Well, i was going to post a public apology, but then it got lost to a shuffle of copy and pastes, so here’s the condensed version.
I slagged the new Patti Rothberg record on the 11th of January. I didn’t like it. Since then, i’ve grown to like it, but it’s my stance that i don’t reccomend albums that i don’t like on my first listen to the general public (though i still have kind words for them to fans), so i never updated my review.
This week Mr. Freddie Katz, Patti’s current guitarist and songwriting pal, found my site via Google and read my scathing review and my indictment of him as the fault behind why i didn’t like the album. He emailed me and basically pegged me as the kind of fan who isn’t. It hurt. But, it was true, because what i said hurt him, and as a member of the general public i shouldn’t have that right.
Whoever knew someone mildly famous might randomly search down their name on my website? Certainly not i. Anyhow, i replied to Freddie and apologized, and informed him that i quite like the record now, which is true. I honestly would have rather heard Patti produce herself, or play every guitar on the record again, but she’s the artist and he claims the record met her artistic vision … which is enough for me.
Anyhow, my best wishes to Patti and Freddie in the future. I’ll still be listening. I dunno if either of them ever want to talk to me again, though. I think what this all proves is that i’m a shithead… yep. In case you hadn’t figured it out already.
reviews
Apparently i was supposed to “hunker down with a pair of headphones” and closely examine Kid A, but i frankly don’t have the time. I’ll be the first to admit that there are hundreds of albums that i would fall in love with if given the chance, but when artists like Sarah Harmer can grab me in a half a listen i don’t know why i should waste my time on an album that i spent hours listening to while only ever really liking two or three songs. It’s one thing to tell me that i shouldn’t just discard an album after a single listen, but i gave Kid A more than just a casual listen at work (where i’ve discovered tons of my current favourite discs, from Ben Folds to Portishead) and it never took hold. Maybe i’m just too into riffs and songs that can be broken down to a single acoustic guitar; god knows i loved Pablo Honey from the first time it ever entered the shop’s disc changer. or, maybe i just hated kid A more and more as i found out from Pablo that Radiohead really was the next best rock band and that they obviously failed us horribly before they could ever prove their point. Or something? I dunno.
I’m long overdue on commenting on the best music of 2000, aren’t i? To be fair, i got some of my favourite albums of last year in a post-christmas shopping spree, so i needed some time to adjust to them. However, i think i might have a top five ready to go – only, it’s not so much a top five as it is five #1’s in different categories. Here we go…
Stories From the City, Stories from the Sea, PJ Harvey – Albums this good aren’t made all that often. Crunchy rock songs, flowing earthy ballads, and the ability to turn love into a tangible wavelength of sound for three minutes at a time. Hardly a single song misfires, and standouts like “Good Fortune” and “You Said Something” are easily some of the best songs to have been released all year. A must have.
The Trouble With Poets, Peter Mulvey – It’s hard to be objective about this album, because i’ve known it for so long. The live album that preceded it featured its title track, and i had seen Peter play over half of the album live in 1999 and early 2000. But, the album’s release was anything but anticlimatic; Peter’s sparse live acoustic sound is something totally different than the textured mix found on his album, complete with sighing backing vocals and drums that just emphasize the incredible rhythms he establishes with his guitar. Every song is good, but the title track is perfection itself.
You Were Here, Sarah Harmer – I would have never bought this album, except that i came into work early one day and heard it played straight through on our local folk station. Of course, i was busy making lattés and hardly could pay the sort of attention Ms. Harmer warrants, but i definitely was intrigued by her sound. On a whim i picked up her disc in my post Christmas shopping spree, and i have to say that it’s the best whim i’ve had in years. The album as a whole resides somewhere in the vast expanse between Ani DiFranco and Sarah McLachlan, but individual songs like “HideOut” and “Lodestar” defy such easy categorization as much as they defy you to not like them. Album opener “Around This Corner” is almost too catchy to even recommend to you for fear you might never listen to another first track the same way again, the wailing “Weakened State” conjures up more angst then any Limp Bizcuit song i’ve ever suffered through while still sounding great, and “Basement Apartment” definitely deserves to hit it big on college or AC radio. This album has something for almost any fan of female folk or pop music, so i suggest you listen.
The other two albums of the year are still in flux. Do i sell out and pick Madonna’s Music just because it’s Madonna and surpassed my wildest expectations. Can i really place indy-rock Death Cab for Cutie’s We Have the Facts and We’re Voting Yes amongst some of my musical idols without a flinch? Or, is Veruca Salt’s first post-humus effort deserving of the best of recognition for it’s shining moments even when there are terrible ones mixed in… I’m altogether unsure. I’ll tell you as soon as i figure it out…
There’s really no point in my buying books anymore. Or maybe there is. It’s gotten to the point where purchasing and reading a book nearly equates to buying and watching a movie; i should probably just rent either the first time to see if they’re worth the expense. Reading a book is now totally analogous to watching a movie for me; if i don’t get through all of it in a sitting or two i’m tempted to just give up on it, and if i like it a lot i’ll gladly go back to it as soon as time allows.
I don’t ever remember reading a book twice back-to-back. A book is the sort of thing you have to digest, and let swirl around in your brain until you reconcile it nicely. There’s no point in going back so soon to read each and every one of the words again. Reading is an experience controlled by the reader, and as much as i can stop at a sentence written in Italian to translate it word for word i can just as easily gloss past it as well as the boring chapter that follows. Movies don’t allow such a luxury; movies are a medium that the viewer has no power over. We have freeze frame, and rewind, but we can’t slow the action without distorting the medium in which the story is told
Or, maybe you don’t believe me and you’re pretty quick on the trigger with your slo-mo button. I just read approximately 1400 pages in four days and i’m wholly dissatisfied. 1400 is two days worth, at the most. Or, i could have sat down and watched the three movies back to back in under nine hours. Usually i’d say that i wouldn’t have appreciated them nearly as much that way, but this time i’m not so sure.
Quick and biased remarks on the novels of Thomas Harris: Red Dragon – 6/10, badly plotted and lacking suspense where it should possess it. Silence of the Lambs – 8/10, practically a shooting script and excellently constructed. Hannibal – 4/10, several hours of my life that wouldn’t have necessarily been spent better but that i’ll never get back either. It’s not necessary to read them sequentially, but you should at least watch Silence before reading Hannibal.
I read too fast for my own damned good. Yesterday i decided to go on a smallish shopping spree with my credit card to see how close i could get to maxing it out without being rejected from purchasing something. In the madness, i hit Borders and picked up Thomas Harris’s Red Dragon and a sweet oversized edition of Silence of the Lambs. I’m not sure what suddenly spurred this in me, but recently my girlfriend’s roommate has been powering through Lambs, and i always meant to read it, and i sorta want to go see Hannible. So, i suppose the plan was to get through the two of them soon enough to buy a non-movie edition of Hannibal to read before i go see the flick in a weekend or two. Or, as it turns out, maybe this weekend.
First of all, you have to understand my unholy hatred of movie-edition paperbacks. I hate them. Hate them. While having the image of a main character to aid me in visualization is always helpful, i’ve endured too many ugly movie-photos like the ones on the covers of The Beach or Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, both of which previously featured superb cover work. Even worse, the new edition of Hannibal doesn’t even use the creepy zombie-like picture of Anthony Hopkins from the movie posters – instead it substitutes some awful and nearly amusing picture of him preening with a large straw hat on. It isn’t too threatening.
Borders had two copies of the non-movie edition, but i didn’t want to get ahead of myself. Paperbacks cost quite a lot now ($8 for a paperback? Does anyone else miss the 90’s yet?), and i didn’t want to sink nearly $30 into three books that i might not even like. So, i bought Red Dragon so i could finally read it & Silence of the Lambs, which looks nice if nothing else. I finished the dense 450 page Dragon in under 20 hours of intermittent reading; started around 4pm yesterday and completed noon today with rehearsal, sleep, and class coming inbetween. I was proud of myself. I’ve been known to finish 500 page books in well under eight hours in the past, but i tend to lose my momentum when i don’t read a large book all in a single sitting.
So far my impression is that Thomas Harris is a tremendous writer but a nearly equally inconsistent author who relies on too many plot devices and explicit histories in the place of actual suspense and horror. Much as in the movie of Silence of the Lambs, where you become excited by the chase rather than the whodunnit, this novel reveals the killer early on and becomes a book as much about him as about the protagonist (who’s a much better character). The protagonist is vivid, logical, and entangles himself and the reader frighteningly deep into each murder. On the other hand, the killer’s history is boring, contrived, evokes little pity, and surprisingly does nearly nothing to set the reader up for his near schizophrenic behaviour near the end of the novel. In fact, the book took a downturn as soon as it dropped the pretense and mainly focused on the murderer. And, i’ll never look at dentures the same way again.
Lambs is 350 pages in super-oversized soft-cover format, and it looks to be a bit more firmly put-together than Dragon. And, of course, it has a lot more of Hannibal Lecter in it. One thing i’ll hand to Harris as an author is that he crafted the ultimate chiller of a villain in Hannibal; in his new forward to the first novel he portrays the writing of Lecter’s first scene as though he viewed it from a corner where he was huddled in fear the entire time, fending off the urge to bolt out the door as well as the cackling of other inmates in the asylum. His description of writing Hannibal seems apropos, because i would hardly expect someone to deliberately conjure this sort of killer from the depths of their own imagination. A monster is hard to create, and much easier to develop in small strides as he crawls into the cracks of your psyche and makes you scared to even write him. Lecter definitely had that effect on his author, and now i can hardly wait to get Silence of the Lambs out of the way so i can run back to Borders tomorrow to buy a lovely copy of Hannibal.
Who knows, i might even wind up seeing it this weekend…