Fit to be tried
Release Date: 2002-11-14 Standing around the wine shop equivalent of the water cooler the other day — the weekend tasting bar, in other words — the converstation turned to Italian restaurants. Old-line, Italian-American restaurants, to be specific, for which “he makes a good red sauce” was the highest form of praise. As it should be.…
PLAYING IT BY EAR
As you would expect, many of these players cross over from the classical world. That’s the case with Detroit native Regina Carter, whose training made her particularly suited for the transition: As a young child, Carter wasn’t eager to learn to read music (one story has it that she showed up at a lesson with…
FIT TO BE TRIED
Standing around the wine shop equivalent of the water cooler the other day — the weekend tasting bar, in other words — the converstation turned to Italian restaurants. Old-line, Italian-American restaurants, to be specific, for which “he makes a good red sauce” was the highest form of praise. As it should be. Massimo is not…
PLAYING IT BY EAR
Many casual jazz fans don’t realize that the violin has been a serious part of the genre about as long as the saxophone, trumpet, and piano; Stephane Grappelli was swapping solos with Django Reinhardt when the label “jazz” was fresh. Though other instruments have certainly overshadowed it, stubborn fiddlers have continued to be a part…
GROOVE WITH A MISSION
(ALL LYRICS BY JAMES BROWN) I got the somethin’ that makes me wanna shout I got that thing, tell me what it’s all about I got soul, ha, and I’m super bad, heh Got the move that tells me what to do Sometimes I feel so nice, I said I wanna tie myself to a…
ROKENROL, MAN
Remember the disaster drills of the ’70s and ’80s? You know, those non-specific air raid sirens that sent schoolchildren ducking like lunatics under their desks as if wood-patterned Formica and chip board formed some sort of miracle shield against radioactive fallout? Perhaps it was my geographical proximity to Three Mile Island that made these exercises…
THE UN-LABELLING OF AUGIE MEYER
A friend of mine recently installed this really cool music program on my computer. All sorts of bells and whistles. But when I submitted the new Augie Meyers’ CD, Blame It On Love, for genre classification, I faced a dilemma. None of the standard pigeonholes (country, alternative, folk, heavy metal, classical, etc.) fully represented this…
PUNK IMPERSONATORS
Some bands were built to accommodate an evolving lineup (Pigface, Thrill Kill Kult, GWAR), while others have a history of defining frontmen (Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Rage Against the Machine) — epitomizing a sound that legends are made of. Then there are those bands that stubbornly refuse to dissolve after their seminal lead singer quits or…
¡VIVA TERLINGUA!
“Apparently, man, there were these two guys together and one of them was a writer in Dallas and started this chili cookoff in 1967. But at some point, it split and went two different directions, and that’s why there’s two different chili cookoffs out there. The guy from Dallas was named Frank X. Tolbert, and…
THE ENDURING ATROCITIES OF AUSCHWITZ
In The Drowned and the Saved, the last book he wrote before committing suicide in 1987, Primo Levi recalls the Sonderkommandos, inmates who assisted the Nazis in operating their horrendous machinery of death. At Auschwitz-Birkenau, the camp that Levi himself survived, 700-1000 collaborators, mostly Jews, herded tens of thousands of victims into the gas chambers.…
NEW REVIEWS
Femme Fatale “Pure De Palma, pure likeable trash” Dir. and writ. Brian De Palma; feat. Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, Antonio Banderas, Peter Coyote, Eriq Ebouaney, Edouard Montoute (R) Many of Brian De Palma’s best films have been, from a certain point of view, complete trash — thrillers that exploited viewers and actors (actresses, to be more precise)…
Armchair Cinephile
IN THE COMPANY OF MEN I did a double take when I saw the words “10 Year Anniversary” on the new DVD of Glengarry GlenRoss (Artisan) — surely this world-weary, embittered film can’t be that young. One decade or three, this adaptation of David Mamet’s play already belongs in the pantheon of testosterone ensemble films,…
STILL PLAYING
Auto Focus “Hooked on Hogan’s goatish hero” Schrader (screenwriter of Taxi Driver, etc.) offers a portrait of “Hogan’s Heroes” star Bob Crane as an ordinary guy afflicted with sexual athlete’s foot. He and his buddy John get a lot of women, but they lack much fun in their compulsions. The film is a study less…
