25 July 2011
Amy Winehouse at 27: M.I.A. & magical thinking
Don’t burn that image of her casual, sloppy brilliance into your mind when remembering Amy Winehouse. Instead remember this one:
M.I.A.’s predilection for inserting herself into debates she has no place in is annoying. Her music is not. And here’s her tribute to Amy Winehouse, an unreleased demo called “27,” one in which her two cents actually seems well-deserved. And, one has to believe, heartfelt.
It includes these lyrics:
said your all mouth and no brains
all rock stars go to heaven
you said you’ll be dead at 27 seven
So it is, in a way, a tribute to the 27 club. Though let’s be honest these lyrics from later on in the song ring even truer than that phenomenon:
you blew that money on a mountain of drugs
and staged your self a bed in
Elliott Smith died at age 34. Rick James died at age 56. 27 is a magic age for rock star death if, for no other reason, people have rarely developed enough good judgement by that age to let self-preservation triumph over the acquisition of new experience. If I recall numerous conversations with friends looking to “settle down” with a mate, 27 is also the age floor many people observe when looking for a life partner. (Obligatory shout-out to those enjoying newly legalized gay marriage in New York State yesterday. Beware the pitfalls, friends!)
Anyway, the sooner we begin attributing death to something other than a mystical kind of numerology, the better off we’ll be.
Bye Amy.
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Posted by Alec Hanley Bemis
Tags: Amy Winehouse, Gay Marriage, M.I.A., Obituary, Say No to Drugs
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2 May 2011
A true American
I lack interest in politics for the same reason that I lack interest in sports: I don’t like being a spectator. But I’ll happily admit it sometimes delivers as in Barack Obama’s speech at this weekend’s White House correspondents’ dinner.
My favorite quote: “I want to make clear to the Fox news table, that was a joke. That was not my real birth video. That was a children’s cartoon. Call Disney if you won’t believe me. They have the original long-form version.”
It’s a contextual quote that will make more sense when you watch. Which you should.
PS – The above post was written before this happened, or at least since it was revealed. (I had a sneaking suspicion Obama may have known at the time of his most excellently delivered correspondents’ dinner speech.) Fingers crossed this might just be Obama’s comeback weekend. I will leave you with this tasteful coverage of the event from the Huffington Post.
Sometimes I wonder why I pay no attention to the media. Then I pay attention to the media, and all is clear.
Posted by Alec Hanley Bemis
Tags: Barack Obama, Disney, Donald Trump, Fox News, NPR, Obituary, Osama Bin Laden, White House Correspondents' Dinner
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19 January 2011
3 January 2011
Michael Jackson vs. Kanye West vs. Quincy Jones: a short attention span essay on pop history, real history & their relation to “blood & treasure”
I. THE BASICS
So you’ve heard Kanye West talking shit like he’s the next Michael Jackson, no? If not try this one on for size: “As far as rapping goes, how can I say this? Jordan, Michael Jackson – it’s what I do.”
His attempts to insert himself in a royal lineage are subtle, no?
Well, actually no, he’s not being subtle at all. One of the primary tenants in Kanye’s five-point plan to achieve greatness is his understanding that subtlety has no place in pop.
Here’s why.
1. Big H history is a matter of large forces — war, disaster, fortunes gained & lost. It is not determined by the people (as one of 2010’s dead would have us believe); rather it is determined by the fate of a nation’s “blood & treasure,” that poetic dyad which legacy-minded presidents and statesmen use to make war sound noble & necessary. It is a game of unimaginable resources; of living and dying; of a cast of thousands.
2. Pop history, by contrast, is a fickle bitch. It is usually a matter of memories (feeble ones incapacitated by the pop cult triad of sex & drugs & rock’n'roll); it is a matter of insistence via memoirs which depict all the fair weather friendships & alliances made in a pop art career; it is a matter of shadowy aesthetic influences cast forward arbitrarily a generation or two past their moment of initial fashionability. It’s a story of whispers, rumors and cross-generational games of telephone. Pop history may not be determined by the people, but it’s certainly chronicled in outlets like People (which, come to think of it, sorta does a guy like historian Howard Zinn proud).
At their best, pop stars learn a way to make their pop historicizing meld into real history. Read more »
Posted by Alec Hanley Bemis
Tags: Blood & Treasure, Crowdsourcing, George Bush, Howard Zinn, Hurricane Katrina, Kanye West, Memoir, Michael Jackson, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Obituary, Patti Smith, People Magazine, Pop Culture, Q-Tip, Quincy Jones, The Problem With Glamour, The Problem With Nostalgia
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18 December 2010
“The way I keep in touch with the world is very gingerly, because the world touches too hard.”
If the short, sentimental, uninformative docupoem about him by Anton not embedded up there then look for it here. “The difference between art & music…” he says in the documentary, well, it’s different forms of drowning. Am I right? Probably not. Because Captain Beefheart aka Don Van Vliet didn’t so much confound expectations as deny they were even possible…
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“Don van Vliet, alias ‘Captain Beefheart’, is one of the most influential, misunderstood, talked about, admired, copied, treasured, loved and quoted musicians and yet he is still an obscure and mysterious artist. His quite abrupt artistic transformation from working with a microphone to a paintbrush in 1982 and his consequent move from the desert to the ocean meant even less direct contact with the outside world than before. Subsequently there is very little information about Don from this time onwards and this short black-and-white film made in 1993 is an unique opportunity to see and hear this unique man. The film is approximately 13 minutes long, directed and photographed in black and white.”
But please don’t mistake Captain Beefheart for being an uncommercial artist. In fact, they were so commercial they once made one:
Before you go, you might want to read why in the New York Times’ obituary. O captain! My captain! More rambling after the jump!
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Posted by Alec Hanley Bemis
Tags: Anton Corbjin, Captain Beefheart, Don Van Vliet, Frank Zappa, Obituary, The Community Function