Author: andrea Page 21 of 72

Things have gotten quiet around here (again!). I’m just back from a restorative week-long jaunt to the UK, where I saw my friends Scarce play a triumphant show (more on that a bit later), visited friends in London and Oxford, and generally had an amazing time.

While in the UK I missed by a hair’s breadth a new dance from Michael Clarke, who frequently drew inspiration from the Fall’s music for his choreography. His troupe even collaborated with the Fall on a ballet —the score of which turned into the Fall classic I Am Curious Oranj. (You can watch selections on YouTube, beginning with this cheeky adaptation of “Spectre vs. Rector.”)

I adore Mark E Smith’s way with words, even if half the time I have no idea what he’s even saying. “New Face in Hell” is one (of many) I’m still working out — piecing it slowly together like the world’s most complicated puzzle. The song unfolds with amazing verbal dexterity, unspooling like a John le Carré spy thriller, dense with paranoia. “A prickly line of sweat covers enthusiast’s forehead as the realization hits him…”

While not every MES song works as a densely layered short story, many do, rewarding repeated, careful listens with “a-ha!” moments of clarity. (And confusion, too, but working through it is part of the fun.)

Fellow blogger Jon Underneathica must have a better handle on translating Mark’s splenetic rantings, and he’s turned it into a fun game. I give you Underneathica’s Mark E Smith Mix n’ Match.

Hours of fun! Collect all twelve! Let’s see, there’s the Peel Session version, the Brix Years, the Step Forward Years, the Brownies Blow-up Years, the post-Reformation Years, etc. etc.

The Fall, “Psykick Dancehall” (from It’s the New Thing! The Step Forward Years, 2003)

THE GLORY DAYS OF ROUGH TRADE (WINDOW DISPLAY, RT EAST) // PHOTO BY ANDREA FELDMAN

Dean & Britta
13 Most Beautiful…Songs for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests
RISD
October 3, 2009

A Walk into the Sea
Esther Robinson, director
T. Griffin, composer
2008

Unspooling in slow motion, Andy Warhol’s screen tests exert a strange kind of hypnotic allure.

Documenting the Factory superstars, as well as the hangers-on, artists, writers, musicians and infamous acquaintances that were pulled into Warhol’s orbit, the films collectively stand as a poignant elegy to the lost innocence of the 60s.

Made between 1964 and 1966, roughly 500 exist. Filmed with Warhol’s 16mm Bolex, each film runs two minutes, the length of a single reel. Slowed down to four minutes, every blink, sly smile and hand gesture takes on a curious gravity.

A single tear tracks agonizingly slowly down Ann Buchanan’s cheek, then hangs, suspended, like a jewel.

Lou Reed, looking very Street Hustler behind enormous shades, swigs aggressively from a Coca Cola.

Square-jawed, blond Paul America evades the camera’s gaze until he finally cracks up, smiling broadly.

Doomed Freddy Herko —the Judson dancer who sailed out an open window in 1966— looks anxious and drawn as he sullenly drags off a dwindling cigarette.

In her memoir, Swimming Underground, Mary Woronov (one of the 13) cannily notes that Warhol’s screen tests are remarkable because “you would see the person fighting with his (or her) image —trying to protect it. …After that it slips and your real self starts to show through.”

Encapsulating that sense of self in flux must have posed a challenge to Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips, the married duo who record as Dean & Britta. Looking to give the screen tests new life, the Andy Warhol Museum commissioned them to compose a soundtrack for a select group of 13.

(As principal songwriter for Galaxie 500 and Luna, Wareham’s music has effortlessly channeled a Velvet-y vibe for years. He must have seemed like a natural choice.)

The result, as it played out live last night before a packed house at RISD, was powerful —as sweet, funny, sad, desperate and ridiculous as the subjects themselves.

Mixing originals and covers, including Dylan’s “I’ll Keep It With Mine” (written for Nico) and a furious version of the recently unearthed Velvets gem “I’m Not a Young Man Anymore”, the score perfectly captured the hazy, narcotized momentum of the scene.

The instrumentals had the most frenzied energy. “Silver Factory” (for Billy Name) was shimmering and thunderous, like a wave cresting over and over. A Luna instrumental, “The Enabler” (re-titled “Herringbone Tweed”) fit Dennis Hopper’s test to a tee, its swaggering, low-end twang a perfect corollary to his glowering presence. (He breaks character halfway through, reverting from tough to goofball.)

The most languid, dreamy songs were paired with the most tragic figures, like the aforementioned Herko or poor, haunted Ingrid Superstar, who disappeared from her upstate NY home in 1987, leaving behind her false teeth and fur coat. And who could forget luminous Edie, who died of a drug overdose in 1971?

Danny Williams was another Factory casualty. Warhol’s live-in boyfriend for a time, he worked as a film editor for the Maysles and designed the lighting for the Velvets’ Exploding Plastic Inevitable traveling show.

In 1966, after a grueling (and emotionally taxing) tour with the VU, Williams drove home to the Cape to see his family. Late one evening he borrowed his mother’s car to go for a swim. He was never seen again.

Thirty-five years later, his niece Esther Robinson stumbled across a treasure trove of her uncle’s extraordinary black and white experimental films. Intrigued, she set out to solve the mystery of his disappearance. The result is the documentary A Walk into the Sea (2008).

Brooklyn musician T. Griffin composed the film’s soundtrack.

Working with collaborators Catherine McRae and Bruce Cawdron, the three set up in Williams’ old house, put microphones everywhere and let the sounds of the sea and surrounding woods lend their own haunting naturalness.

Of the process, Griffin writes, “I wasn’t dumb enough to try to sound like the Velvet Underground. But I knew they’d be hovering in the background somewhere, along with the Jaynettes and LaMonte Young.

“Esther was looking for music just at the edge of hearing, something that signaled the music swirling around NYC in 1966, but was impossible to place. Suggestive, not descriptive. We wanted music that sounded like a yellowed newspaper, like a rusty set of keys.”

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………13 Most Beautiful is on DVD from Plexifilm; you can buy it from the Dean & Britta store. A Walk into the Sea is available from Shiny Little Records. You can find the film at Amazon.

STILLS: ANN BUCHANAN, FREDDY HERKO, EDIE SEDGWICK [© THE ESTATE OF DANNY WILLIAMS]

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Dean & Britta, “Herringbone Tweed” (Live) (from 13 Most Beautiful…, 2009)

The Velvet Underground, “I’m Not a Young Man Anymore” (Live at the Gymnasium)

T. Griffin, “In Silver” (from A Walk into the Sea, 2008)

Extra Golden
Providence, RI
September 24, 2009

The saying “If there’s a will, there’s a way” fits Extra Golden to a tee.

The group’s certainly had to prove its resilience in its five years of existence: they haven’t let visa troubles, political unrest or the untimely death of a founding member get in the way of a joyous international collaboration between American and Kenyan musicians.

Formed almost by happenstance in 2004 when musicians Ian Eagleson, Alex Minoff and Otieno Jagwasi began playing one another’s compositions, for fun, just to see where they could take them, the group quickly coalesced into a full-fledged band.

Ian and Alex were American musicians from the Washington, D.C.-based band Golden; since 2000, Otieno had been assisting Ian in his doctoral research documenting benga, a guitar-heavy kind of dance music (similar to Congolese rumba) that has been popular in Kenya since the 1960s.

Over a couple of days, the group hashed out several songs, building them on top of rhythm tracks that Eagleson had recorded earlier with local drummer Onyango Wuod Omari.

Making due with less than ideal recording circumstances, they set up a laptop and a mixing board in the middle of a Nairobi restaurant. Three hours later, the majority of their debut album, Ok-Oyot System [Thrill Jockey], was complete.

Nearly five years and two more albums later, the unbelievable difficulties they’ve weathered haven’t touched the music, a jangly, funky, propulsive mix of rock and benga that transcends pastiche and achieves a rare grace.

Appropriately enough, summer returned with a vengeance in time for the band’s outdoor show last Thursday evening. Their sound —crisp, buoyant, insanely danceable, all forward momentum and frenzied riffage — cut through the heat with joyous abandon. And, while the crowd was a little thin, the group didn’t let that stop them from giving it their all.

By show’s end the motley audience —an oddball mix of hipsters and the drunks who practically live in the park — were all dancing like crazy, won over by the music’s effortless charm.

If you’re curious about traditional benga, you can buy CDs by Extra Golden vocalist Opiyo Bilongo and other Kenyan artists through Kanyo Kanyo.

Extra Golden, “Anyango” (from Thank You Very Quickly, Thrill Jockey, 2009)

PHOTOS BY ANDREA FELDMAN