Ramsayings

Set in post-war York­shire, This Sport­ing Life tells the sto­ry of Frank Machin, a coal min­er turned rug­by star. A damn­ing com­men­tary on the sti­fling Eng­lish tra­di­tion of val­ues and class, mak­ing it the very antithe­sis of George Cuko­r’s My Fair Lady. Mach­in’s hard-bit­ten expe­ri­ences pre­fig­ure mod cul­ture: an upstart dying to be accept­ed, yet does­n’t fit in despite his best efforts and in turn rebels against received notions of what’s prop­er and right. In some respects, Machin plays out as a brow­beat­en fig­ure for change in post-war Eng­land and it’s through him that one can envi­sion the social rev­o­lu­tion that was about to take place there.

Con­tin­ue read­ing “This Sport­ing Life”

Art Brut w/ Gil Man­ter­a’s Par­ty Dream — First Uni­tar­i­an Church, 8 p.m.

Did they miss their “hype cycle”? Maybe. But that does­n’t detract from the non­sen­si­cal, in-jokey cheek­i­ness that made Bang Bang Rock & Roll one of last year’s fun­ni­est records. With a wink and a pump­ing fist, Eddie Argos tells the sto­ry of the in-crowd in all their self-loathing glory!

Actu­al­ly, it seems fit­ting now that they’ve missed their hype cycle…

Yeah Yeah Yeahs w/ Blood on the Wall — The Tro­cadero April 5, 2006

Show Your Bones may not sat­is­fy fans look­ing for pre­tenders to The Pre­tenders hard-bit­ten vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, but enig­mat­ic, extro­vert­ed front­woman Karen O. still pro­vides good val­ue for the enter­tain­ment dol­lar, prov­ing that the mil­lenial hype for the New York sound was­n’t com­plete­ly off the mark.

Con­sid­er­ing that record­ing Show Your Bones near­ly destroyed the band, YYY’s aren’t the self-sat­is­fied garage rock card­board cutouts The Strokes proved to be, and even with Liq­uid Liq­uid seep­ing in to “Phe­nom­e­na”, they haven’t gone total­ly DFA either, leav­ing them in an elec­tro-acoustic no man’s land of sorts, which isn’t entire­ly a bad thing.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs — “Gold Lion”

The tec­ton­ic changes fac­ing media com­pa­nies are by now the top­ic of an often-recit­ed ser­mon. Put briefly, dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy is plac­ing con­trol over much infor­ma­tion square­ly in the hands of con­sumers and cre­at­ing all kinds of oppor­tu­ni­ties for new entrants who can push the rev­o­lu­tion forward.

And…

These are new-media ven­tures that leave the com­pe­ti­tion scratch­ing their heads because they don’t real­ly aim to com­pete in the first place; their cre­ators are mere­ly tak­ing advan­tage of the eco­nom­ics of the online medi­um to do some­thing that they feel good about. They would cer­tain­ly like to cov­er their costs and maybe make a buck or two, but real­ly, they’re not in it for the mon­ey. By pure­ly com­mer­cial mea­sures, they are illog­i­cal. If your name were, say, Rupert or Sum­n­er, they would rep­re­sent the kind of ter­ror that might keep you up at night: death by smi­ley face. [empha­sis mine.]

What he said, with reser­va­tions. Thoughts?

Con­tin­ue read­ing “Cha-ching!”

This 18th C. Adap­ta­tion pits Felli­ni against Mon­ty Python and treats Lau­rence Sterne’s unedit­ed mas­ter­piece as it should right­ful­ly be treat­ed: as though no one has ever read the book in its entire­ty, pre­fer­ring the idea itself over an actu­al telling. The film already has some­thing of a folk­lore: it was shot in five days, with no mon­ey; that it was­n’t actu­al­ly script­ed, but impro­vised, main­ly by Coogan, but every­one went along for the ride, neces­si­tat­ing a “Don­ald Kauf­man-esque” inven­tion to cov­er their tracks. There will undoubt­ed­ly be more as this film reach­es larg­er audi­ences, but for now, small­er myths should do.

Con­tin­ue read­ing “What did you do in the war?”