Friday Videos: AD/BC - A Rock Opera

"An outstanding accomplishment in late '70s British religious rock opera, this lavishly produced adaptation of Tim Wynde and Solomon Homerton's 'fringe stage sensation' celebrates the life-affirming story of Christ's nativity as told through the eyes of the Innkeeper (played by Wynde)..."

I was hipped to this in the comments section of the AV Club's Gateways to Geekery: Contemporary British Sitcoms (they suggest starting with Peep Show). I'd never even heard of it before, likely because it only ever aired once, on BBC3 (which is one more BBCs than I have), in 2004, although it was released on DVD in November 2007. Essentially, this is a combination of Garth Marenghi's Darkplace and The Mighty Boosh, starring as it does Matt Berry and Richard Ayoade of the former, and Julian Barrett (Howard Moon) of the latter, with Noel Fielding (Vince Noir) in a smaller role too. And Matt Lucas (Little Britain) as God.

Sometimes the music is better than the comedy, but that's not too much of a bad thing in such a brilliant pastiche of 70s rock musicals. There are the metafictional conceits of Darkplace along with the bizarre theatrics of the Boosh (though not quite as bizarre) as well as the musical skill obvious in both shows. Plus large parts of the performance remind me of Grails videos, that strange irony/reverence for 70s psychedelia, and cowbell, just with a more obvious(ly) comedic target.

Amazon.co.uk DVD

Friday Video: Foals, 'Olympic Airways', post-Skinscore

A nice summery video from Foals, the best popular math-rock band of 2008 and one of my records of the year with Antidotes. The sound seems (intentionally?) muffled at first, but it's a beautifully shot video of one of the most thrilling, trilling quiet-ish songs on the album, and a great display of youth shenanigans. Which brings me to the point that, after their performance of 'Hummer' on the popular TV show Skins which gained them a large and youthful fanbase, they proved to be a tremendously interesting and worthy post-punk band. Antidotes is a crystalline, energetic post-rock album, filled with sweet hooks and a pulsing beat that keeps it going through eleven tracks of desultory experimentation. And no guitar chords.

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Anyway, I'm sooo over Skins... At first, I thought getting rid of all the old characters mightn't be too bad an idea, given that the show isn't Saved By The Bell and youth is a transient phase, but now it seems that the new cast is allowing them to regress the central attitude and vision of the show. Parts of the second series were actually really classy television, and the first season had novelty and daring behind its shock! hedonism! aspects - this season appears to have neither quality.

The trailer looks exciting enough; of course, neither of the two previous elaborately shot sequences was meant to bear more than a figurative resemblance to the events of the series itself. So in this case, it's what the creators of Street Wars would have you believe the average Friday night out in Britain is like. Dubiously aged drinkers in a stereotypical English pub suddenly turn to ransacking the place, beginning with lighting distress flares indoors. The opening sequence of the series - "this day has potential. It's pregnant" - introduces: a cocky skater kid who cheats death and serious traffic accidents; a semi-Chav-like guy who drinks lager in the morning; and a semi-autistic nerd who counts calories. Eventually, Harry Enfield gets nutted in the face. Oh dear.

Nobody expects Skins to be realistic, but we do expect the comedy to have a point. So far, this series seems as aimless as the tabloid idea of drunken teens it was supposed to lampoon. Nevertheless, I'll probably still watch it - the first episode at least - to see if the jokes or the characters get any better.

Series 3 trailer (featuring TV on the Radio, 'Halfway Home')

Episode 1, part 1 (featuring Fucked Up, 'Son the Father')

Friday Sound and Videos - Friday Night Lights and Band of Brothers Themes

Friday Night Lights (movie sequence)

Friday Night Lights (TV show, Season One title sequence)

Band of Brothers (TV show, title sequence)

Explosions in the Sky, 'Your Hand in Mine' (The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place, 2003)

Michael Kamen, 'Band of Brothers Theme' (Band of Brothers OST, 2001)

There's nothing like a good TV show, and that's including a good book (by H.G. Bessinger or Stephen E. Ambrose, respectively). Friday Night Lights, the Texan football drama, I've been watching for about a season and a half in total (now watching the latter half of the second season) and although I've neither read the original book nor seen the original movie, they obviously at least laid down a good foundation. Band of Brothers, the account of American 101st Airborne in Europe during the Second World War, I've seen in its entirety several times (even without buying the boxset), and having initially read the book as well; now I'm watching it again - courtesy of the BBC, who apparently felt the need following the 90th anniversary of the First World War armistice to put on a good - the best, really - war series.

What the two shows have in common is probably less than the sum of their obvious differences, but still significant: 1) they are both quintessentially American in focus (even if Band of Brothers had a lot of British actors, such as, of course, Damien Lewis, but also as I just noticed this time around, James McAvoy and Simon Pegg - briefly) and 2) they both have great soundtracks/scores. It is the latter feature which I will discuss here, but there's plenty I could say about the dramatic content of the shows as well. Even more than that, their visual style is great too - the unconventional, fragmented camerawork of Friday Night Lights, or the muted pallete of colours in the Band of Brothers cinematography (although the CGI looks a little dated now).

However, on to the musical themes: fellow Texans, Explosions in the Sky, wrote a lot of the music for the film version of Friday Night Lights, and while the TV show is scored by the well-known composer for television shows W.G. Snuffy Walden (he won an Emmy for his work on The West Wing), a considerable amount of the post-rock sound, to my ear, has been carried over. The title sequence for the TV version of Friday Night Lights has clear echoes of EitS's 'Your Hand in Mine' from the film, but throughout the show there are sections of sweeping, epic, and minor-keyed grandeur (supposedly Explosions in the Sky have been used for some situational music). Given that the show is a strange mix between a serious drama and a soap opera, the inclusion of a style so unconventional in terms of mainstream culture, yet tremendously familiar and expressive to my experience, is curiously effective (and affecting).

Band of Brothers has a similarly epic, but instead quasi-classical, score (composed by Michael Kamen, who died in 2003 and who also collaborated with Pink Floyd on The Wall). It too has contradictions: between stirring patriotism and harsh, even pessimistic realism, between the celebration of solidarity and mourning for individual tragedy, and between the confidence of democracy and the nihilism of war. A lot of these tensions are expressed in the theme, which navigates a sound neither jingoistic nor cynical, but instead somehow powerfully human.

The somewhat predictable strings are present, but do not totally predominate, and are matched by the choral, almost transcendent, element. The underlying melody, varied but insistently memorable, has a certain hymnal quality to it for me (memories of a secular Protestant culture experienced in childhood, in which church was a social and artistic as well as a religious event - and I guess the intent is equally to produce a 1940s, solidarist 'one nation under god' American feel). The soundtrack (pw - sharedmusic.net) has a set of two 'suites', expanded versions of the theme long beyond the two or three minutes of the title sequence - a fascinating exploration of the condensed television piece.

The Best TV Show Ever

"Jimmy McNulty and Bunk Moreland take one more ride on the Jameson/Glenlivet Express" by Steve Lieber, Periscope Studios, series of 5.

Just watched the final episode of the Wire last Monday night. Wow.

If by some bizarre chance you're actually watching it by some even slower method than I was, don't worry, I won't give any of the plot away. Just wow. And disappointment, I guess, that's it's over.

Luckily, our other TV channel specialising in American drama, Channel 6, will keep the jones at bay by continuing this Thursday with the second series (actually one of the best) immediately after finishing its run of the first season, concurrent with TG4's showing of the final one.

And all this with the basic, non-digital cable package. In fact, a real wire-related accident threw me temporarily back to terrestrial, four-channel land but I was still able to continue watching the final season on TG4 because it’s terrestrial too.

I wasn't able to keep up with the internet, of course, or rather I wasn't really bothered (still haven't seen Generation Kill yet. Obviously, I know that I should. But I don't torrent, either). However, this means there's a wealth of commentary to discover, post hoc, on the Wire. Meanwhile, there's still Mad Men and Friday Night Lights showing on the TV.

So far, discovering the commentary has meant working back through the most excellent, in both style and content, blog Heaven and Here. Before S5's arrival on TG4, I did succumb to reading one of the very last posts, an interesting (and, in the light of actually seeing the episode, intriguing) discussion on the role of Jewish ethnicity in the character of Maurice Levy. Among the other comments, however, there was a description of the finale - don't worry, in the abstract - as:

"Like one of those scenes in a Tarantino where everyone has their guns on each other. Only instead of everyone dying, in this one, everyone cuts a different deal"

So This Is How It Ends (#59) [comment]

Importantly, I think the end of the Wire - and not just in the finale, but also in the several episodes leading up to it - successfully resolved the central conceit of the season, which had threatened to overwhelm the show with its outlandishness. That said, it equally importantly left some consequent moral dilemmas unresolved, as did Hamsterdam before it in S3, itself recognised in the brief encounter between Colvin and Carcetti at the end of this season.

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When it comes to deciding the best TV show of the last century, that is to the say the smaller period of it which saw the creation, transformation and global establishment of the medium, it probably would have to be the Simpsons. For its inherent quality just as much as for its sheer cultural impact. Or for argument's sake, at least.

Trumping that, and setting the bar suitably high for the rest of this century, is the Wire. Hence I think the amalgamation above is very appropriate. Realistically, however, the Wire had more of the level of humour of Family Guy and the complexity and irony of South Park. The Wire was a show very much of a post-Simpsons world, short-to-nonexistent though the gap in time between them may have been.

(I just found out there's an upcoming Simpsons episode where Homer and Grandpa visit Ireland and buy a pub. Elsewhere I hear that Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova (he of the Frames, the both from the film Once) will appear in the episode. The fact that it references the smoking ban I suppose could be interesting, but man, they're as gimmicky as hell now. Maybe post-Simpsons world is just wishful thinking?)

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One of my favourite scenes from the Wire was from the third season, where the cop McNulty arrives a high-class DC political fundraiser and, naturally, heads straight for the bar:

McNulty: Jameson's, please.

Bartender: Bushmills alright?

McNulty: Bushmills?! That's Protestant whisky...

Bartender(glibly): The price is right, ain't it?

In the context of the Wire, this is either a) a throwaway gag, a trivial aside, b) a wry comment on ethnic loyalties and the economic imperative of 'the game' or c) both.

I'd like to think that I take a non-sectarian, non-denominational approach to my whiskeys, but Bushmills actually does have the better taste, in my opinion. 'Black Bush', in particular. Not having ventured very far into the world of single malts, the best taste of all the ordinary types. And in addition, Bushmills > Jameson's > Jack Daniels. As much as I like the Southern (US) grá for rye whiskey, particularly in the archetypal beardcore attitudes of Hot Water Music, I don't think much of the flavour compared with good ol' Irish barley malt.

Jameson's, by the way, is from Cork, the republican heartland of Ireland, while Bushmills is from a town of the same name (and twinned with Louisville, KY) in Antrim in what is now Northern Ireland. I found this (American) St. Patrick's Day article on the rivalry between the two whiskeys, which references the Wire scene. According to it, Jameson's outsells Bushmills by 3 to 1 in the States. Jameson's was established in 1780, and (now) produced "in the Catholic-rich cities of Cork and Dublin". Bushmill's, is "by contrast... distilled in Protestant-heavy Northern Ireland, has a Protestant following. Never mind that until a few years ago, both brands were owned by the same conglomerate, Pernod Ricard of France". Actually, Protestant-heavy is partly an understatement: Bushmills itself - that is, the town - is 97% Protestant, while on the other hand to describe Northern Ireland as "Protestant-heavy" is a bit reductionist with regards to the majority-minority conflict there (of course, it is just an article about whiskey.)

Even better, however - and wonderfully ironic - the same Google search turns up an A-Z of what to do in Coleraine borough with, under Art Galleries, in Bushmills, a gallery run by "James McNulty"! Sweet... guess that should mean a road trip coming up to the town of Bushmills, via the village of Emo, Co. Laois...

The Wire: 'The Fall' (closing theme)

"Read between the lines"

- tagline for Season 5

Don't worry, no spoilers. I've only just seen the first two episodes, anyway. Listen to the track at the end of the post...

Hoover's been on my mind a bit lately, and it occurred to me that I left the band out of the previous post justifying The Wire's inclusion on this blog. Naturally, there's no direct or actual link (that I know of, anyway) but bear with me while I draw the connection. Starting with the image above, which is the long-running clip from The Wire's title sequence of police lights flashing in trickles of blood, with the colours changed to make it look somewhat reminiscent of the cover for Hoover's Lurid Traversal of Route 7.

To my mind, The Wire is the televisual equivalent of the dark, stupendous quality we have come to associate with the Hoover works. The Wire, too, has cult appeal which - however - has escaped the genre (crime) and achieved major media establishment acclaim. Neither of which, perhaps, has made it any more attractive to the average person, but at least it's getting recognition - and not only recognition, but interrogation - albeit of the critically positive kind.

It's probably grandiose to compare the Guardian, the Irish Times, Slate's belated love-fest over the final series of the TV show to my own scratchings on the topic of Hoover-related bands, but what the hell, I'll do it anyway. Over on Zen and the Art of Face Punching, I received a very nice compliment from another reader in the comments on the various attempts at description, eulogy and analysis that have made up the last 10 posts in that series. In jest I replied that I'd love to do a whole thesis on Hoover, from the perspective of post-hardcore as a movement in post-modern, post-materialist society (history and political science being my 'field' of study, so to speak). Nonsense, of course, but it ties in with the deep sense of meaning and art which I get from Hoover et al, and, The Wire.

At the end of every episode of The Wire, the screen goes black - it always feels far too soon - and the closing theme comes on. It's entitled 'The Fall' - post-lapsarian to our post-hardcore - and was composed by Blake Leyh, the show's music supervisor. Elsewhere, The Wire is packed full of interesting music, as befits its status as the most complex and realist show on television. There's the changing version's of Tom Wait's 'Way Down In The Hole', as mentioned before, that open the show; in cars and in houses, there is presumably carefully chosen music that reflects the characters - soul, r'n'b, hip-hop, country. It even works its way into the dialogue and action: like in the previous season, where assassins Chris and Snoop identify New York competitors in the drug dealing business by testing them on their knowledge of Baltimore club music; or where Bunny Colvin takes the corner kids out for a meal and has the Ella Fitzgerald in his car switched off in favour of rap music. Of course, that's just two examples.

But when it comes to making an artistic statement, it's that tune in the 'cold closing' of the show, in those half-unexpected moments of silence and emptiness, which hits the hardest. Nothing, and then the faint rattle of percussion, gradually growing louder and then joined, softly, with strings which are simultaneously stirring and mournful. It's flexible, rhythmic, and above all a little dubby: it always reminds me a little of 'Electrolux' or 'Regulator Watts', though of course to listen to those songs straight away destroys the illusion. In actual fact, in terms of space and cymbal-tapping awesomeness, it's quite like 'Cuts Like Drugs'. And the real, jazzy, soul- but also angst-filled version wouldn't be too out of place on Movin' Out by the Boom - a connection I made previously with 'Way Down In The Hole', which is however the stronger, brasher track of the episode opener/closer pair - while 'The Fall' is more meditative, slithering, ominous and thus, a little bit more Hoover-like:

The Wire: Season 5 - tonight!

"Omar Little is the gay stick-up man who robs drug dealers for a living on The Wire..." (The Guardian Guide, July 19-25)

Monday 28th July, TG4 10.30 p.m.

It's finally here on terrestrial TV, the fifth and final series of the superb US crime drama. TG4 is the Irish language national broadcast channel, who showed the previous four series at various times in the graveyard schedule. There's nothing Irish about the Wire (except for Aiden Gillen - Carcetti - and a few other things to be mentioned below) and it's not subtitled into Irish (though that might help... sometimes). In fact, TG4 do a good line in quality US television - Cold Case, Without A Trace, a weekly Western, and a while ago now, the equally cult (and fantastic) show Carnivale.

Obviously this season of The Wire has been on HBO already in the States, and it started in the UK on cable channel FX last week, hence the Guardian TV guide. So I've had to wait a little while, which meant I wasn't able to follow the coverage in the AV Club or elsewhere. Not to fear, because the Irish Times music writer and Phantom FM DJ, Jim Carroll, is devoting a thread on his blog every week to The Wire. Best part is the Tyler Durden-esque rules he's laying down:

"The first rule of On The Record on The Wire? "Casual viewers? Fuck the casual viewers".

The second rule of On The Record on The Wire? If you’re not a fan, don’t read it.

The third rule of On The Record on The Wire? Sheeeeeee-it, you have to ask? Clay Davis for Taoiseach, of course."

So I'll be following that, as well as the AV Club TV Club, the excellent, literate Wire blog Heaven and Here, and josephlovesit on Geek Down. The Wire is nothing short of the cultural apotheosis of modern television.

But other than its incipient awesomeness, what reasons do I have for mentioning The Wire on this particular music blog?

1. Tom Waits, 'Way Down In The Hole'. This is the theme for The Wire, performed by different artists every season (including Waits himself on the second season). It's covered by Steve Earle for this season.

2. Baltimore, MD. Whence not only The Wire comes, but also (it's a big city, obviously) a wide variety of alternative music including Dan Deacon's Wham City collective, Matmos and, of course, the superb post-hardcore group Lungfish. Not just Lungfish but the various associated bands such as Asa Osborne and Daniel Higgs's Pupils, Nathan Bell's Human Bell, and the punk preincarnation of Lungfish, Reptile House.

3. Baltimore, Co. Cork. Yeah, the original Baltimore is a small town in west County Cork, on the south coast of Ireland. It's pronounced slightly differently - 'Bal-timore' rather than 'Ball-timore', and I don't think anyone's ever called it 'B-more'. I can't find anything about crime statistics, but it was sacked by Algerian pirates in 1631.

4. Did I mention it's awesome?

New Vinyl Photography and Friday Videos: Crystal Castles, Fight Like Apes, Foals & Radiohead; Skins & SXSW

(Click to enlarge - and to test your knowledge of Dischord/No Idea/etc release numbers!)

First of all, hope you like the new header (above, top). I'd been thinking of changing it for some time, especially since the mp3 player in the original (and the headphone cable, but not the headphones) had given up on me. You might recognise the current picture from the Double Slowcore Post; it's a record stylus in action, shot from a slightly odd angle. It fits the slightly different direction this blog has been going in lately.

The picture immediately above - the sum total of my LPs as of 04/04 - is the genesis for a third header. I might come up with one or two more, and maybe rotate them on a weekly basis...

However, no vinyl is involved in this post; it's all hip, up-and-coming indie-ish bands, shown mostly through the medium of low- and medium-quality video:

Crystal Castles on Skins:

I've heard a good deal of buzz about this band, particularly surrounding their outing at this year's SXSW. Apparently the singer was flailing around the stage only days after she had a few ribs bruised (or cracked, I can't remember) in a car accident. I haven't heard much, but I like their sound and I'm encouraged to seek out more; kind of like a collision between the Yeah Yeah Yeah's Karen O and the loopy beats of Dan Deacon (oh, but I've used that comparison before - see below) with a good dollop of Suicide thrown in. Here's their appearance in a scene from Skin, "the new-rave OC" according to UnaRocks". Pretty rockin':

Fight Like Apes at SXSW:

Yep, back to being parochial again. This excellent Dublin band first garnered my - quite shallow - Dan Deacon/Yeah Yeah Yeahs comparison (prologue to Fuck This Band: Mclusky Singles) and fit more generically somewhere between "obnoxious pop" and punk. I haven't heard much about their trip to SXSW, but a few Irish journalists who went said they put on a very good show - for documentary evidence, here's a couple of videos from YouTube (also found via UnaRocks). Fairly decent sound quality, too. I'll be seeing them for just the third time when they hit the UCD Student Bar this coming week, and then hopefully for a fourth when they play the Village with Future of the Left next Sunday:

Foals - 'Hummer', Skins Secret Party Episode:

A video I've been meaning to post for a while, in particular following this post on 'Cassius'. The scene comes from a special mini-episode of Skins which was broadcast shortly before the start of the second season. Basically, the group find a small abandoned mansion in a forest and put on an impromptu rave with, er, Foals providing the music. Mucho hedonism.

You can watch the full 10-minute episode on YouTube here.

Holy Fuck - Radiohead 'Nude' Remix:

Finally, the song used for the recent Skins trailer, Radiohead's 'Nude', has been offered for remix for the band (BBC story). I came across - via Thrill Pier - a Holy Fuck remix today, which sounds pretty good - you can download it from Fileden here. This is the original trailer which I posted previously:

Friday Video - Skins Series 2 Trailer

josephlovesit over at Geek Down recently did a post about one of his favourite TV shows, It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia. In truth, it's the latest in a long series of television-related posts, stretching back a while.

Personally I really like the idea of treating TV as a culture equivalent to music. As it's something I have a great deal of interest in, I'd add in literature. The best forms of each culture are all items of smart entertainment, whether it be a good album, a good book or a quality TV show. At the same time, the band, the author or the series all provide a focus for the shared enjoyment of the many of the one thing, the kind of ideal that turns something from entertainment into culture. Basically, it's culture if it's worth talking about, and telling other people about. (Can you tell I'm not a media studies student yet?)

I mostly use YouTube for looking at music videos, rather than fat kids making themselves look stupid (but if you want to see that, I recommend you go here). As such, the Friday Video is more than likely going to be the latest single from some hip, new-ish band, but equally it should encompass a broad range of audio-visual culture.

Also, this is the emo-est thing I've seen in a while.

Skins, by the way, is a British teen comedy-drama on E4/C4 (the channel that likes to shock!). The first series was introduced by a similar trailer which you can see here. Skins is really rather good, even if it is just the middle-class adaptation of the much better series Shameless, now on its fourth series, created by the same producers (but a different writer) set in a Manchester council estate (whereas all the characters in Skins are college-age suburban kids). Not surprisingly, Skins seems to be quite popular amongst all the college-age, suburban kids I know (including myself). But Shameless really is much funnier.

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http://SKINSIS.com

Skins Series II The Uncut Trailer!

Song: Nude by Radiohead