Gillian Welch: Dark Turn Of Mind

By Paul Casey

Out of hospital a few days. Nighttime seizures cause strange dreams. Out of place. A rare, complete family notion: Let’s rent a movie. A dividing line between a childish reality and a childish regression.

O Brother, Where Art Thou?, 2000

The Coen Brothers did it. O Brother, Where Art Thou? Sympathy for the American story. Great Plains or Skyscrapers; didn’t matter. If you had a touch for music in the 20th Century, pretensions of nonplussed rural plods struck as backwards affect. America was serious business. Real things happened there.

The soundtrack, produced by T-Bone Burnett—a sort who has been responsible for a whole lotta good “produced by” outings, and not too many originals—collected the Alan Lomax perspective with covers by those living. Gillian Welch was the one who took me at two moments. First, flight over fields in prison wear, with Alison Krauss. The Kossoy Sisters were used in the picture, but the soundtrack version stuck as definition.

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Thoughts On: The Band, MUSIC FROM BIG PINK

By Paul Casey

Part one in a continuing series on THE BAND’s discography.

To read the whole series, go here.

THE BAND is Rick Danko, Levon Helm, Garth Hudson, Richard Manuel and Robbie Robertson. In common chatter, they are known first for being Bob Dylan’s backing band during the most combative and divisive tour of his career, and second, for convincing Martin Scorsese to film their last concert as The Last Waltz. Those who are fixated on “classic rock” may know them for the issues that existed between the members of the group, and how Robbie was a preening ego-fuck who took glory for himself alone in the last gasps of their existence.

Like The Eagles, and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, THE BAND was home to acrimony over songwriting credits, royalties and differing philosophies. It was also home to five multi-instrumentalists, four of whom sang and wrote material. Unlike those supergroups, THE BAND did not come after the fact. They were a supergroup because of their combined talent, not their individual fame. This does not make them superior to those bands, but it is significant to the changing dynamics which resulted in The Last Waltz and their untimely end. To understand why THE BAND are so respected and influential is just to hear their music.

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Mixed Up Confusion

By Paul Casey

Since I was seven years old, I have absorbed music through compilations. Obsessive ordering and fear of the new drove it. Mixtapes, playlists, and mash-ups took new sounds to my brain. A new album was orgy time, and the chance of stumbling into some serious bad orifice play was too great. Eye up the single, cruise the opening seconds, and make camp. Listen for the transitions. Synths that keep going. Or cheat and crossfade that sucker. Yes, I made mixtapes for passive-sexual purposes. Passive-aggression? Naturally.

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Prometheus: More Than A Spectacle

By Paul Casey

You will see Prometheus. Of course you will. If you have even a modicum of space knowledge of Ridley Scott, you will. Alien, Blade Runner, Prometheus. Even if this is a space version of Robin Hood, you have to see it. Ridley Scott is as important to science fiction cinema as Stanley Kubrick. We all know this. In spite of the cynicism and waiting Internet doom machine, you have no choice but to see this movie. And when you do, you need to see it in 3D.

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More Modern Noir: Max Payne 3

By Paul Casey

Noir has been having a good time in video games, over the last few years. Quantic Dream’s high profile Heavy Rain, and last year’s L.A. Noire (which we reviewed here) both used noir as their foundation. Max Payne 3 arrives as the third in a trio of story-driven, highly stylized games indebted to the classics—Raymond Chandler, John Huston, anything starring Humphrey Bogart—as well as modern creators who have ensured that noir and hardboiled fiction stay vital—James Ellroy, Frank Miller, Michael Mann.

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The Cult Of Hunter S. Thompson

By Paul Casey

“We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.”

Coupled with Bruce Robinson’s Withnail & I, there is no more cherished catharsis for the teenage crowd than the work of Hunter Stockton Thompson. Or the drunk crowd. Or the drugged crowd. Or the drunk and drugged teenage crowd. Hunter Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and the wonderful Terry Gilliam adaptation starring Johnny Depp and Benicio Del Toro, are the blueprint for so much debauchery and casual destruction. Apart from the compelling joys and miseries of sucking from the Gonzo cock of hyperbolic substance use, Thompson is one of the most emulated crusaders in the truth game.

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Prince’s Dirty Mind

By Paul Casey

Those who are only familiar with Prince as a traveling hits tour; one who thinks that Biblical coincidence—hello! 3121 perfume—is a guarantee of good business; and who makes deranged cultish put-downs of homosexuality and his old friends may not be aware that he was once something else. Some omni-sexual thing that was an expert in transgressive pop music and performance. Some deviant, perverted thing that ejaculated guitar semen onto his audience. Some ballsy twentysomething who wore black underwear and a trench coat to a Stones concert. Some kind of genius.

Photo © Blonde Peterson

From 1978’s “Soft and Wet,” the only sign of Prince’s genius on his debut For You, sex was the thing. Indeed, even now a decade following the misunderstood Jehovah’s Witness tribute The Rainbow Children, sex is still the thing. While most casual fans of Prince are aware of the mention of used Trojan condoms in “Little Red Corvette”—a song and line which is still performed today—or what “Cream” refers to (also still performed), there is a depth of perversion in his music which passes many by.

Prince’s sexual creativity touches areas which make even his longtime fans uncomfortable, including rape, incest, and turning lesbians straight. It has also turned out some of his greatest songs. This is an introduction to and celebration of that work.

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Suffering, Defeat, and Justice: Why You Should Care About Pro Wrestling

By Paul Casey

Professional wrestling reached the high water mark of its popular and critical acceptance in the late 1990s. Since then, the Internet has bypassed the crude elitism of the dirt sheets and allowed fans the world over to step inside the shoes of a failed sports journalist with a disregard for both style and skill. When Vince McMahon admitted the pre-arranged nature of professional wrestling, he hit upon a unique way to market his World Wrestling Federation. “Sports Entertainment” is an athletic display, a “male” soap opera, a comedy showcase, and supposedly has more in common with Saturday Night Live than it does with Greg “the Hammer” Valentine vs. Roddy Piper in a Dog Collar Match.

Lou Albano, Cyndi Lauper

This was probably true in the 1980s, when Cyndi Lauper was palling around with Lou Albano and Mr. T was teaming with Hulk Hogan. It was probably true in the late ‘90s when The Rock and Steve Austin were at the top of their game. We’re a living cartoon. We’re real life super heroes. We’re a magic show. The successful marketing term of “Sports Entertainment” was an obvious, calculated attempt to redefine a business which had fallen between the cracks of popular culture. “Do they really expect us to believe this is real?” Although people can appreciate the commitment of magicians such as Penn & Teller and David Blaine in maintaining the illusion, the confusion over what wrestling actually is led to a long period where the public liked to believe that they were simply too sharp to be fooled.

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Arkham City: World Of Echo

By Paul Casey

Arkham City, released October 21, is an important Batman story. While perhaps not as unexpected as its predecessor, Arkham Asylum, Rocksteady have turned in a Batman game that builds on that one’s many successes. As someone who has been obsessed with Batman for a couple of decades, with changing degrees of intensity, Arkham City is literally a dream come true.

To have an interactive slab of Gotham City with such extremely detailed and well observed parts of Batman’s long history concealed for your own brand of detective work . . . well, it makes me feel both old and lucky to have been around this long. That the game is actually a wonderful, expertly paced, physical experience is something else entirely. As with Arkham Asylum, it still seems quite unusual to have a great comic book like Batman finally tap into why video games are such an exciting medium.

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The Smile Sessions

By Paul Casey

As Paul Williams said in 1997—prematurely as it turns out—upon the release of 30 minutes of the SMiLE music on the Good Vibrations box set, SMiLE is Done. The release of The Smile Sessions by EMI and Capitol Records on November 1, 2011, is the end of a long strange journey. You can read my thoughts on the phenomenon of SMiLE in my other article, but this one is purely about the music.

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