

CENSORED GRAPES

This year's reading has been all about The Box Of Paperbacks Book Club over at The A.V. Club and my subscription to the Library Of America, which sends me hardbound omnibus editions of major American authors. I love the books and I like the randomness of the subscription service. One day I don't own any Willa Cather novels. The next I own five of them in one meticulously presented volume, complete with slipcover for that added touch of class/pretension.

Because I got a lot of Steinbeck when I first signed up I've consequently been reading a lot of Steinbeck, including The Grapes Of Wrath for the first time since high school. It held up well, but read a little saltier than I remembered. That's because it was a little saltier than I remembered. My edition restored some cuts made by Viking upon its original publication. A note at the back details the changes and provides some awkward comedy when read on its own.

Most puzzling entry? I vote for, "Joan Crawford."

WHAT? NO JETPACKS?
I'm watching the opening ceremonies of The Olympics now, as directed by Zhang Yimou. So far, so good. But why don't they have this?:

THE LATEST KUENN/PHIPPS ONLINE OBSESSION

Move over LasagnaCat. It's time for Cake Wrecks.

Cake wrecks?

Cake wrecks!

Cake wrecks!

Cake wrecks.

RECENT STUFF I WROTE: NEWMAN PANTS

- New Randy Newman album, Harps And Angels
Worth it for Newman's delivery of these lines alone in the title track:
[speaking as the voice of God]
"You ain't been a good man
You ain't been a bad man
But you've been [half-beat] pretty bad"

- Sisterhood Of The Traveling Pants 2

Pretty Greek scenery + appealing actresses ≠ something worth seeing.

SECOND WAVE VIBRATIONS

If you're of a certain age and grew up with parents with no interest in rock and roll you probably first encountered The Beach Boys song "Good Vibrations" in an ad for Sunkist soda. Specifically, this ad:

The lyric is changed, the arrangement pretty lazy, and the harmonies aren't exactly soaring. Hearing "Good Vibrations" this way is a bit like seeing Hamlet on Betamax in a production in which Hamlet wears a Burger King t-shirt the entire time. Maybe that's why it took me a while to understand the song's genius.

So where did the commercial come from? I have a partial answer for that. I just wrote a review of the album Brotherman, a long lost soundtrack to a never-produced Chicago-set, '70s blaxploitation film with music performed by the unfortunately named Chicago soul act The Final Solution. It's due out in a bit on the great Chicago boutique label Numero Group which specializes in such oddities. Numero sends out updates every once in a while, and the most recent one linked to that YouTube clip above. Turns out it was The Final Solution, or at least members therof, providing the vocals.

I doubt they regarded it as their finest moment, either. In fact, the Brotherman album makes a pretty convincing case for their best moment never seeing the light of day until now. Here's a taste:

Love that guitar line, which was apparently going to be swapped out for a more polished guitar sound, strings, and horns. Maybe it's best it never got completed after all.