June 23, 1999
Well, this is the second issue of
Fred.
STAR WARS
Well, I saw
Episode I about a month ago, and
unfortunately have nothing to say about it. Well, OK, it
was a visual extravaganza. It was like walking into a store
as a kid, looking at all the chocolate in the world, and
then actually eating it. That's how it felt to see it. The
story was kind of not compelling. In fact, it was
impenetrably convoluted. The dialogue was completely
moronic. The acting was poor. The accents were insulting.
The kid and that Ja Ja alien were completely unbearable to
withstand for more than 10 seconds on the screen. Let's
see...what else? Oh Darth Maul. Man, he kicked some ass.
The movie would've been a complete triumph had Darth Maul
offed the kid (future Darth Vader) and been in it in every
scene instead of a few choice minutes here and there. There
should be a separate movie series dedicated only to Darth
Maul. Darth Maul Rising. Darth Maul Attacks. Darth Maul
Digs Deeper. Darth Maul Feigns To Look Evil. Darth Maul
Kicks Ass. Anyway, so that was the movie. Oh, Ewan
McGregor...well, yes, he was in
Trainspotting and
he was in
Shallow Grave but he was pretty wooden
in this one.
GO NOW
I had no clue Richard Hell was such a good writer. And by
good, I mean incredibly perceptive about the depths of
depravity and self-centeredness which we humans can descend
to.
Go Now is a book published by Simon &
Schuster in 1996. His lyrical (yes, lyrical) ambition in
this book is amazing, and he actual attains the
impossible--to write lines and lines of prose like a poet,
filtered as it were through the lens of a hard dose of
unpretentiousness. The story is essentially
autobiographical: about a punk rocker past his prime who is
given one last chance (circa 1980) to make something of his
career by traveling across the U.S. in a beat up car with a
strangely detached yet hopeful female companion of his. Her
job: to take pictures; his: to write text for the photos;
ultimate goal: publish a book. The subtext below all this
is, of course, heroin. The descent to heroin, the ascent
from heroin, the descent again into heroin. Be forewarned:
this is not the usual run-of-the-mill self-pitied "I was a
rock star on heroin and my life when to shit" story. This
is sharp stuff, it is unforgiving, and it is brutally
honest in its assessment of what obsession does to you.
Richard Hell, of course, lived the life himself. He was in
four seminal punk rock bands (Neon Boys, Television, The
Heartbreakers, and Richard Hell & The Voidoids) and in
my mind was PUNK ROCKER NO. 1, predating Johnny Rotten by
several years. For those interested in the Hell's "real
life" depravity over his search for heroin, pick up a copy
of
Please Kill Me: An Oral History of Punk. I
would not recommend the latter for the faint-hearted or
those who hold their punk rock idols in high esteem. This,
my friends, is not the good, classy, artistic side of Iggy
Pop, Lou Reed, Dee Dee Ramone, Richard Hell, Richard Lloyd
(who had the best heroin stories), Sid Vicious, Debbie
Harry, or whoever. But back to
Go Now. I'm still
not finished with it---I'm reading it very slowly.....you
have to read it slowly, because every sentence is like a
ripe peach in your mouth. I read a sentence. I think I know
what it means because it makes sense. It reaches down to my
essence. I think "this is me." But I know it isn't really.
This is what makes it so eerie. It is somewhere between the
reader and the writer, the perfect space between the artist
and his/her art. I want that space for me too, but I'm
positive I'll never attain it. This is a great book about
why life is ultimately so pathetic, no matter who you are.
Interview with Hell
here. Excerpts from the book
here.
MERCURY REV CONCERT
REVIEW
Well, folks, I saw Mercury Rev a couple of weeks ago at
Graffiti here in Pittsburgh. Having been slightly put off
by their ostensibly growing Brian Wilson fascination, I was
in for a surprise. Their sound was indeed crystal clear,
and they did not curb their former tendencies to fly off
the handle into the stratosphere for long elongated space
rock jams that made you forget you were standing in a
smelly bar with smelly people all around you. It was
actually, less space, more rock than the last time I saw
them, but they were breathtakingly beautiful in their
ability to make a mundane song (especially those on the new
album) come alive in a fantastic way. They played most of
the new album
Deserter's Songs, giving me a much
better appreciation for the gems trapped on that CD. As I
said, they are more rock now, with songs having a
structure, feedback moderated a little bit. There was still
that bizarred childlike weirdness. The lead singer Jonathan
Poneman (who actually was a member of Flaming Lips for one
stunningly brilliant album) must be in his mid-30s, yet he
had the demeanor of a 12 year old, laughing as he would
shake his head and look at the floor in the sheer joy of
the music around him. As one song reached its insane
crescendo-like coda, he whispered into the mike "You may
find yourself, living in a shotgun shack..." It was
transendent. I was suprised that they reached into their
first album
Yerself Is Steam for several numbers.
None of them, however, matched the sheer power of the songs
on the studio album itself, perhaps because those songs
were more suited to their space rock format. Their encore
was a brilliant version of Neil Young's "Cortez the
Killer." The crowd swayed in unison, and we saw Cortez meet
Montezuma, the lead guitar was flying, Poneman flailing his
guitar over a strange electronic noise instrument that made
sounds as if from nowhere. Neil Young would have been
proud. Simply put, Mercury Rev are the best American live
band today. The fact that they were the best American live
band in 1995 by playing substantially different music is
amazing.
THE BETA BAND
I've been considering buying the older e.p. collection or
the new album for months now. If anyone knows anything
about the quality of these releases, please let me know.
Since no one is actually ever going to read this, this
would make this a meaningless exercise---a virtual
impossibility.
DEEP SPACE NINE
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine ended its run of seven
years on TV a few weeks ago with a two-hour finale. It was
truly an amazing ending and one that made shed a few tears.
I was really upset about the ending of DS9. People go on
about the original
Star Trek, the
Next
Generation, or
Voyager, but all of them
(well, most) were ridiculous. OK, let's back up a little
bit. Star Trek in itself is a ridiculous media
construction. It has nothing to do with reality. Having
said that, within the confines of that ridiculousness, DS9
was an unusually affecting television series. The original
Star Trek was compelling in a corny way--the stories were
like
Twilight Zone episodes sprinkled with some
twist of modern day anthropology mapped on humans rather
than cultures ("...we humans aren't all that great after
all...").
The Next Generation didn't improve on
that formula, at least not for the first few years. It
didn't help that they had terrible actors (Whoever play
Commander Reiker and Tasha Yar should be hounded out of the
acting profession----"Number One" should be arrested if he
tries to do anything besides Alien Autopsy Video
narrations---I wish someone would make a Reiker Prime
Directive---never to appear again on TV). But in the last
two years of its existence, the
Next Generation
began to get more sophisticated. They dropped the dramatic
theme music, upped the nuance factor, and eliminated Reiker
from most of the good plots. The then ended abrupty, but
they ended on a high note.
Voyager on the other
hand is swash-buckling Flash Gordon ressurected for those
who missed the 1930s
Flash Gordon serial. Voyager
is good, but it pales in comparison (in fact all of them
do) next to DS9.
Deep Space Nine had an innate
sophistication that was neither forced nor pretentious. For
the first time in a Star Trek show (except for that brief
period in the
Next Generation), it really explored
characters and introduced character development. I really
liked everyone on the show. And it didn't commit the most
heinous crime on TV, having a cutesy kid run around and be
cute. Kill the child! Kill the child! No, they actually
made the child grow up and become a cool character. DS9
also had two episodes that made me cry. Now, I don't cry
for shit ("...I'm a man...") but these two episodes were
just remarkable in their depth and breadth. They were not
complicated by any stretch of the imagination. But they
appealed to that sense of the possibility of loss that most
of us I think relate to, one about a father and a son, and
the other about a couple. And to top it off, they had a
several year long storyline that culminated in the final
show. And it worked. At the same time, I don't want to
suggest DS9 was always excellent. In fact, there were some
real stinkers---guilty of the standard Star Trek
in-your-face moralizing or pop anthropology lecture.
Anyway, while millions of unsuspecting fools will continue
to watch the
X-Files and think it's the best
sci-fi show ever made, they will unfortunately have missed
a show that was much much better.
The X-Files can
claim to be very clever (I mean it is)----it's too clever,
which makes the dialogue completely wooden, like Mulder
Robot and Scully Robot doing a Starsky and Hutch
impersonation with aliens as the enemy. The narration on
X-Files is actually more comical than William
Shatner's increasing beer gut. Having said that, I do like
the
X-Files, but those guys seem a little too full
of themselves. Anyway, DS9 is gone. The last scene was
wonderful. Jake and Kira standing in front of a huge window
in the station. The camera moves backward and suddenly we
are outside the station, we see their figures grow
increasingly smaller through the window as the camera
slowly backs away from the station. Eventually we see the
vista of the whole station, the camera continues to back
away, and finally the station becomes a tiny fragile thing
in space, alone, all these years, finally ending. The music
is understated and not dramatic. It's a beautiful few
seconds of television.