The Year-end List

This time it is easy for me to identify the things I have heard, seen and done since the beginning of this year (2008), as there was a significant event in my life in January and I can clearly distinguish everything pre- and post-Jan’08.

In music, it was a comeback year for the album. I listened to more albums (start to finish) than in last 3-4 years, instead of listening to hit/single mp3s. I am glad that I did. Didn’t listen much of radio this year (almost nil), while 2007 was dominated by NPR and Worldspace.
Here is a list of some impressive albums I listened to in 2008 (most of them released before 2008)
1. Wilco- Sky Blue Sky (2007)
After hearing them on the Woody Guthrie Project, I picked this album which is a bunch of soft, melodious, piano and steel guitar driven songs.
2. P J Harvey – White chalk (2007)
Eerie. Harvey sings in a spooky tone throughout the album; piano driven rock and absolutely fantastic. Unfortunately, I can’t play this album very often as its songs are centered on the theme of abortion; the darkness which the album successfully conveys through its music and words, which my partner and now even I can’t stand.
3. Pegi Young – Pegi Young
Neil Young – Chrome Dreams II
Both albums released in 2007, individually by the Youngs. Neil’s stuff is mostly from a long time abandoned project.
4. Johnny Cash – American Recordings III: Solitary Man (2000)
Started listening to this for the cover of Bonnie Billy’s I see a Darkness, but the other covers -One (U2), Solitary Man (Neil Diamond) and Mercy Seat (Nick Cave) - are equally good.
5. Bonnie “Prince” Billy – I see a Darkness (1999)
Undoubtedly, my best find of the year.

Honorary mention: Fleet Foxes’ self titled debut. Haven’t listened to the whole album yet, but I liked what I heard. Winter Hymnal is a must-listen.
Update: I played the Fleet Foxes' album yesterday and realized that my fav tracks on this, as of now, is "Blue Ridge Mountains".

Albums I have listened to before but found a new dimension while listening to it this year:
1. Steely Dan – Aja
2. DMB – Live at Folsom fields
3. Allman Brothers – Live at Fillmore (A perfect weekend start would be having English breakfast and coffee listening to this album. No hurry at all!)
4. Dire Straits – On every street

Indian Music: I got addicted to Kathaklai music this year, which has a stunning percussion (Chenda and Edaikka); something you don’t find in Carnatic and Hindustani music. I realized that listening to Kathakali music is as good a treat as watching it.

And for books, not much of reading this year. Read two graphic novels which were outstanding. Sarnath Banerjee’s Corridor and Amrutha Patil’s Kari. The dark and disturbing Kari had more text than any conventional Graphic novel. Both, Banerjee and Patil, have contributed to the year-end special edition of Tehelka which has “Short Fiction” as its theme.

Books I wanted to read this year but never got to it (and will definitely read someday):
1. What I talk about when I talk about running – Haruki Murakami
2. Imagining India – Nandan Nilekani

My best find: Malayalam literary critic K. P. Appan. I picked up a book with the transcript of an interview with Appan-sir (as he is widely known) back in September and was craving to read his essays on The Bible (book titles given here are roughly translated from Malayalam), which I picked up this month.
1. “Bible – The armour of light” – His reflections on the Bible and its impact on his life.
2. “So Sweet, Your life” – Appan talks about the significance of Mother Mary in Christianity and introduces to Malayalees, a relatively unknown stream of thought in Christian studies– Mariology.
K. P. Appan passed away on Dec 15th 2008, 10 days before Christmas – a festivity he loved the most in his life, even though he was not raised a Christian.

Movies: The most memorable movie was In Bruges, which for me was “a perfect movie”. The AV Club reviewer sums it up: "When it's funny, it's hilarious; when it's serious, it's powerful; and either way, it's an endless pleasant surprise."

This year also marked the 10th anniversary of the Coen Brothers’ legendary, hyper-intellectual stoner noir film, The Big Lebowski.
The 2008 NYT article on achievers, here.

Outstanding Blog: Song of the Waves – Parayil A. Tharakan shares his view on current affairs, anecdotes and trivia on anything Keralan (flowers, spices, traditions) and it is frequently updated! A blog where every other post is a collector’s issue!

Reaching Fahrenheit 451

A month back, I borrowed the latest book by Anita Nair, Goodnight and God Bless, from a local library. Earlier, I had read her columns in The Sunday Express and I own a copy of her last work of fiction (Mistress), which I liked. I glanced through this small book, priced at Rs. 399, before borrowing it, and realized that the material is nothing superior to the free stuff that I get from the blogosphere. To make matters worse, on reading the book I realized that most of the pieces were from her earlier Sunday Express columns which I had already read! Strange that this was not mentioned in the preface, blurbs or in any publicity material; but only at the end of the book as fine print! I was glad that I didn’t buy the book for 399 bucks, but spent just Rs. 40 (10%) as lending fee.

Most of the Indian Writing in English published here is overpriced, except for certain authors like Chetan Bhagat. I haven’t read Bhagat yet, but despite being a best seller, his books are nominally priced (The 3 mistakes of my life at Rs. 95). I like him for that.

The latest entrant to the overpriced Indian Writing in English scene is Nandan Nilekani, with his ideas for the new century: Imagining India, priced at Rs. 699! I am not commenting on the quality of the book, of which I have just read an excerpt, and I don’t expect the book to be mediocre- from whatever I know (and have read) of the author as a businessman and a person. I feel that it is overpriced, even though it is a thick book. As rightly commented by a reader on Nandan’s blog: “..when you price a book such that it’s inaccessible to many, you are not letting the ideas reach the people”. Mr. Nilekani, apparently, has bagged the fattest advance for a nonfiction work in India. With India eagerly awaiting the release (on Nov 24th) this one would easily become the all-time nonfiction best seller in India. Moreover, it is quite obvious that Thomas Friedman would be showcasing this book to a wider global audience who might not be really interested in India or Nilekani.

Indian is a country where Public libraries haven’t evolved as in the West. Reading a new book still means paying a 10% of the book price at a privately run library (if at all they get a copy of the book you want to read) or actually buying the book (assuming you don’t buy the pirated copies of limited collection of best sellers available).

Ironically, in the last edition of The Sunday Times of India (Nov 16), which carried an excerpt from Nilekani’s Rs. 699 book, the opinion page carried the column by Gurucharan Das about reading and the state of libraries in India:

Just as a great city must have a big public park along with lots of small neighbourhood parks, so it must have one big public library and many neighbourhood libraries. Ideally, public libraries should be free, paid by taxes, and managed by the municipality. But this is a distant dream in India where the state has failed to deliver even more basic services like schools and hospitals.

Between 1900 and 1917, [Andrew] Carnegie founded 3,000 neighbourhood public libraries [In the United States], insisting that the local municipality had to guarantee tax support for running and maintaining them.

Perhaps, one day we, too, will spawn our Carnegie.

Till that day, I wish, at least the financially sound Indian writers don’t overprice their books by demanding unjustifiable advances from the publishers.

Guy Montag, you there?

Making Music

Donald and Walter of Steely Dan might have been the coolest, laid back guys of rock 'n roll in the 70's. From '74 they decided to work from home; they gave up live shows and worked entirely from the studios, churning out platinum albums. I got initiated by a Dan Head at a local pub and bought a best of CD, couple of years back, but never really got into it. Recently, I got hooked to the album Aja and I just can’t stop playing it!

Even if you are not a Dan Head and have some interest in music, this documentary on the making of Aja is a must watch. In case it is not available where you live, you can download the torrent here.

In the last fifteen minutes of the documentary, Donald and Walter jam with some of the Aja session musicians, playing Peg and Josie. I haven’t seen a band playing under so much pressure, as if you miss one-tenth of a beat and you mess up the song, and enjoying every moment of it!

The Killing of Georgie - Part 2

BBC News: George Michael arrest over drugs

A talent that was killed by homosexuality, 15 years ago.

See what happens George, you see what happens....


Rod Stewart's tribute here (youtube).

"The Dark Knight" Reviews

The Dark Knight is certainly a good movie. No arguments on that.

While I thoroughly enjoyed Batman Begins, I didn’t get the same feeling after watching The Dark Knight- something was lacking somewhere, nothing to relish (Heath Ledger is brilliant, but the pre-release hype killed it!), no goose bumps (except for, maybe, the Bat Pod scene) and overall, yeah, just that it is not a bad movie. I had arguments with my friends on this, but I couldn’t prove my point.

I was browsing through some film reviews today, came across this review by The Indian Express film critic Bharadwaj Rangan and I got the word I was looking for to support my point: laboured.

The storytelling is deliberate and laboured, and there’s so much pulling away for the larger picture, with such a densely plotted maze of procedural details, that the simple emotional beats get lost. When Batman faces the death of a loved one, we don’t feel that loss.

Rangan shares some interesting thoughts on the movie:

You cannot will a great movie into being. It just happens – if you’re lucky, and if about a few thousand variables click satisfyingly (and somewhat improbably) into place. The undoing of The Dark Knight appears to be that its greatness was pre-ordained (and heartily embraced by millions) to such an unprecedented extent that the film had to merely show up, and it would already be a masterpiece.

I didn’t grow up reading Batman comics; the only super hero comic I read was Phantom. It was in my college days that my friend told me about the greatness of Batman in the super hero world -like others, Batman has no super powers, but indeed he is a super hero! Batman Begins turned Batman into a human hero, which we all watched with awe. In The Dark Knight, Nolan takes that one step further. Rangan has an interesting take on this:

[..]in Batman Begins, where he transformed Batman into Bond, an ordinary hero (as opposed to a “super” hero) who needed the help of Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) just as Bond needed Q. This was an unprecedented level of inquiry into the origins of the powers of a superhero, who, in the comic-book universe, is typically self-made. In The Dark Knight, Nolan pushes Batman further into Bond territory, fashioning mirror events such as the loss of a loved one, or the fight sequence involving a shoe with a knife.
It feels funny to say this, because The Dark Knight is certainly not a bad movie. It is consistently interesting, well intentioned and well crafted, with a lot of expertly executed action eye candy – but the numerous story threads aren’t tied together in a fully satisfying way. The Dark Knight shapes up into a solidly good movie – and while that’s hardly an insignificant achievement, that’s all it is.

Update:
A thought was running in my mind while I was driving back home from work yesterday. To put it bluntly: The Dark Knight is like a Steely Dan song.
A Steely Dan song is a perfect piece of art, a flawless and meticulous production. There would be outstanding and extensive sax or guitar solos which can be considered as a song by itself (like Ledger’s performance). At some point these solos are woven back in to the song, at times painstakingly, and gradually we get into perspective. All Steely Dan albums are studio engineering marvels** and they get the best session musicians to play for them. Also, I am sure that The Dark knight wouldn’t be considered dated even after 20 years, just like a Dan song you heard, which was made in the late 70s sounds as fresh as it was recorded last year.
You know what to expect from a Dan album and you get exactly that, it just has to show up to be hailed as a classic – like Two Against Nature. And a solid album that it is.
But here is the point – would you ever hum a Steely Dan song in the bathroom?

**from Wiki: ..with one notable example being that Becker and Fagen used at least 42 different studio musicians and took over a year to record the tracks that resulted in 1980's Gaucho — an album that contains only seven songs - Did I say "laboured"?

It takes two (You got the money and I got the honey!)

We have heard many duets by successful male and female singers that have topped the charts. For instance – Bryan Adam’s When you’re gone (Duet with Mel C) or Neil Young’s Star of Bethlehem (Duet with Emmylou Harris). Both these songs probably would have worked well even if they weren’t a duet. Both these songs have female vocals humming the same lines faintly in sync with the prominent male vocal. For me, a duet would make sense when the singers sing separate lines (stanzas) of the song to complement each other and probably join in singing the chorus. Like Picture by Kid Rock and Sheryl Crow.

The duet album All the Road Running by Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris is a perfect example of the latter type. Knopfler and Harris sings separate lines in most of the songs, like a dialogue. The guitar sounds in the album are vintage Knopfler, but it is the graceful vocals of these two adorable singers that we eventually crave for. Halfway through the record (Rollin’), all we want them is to just sing all day!


Though it wouldn’t entirely fit into the second category of duets I mentioned earlier, Raising Sand, the album by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, is a noteworthy release of 2007. While Knopfler is within his comfort zone on All the Road Running Plant doesn’t do his typical hysterical Zeppelin outbursts in Raising Sand. Instead he is sober and doing melodies here with Krauss, augmented by the superb arrangements by T Bone Burnett (listen to the cover of Townes Van Zandt’s Nothin’).

These two albums are two of my favorite artist (male-female) collaboration albums. They have lived up to the expectations; the singers here are not trying to be classy playing their part, but just having some fun together – like the Wilburys did.

PS: Maybe, Van Morrison’s duet album with Linda Gail Lewis, You win Again, could have easily made it to this list, but I haven’t given it much of a listen as I was not exposed to the music (and style) they are covering on this album.

Just another list: Dance tracks

I always found it easy to dance to a up-tempo rock song than to a so called "dance track".
Here is the list of our favourite dance-rock songs:

1. Jockey full of Bourbon - Tom Waits
2. Mama don't - JJ Cale
3. Blinded by the light - Bruce Springsteen (Live in Dublin/Pete Seeger ses'sions)
4. Wild Night - Van Morrison
5. Sleep around the clock - Belle and Sebastian
6. Yellow moon - Neville Brothers
7. Carry on - JJ Cale
8. Peg - Steely Dan (a bold one:)
9. Postcards from Paraguay - Mark Knopfler
10.

We will have to try this out to get the order right, and one slot is vacant. Recommendations are welcome!

Rock Journalism

Some stop discovering new music with age. I got a boost recently discovering Will Oldham aka Bonnie "Prince" Billy. I have been listening to his album I See a Darkness for the last 3 months and no other artist has stunned me like this in the last, say, five years! I was wondering how to describe his music and I came across this pitchfork review (of Billy's 2008 album):

Musically, these meticulously crafted songs give the impression of front-porch spontaneity, their purposefulness made to sound like serendipity.

I don’t know what that means, but I think that perfectly conveys what I think of his music:)

Allen Worship

Tim Burton's Ed Wood reminded me of Woody Allen.
Johnny Depp portrays the enthusiastic Edward Wood Jr. (apparently voted the worst director in the history of cinema) who is madly in love with film making and does it with amazing speed - he made a movie in 5 days! However his movies were horrible while Allen's movies are at the other end of the spectrum. But the passion and the speed may be the same.

Here is a quote from AV Club Woody Allen interview:

Vicky Cristina Barcelona has not yet come out, and I'm already finished shooting and editing a film with Larry David, Evan Rachel Wood, and Patricia Clarkson, and I'm now working on another film.

Roger Ebert writes in his review of Allen's latest:

A few days before seeing "Vicky Cristina Barcelona," I viewed his "Hannah and Her Sisters" again. More than 20 years apart, both with dialogue at perfect pitch. Allen has directed more than 40 movies in about as many years and written all of them himself. Why isn't he more honored? Do we take him for granted?

Shiny Happy People

Sex, drugs and rock n’ roll. That’s our impression of a rock-star life and it is impossible to think of them leading a normal family life.

I was listening to NPR Fresh Air, last August, and the guest on the show was Pegi Young, Neil Young’s wife. She had just released her self-titled debut album. She was part of Neil’s band (backing vocals) on some of his records and tours. But it took a very long time for her to come out with a solo album. She had been busy raising their kids (Ben, born to Pegi and Young, and Zeke from Neil’s first relationship were diagnosed of cerebral palsy) and running their Bridge School which helps children with severe speech and physical impairments.

They’ve been married for almost 29 years now and as Pegi says in the interview, they met in a bar. Recently, when I was listening to the song Like a Hurricane in my car, I knew what Neil was singing about:

Once I thought I saw you in a crowded hazy bar,
Dancing on the light from star to star.
Far across the moonbeam I know that’s who you are,
I saw your brown eyes turning once to fire.
(Like a Hurricane, N. Young)

I have been listening to the Pegi Young album for a couple of weeks now. Though it may not be a significant record in the rock history, it is a significant one for the Youngs, and definitely for me. I love the album: Pegi’s voice, the light hearted love songs, the humor and the presence of Neil. It’s on the 4th track Hold on that we feel the first major presence of Neil and intentional or not, I don’t know, Pegi sings: Hold on, I'm not me without you here.

It’s a party for Neil Young fans on the song Love like water, where Neil plays a groovy sitar riff throughout the song. Even with Neil’s presence, this is essentially a Pegi Young album, consistent, and she has written most of the songs.

Praise be the bars where the lonely meet
And for awhile can feel the heat
Praise to the liquor that warms our heads
Gives us the courage To get things said
(Heterosexual Masses, P. Young)

As we know, Neil also has declared his love for Pegi on some of his albums - lyrics such as these ones from Harvest Moon says it all:

Because I’m still in love with you
I want to see you dance again
Because I’m still in love with you
On this harvest moon.
(Harvest Moon, 1992, N. Young)

You know it aint easy, you got to hold on
She was an unknown legend in her time
Now she’s dressin’ two kids, lookin’ for a magic kiss
She gets the far-away look in her eyes.
(Unknown Legend, 1992, N. Young)

I might have gone overboard here celebrating the Youngs’ family life, but it is heartening to see that they have fought through and contributed their learning (on dealing with cerebral palsy) to the society by envisioning and managing the Bridge School.

The Voice of America

Willis Conover 1920-1996

You may call Willis Conver a Jazz legend, though he was just the host of the Jazz Hour program on Voice of America. I heard Conover on radio (Voice of America on shortwave) when I was probably too young to listen to Jazz. Perhaps he is the only radio show host who is as respected as the legends of the music genre itself.

The clipping is from the VOA newsletter which I recieved in '96. Click on the image to read.

Read the Conover tribute by the The Hindu jazz critic Jazzebel here.

Also posted on my Radio blog.

Strawberries and some extra cream

It is Wimbledon again and for the readers of The Hindu, it would also mean that they get a daily dose of strawberries and cream from the staff reporter Nirmal Shekar. Though cheesy at times, I find Shekar’s reports amusing.
He writes in today's (Jun 23) paper marking the opening day at the Wimbledon:

For sport to evoke spiritual states akin to those activated by the best of music, try sitting in the centre Court stands on a lovely summer afternoon even as Rafael Nadal forces Federer to dig deeper than ever before. Borg and McEnroe, Becker and Edberg, Agassi and Ivanisevic — if you have been there and seen it, you will know all about Wimbledon’s special allure.

Here are some select quotes from last year's reports:
Shekar on the Russian player Marat Safin:

It is easy to accept Martina Navratilova as American, easy not to think of her Czech past. It is just as easy to accept the new national allegiance of almost any athlete. But Safin — well, even if he bought a home on Mars and settled down on the red planet, you cannot think of him as anything but Russian. He is as Russian as Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Dmitri Karamazov.

This is one of those cheesy pieces, again from last year’s reports- On the weather condition during a Sania Mirza match:

A polar bear might have found the conditions perfect for a roll on the grass and a cozy snooze, although it must be admitted that the endangered creature would have found the noise from the stands — the cries of ‘come on Sania’ and the histles — distinctly alien. Things are rather quieter in the Arctic northern Canada and Alaska.

I liked his comparison of Pete Sampras and Roger Federer (The Hindu Jul 2, 2007):

In his first final in 1993, the great man [Pete Sampras] played Jim Courier, a four-time Grand Slam champion. His other final opponents were Boris Becker (six Grand Slam titles), Goran Ivanisevic (one), Andre Agassi (eight) and Pat Rafter two). Sampras’ final opponents together won 20 Grand Slam titles.
In comparison, Federer’s final opponents have won four (Nadal three and Roddick one).

All this leaves us with a simple question: who is the greatest Wimbledon (grass court) champion of all time?

Here is my choice: Pete Sampras. I believe if Sampras and Federer had met at their respective peaks at Wimbledon, the former would have won seven out of 10 times.

I dont know the math behind that conclusion, but somehow it made sense.

While we all are anxious to know the fate of Federer this year, Shekar writes (Jun 23, 2008 The Hindu):

If Federer were a listed company, then his stock would now be trading at a five-year low and this is the main reason why this championship is invested with special meaning, particularly in the context of the men’s game.

Time’s arrow travels only in one direction and a slightly wobbly Federer knows that his ascent of Mount Sampras and beyond will depend heavily on his reinventing himself as an all-time great champion on the velvety green carpet here, a surface that seems to endow the great man with wings, making him miraculously weightless.

Enjoy the season and yes, stock up your refrigerators.

State of Pecos

I owe a lot to Pecos, the dingy little pub on Rest house road in Bangalore. I would be there at least 5 days a week, with my friend. We would drink flat beer by the gallon, eat Kerala beef and listen to the Dead, Steely Dan and Creedence for hours. We would check out by 11:30, come home and eat Maggi noodles for dinner.

The music system was the worst in town, but the music just the opposite. One day you could see Paul at the bar, next day he was gone. Elango, the pub manager, never cared much for guys without girls, so we didn’t care much for him either. Technology took over, they got a CD player. But they still played the tapes.

Years passed, my visits became less frequent- thanks to the traffic situation in Bangalore. In the last one year, probably I went there 10 times, and may be only once I could feel the good old Pecos. All the other days, they played the same music: Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and Bob Marley-almost in the same order too! Though there were familiar faces in the waiting staff, the regular crowd was different – not just the faces, but the people too.

Pecos is history. Maybe we need a Rick Rubin to save Pecos - getting it back to where it once belonged. :)

For old times’ sake, let me compile a quintessential Pecos play list. Making a list of “singles” for Pecos would be blasphemous, as the tradition is to play albums – start to finish. But these are the songs that define Pecos (for sure, I would have missed many–I just put a cap at 10 songs).

1. Bad moon rising – CCR
2. Ruby Tuesday – Rolling stones
3. Truckin’ – Grateful Dead
4. Homeward bound – Simon and Garfunkel
5. Locomotive breath – Jethro Tull
6. Boston Rag – Steely Dan
7. Domino – Van Morrison
8. Free as a bird – Lynyrd Skynyrd
9. Riders on the Storm – The Doors
10. Heading for the light – The Traveling Wilburys

PS: I didn’t include any Jazz tracks here (pity, they don’t play Jazz anymore) and deliberately kept the Floyd, Zeppelin and Marley out.

Jack flak

Jack Black is not an actor. He lives in his movies. That’s why we are so bored of him. He is just the same in all of them. After doing School of Rock he should have embraced St. Kurt. It’s better to burn out, etc. In Hi Fidelity, it was a guest appearance of the character from School of Rock. I don’t remember much of Shallow Hal. In Jesus’ Son and Orange County, the roles are so similar that even Jack Black wouldn’t be able to tell one from the other. Luckily I didn’t get a chance to watch Nacho Libre.

And with the Pips spoof from the American Idol finale, it is official – Jack Black should quit the entertainment industry. May be he can form a rock group and put his music online for free download. It would be better than whatever he is doing now.



Ladies and Gentlemen, Jack Black has dropped his pants. You may laugh now. Thank you.

Just another list

3 favourite "rock songs with accordions":
1. When I paint my masterpiece – The Band [youtube]
2. 4th of July – Bruce Springsteen & the E-Street Band [youtube]
3. Summersong – The Decemberists [youtube]

Band on the run

I have always wondered how studio albums are made by each member of the band coming in at a different time to the studio and recording his own instrument/vocal into the song. Technology may have advanced to make it possible, but would they actually enjoy recording like this?

Every kid knows: When Van Morrison made the monumental Astral Weeks, he came into the studio alone with his guitar, sang and strummed hysterically, and later all the instrumental segments were added on to this. If you were not aware of this fact when you listened to this album, you wouldn’t have ever imagined this, Astral weeks being such a passionate and solid record.

Talking of bands and of being passionate, nothing can get more intimate than the E-Street Band. But then, Springsteen’s latest offering Magic was recorded in a similar fashion (maybe for the first time in the history of E-Street) – due to the busy schedules of E-Street members, they came in separately to the studio and recorded their part into the song. Can you imagine E-Street band doing such a thing?

The indie-rock-gone-major-met-Dalai-Lama band Death Cab for Cutie decided that for their latest album, they would stick to playing as a band, live, while recording, in contrast to their first Major Label album Plans. From the NYT review:

As the album [Plans] turned into a big-budget production in which each instrument was recorded separately, “It was freaking me out, definitely,” Mr. [Chris] Walla said. “I missed out on the fun of being in a band. I felt more like a project manager than one quarter of a band. I had a clipboard instead of a guitar.”

[..]“Narrow Stairs” was largely recorded live in the studio, and in the music you can sense a band in communion with itself.

While we are at it, on the album Band on the run by Paul McCartney, “backed” by the band Wings, Paul played lead, rhythm and bass guitars, drums, piano, keyboards, percussion, and obviously did the vocals too! All the instruments on this album were not played and recorded live, eh.

Major Lift

One of the most frequently used song in movie and TV serial soundtracks these days, is Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah. Last night I came across this song again, the John Cale cover, in an episode of Scrubs. By far the most appropriate usage of this song I have seen, is in the movie Lord of War (the Jeff Buckley cover). Others can take a lesson or two from T Bone Brunett.

Now those memories come back to haunt me...

Songs in the key of Life #2

The River is probably the first Springsteen song I fell in love with. And at that time, thats how I wanted my life to be- just like the story in the song:

And for my nineteenth birthday
I got a union card and a wedding coat
We went down to the courthouse
And the judge put it all to rest
No wedding day smiles no walk down the aisle
No flowers no wedding dress

For me, this song brings in memories of the first CD player in our home and the first couple of CDs, my brother got on his first trip to the US.
This is also the first rock song lyrics I memorized, start to finish, and I sang along each time it was played. I can still play this song shut in a room alone, sing along with all my energy, get moody at the end of it and not talk to anyone for three days.

Mega stores and iTunes killed the Record Store

Apr 19th was celebrated as the Record Store Day, or more appropriately - an obituary to the dying neighborhood/independent record stores.

Some relief to the folks in Bangalore - Habitat is still there on Church Street. I am grateful to them for organizing the CDs so meticulously, playing good music on their stereo (usually jazz), the unpretentious atmosphere and non-intrusive staff.They also have the best collection of DVDs in Bangalore.

Looking at it from a different angle, some people love to visit a mega record store chain, without any hassles of familiarity, walk in, buy the record you like, pay and walk out. You can buy a Pet Shop Boys album and don't have to hear the rant of the rock-snob record store employee who swears by Nick Drake. They usually are a pretentious lot, like the DJs in a rock pub- remember Jack Black in Hi-Fidelity (as a independent record store clerk) yelling at a customer who asks for a Stevie Wonder album!

Where the Holly berry bleeds...

*Songs in the key of Life #1

I clearly remember the time and place where I heard this song for the first time. I remember the smells too:

Rosin smells and turpentine smells from eucalyptus and pine
Bitter tastes of twigs we chewed where tangled woodvines twine
Trees held us in on all four sides so thick we could not see
I could not see any wrong in you, and you saw none in me.

The song is Remember the Mountain Bed from Billy Bragg's Mermaid Avenue Vol. II. If you care much for the lyrics, it is by Woody Guthrie. Bragg's interpretation of lost and found Woody Guthrie lyrics, backed by the band Wilco (mostly set to music by Wilco's guitarist Jay Bennet).

In music news - Billy Bragg is out with a new studio album "Mr. Love and Justice", AMG rates it with 4 stars - "it's a return to form, a step forward, and a potent reminder of why Bragg's music still matters."

*Based on my first post on this blog.

Mr. Sanghvi, you are out of your element!

Last month (Feb 08), his column on Woody Allen was titled When did the genius turn into such a bore (yes, b-o-r-e!) in which he says that he dozed off while watching Melinda and Melinda. I agree that Melinda is not a great Allen movie, as I have mentioned elsewhere on this blog, it would have been like a TV soap if it had been made by a lesser film maker.
Vir rambles on:

"Frankly I couldn’t give a monkey’s. All I knew was this: Christ, was the man a bore!"

Take a look at yourself, Sir!

"In 1972, Allen made the crappy Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex (a series of unfunny sketches)"

Unfunny sketches!- Mr. Sanghvi, I thought you had taste!

"Now I very much doubt if I’ll waste my time on another Woody Allen film."

Better not, Sir. Instead, please spend that time eating oysters, drinking wine and do some good introspection!

"He’s still offering the same old things. But alas, I’ve moved on."

Thank you, Sir. And please don’t write about his next movie without watching it. Peace out.

PS: I am a huge fan of Vir’s food writings.