Tag Archives: Robert Carlyle

The Summer’s Is Gone The Winter’s Tuning Up

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I totally borrowed the title from a Leonard Cohen song. Everyone should read and hear Leonard Cohen.

As the miserable heat of summer gives way to a brief autumn, people are beginning to go outside again. I am a little bit, but cautiously, because of… people.

I have been pretty busy. The blog has taken a back seat as I look for a steady gig and take on things to write about for more income. Plus, there is so much stuff to stream. The long and short of it is I am sorry to be so tardy with this.

This summer had a hot few months. Originally I was fine with that. After all, it is not snow or ice. The weird, colder spell in the middle is kind of weird, but also super nice. But now, there has been a break and it is not as muggy and nasty and crappy out. Hallelujah. That stretch of a week to ten days with the super high heat index was really a beast.

I am worried that our rather brief spring and summer means we may have a long winter. I do not want to see snow or sleet in the coming months. So, the seasons are a trade-off of sorts. All I know is I hate winter. And this year’s is supposed to be miserable. According to the Farmer’s Almanac, we are supposed to have a rough winter. Great.

Spring turned into summer and with those seasons came a sudden uptick in stuff I needed to do. I have had more articles to turn in and a few other projects have come down the pipeline. I am glad to be busy, but I am not thrilled with the arrival of the fall allergy season.

In addition to some articles for Broadway World, FEAST, and ReviewSTL I have been hosting a second radio show. It is called Antics and it airs on Louder Than War Radio on Mondays from 6-8 pm GMT or 12-2 pm Central time. Click here to listen to archived shows.

It differs from my other radio gig in that I do not need to run promo spots or reviews. It is more or less, a full two-hour slot of music. Plus, I can play longer music and make deeper dives into the songs I like. And there are less shenanigans to deal with. If you need a break from the station I also broadcast from, this is a nice reprive.

I also continue to co-host the Modern Musicology podcast. You should check it out, we’ve had some great guests on it.

Speaking of radio…Thirty years ago I was told by The Point that I didn’t know enough about music to be a DJ on their station. Well, looking back, most commercial alternative stations now are completely craptacular.

There has been so much music. I saw Sparks in Kansas City. They were terrific. This concert was fun and euphoric. However, I still think I liked their concert in Chicago last year more. it was more energetic.

In a weird chance of fate, I got an opportunity to review the Taylor Swift concert the night before. I was joined by over 80,000 other people. it was kind of surreal. I was only marginally familiar with her music, but I was really interested in the production itself. There were three connected stages, a massive video screen, lots of cool projections, elaborate sets, costume changes, and rising and lowering stages. It was a massive technical undertaking.

One takeaway from the show was how polite and nice her fanbase was. Another was the fact that she played for nearly four hours and showed no signs of fatigue.

A band that is buddies with T. Swift is The National. They dropped an album called, First Two Pages of Frankenstein. Now, they just dropped another album called Laugh Track.

First Two Pages of Frankenstein is solid, but Tropic Morning News is my favorite.

The album is pretty minimalist and it sounds just as intense as their previous records. Phoebe Bridgers and someone named Taylor Swift are on the album.

Laugh Track is more or less the same in texture and sound. The first batch of songs from it dropped a few weeks ago.

I like Space Invader a lot. I think it sounds like their older stuff. The guitars on it are also pretty good.

Louise Post used to be in Veruca Salt. Now, she has released an album called Sleepwalker.

I saw Veruca Salt open for that terrible band called Live once. I saw their set and then PJ Harvey’s and then left before Live went on stage. Recently, Louise toured for the record but it was a super short run.

Yard Act dropped The Trench Coat Museum a few months ago. It is simply epic.

Sounding like LCD Soundsystem and Gang of Four had a baby, this cut is deep. It’s got some really searing guitars, some bells, snazzy percussion, and a really sharp vocal delivery. I look forward to hearing what these guys do next.

In June I Saw Love and Rockets in Chicago. They were fantastic. They crushed it. I was really surprised by how tight their set was. They did play the hits but they also did some cool deep tracks and b-sides. At a time when everyone was doing a reunion tour, this one was really good.

The Theater Section

Opera Theatre St. Louis has come and gone for this year. I enjoyed the season immensely. I am looking forward to the upcoming season.

If you ever go to an Opera Theatre show make sure to people watch. The amount of 1970s polyester suits still in the wild is frightening.

I am seeing plays again. I am lucky that I get to review them, so if they are ghastly, I am not out any money. Nothing is worse than spending lots of money on rubbish theater. One of the best things about St. Louis that goes undervalued is our terrific theater scene. We have a lot of great companies doing terrific productions.

The best thing I saw in the Spring was the touring production of To Kill A Mockingbird with Richard Thomas. He was outstanding and the entire ensemble was terrific. I was pleased that it kept the spirit of the book. it is coming back to town next year.

I really enjoyed seeing Beetlejuice at the Fox. The show had a kinetic energy to it and the musical numbers were very good. It was a great opener for the Fox’s new season.

I am thrilled that The Phantom of the Opera has ended its run on Broadway. I know people love it, but I think it’s overhyped and tedious. It needed to be about a half-hour shorter. It just never did much for me.

I am thrilled that people are going to movies and live theater again. However, I wish they would remember that the time that is printed on that ticket they have is when things start. It is not an estimate or a five-minute alert. It’s the go time. But, somehow, there are always assclowns who come later. It is especially annoying when you have gotten all settled in your seat and then have to get up to accommodate some moron who has no time management skills. Oh, by the way, it’s really rude to come late.

Also when you come late and have to make everyone in the aisle move to accommodate you, don’t bring like 6000 things to carry with you. Especially snacks. And another thing…don’t talk during the show.

Let’s All Go To The Lobby

Party Girl is out on Blu-ray. This 1995 comedy starring Parker Posey and Liev Schreiber takes the spirit of comedies of the 1930s and puts it in 1990s New York club culture.

All these years later this is still a fine indie film. Ironically, it was filmed in Austin.

Trainspotting is getting a 4K restoration for a 2024 Criterion release!

This edition has a few new extras as well as stuff that was on the original Blu-ray release. There is also some sort of spinoff series with Robert Carlyle coming soon as well.

The new restoration of Stop Making Sense is fantastic. I had not seen the movie for maybe twenty years or so and was thrilled to see it has held up well as a concert film.

The restoration is fantastic. it looks and sounds amazing. Hearing it now in a theater with great audio really makes it a richer experience.

Seeing it now, I am reminded of just how great this band was. I saw them near the end when the were close to breaking up. They were good then, but nothing like this.

There is appliance news!

The black lining inside of the dishwasher was starting to come apart. I was going to buy some waterproof sealant and just that hold somebitch back into place. But, when I mentioned the issue to the property manager. She decided to get a new dishwasher instead. I was surprised because she is generally useless.

It should have been an easier process. But it wasn’t. The new one, probably bought from a second-hand place, was dropped off. The guy bringing it didn’t want to bring it inside. He wanted to leave it on the stoop and let me and my arthritic knee move it. But, eventually, he brought it in and I pushed the box into a corner. I had to do this because the person installing the dishwasher was coming the next day.

So, to make all of this work I had to move a bunch of appointments around. I wanted to be here when it got installed and not have the person alone in my apartment with it. Plus, I wanted to make sure the old one got removed and not left in my kitchen or outside somewhere where it would sit and rust.

The stupid thing is that the dishwasher we got doesn’t fill the entire space. So now there is a small cap between where the counter ends and the dishwasher starts. I am not quite sure how to fill it but it is a giant hassle.

Books!

First off, support your local library! help them fight the banning of books and be nice to their staff.

Probably the best music book I have read all year is Listening To The Music The Machines Make by Richard Evans.

It is a thorough examination of electronic music of the late 1970s and early 1980s. I am so glad someone else likes Telex as much as I do!

Nick Hornby is a fantastic writer. His latest book is a quick read.

In Dickens and Prince: A Particular Kind of Genius, he finds parallels between the two artists and how they executed their craft. He doesn’t directly connect them to each other, which is fine, but he does fanboy about each and why their work continues to resonate and why it is vital.

His books are always well paced and this one is no exception. Told as a collection of essays, he touches on how common themes of social status, race, and education affected each artist.

Finally, people found a lot of things to blame the Cardinals’ crappy season on. I think it is the flurry of “He Gets Us” Jesus commercials. I will say this, these things are slick. They really try to draw folks in some seriously unsuspecting ways.

I think the commercials are really annoying and I think that they should not be on TV or radio. I mean, people of other faiths listen and watch baseball games.

But overall, this campaign is insipid, stupid and diabolical.

One Year

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It has been a year. While no one can really comprehend all that has been last during our pandemic year, there is some optimism that the world will at least partially reset. If only it were that simple.

But what kind of world will it be? Will it be a world where social injustice is met with with activism? Will the fast world of McDonald’s be replaced by home cooking? Will the interest in home gardening sustain itself? Will positive change really happen? Will the movies ever be the same again? How will we interact as people? How will work at our jobs? Will we have jobs?Will people finally give up listening to REO Speedwagon?

I cannot answer those questions, but bringing them up helps our society face them and built something better. Sadly, I fear we will all just forget everything we learned and struggled through and go back to what was. That would be disappointing. I want to believe that a better world will emerge, but I have doubts.

As someone who is social by nature I find it odd that I don’t miss gathering in large groups. I miss concerts to an extent and going to the pictures. Man I miss going to the movies. But overall, I am fine just staying in and reading my books, listening to music or watching tv.

This “time off” has made me enjoy taking long walks, sitting on my pack porch and doing more and more cooking. I also am less concerned about having stuff. This has resulting in a massive decluttering which has been therapeutic in that it has made more open space for the apartment.

The cooking has been interesting. I’ve learned t make a lot more Indian, Thai, Korean and Mediterranean dishes that I like. I’ve spent a lot more time in international grocery stores which has bene interesting in that there is often a discovery in every aisle. Like kimchee, which will sit in the fridge forever and it is always filling, or various Indian sauces which will always give things a spicy edge and provide flavor. Oh, and cauliflower rice is the bomb.

On the flip side, I’ve had to learn a lot about cleaning products, hand sanitizers and applications for bleach.

While I never injected myself with bleach, I did do some floor mopping and surface cleaning with it to such an extent that the smell never got on my nerves. Looking back, that crazy scramble for hand sanitizer, latex gloves and Clorox Wipes was a theater of the absurd. Everyone became obsessed with it. It got a little out of hand.

Separation Nation remains in full effect. Over the last year I have seen a few of my friends here and there as they stopped by to visit social distantly and say hello. But, generally, I haven’t seen many of them for over a year. That’s weird. It also is kind of freeing though in that this distance and isolation really has helped a lot of people discover who their real friends are.

Having been vaccinated now I feel obligated to help others get their appointments. I’ve been doing this for a few weeks now and it has been very rewarding. It has underscored my hope that all of this makes people care abut their neighbors and fellow human beings. I suspect it will not since Americans are, by nature, stupid and selfish.

So the best advice. can offer is to pay it forward, any way you can. We need more empathy in our world right now and even more in the future. Empathy and giving up REO Speedwagon will lead the way.

I still plan on doing social distancing and masking up. I don’t really think I am going to change my routine up all that much.

For me, I really have enjoyed the weekly Zoom get togethers I have with friends in other places. it’s been nice to have social interaction and a sense of camaraderie. It also has introduced me to lots of crazy things like Korean TV shows, new recipes and an appreciation for new authors and bands.

I also have made it through the year by doing a weekly online board gaming night and that has been a lot of fun. It keeps the brain working and I get to some friends! It is interesting how board gaming was able to pivot to new formats during all of this. I also am doing word search puzzles which keeps the noggin’ sharp.

Had the pandemic not come I doubt I would have discovered so much new music. Thankfully, The Wants, The Reds, Pinks & Purples, The 1981, Phoebe Bridgers and Swansea Sound have been around to keep me company. I also have really enjoyed rediscovering Telex, Felt, The Jazz Butcher and The Close Lobsters.

I also have listened to more jazz than I used to and watched more streaming symphony concerts than I had previously. I still hate Phil Collins.

There also is a cool app called Radio Garden that lets you hear radio from around the world. I have listened to stations in Madagascar, Liechtenstein and places like that. It is interesting to hear what Western music is played where. For example there’s a lot of contemporary country getting played in Triesen, Liechtenstein.

I also have written more. I have had a lot of time. Two of the outlets I contributed to regularly folded and I had to scramble for fresh freelance work Luckily, I was able to interview John Doe, Tim Burgess (The Charlatans), Kathy Valentine (The Go-Go’s) and Chris Frantz of Talking Heads. Those were all fun! I also did a few reviews of streaming theater events and films.

Not being able to travel sucks. I don’t miss flying, airports or packing. But, I do miss seeing people I normally see when I travel. Even though I have gotten my jabs I still am in no rush to get on a plane. I can wait.

I mentioned before that I missed movies. That may have been off base in that I did still watch them at home. However, because streaming was insanely off the hook this year, I found a lot of good TV and films. I also got media credentials for the Vienna Shorts Film Festival and Slamdance which allowed me to see some really different, cool stuff.

Slamdance was pretty great. they had a really good selection of short films and they had some feature stuff that was really evocative. Trammel was my favorite short film. It’s about a guy whose only real communication with the outside world is through visits with his local pharmacy technician. It is sweet funny and has a lovely melancholy to it.

CODE NAME: Nagasaki is an emotional documentary about family, self-discovery and alienation. Marius and Fredrik are two friends who live in Norway and pretty much hang 24/7. Driven by a passion for movies and filmmaking they decide make a film about Marius’ quest to find and meet his long lost Japanese mother.

Seeking out a mom who left him decades earlier does not come without some intense drama and the film has that in spades as Marius weighs his every move with careful deliberation. The emotional distance between the two is heartbreaking and as the movie plays out these feeling of solitude and separation become further amplified.

It looks fantastic. Mixing black and white and animation, this powerful piece of cinema was named the fest’s best documentary film.

I also enjoyed the gritty minimalism of No Trace (Null Trace), another example of the exciting things filmmakers are doing in Quebec right now. shot in black and white it looks amazing.

Set in a dystopian future, the plot is sparse but centers on a callous smuggler whose hardened by life attitude shows cracks after she guides a young woman and her child across the border to safety. Unaware that their lives are inescapably linked their journey and struggle for survival is emotionally tense and compelling.

Director Simon Lavoie is a master of visual storytelling and I really liked how the narrative evolved with barely a spoken word. This will probably go into wide release.

Grimy Brit films were represented at Slamdance with A Brixton Tale, a film that takes on a lot of issues in a compact amount of time. Class status, exploitation, love and the art world collide in a movie filled with unsavory characters who just want to survive.

Speaking of gritty…. I watched Trainspotting again. The film has just turned 20 and it is still really enjoyable. Well as enjoyable as a film about heroin addiction can be.

Two decades on, the acting still stands out and the soundtrack perfectly frames everything. It doesn’t sound dated at all. In fact, I had forgotten about how good the Blur song in it was.

Upon seeing it, it made me miss Edinburgh. It’s an interesting flick too in that it calls out a lot of striking societal issues which have been careful been woven into the film. Robert Carlyle is a force of energy, Jonny Lee Miller is cool as a cucumber and Ewan MacGregor shines in his breakout film. I am curious to see how Ewen Bremmer plays Alan McGee in that biopic he is doing.

It is pretty cool that Perseverance is on Mars. JPL did some amazing things to get that project going and their efforts did a lot to lift the nation’s spirits.

It was amazing to watch the landing and see all the data come in over the last few weeks. Isn’t it amazing what science can do?

Here’s one last thing! There is furniture news! I have some new DVD shelves and bookshelves. It’s helped with the massive declutter in terms or organization and storage.

Anyway the adjustment into a person who is going back out into the world is Underway. Hopefully when it happens in a few weeks things won’t seem as desolate or sad or weird. I am not holding out hope. But it will be nice to not have as much of the worrying.