I'd Buy Anything By...Depeche Mode

Okay, this is an easy one. Everybody knows who Depeche Mode is.

Although they first entered my consciousness with "People Are People," it wasn't until the "Music for the Masses" album that I became a loyal fan. Something about that album's inscrutable, cold, deep, fat, orchestral melancholy. Crystal-clear vocals. Alan Wilder's brilliant keyboards. All sad and eye-clenchy angstiness.

That album will always remind me of a certain "Yearbook" party -- one of the few parties of my youth -- when I discovered that the cool and somewhat askew kids liked the same music I liked for a change. I realized there were other people in the world like me! And though the party ended with us watching "Alf," it was still a significant moment in my life, and "Music for the Masses" sums up that period of a teen's social-discovery.

"Violator," the next album, upped the ante. Superb all the way through (with the exception of "Blue Dress," maybe) and their darkest release yet, "Violator" was the soundtrack for the next stage in my life: dating, exploring, gaining confidence, and realizing that the world was a big scary place indeed. It was also the first time I fell in love with a producer: Flood (though Tim Friese-Greene had been on the periphery of my brain and my heart for some time).

My favourite Depeche Mode song off that album (and a wonderful video as usual): "Halo."

[Video excised when I realized that most of Depeche Mode's videos on YouTube are either crappy live clips or awful fan videos.]

My enthusiasm diminished afterward. "Songs of Faith and Devotion" had wonderful moments but sounded a bit messy, and when Alan Wilder left I began to wonder about "the point." The following albums have been lacklustre, but like a loyal dog I keep buying their music and sniffing their collective butts.

Come back, Alan. They need you!

That's not to say they haven't put out some great songs in the post-Wilder years. Case in point: "It's No Good" (and yet another typically brilliant Depeche Mode video):



Albums to buy? As above, "Music for the Masses" and "Violator." Albums to avoid? Their debut, "Speak and Spell," which seems to be mediocre no matter how you slice it. For fans only? The three CD "Remix" set, which has all those remixes that you loved on vinyl but couldn't find on CD...or most of them, anyway. Now that all the albums have been re-released in mega-format there's probably little a late-comer can't find at HMV.

How I Got My Soul Back From Bollywood

I used to watch a lot of Bollywood movies and then write elaborate reviews about them (which were well-received at the time and which I still get lots of praise for). I genuinely loved the films, for reasons which I described (sort of flippantly) in an L.A. Weekly article. My most likely route to long-shot recognition and fame was probably through Bollywood fandom, if anything.

Why did I stop enjoying the movies? Here's a list!

1. The novelty wore off. What at first seemed to be revolutionary and unconventional turned out to be only "different from Hollywood." I had to eventually admit that I loved most of the plot twists only because I hadn't seen the films they were duplicated from, and not because the writers were geniuses.
2. The medium was changing. New Bollywood films were looking more and more "MTV," and were moving away from those novel elements that I loved so much to begin with. This sullied my idea of Bollywood as a whole.
   
3. It sank in that I could never really be "part" of the Bollywood machine, except as a curious outsider who would always remain awkward and comparatively clueless.
4. The appreciative emails and "write reviews for our website" offers were not, ultimately, worth any money.
5. The very small romanticized ideas I had about India were gradually eroded by Jai Maharaj and his ilk.
6. I gained prestige for being critical, so I also gained criticism of my own critiques.
   
7. Us cozy members of "Bollybob" became too busy to regularly meet, and our semi-annual get-togethers were no longer cozy.
8. I increasingly felt like I was focusing only on the "kitsch" value of the films, mainly because a kitschy review is more fun than a serious one.
9. Bollywood was becoming "hip," thus removing the joy of appreciating a gem that your peers are unaware of. And all because of "Ghost World."
10. I could no longer enjoy the movies since I had to watch them with a notebook in hand, jotting down plot points and ideas for the inevitable review. I felt I NEEDED to review the movies.
    
11. Writing the reviews (and taking the screen shots) took an awful long time, and that is the most significant point of all: when a non-paying hobby becomes a gruelling chore, JUST STOP IT.

I still love ELEMENTS of Bollywood, and someday I'll be able to go back and love the movies again (see below for ruminations about "going off" the things you cherish). But until then, the thought of yet another predictable 3 1/2 hour comedy/melodrama featuring an abused mother, a boys vs. girls dance, an over-complicated plot shot over several years, a snake, and a scene in a tacky nightclub makes me feel tired.

Two Things I've Avoided for Years, But That I Now Realize Are Really Quite Good

Sometimes you love something but you "go off it" for some reason. I used to enjoy eating cheddar cheese, pistachio nuts, and Kentucky Fried Chicken, but I couldn't even THINK about any of them for years because I got sick once while eating them (at different times, not all together).

It took me a long time to appreciate cheddar cheese and pistachio nuts again. Sometimes you need to distance yourself from a thing in order to learn how much you love it, though Kentucky Fried Chicken still grosses me out (for different reasons than it did originally).

Monty Python's The Meaning of Life

My family was very much a British humour household, maybe because PBS was the only reliable channel we got. At some point Monty Python became a regular staple for us and I loved the TV show and the movies for many years.

Then, in high school, people started to QUOTE it around me. This got worse in university when the people who quoted it were thoroughly annoying (and should have known better). I had become exposed to the Monty Python Cult, and I ran away for fear of being associated with them. I stopped watching the films. I "went off" Python, and every time I saw a poster or a video cassette cover featuring Python artwork I felt vaguely hostile and ill.

Last week I found myself buying "The Meaning of Life" on DVD, and I'm now distant enough from my childhood and my bad "cult experiences" to see it for what it is: absolute genius. Maybe the film has actually gotten better with age, its "sketch" format no longer so jarring and its shocking bits more "fun" than "rude."

I'm most struck at what good ACTORS they all were. Well, Gilliam and Jones were never very good, and Idle was I think only middling, but Cleese, Chapman, and Palin were EXCEPTIONAL. They were no longer amateur performers relying on silliness and enthusiasm to sell their characters; they'd become 100% confident and skilled. And as Gilliam wonders on the movie's bland commentary, why did they all give up acting together just when they'd hit their peak?

And the musical numbers...wow. As a kid I giggled about sperm and boobs...now I think, holy cow, Terry Jones (and the choreographer and the set designers) deserve an award.

Skinny Puppy

My adolescent devotion to Skinny Puppy was based on angst, isolation, and novelty. When they started to repeat themselves (Ogre hits himself, falls down, gets dirty, falls down again) or produce total crap (Ogre "sings"), my interest began to fade. And when I decided in 1994 that I'd rather be HAPPY than hateful, I relocated my Skinny Puppy CDs to the shelf below the ABBA, and that was the end of that.

This month, high school chum Lynda reminded me of Skinny Puppy (she'd introduced them to me way back when, and we'd both gone to their Toronto "Too Dark Park" show). I said I didn't like them anymore. But in the back of my mind I wondered...hmmm.

So I dusted off the CDs and brought them to work, and (like with "The Meaning of Life") I was able to view their work with a new distance and maturity. NOBODY sounds like Skinny Puppy -- an overpowering, sludgy cacaphony that still sounds impossible -- and even though I no longer feel "the pain" I can finally appreciate "the creativity and the skill." They weren't simply making angry noise, they were making a new kind of music, and they knew exactly what they were doing.

"VIVIsectVI" is still my favourite (!!!DISTORTION!!!), as is "Bites" (for its relatively fresh early sound) and "Cleanse, Fold and Manipulate" (the clearest mix between percussion, keyboards, vocals, and samples). "Too Dark Park," which I didn't like at the time, sounds particularly good in these post-White Zombie days.

"Rabies," however, still pretty much sucks. It was the Kentucky Fried Chicken of Skinny Puppy albums. Just so you don't think I've lost my critical perception.

The Barthathon: "Once Upon a Time"

I feel increasingly stupid about reviewing these Barth books.

I'm reading them for pleasure and also out of a vague obsessive desire. I am not reading them so I can write thoughtful (let alone accurate) reviews. Who cares what I have to say about John Barth's writing? Not even *I* care.

How appropriate that these doubts would come to the surface of my brain just as I've finished "Once Upon a Time" (1994), Barth's largely autobiographical "floating opera." In it he gives us shockingly candid, personal close-ups of his own Ambrose Mensch-ish childhood, his struggles to become a jazz drummer (and arranger), his lame attempts to become a writer, his growth as a teacher, the painful dissolution of his first marriage, and his later years with soulmate, former student, and later wife Shelly (she of the "for Shelly" dedication fame).

You might say "oh no, he writes about that stuff in ALL his books!" You'd be right, but that doesn't mean that "Once Upon a Time" isn't worth reading. In this case, Barth approaches all these anecdotes with a sharper filter; not only are they more-or-less "true" this time around, but they're also told in the context of the novel's biggest theme: vocation.

Yes, it's the story of Barth's "calling," that is, his need to make sure that "the sentences get written." Everything in his autobiography is a preparation for the next step, the next idea, the next book. Obstacles are there to teach him lessons, and the rewards are lessons learned. Through "Once Upon a Time" Barth tells us How He Became a Writer, and all those life experiences we're already familiar with are retold so that they point in that precise direction.

Sound artificial? False? The benefit of hindsight? Definitely, and as usual Barth turns that structural weakness into a strength. During the story, Barth (or Shelly, or his twin sister) reminds us at appropriate times that this vocational tale is still a STORY. One of its major characters, Jay Scribner, plays a part in all of Barth's autobiographical epiphanies...but Jay never existed. He's only in the story because, in Barth's authorial opinion, he HAS to be in order for "the story" to work.

Along with the book's "time" conceit -- he has set it two years in the future, and since it takes longer to write the book than it does to live its climactic events the author gradually catches up to the story -- this balance between autobiography and idealized memory is the very thing that Barth is always doing...but this time it is done explicitly and with an appropriate purpose, or at least a purpose that appeals to me. We learn not just about his life, his environment, and the evolution of his writing, but we also learn the HISTORY of those things, both real and fantastic. We learn how HE really feels, and how HE relates to the world. We learn WHY and HOW.

It is honest, clever, and significant. It's Barth's world as it is, and also as it "should be" if it were novelised (which, here, it is). It is mind-bending in a way that ENHANCES the lessons as opposed to obscuring them.

Well, usually. The hundred page introduction contains far more filler, Shelly-love-note-ing, and structure-building than anybody should expect, and that section is also uncomfortably similar to all those other couple-goes-sailing-into-a-crisis books he's written immediately before this one. And you get awfully tired of Barth's (perhaps unconscious) need to tell us exactly what everybody is drinking, which he started doing around "Sabbatical" and REALLY overdoes here. Plus, Jay Scribner's bebob-talk is tiresome ("dippy," even).

But those are the quibbles of one who has read nothing but John Barth since July. "Once Upon a Time" enriches his earlier books (and it's surprising to learn that he was hopped up on amphetamines when he wrote most of them) and partly excuses his repeated themes. There are also brand-new meditations in here that are a joy to read; Barth's description of his early rhythmic and musical revelations are beautiful and I wish he'd spend more time on them in the future (and perhaps drop the frame-tales and mythic heroes for a bit).

I loved "Once Upon a Time" years ago when I first read it. I love it more now. I think it's one of the most significant of his novels, in an understated sort of way. But please, please, please read it SEPARATE from the rest of his books, as opposed to during a somewhat gruelling Barthathon (and before "Further Fridays" which -- you guessed it -- revisits these themes ONCE AGAIN).

"Boo! You Pretty Creature!"

I find Peter Arno's "New Yorker" cartoons to be hit-or-miss, though early on I was enthralled by his "Whoop Sisters" strips. These cartoons were always single panel, somewhat confusing, and strangely vertical.

They'd show the two muff-wearing Whoop Sisters -- uncouth, middle-age British women -- striding rapidly through some far-out scene -- the greet-line for the Queen, exploring a construction site, etc. -- and exposing their crassness by making ridiculous comments about the situation (or sometimes just gossiping about something irrelevant). The sisters were always on the verge of a strange hysteria, and would express their amusement by saying "Whoop!" (a loud way of laughing, in this context).

As you can imagine this got boring eventually. After releasing a book of "Whoop Sisters" cartoons, Arno went back (as of 1928) to the strange illustrations of society gentlemen and debutantes that he was so good at. See above for the oddest one yet from the June 9, 1928 issue.

I mentioned Arno in a previous blog post about writer Lois Long (AKA "Lipstick"), because the two of them were married in what remained a sort of secret union for many years. This morning, however, I discover that those tales of Long and Arno's drunken sprees weren't all fun and games: he repeatedly had violent run-ins with his peers, and Long finally divorced him in 1931 for extreme cruelty.

Sometimes you'd rather NOT know certain things about artists.

PS: The OS X dictionary does not recognize "debutante" and wants me to use "debut ante" instead.

Because It's Sunday: Rambha

Next to Sridevi, Rambha was by far my favourite Bollywood actress. She wasn't a particularly GOOD actress last time I checked, but she had genuine spunk, a terrific turtle-nose, a strangely genuine screen presence, and WOW she could dance. For these reasons I think of her as India's Ann Miller, always likable but rarely the "star."

To illustrate this, here's one of the few good numbers from "Beti No.1." Rambha is the only person who can out-dance Govinda, and in this song she effortlessly matches him move-for-move.

The Perils of Automatic Web Harvesting

By now you've probably noticed that when you type a search request into Google, you are often directed to spontaneously-generated pages that pull together bits of information about that search term. These automatic web harvesters are not usually meant to fulfill your search request...they are only there to lure you in so you can see the attached advertisements.

I don't usually notice these sites and I've gotten pretty good at NOT clicking on them, but this morning I did a search for "Creepy Pedro" and got sent to this page. It's run by "Pipl," the most "comprehensive people search on the web," and automatically populates its database from stuff it harvests off the web; newspaper articles, trade papers...and those "Creepy Pedro" radio plays I wrote so many years ago.

The subject of the page is "Bernard Hiller," a real-life acting teacher. Three of the "Pipl" links point to legitimate sources of information, but the fourth points to the "Camp Creepy for Kids" play, wherein a (fictionalized) James Bernard insults a (totally fictional) person named "Hiller Black."

Since "Pipl" obviously has a problem with punctuation, it includes a quote from the play as one of the "quick facts" about the totally real Bernard Hiller: "Hiller was always a bit of a copycat, wasn't he..."

I assume that people don't go to "Pipl" for their research reports or resume checkups, but even so it thrills me to know that some guy out there is being slandered in a supposedly authoritative database, entirely because of a Creepy Pedro radio play that has nothing to do with him. Ahh, serendipity. Pedro would be proud.

(PS: Some new Creepy Pedro movie reviews are in the latest issue of Genxine...download your copy today!)

Dr. Seuss and Flit

You might think that Dr. Seuss was ALWAYS a famous author of children's books, but he didn't start writing those books until the late '30s. Before that -- as I discovered this morning -- he drew cartoons for humour magazines and advertising companies.

I discovered this bizarre fact when I ran across an advertisement for "Flit" bug-spray in the June 2, 1928 issue of The New Yorker. Not only is this ad the kind of thing you wouldn't be able to do today -- kids all over the country would be drinking insecticide in emulation -- but there's the trademark Seuss-type tree, and there's the Seuss signature at the bottom.

It turns out Dr. Seuss was Flit's big illustrator. Chalk this up to "weird things you should only learn about at 7:30 in the morning."

Catching Up With (Happiness)

Sometimes you get an hour of total bliss, when everything comes together. You're finished work, you're looking forward to the year's first snowstorm, you have a DVD you're looking forward to watching (episodes of "Monty Python's Flying Circus") and a book you're enjoying (John Barth's "Once Upon a Time"). As if that wasn't enough, the songs you're working on are -- in your opinion -- the best things you've ever done (tentatively titled "Road to Avondale" and "Little Bit Out") and somebody just positively reviewed your latest CD collaboration with Infant Cycle:

St.Bernard’s four tracks give instead the idea of a mini-movie, as instruments, field recordings and pre-existent voices lead our brain towards the nowhere of significance. At one point, I was so mesmerized by the apparent nonsense of certain repetitions, I couldn’t decide if what I was hearing was too simple to accept a description or just nullifying my thoughts; one’s left even more anguished in the final minutes of the disc. Music that is intense and uninviting at one and the same time but, this notwithstanding, we all know that - aesthetic pleasures or not - if something stimulates a reaction, then it means that it’s good enough.

I am oddly complimented.

An additional "catching up" point: if you like the "Daily Muffy" episodes (or you didn't know they existed), another oldie (from 2003) is getting underway. St. Mark and I try to defeat SARS in Toronto's Chinatown, and then tackle West Nile and Mad Cow as an afterthought.

I'd Buy Anything By...Dana International

An inspiration, an artist, a real and utter thrill. She may have become uncomfortably "Celine Dion-ish" during the last few years, but you can't blame a girl for chasing fame, especially in those heels.

So spare a thought for Dana International, Israel's first (but surprisingly not only) transsexual pop princess. She clawed her way up thanks partly to Ofer Nissim's unorthodox power-production, surprised everybody by winning the Eurovision contest, and surprised everybody again by falling over at Eurovision the following year.

Her style was initially fluffy camp with lots of Arabic whoopy-hollery nods. On their way toward Eurovision, the Dana/Nissim partnership took on a harder-edge; all that whooping and hollering became somewhat scary and resulted in their best album to date, as well as their best video: "Chinquemilla." Yup, that's a banana.



Sadly, Dana International and Ofer Nissim parted ways shortly after her Eurovision win, and while he's continued blazing trails she has become...well, sort of a victim of the top forty climb. She's still fabulous, but she's no longer very "different," which puts her in a musical league that she can't compete in (especially not in English). Here's her latest single, "Love Boy," from the latest album this is constantly just about to be released. Sure it's great and all, but what sets it apart (besides Dana's crotch?)



In Las Vegas I met a cab driver who claimed to be her former lighting assistant. He said she was a jerk, and I believe him. Still, to become a transsexual pop star in the middle east -- and to go so mainstream as to hawk insurance for a "girls only" insurance plan -- is a significant accomplishment. And much of her music is simply amazing, no matter how much her "diva" stuff annoys me.

Albums to buy? Oh, "Maganuna," the wildest one out there! Albums to avoid? Anything post-Eurovision...they're not TERRIBLE, they just aren't very good. For fans only? Any of the frequent Israel-only special editions, which tend to come in outrageous packaging yet offer very little new music.