p Ever wonder what type of chair Vladimir Nabokov sat on when he carefully penned the introduction to i Bend Sinister /i , a precocious retort exclaiming, in effect, i Freudians fuck off /i ? How about what Simone de Beauvoir stuffed her face with come lunch time during the mammoth writing task that was i The Second Sex /i ? How many jars of whiskey surrounded Charles Bukowski as he spat out the prose that was to make up i Post Office /i ?
/p p These are questions lacking an answer; a patchwork of texts that conceals the author, throwing up a wall from which we can only resort to sheer conjecture as to precisely what Woody Allen had in his coffee the day he thought up the story about the hookers paid for their ability to discuss Milton ( The Whore of Mensa ). These are disembodied reams of words, cut off from the wordsmith who suffered their conception, yet they somehow remain inextricably linked to that mind of origin. br / br / Who were these men and women who were to express with such sublime triumph their talents for merging language and the floating images of consciousness?
Despite the tidbits of inference afforded us, the convoluted mediation process hinders any clear-sighted gaze we rsquo;d wish to possess; the question is: where is the window? br / br / i Zizek! /i is one such window.
This documentary, produced in 2005, takes on the task of following its eponymous subject, Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek, as he treks from one teeming mass of hungry young leftists to another, visiting university campuses all over the globe, forever articulating in suitably spectacular fashion all the tenets of Lacanian psychoanalysis, a complex web of obtuse terminology and esoteric concepts read through as many multifarious and multifaceted cultural objects as possible. /p p Lobbed up on stage, serrated by the roar of the baying crowd, Zizek can orate for hours on the exact dimensions of ideology, interweaving his theoretical delineation with accessible examples ranging from Hitchcock to chocolate laxatives. Never shying away from inserting the odd obscenity, or the old Stalinist joke, or a witty rebuttal to some insolent query, he exudes confidence and erudition on stage, connecting with fresh-faced students high on Foucault by dissecting the culture of the quotidian, shirking ivory tower banalities by singing in a key comprehendible to those perhaps yet unaccustomed with Schelling.
br / br / But we all know this. Zizek rsquo;s competence in relaying his rereading of Hegel, his manic rescue of the German philosopher from the bowels of Idealism rsquo;s dark netherworlds, this comes across in the myriad of lecture videos swimming ashore on YouTube every week. His analysis of the Marx Brothers in terms of Freud rsquo;s id/ego/superego triad and such like, wasn rsquo;t this all presented with subtle ingenuity in i The Pervert rsquo;s Guide to Cinema /i ?
It was indeed. So, where rsquo;s the attraction of this film? br / br / Quite clearly, what interests us here are the sequences that punctuate the engagements of public speaking.
The film truly comes alive for the first time during a visit to Zizek rsquo;s residence, wherein he shows us his preference for storing clothes in the cabinets gracing the walls of his kitchen, commenting enthusiastically about this arrangement, everything found in one small corner. These personal little unveilings are the warm heart of the film; witness Zizek as he explains to filmmaker Astra Taylor the portrait of Stalin that greets all visitors to his office, or his hyperactive exuberance in purchasing DVDs from a store in New York, or his jocular reproach to the congress of vegetarians constituting the film crew as he cries out for a meat-fueled lunch. /p p The particular highlight of the film has Zizek interacting with his infant son, discussing the charade of going to McDonalds and giving us an in-depth analysis of the little guy rsquo;s vast toy collection, with i pater familias /i noting some of his favourite plastic figures and the wonderful feminist gesture signified by the son rsquo;s decision to place two female figures on the summit of a building.
The scene is topped off by a hilarious statement from Zizek, when the infant becomes enraptured by the flickers of the TV, ldquo;Oh look, he rsquo;s narcissistically amused. rdquo; Delivered with perfect timing and so indicative of a mind whose cogs never slow down for a second. br / br / Textual quotes line the fissures opened up by one scene segueing into another.
Rather than this being intrusive, or a dull and crippling tarnishing of the whole, these breakages highlight relevant kernels of Zizek rsquo;s philosophy, from relevant books, and are interpolated in such a way as to avoid ruining the pace of the film. This method of on-screen text and selective graphic embellishment is a contrast to the film rsquo;s precursor, i Derrida /i ndash; another film concerned with the everyday manoeuvres of a philosopher, this time the father of Deconstruction, Jacques Derrida. Packed with plenty of joviality from seeing the author of such headache-inducing tomes as i Writing Difference /i sitting down to eat a cracker, it was nevertheless mired slightly by interludes of spoken excerpts set to a strangely unsettling soundtrack.
Thankfully, i Zizek! /i skips right past this obstacle. br / br / It rsquo;s incredibly interesting observing how such a brilliant mind goes about the dreary practice of everyday living, it allows us a fascinating peek into the world of a man whose words and dynamic on-stage persona were all we had held previously.
Naturally, there rsquo;s a touch of the cult of personality in all this, something Zizek himself speaks out about in the film, casting mighty scornful gazes at the chance of someone perceiving him as anything other than ldquo;a monster. rdquo; Regardless, there appears an innate desire to reach out to the objectified other, as idealised as it may be, we want to clear away those barriers and see the frail organism that lies beyond, an entity more real than the slew of words that masks it. br / br / Just today, in the i Observer /i rsquo;s lsquo;Food Monthly rsquo; supplement, there dwelled a fine piece of captivating journalistic inquiry detailing the contents of Steven Seagal rsquo;s shopping basket.
Not only did we learn of his fondness for scotch whiskey, but he also, like a good pedagogue, taught us that he consumes Tibetan barley every morning, ending on the fundamental truth that ldquo;I always try and eat healthy but I rsquo;m kind of human so I do have my weaknesses. rdquo; How this ldquo;kind of human rdquo; compares to Zizek rsquo;s declaration that he is a monster is best left, for now, to another inquiry. /p div id="authorbio" Aaron Fleming is a sporadic student and wannabe pretentious intellectual trapped debating cultural and sociological conundrums in a cascading bout of mental fellatio.
He currently resides in London. /div br style="clear: both;"/ p A man went looking for America and couldn t find it anywhere, read the advertising tag line for 1969 s i Easy Rider /i . The subjects of i 10 MPH /i , however, had more luck.
Not surprising, considering that they could travel no faster than the film s title. br / br / People have traveled from coast to coast in or on pretty much every type of vehicle imaginable, but until i 10 MPH /i was made, I m pretty sure no one had ever done it on one of these a href="http://www.segway.
com/" Segway scooters /a we were all supposed to be using by now. (Top speed: you guessed it.) Producers Hunter Weeks and Josh Caldwell, who left their well-paid but dull jobs at a software company to become filmmakers, decided to travel from Seattle to Boston on a $4,500.
00 Segway and film the beautiful sights and interesting people they met along the way. /p p According to a href="http://maps.google.
com/" Google Maps /a , that s a 3,079-mile trip. According to Weeks and Caldwell, it was more like i 4,200 /i miles, on a route that took them through Colorado, Kansas, and Missouri. Josh rode the whole way, even managing to pilot the scooter through a hole in a fence in Wyoming (lifting it over the fence would be cheating, and when you can only go 10 miles per hour, circling back and finding another route isn t really an option) while Hunter and a couple of friends followed, filmed, and chronicled the trip on a href="http://www.
10mph.com/" a website /a . br / /p p The real stars of i 10 MPH /i are the friendly and interesting people they met along the way, especially in the sparsely populated Western states.
Things get more hectic after Chicago, as the roads become more crowded, the weather takes a turn for the worse, and some promised sponsorship money fails to materialize. Fortunately, some media attention (including a i New York Times /i story, and even an on-stage appearance with Michael Moore) earns them enough donations and care packages to make it all the way, and the Segway company (which wouldn t sponsor the trip at first) organizes a parade and ceremony for them when they reach the factory in New Hampshire. Except for frequent battery changes, the little scooter makes it all the way across America without a hitch.
/p p i 10 MPH /i moves at a leisurely pace - what else would you expect? - but it is a very likable film featuring likable people. (I m looking forward to the next Weeks-Caldwell documentary, about fantasy football.
) The DVD comes with quite a few special features, including commentary from the filmmakers and deleted scenes. The movie didn t inspire me to quit my job and follow my dream (not many of us can make blogging a full-time job, alas), but I d love to take a cross-country journey of my own someday. I think I ll do it in my Mazda, though.
/p br style="clear: both;"/
He s putting out an environmental documentary for which he co-wrote the script, called i The 11th Hour /i . br / br / Still, even an actor might know something, and he s undeniably got an impressive jaw line. That scruffy bit of beard tells you unmistakably that he s a Serious Thinker, not just another pretty face.
So perhaps we might grant him some credibility - until you read this a href="http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/film/news/e3i1f890f625ffdd1903ee8bde055a360d1" promotional interview /a , where he says, br / blockquote Trying to condense a world of issues into an hour-and-a-half format in this film was the biggest challenge.
But it was about giving them a platform where they didn t have to argue about the science. Because, and I keep stressing this, this is the overwhelming majority of the scientific community that believes in this. Not to have to be challenged about the science, about if their opinions were correct or if their opinions were valid.
It was about them being able to express ideas and being able to give us, the public. Listen to the scientists and give us, the public, solutions for the future. /blockquote a href="http://www.
morethings.com/photo_gallery_index.htm" img style="border: 1px solid gray; margin: 10px; float: right" src="http://www.
morethings.com/pictures/pretty-boy-leonardo-dicaprio.jpg" alt="Leonardo DiCaprio has a right purty mouth" width="250" / /a This quote tells us at least a couple of things.
For one thing, Leonardo DiCaprio is an environmental Stalinist demagogue. The other obvious thing this quote tells us is that Leo is an idiot. See, there s no need to argue about the science ie actually establish proof of what you re saying by answering critics.
Dissident scientists don t count. br / br / Making the point of demagoguery more clear, note this explanation of intent from the same interview: br / blockquote But ultimately the most important thing to us was whether you were emotionally moved at the end of the movie. And on a personal level, I believe that has been accomplished.
Yes, a lot of the science is very hard to wrap your head around. But I was very clear in the movie. I want the public to be very scared by what they see.
I want them to see a very bleak future. I want them to feel disillusioned halfway through and feel hopeless. And then when we get into the entire section in the second half when we talk about cultural transformation and a new way of looking at things and the alternatives or green technology and all these things, you realize there is great hope and there are options on the table.
And hopefully the audience is moved and galvanized to do something about it /blockquote /p p See, we don t need to inconvenience people with all those complicated opposing viewpoints and reasoned analysis. Just tell them what they re supposed to think, and push their buttons so that they are emotionally moved to do your bidding. That s classic demagoguery.
br / br / a href="http://www.morethings.com/god_and_country/ptolemy-manbearpig.
htm" img style="border: 1px solid gray; margin: 10px; float: left" src="http://www.morethings.com/fan/south_park/photo_gallery/al-gore-is-manbearpig.
jpg" alt="Al Gore IS Manbearpig" width="200" / /a All this leads to the broader conclusion that Leonardo DiCaprio is not just an environmental demagogue, but an idiot as well. As a way of promoting his moviefilm, he openly and purposely explains exactly the demagogic process. He as much as says in so many words that he s not going to bore the audience with real scientific inquiry, but rather an appeal to low-level biological mammalian fear circuits.
He says that in public and on purpose - like that s supposed to get people to support his project rather than ridicule him mercilessly. br / br / Science, schmience. Manbearpig is coming to get you!
Better do what the handsome alpha male says if you want to live! /p Drop Al a note, and try to talk some sense into him, will ya? gadfly at morethings.
com /div br style="clear: both;"/ p When was the last time you had a really good scare mdash; for fun, I mean? Admit it. You love to be chased around by freshly unearthed ghouls and sundry creatures of the night, don t you?
And you re willing to pay good money to see your friends frightened out of their wits, right? Horror is such a communal thing after all mdash; best shared by friends and lovers. /p p Haunted house attractions put you in the middle of a horror movie mdash; willingly, of course.
And while some haunted houses are scarier than others, or more ghoulish than others, or more jaw-dropping - oops, just wet my pants - horrifying than others, one name stands out as the most elaborate, most engaging haunted house ever done -- Britannia Manor. /p p img style="border: 1px solid gray; margin: 10px; float: left" src="http://www.zomboscloset.
com/photos/uncategorized/250pxrgarriotthouse.jpg" alt="250pxrgarriotthouse" title="250pxrgarriotthouse" / And it didn t cost a dime to get in! Not one cent.
The purveyors of haunted house attractions, STB Productions, recorded for posterity the goings-on at Britannia Manor during one Halloween. Their DVD i , a href="http://www.generationfear.
com" The World s Most Famous Haunted House: A Tribute to Britannia Manor /a /i , contains a short but highly informative interview with Richard Garriott, mastermind behind Britannia Manor, a photo gallery of assorted medieval items of violent intent lying around his home, and extensive archival footage that includes actors and make-up artists preparing for a typical night s events of thrills and chills. /p p Rounding out the DVD is an actual you-are-there experience as you follow a party of lost souls making their way through the various creepy tableaux of Britannia Manor, which provides lots of logistical information for the students and designers of haunted house attractions. /p p In the interview, game designer a href="http://en.
wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Garriott" Richard Garriott /a talks about what prompted him to go to such great lengths to turn his home and surrounding grounds into an elaborate role-playing adventure during Halloween, between 1988 and 1994. According to the a href="http://en.
wikipedia.org/wiki/Britannia_Manor" Wikipedia entry /a on Britannia Manor, blockquote /p p The events were designed like a roleplaying game. Participants would go through Garriott s mountain property in adventuring parties, gathering clues to solve mysteries and quests, while facing different perils and pitfalls.
The actors would touch, grab, and physically as well as verbally interact with the guests, who could not simply wander through like in most haunted houses. They would have to swing, crawl, climb, and row their way out. /p p It was not uncommon for parties to lose members in the course of the quest.
Garriott spent a great deal of money annually around Halloween to pay for makeup, tools, construction materials, special effects, and costumes for his haunted house. The actors and techs were all volunteers, many donating hundreds of hours for the honor of being a part of the show, and a free t-shirt. /blockquote /p p Free t-shirts will do it every time.
I hope those lost party members were eventually found, too, and didn t lose any arms or legs. /p p While Garriott, dressed as Lord British from the i Ultima /i computer roleplaying game which he created, entertained people waiting on the long lines to get in, hooded monks guided small parties of participants into the interactive environment. /p p The adventure begins with a descent through a sarcophagus as smoke swirls about, and entry into a dimly lit tomb where a dying monk implores participants to find the Avatar.
A ghoul suddenly comes to life mdash; oh, you know what I mean mdash; and speeds up the monk s mortality while the participants race to escape and find the Avatar. Along the way, they meet the bizarre denizens of this Britannia Manor netherworld, who either assist the hapless participants in their quest, or scare the pants off them. /p p Each tableau of horror or terror they encounter contains actors who do a very good job of creeping them out, and the bloody icing on the cake is their encounter with Minos, who mercilessly belittles them, then sends them on their way.
The pyrotechnics at this point are amazing. I wonder if anyone got their eyebrows singed? /p p a href="http://www.
zomboscloset.com/.shared/image.
html?/photos/uncategorized/master.jpg" img style="border: 1px solid gray; margin: 10px; float: right" src="http://www.
zomboscloset.com/zombos_closet_of_horror_b/images/master.jpg" alt="Master" title="Master" width="150" height="189" / /a Participants really do need to be in shape, as they must go through strenuous gyrations to make their way into and out of the various rooms containing demons, ghouls, and black-lighted flying banshees.
/p p Sliding down long and tight tunnels in the darkness, taking a dip in a lagoon, and crawling through pitch black corridors to get away from monsters is a big part of the interactive adventure. Funhouse-styled rotating tunnels, just like the ones I ve often up-chucked on at amusement parks, provided even more shake and bake anxiety for the participants. After about forty minutes, the Avatar is finally found, and all join in the climactic battle as she fights the big demonic guy with really big horns.
/p p Richard Garriott hopes to re-start the world s most elaborate haunted house in 2008. Until then, for horrorheads interested in learning more about Britannia Manor and experiencing its exciting magic, this DVD is a worthwhile resource. /p div id="authorbio" iamlegend is the full time chief editor and blogger for several blogs, but confesses that a href="http://www.
hauntedreport.com" The Haunted Report /a is his favorite. It covers the haunted house/horror market.
Basically, if it tries to scare the crap out of you...
we cover it. /div br style="clear: both;"/ p i In becoming a public pastime and a topic for incessant conversation, sex has not increased its style. Indeed much of what it formerly possessed it has lost.
-- /i Quentin Crisp /p p James Reilly wanted to lose his virginity and become a man, not an outcast . After a childhood of being bullied and teased at the hands of his peers he acknowledges some resentment towards women, having been told by girls feigning interest in him for fun that they could never go out with him because he was so ugly . He isn t ugly at all.
His low self-esteem marred his facial expression, posture, demeanour, and personal style, but he is quite a good-looking man. /p p James fits every stereotype going as far as male virgins and those inexperienced in sex go, however -- painfully shy, bespectacled, lacking in self-esteem, and worried about talking to women. He goes clothes-and-underwear shopping for sexless, conservative outfits with his grandmother and has little social life.
His mother remarked, He doesn t have a very confident John Travolta strut down the street. Shown delivering the local free newspaper, it was clear that James had no strut whatsoever. His best friend observed that women don t think much of him.
/p p img style="border: 1px solid gray; margin: 10px; float: left" src="http://img78.imageshack.us/img78/1991/virginschool1rn7.
jpg" alt="photo of High Heels" width="280" / ldquo;I don rsquo;t think I rsquo;ve ever even been to first base rdquo;, James mused shyly. It turned out that not only had he never been to first base with a woman, but he rsquo;d never touched one in any way or been on a bed with one ( ldquo;Apart from my mum, of course rdquo;). /p p Moreover, he wasn rsquo;t even in the habit of touching i himself /i .
The documentary followed him on his journey to the Aquarion School for Love and Leadership in Amsterdam, for a four-month intensive course aimed at teaching sexually inexperienced men how to grow in confidence and make love. As his beloved Nan helped him pick out the very plainest ill-fitting boxers and y-fronts for his trip to Holland, James confided that, ldquo;She rsquo;s been led to believe it rsquo;s a confidence course, nothing else. She might be a bit shocked.
rdquo; She is now! /p p In Amsterdam, a kind old man showed James how to put on a condom, using a dildo. Carla, a grandmotherly intimacy coach, showed him how to touch breasts and recognize and touch a vagina and clitoris, using her breasts, vagina, and clitoris.
Fifty-eight-year-old Bridgit, a vision in her rainbow kaftan, showed him how to masturbate and make love, using her whole body in a process of masturbating and love-making. /p p There were many moments of humour in this documentary. James peered closely at Carla s vagina as she sat spread eagled on the bed as if he were examining an interesting museum exhibit, and declared it intriguing .
He d never seen so much as a diagram of one since school, as he isn t that much interested in women, really . She, in turn, said she fulfilled a motherly role in doing this -- though, Of course, a mother would not really do this with her son. That would be called incest, maybe.
/p p The strip tease he was encouraged to perform next to Bridgit rsquo;s bed on the occasion of his deflowering was funny, but cringe-making, and reminded me horribly of Alan Partridge rsquo;s pole dancing fantasy in a sweater and leather thong. James was taking no chances with thongs, however, and was well prepared with thick navy boxers over thick white y-fronts. A sly close-up of his thrusting buttocks as he finally did the deed, overlooked by the face of a serenely smiling statue of Buddha, took some of the sting out of the scene for the viewer.
James ended up smiling and walking tall, showing the good looks of which he had been so painfully unaware. I felt happy for him. I laughed aloud, however, at his glorious cheek in declaring that he ldquo;didn rsquo;t fancy her, she rsquo;s just, you know, like a friend sort of thing.
rdquo; Four months previously he couldn rsquo;t get any woman other than his mother and grandmother to pay him any attention whatsoever; the irony was clearly lost on him. The course certainly improved his self-esteem. /p p I ended up with a lot of sympathy for James however, and admiration for his courage in facing his demons so openly.
I especially admired the frank and open attitude of the women who helped him, and their well-judged balance of therapeutic professionalism and loving care. I did have to force myself into a state of negative capability throughout most of the documentary, though, to cope with the obvious Oedipal implications of the scenarios James put himself in, in his quest for manhood. /p p Mine?
In that case, he would have been better off on i Queer Eye For the Straight Guy /i . Those underpants have i got /i to go -- for good, this time. br/ /p div id="authorbio" img src="http://img514.
imageshack.us/img514/2688/highheelsbybenwharton20ln2.png" align="left" alt="photo of High Heels" style="float:left; margin-right:10px;" / High Heels is a writer, poet and blogger.
She is a tutor in an arts college in the UK. She is a specialist in Literature, Art History and Film Studies. Her interests include film, art and photography, literature, philosphy, politics, fashion and style, popular culture, music, surrealism and the avant-garde.
Image of High Heels by kind permission © Ben Wharton 2007. /div br style="clear: both;"/
David Holbrook, as he even says in his own words, kind of found a documentarian's fantasy in the main character who says exactly what's on his mind -- whether it's about his Catholic faith or masturbation, he holds nothing back. /p p Here you have a young, self-ordained minister of sorts, who grew up in a very wealthy family, who looks like a cross between a lead singer of a hardcore band and a UFC champion, preaching the word of Christ to high school students in small towns across the country. He's the traveling preacher, selling salvation and redemption.
.. all with a strange MTV twist.
/p
Pepper s Lonely Hearts Club Band /i and it will always retain a special place in my heart. I got in 1969 in exchange for a Christmas present that hadn t worked or something like that at a post holiday sale and held onto the disc for more then thirty years. Since that time there have been other albums that have taken on various different types of significance for me, and like everyone else, they were evaluated according to my own special criteria.
/p p We all have our own means of judging why we think a piece of music or an album is important. That s why when I first heard about a href="http://www.eaglerockent.
com" Eagle Rock Entertainment s /a reissue of the VH1 i Classic Albums /i series of DVDs I was a mite suspicious of what was going to be deemed a Classic by the people at VH1, and whether I was going to agree with any of their selections. /p p I also wondered what the hell are they going to do for an hour on tape -- sit around and interview people talking about how great they had been? But, after viewing two releases -- i Catch A Fire /i by Bob Marley and The Wailers and i Aja /i by Steely Dan -- I realized that wasn t the case.
In fact, they were pretty fascinating documentaries on how an album is assembled, and the history of the groups involved. /p p Over the next week or so I m going to be reviewing four more DVDs from this series starting with what I still think was the best roots rock album ever recorded -- even though the genre didn t even exist in those days: i The Band /i by the Band. Aside from the confusion about the title of the album and the title of the group it and the album that preceded it ( i Music From Big Pink /i ) those have always been the two albums I automatically associate with The Band.
br/ Contained within those two albums are almost every song that you associate with them: The Weight, Up On Cripple Creek, Rag Momma Rag, and of course The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down. The last three songs were all from i The Band /i , and it s those songs, plus a couple of others from the album that come in for the closest scrutiny. /p p What makes this i Classic Albums /i disc so special is the fact that the film makers have sat down with both Levon Helm (the drummer and lead vocalist) and Robbie Robertson (guitar and primary songwriter) and allowed the two men to separately go through the songs and break them down track by track to show what it is they think made the songs so special.
/p p To me those are the highlights of the disc. Sure, the history behind the making of the album is interesting enough -- it was recorded in Sammy Davis Jr. s pool house in Los Angeles -- but to be honest, I really couldn t care less what Bernie Taupin or Eric Clapton thought of the album, or much of what any of the other talking heads had to say.
The music doesn t need to be justified by celebrity endorsements and unfortunately that s what moments like these feel like. /p p The only person who was of interest outside of those who had been directly involved with the recording process was Don Was because of his producer s ear for analysing what they had done in the studio. His input was an interesting augmentation to the information that Robbie, Levon, and the original producer/engineer John Simon provided.
/p p Both Rick Danko and Garth Hudson also took part, but I found them to be more of a distraction than anything else. Rick because he was so overweight, and I knew he was due to die a year or so after this had been filmed, and Garth because he just sat at his keyboard and played long complicated pieces of music which, as far a I could tell, had nothing to do with the songs under discussion. /p p But all that was more than compensated for by the input and eagerness that both Robbie and Levon brought to the table.
It s unfortunate that they don t seem to have been able to settle what ever their differences had been, because I m sure it would have been great to hear them together. However, there were advantages to them being separate as it gave them each an opportunity to focus on the parts of the music they thought important. /p p One of things I d always loved about the Band s songs was their ability to harmonize.
None of them had what anyone could call a beautiful voice by any stretch of the imagination, but they all had character and passion. Somehow or other when they would come together on a chorus the sounds would mesh beautifully. br/ Levon lets us in on the secret of how that worked for the Band.
When it came to the choruses they would divide the parts up by who could hit what note. Usually that meant that Richard Manuel was the one who ended up singing the high harmony because he was the only one who could hit the notes. It didn t matter that he also sang lead vocals on a lot of the songs.
For the chorus, somebody else would take over the lead vocal line and he would shoot up for the high harmony, and then he would be right back into singing lead again when the verse started back in. On quite a number of their songs there was no pause between the verse and the chorus but they were so seamless in their performance you could barely notice the switch to or the switch back. /p p Even when Levon sat at the mixing board playing back the old masters one vocal track at a time, once he started weaving them together, I was no longer able to tell where the switch took place.
These types of details are what makes these i Classic Album /i discs so fascinating. Both Robbie Robertson and Levon Helm are intelligent and fun, so not only can they tell you all sorts of details about the music; they are enjoying every minute of talking about it and that make you enjoy it all the more. /p p The first time we see Robbie sitting behind the console he looks and acts like a kid whose just been given an amazing present and doesn t quite know what part to play with first.
Here s a guy whose written scores for movies, recorded and produced a number of his own projects, yet this music that he recorded almost thirty years earlier still excites him so much that he doesn t seem to know what he wants to talk about first. That tells me a lot right there about how good this music really is. /p p I have two quibbles with the DVD from a technical standpoint.
One is the sound quality. Maybe they couldn t do anything about this, but I m curious as to why there was no other option for sound aside from straight stereo? Perhaps it was my system, but on occasion there was quite a bit of bass distortion -- as if too much sound was being forced through too little space.
The other thing was the packaging is limited to a single sheet with a list of the songs they talk about from the album and a blurb on the back cover. I would think that albums that are considered Classics would merit a little more attention than that. /p p But those are just minor points.
What this disc wants to do, and succeeds as far as I m concerned, is to convince the viewer that i The Band /i by The Band merits the sobriquet Classic in terms of popular music. If you are a fan of The Band you ll want to see this disc for the pleasure of gaining a deeper appreciation of their talent. If you were unfamiliar with their work until now than i Classic Albums, The Band /i makes a great introduction to one of the great bands and the great albums of the last forty years.
/p div id="authorbio" img src="http://static.flickr.com/49/114463085_224d431d08_s.
jpg" style="float:left;margin:5px;border:1px solid gray"/ Richard Marcus is a long-haired Canadian iconoclast who writes reviews and opines on the world as he sees it at a href="http://blogs.epicindia.com/leapinthedark" Leap In The Dark /a and a href="http://epicindia.
com" Epic India /a .
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