Posted: August 22nd, 2016 | Filed under: Cinema, Music, Spyglass Chronicles | No Comments »
“Night Moves” Full Contact Karaoke. St. Joe’s Picnic. A run of the mill version of the Bob Seger’s most astute classic by an earnest but mediocre garage contingent. (Great band name though.) Only a smattering of the large crowd at the beloved annual charity event were even around the stage at the time. Probably so they could set their beers down, while downing an uninspiring fried fish sandwich, sold from a booth nearby.
But the song took on meaning as the evening unfolded. The facility’s grounds were overrun by gaggles of recently teenaged girls and hordes of pubescent boys. They circled each other in droves, looking up from their phones, nervously laughing, pointing, whispering in their BFF’s ears.
They were workin’ on mysteries without any clues, tryin’ to lose the awkward teenage blues, waiting on the thunder in the summertime.
Sweet summertime summertime.
“Dust My Broom” Elmore James. I’m not much into musician’s bios. Friends have been gifting me them for years. They’re stacked in my book cases, most just partially read, some never opened. But an old college pal, as addled with the music as I, sent me Rich Cohen’s latest, “The Sun, The Moon and the Rolling Stones. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: August 8th, 2016 | Filed under: Cinema, Culture, Music, Ruminations, Spyglass Chronicles, TV | 3 Comments »
Vittorio Storaro, Santo Loquasto “Café Society” Steve Carrell plays a namedropping super agent in 30s Hollywoodland. His deco wood-paneled office is, as my favorite movie critic Libby Gelman-Waxner would say, “to die for.” Kudos Santo Loquasto, head of production design.
The Los Angeles scenes are sun-splashed amber glorious. You can visualize Gloria Swanson lolling by her pool. Cinematographer Vittorio Storaro has again worked his visual magic.
Despite its thin veneer of a plotline — boy falls for girl who is involved with older man, confusion ensues — Woody Allen’s latest is not without its visual charms. The octogenarian is to be forgiven if he doesn’t hit a vein of gold every time out these days. He’s at an advanced age, when most directors have long since given up the chair. But Allen’s keeping a full workload. He’s released a film a year since 1966.
He’s tired. His plot’s a might mundane.
But the flick looks mahvelous.
Lake Street Dive. Iroquois Amphitheater. Rachel Price lorded over the stage like Kathleen Turner’s Matty Walker chewing up and spitting out William Hurt’s Ned Racine in “Body Heat.”
This marvelous quartet is tight, no simple singer and back up, but . . . Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: August 1st, 2016 | Filed under: Cinema, Community, Music, Spyglass Chronicles | 3 Comments »
“Wild Night” Van Morrison (It’s Too Late To Stop Now, Vol. III) The kid scores a fake ID, borrows a disco shirt from his older brother, heads into his first Saturday night out and about, and walks into the hot new bar in town. Morrison’s voice cracks,
“Ooooewuoooo Oooooooooooh Weee!!!!! Wild night is callin’.
VM’s Spring/Summer ’73 tour with the very hot Caledonia Soul Orchestra is Van Morrison at his loosest and best, scatting, soaring and swooping through melodies as only he can. 300 new minutes worth of live tuneage from that tour have just been released as “. . . It’s Too Late To Stop Now . . . Volumes II. III. IV & DVD.” Easy to understand why these versions weren’t included in the original volume. A burp here, a clank there, Morrison consumed by the music like a celestial mass sucked into a black hole, but so damn what?
Which is obviously what Morrison finally thought when he authorized this release forty years later. This is not some ersatz money grab, full of outtakes. The music is righteous.
Holly Houston Interview. Louisville Magazine. The local attorney/ activist/ Woman About Town dropped the F Bomb in one of her As to the zine’s Q & A. (Spelled as most mainstream mags are won’t to do, “f***ed.”) A reader, someone obviously on the sphincter transplant list, wrote a letter to Ed complaining. At the end of the reader’s screed, she asked, “My grandchild asked me what “f***ed” meant. What should I tell him? Please share this with her.”
Ever feisty, Ms. Houston answered for print. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: July 25th, 2016 | Filed under: Culture, Music, Spyglass Chronicles, TV | No Comments »
The eagle-eyed returnees among you have probably noticed a change in the title of this periodic endeavor to “The Spyglass Chronicles.” Upon which discovery, you are surely wondering, given the branding image I’ve been using of a pathfinder in buckskin, looking through a spyglass, why hasn’t it been called that all along? To which the answer is, “Duh, I dunno.”
Michael Kenneth Williams, “The Night Of.” Omar — Williams shall forever and always be Omar from “The Wire” to me — is back. As Freddy, the guy at Rikers with the private cell up in the corner at the end of the block. He shtups the women guards, takes care of the guys in uni on the outside, thereby currying favors and ruling the roost. In Episode 3, he offers to protect Naz from the others inside who want to take him down. Looks like the kid is going to need it.
“She’s About A Mover” Sir Douglas Quintet. When the British Invasion hit in the early 60s, the gang from Merrie Ol’ left the redcoats at home and took over pop culture with terrible swift sword. Dominated Top 40, News, Weather & Sports Radio. Even cotton candy music by such as Freddy & the Dreamers and Herman’s Hermits charted. The invaders dominated dress thanks to Carnaby Street. Because of Twiggy, anorexic became the new look.
All some needed to become a deejay radio star was an accent. Happened in Louisville with a guy named Ken Douglas, an English fellow, even though he really didn’t know much about music. He’d had been selling clothes at a local haberdashery, when somebody with a WKLO connection heard his accent. Read the rest of this entry »
