The Optical Files #30: Marvin Gaye - Let's Get it On (1973)

If you have any doubts that advertising can ruin a song, I offer as evidence the opening title track from Let's Get it On: a monumental paean to that place where sex meets spirit, a risky (for a popular artist at the time), frank celebration of flesh on flesh, that nobody under a certain age can hear without immediately being reminded of countless ads that use the song to sell everything from chocolate candy to dish soap to automobiles. (The implication, or encouragement, that consumers have sexual desire for those products is a topic for another time.) It's a shame, because the songwriting & playing are impeccable on their own terms. I particularly love Wilton Felder's nimble bass runs & Gaye's layered vocal harmonies. Next time you crank it, try to put away your associations of "the song from 1000 commercials."

It's also perhaps not intuitive for people who were born decades later to understand the throwback nature of "Let's Get it On." It works around a '50s blues shuffle, not a trendy style for the '70s & an example of Gaye flexing his newfound creative freedom to make music that Motown might not have preferred he release. Another song that feels out of its time is "Come Get to This," with doo-wop wordless backing vocals (multi-tracked by Gaye, again) that recall '60s pop as much as '70s soul.

Gaye's childhood abuse at the hands of his puritanical preacher father (who ended up murdering him) gave him hangups about sexuality that he only managed to overcome in adulthood by reconciling a new spirituality that didn't tell him the existence of his penis made him a bad boy. (He writes in the liner notes, "I don't believe in overly moralistic philosophies.") With this understanding, Let's Get it On takes on a new resonance: Gaye sings with the passion of a romantic lover, but also the passion of a man embracing a newfound serenity with a god who doesn't punish, reward, or judge.

The complex arrangements & progressive subject matter on What's Going On & Let's Get it On spelled the end of the Motown sound, especially as Gaye's colleague Stevie Wonder was exercising his newfound creative control at the same time. Similar to what happened with Nashville labels after Honky Tonk Heroes, Motown had to change their business model. Rather than a factory for interchangeable singles by faceless session musicians, they had to start taking cues from the visionary talents on their roster. It happened with rock a few years earlier, but for other genres the early '70s was when the power got put in the artists' hands, & we're all better off for it.

Bressonian Quote #28 - Notes from a Master Filmmaker

"Apply myself to insignificant (nonsignificant) images." 

- Robert Bresson

From:  Notes sur le Cinematographe/Notes on the Cinematographer (1975)

The Optical Files #29: Rob Zombie - Educated Horses (2006)

Educated Horses marks the turning point when Rob Zombie became more filmmaker than rocker, i.e. when he started making albums in between his movie projects rather than vice versa. Educated Horses is also the last Rob Zombie album I bought (unless you count Zombie Live, released the following year). In my memory it goes down as the lukewarm CD that killed my interest in Rob Zombie the rocker, even as my interest in Rob Zombie the filmmaker was mounting. For that reason, I haven't given the album a fair front-to-back chance in many years, so I did my best to sit down for this listen with an open mind.

The cover art here is certainly new territory for the artist. Gone are the ghoulish makeup, occult sigils, & psychedelic colors of the White Zombie era & his first 2 solo records; in their place we have...a black & white photo of regular-guy-Rob in a denim jacket, standing in the woods, looking up & slightly to the left. It seems to signal a shift toward maturity. Does the music bear this out? Well, I wouldn't say mature exactly, but it does lessen the industrial excesses of his previous 2. The samples & keyboards are still there, but there's no turntablism & the mood is tasteful rather than garish. On the whole, Educated Horses is a muscular rock record, like a less riffy version of the early White Zombie sound. He's going for more arena rock, less metal this time around, as songs like the heavily Gary Glitter-influenced "The Scorpion Sleeps" make obvious.

The other stylistic throughline for this album is something I hinted at earlier: Rob was a filmmaker now, & although his music always had a cinematic edge, Educated Horses sounds less like a standalone rock album & more like a soundtrack to a horror movie that doesn't exist. His trademark ambient interludes (the album intro "Sawdust in the Blood" & "100 Ways") sound more like film score than DJ breaks, & the huge orchestral strings in "Death of It All" recall Tyler Bates's soundtrack work for Zombie's films.

One thing I appreciate about Rob is that he always made short albums (in his solo career anyway--White Zombie is another matter). Educated Horses does its thing in 38 minutes, in an era when 70-plus-minute CDs were the norm. Even if you're not enjoying the album, it's over before you know it. My favorite song, then & now, is "17 Year Locust," a massive Sabbathesque stomper. The main riff isn't very interesting (in fact, it's probably the 50th time you've heard it), but the energy & atmosphere is amazing. The massive production on the drums is a mule-kick to the chest when the full band comes in, & the wah-wah keys that drive the verse sound like Stevie Wonder's signature clavinet. By the time the sitar (!) & nylon acoustic finish trading solos, you're already reaching for the repeat button.

"Let it All Bleed Out" is an interesting, not always successful blend of the aforementioned styles: a thrashy (but not quite thrash) main riff & a slower, Soundgarden-esque alt-rock bridge. Rob sings in the same old cadence as seemingly half the songs on Hellbilly Deluxe, plus he seems to be aping Jim Morrison on the chorus. The moody acoustic-driven "Death of It All" is buoyed by the aforementioned string arrangement, & "Ride" has a nu-metalish main riff, despite Rob usually avoiding the Korn sound even though the press & public lumped them together. It's understandable why Rob didn't use the song "The Devil's Rejects" in his film of the same name--it sounds too close in style to "House of 1000 Corpses" from The Sinister Urge, despite the 2 films being about as different stylistically as you can get.

"Devil's Rejects" is one of 2 songs on the album that tie in to Rob's movies. (3, if you count "Foxy Foxy," which seems to reference a character from 3 From Hell, a film Rob wouldn't make for another 13 years.) The other is the album closer, "Lords of Salem," a big doomy lurcher with a thundering chorus, recorded from a live performance. After the song, the band transitions into another number before the recording fades out. It's a fun, ragged, punkish way to close the record.

Is Educated Horses the disaster I remember? Definitely not. I can confidently say I like more than half of the album, & a few songs transcended the record to become all-time favorites. But it's the first record Rob had a hand in that was anything less than a front-to-back banger in my opinion, so in hindsight I understand why I perceived it as a letdown.

The Optical Files #28: Erykah Badu - Mama's Gun (2000)

In 2000, the high priestess of neo-soul followed up the Grammy-winning Baduizm with a more ambitious, conceptual & confident LP that I believe deserves as much (if not more) acclaim as her debut. Blame it on the singles ("Bag Lady" was big, but "On & On" & "Next Lifetime" were bigger), or speculate that the more overt feminist themes scared male listeners away, but back-to-back listens should make clear to everybody that there's no reason Mama's Gun should have underperformed by any measure compared to its predecessor.

I have the first pressing of Mama's Gun on Motown records. The track listing on the back & in the liner notes is incorrect, & there's even a song listed ("Props to the Lonely People") that isn't included on the album. The correct order is printed on the CD itself, along with the message "i changed the sequence at the last minute. peace, e. badu". The liner notes are full of such asides: "Didn't Cha Know" bears a note saying, "Peace my beloved people, check website for the rest of these lyrics--ain't finished yet." The album has only been reissued on CD once in the US, also by Motown in 2009, & the reissue kept this inconsistency. It's understandable--there's a casual charm to the little messages from Erykah, as if they are handwritten annotations from a friend in the margins. In the original pressing, I'm sure they really did run out of time to make their release date, but the warts & all presentation has the effect of an intimate, authentic experience. The fact that it's been made into an affectation on the reissue is, I'm sure, the label's fault & not Erykah's.

Mama's Gun opens with a statement of purpose to make a hard left from Baduizm in the form of "Penitentiary Philosophy," a song that's as far from the tone of its predecessor as possible while still being identifiable as the same artist. A more aggressive, almost rock-influenced arrangement with Questlove's pugnacious drums front & center in the mix. One of the key reasons for the sound of Mama's Gun is that Erykah was by now fully integrated into the Soulquarians crew. Soulquarians main man James Poyser & Questlove had their hands in Baduizm here & there, but on Mama's Gun Poyser has writing &/or producing credits on 8 of the album's 14 songs, & Quest plays on half the album. "My Life" is another early-album example of this musical combo's power: Poyser's prominent piano bangs out chunky chords while, instead of Quest's snappy drums, we get a drum machine programmed by none other than J Dilla (yes, that one, credited here as Jay Dee, who takes over the controls for the album's 2nd single "Didn't Cha Know?") Another intriguing element in "My Life" is the string arrangement by Larry Gold. Gold's strings also pop up later on in "Time's a Wastin'," where they come close to dominating the track with an atonal counterpoint to the jazzy main groove.

Pretty much all the songs on Mama's Gun are musical triumphs, not just for Erykah's cool yet emotive vocals, but also as examples of songwriting that is tricky & twisty while still remaining catchy. Sure, there are some verse-chorus-verse structures, but there's also stuff like "Kiss Me On My Neck," which has a huge bridge that enters halfway through & dominates the song from there on out, flipping the relationship between chorus & bridge. Then there's the Stephen Marley collaboration "In Love With You," recorded in Jamaica, a roots reggae feel with a sparse arrangement: just layered guitars & bass played by Dready--no drums, no skanking, still 100% reggae.

The lyrics on Baduizm were fine & all, but here Erykah digs deep into introspective, autobiographical, & sociopolitical terrain, a lot of it at the intersection of society's policing of women's bodies. "Cleva" is a body-positive women empowerment song over Latin percussion & vibraphone played by the legendary Roy Ayers. "Booty" is an ahead-of-its-time song about rejecting the idea that other women are her competition, promising another woman that she won't allow her man to cheat with her: "I don't want him 'cause of what he doin' to you/& you don't need him cause he ain't ready [...] I hope you would've done the same thing for me too."

Erykah herself plays acoustic guitar on "A.D. 2000," a collaboration with Betty Wright that was written in the aftermath of Amadou Diallo's murder at the hands of 4 NYPD officers. The sentiment--the futility of lip-service monuments & memorials to the dead in the absence of any substantive change--could have easily been written in 2020.

Mama's Gun closes with "Green Eyes," a 10-minute multi-part suite that sums up everything the album wants to do. It starts with a degraded, Billie Holiday-esque jazz sound that recalls Baduizm's "Afro (Freestyle Skit)" in its homage to bygone eras of Black music. It then explodes into a showcase for Roy Hargrove's burly horn arrangement (last heard in "Booty") & ends with the lyric "y'all just listen" repeated who knows how many times. Both tracklists (the one on the booklet & the one on the CD) end with this song, so it's clear Erykah knew this is how she wanted to close. A psychologically dense epic of ambitious songwriting & impeccable musicianship. Whether that last sentence describes "Green Eyes," the whole album, or both is open to your interpretation.

The Optical Files #27: Public Enemy - Fear of a Black Planet (1990)

In the entry on Chuck D in his 2003 book There's a God on the Mic: The True 50 Greatest MCs, Kool Moe Dee writes: "He never talked about being the best, and he never criticized another emcee. He never even compared himself to another emcee. This only enhanced his image as a true lyrical leader, and he never even professed to be that." I was reminded of this quote when listening to Fear of a Black Planet & reflecting on just how incomparable Public Enemy is. For a group that changed the face of rap music (as the first predominantly political hiphop group, their success made it cool to be conscious in the '90s), it's curious to realize how few imitators they spawned. Sure, you can hear bits of their style in everybody from X Clan & Paris to Rage Against the Machine & Immortal Technique, but almost nobody attempted to imitate them sonically. (The only full-on Public Enemy ripoff I can think of is Michael Franti's Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy.)

Part of the unique sonic signature is Chuck himself. His booming voice is instantly identifiable, but his lyrical approach is even more singular. He is not a pocket flower. He doesn't always put rhymes at the end of lines; he puts them anywhere he damn well pleases. He starts & stops & modulates up & down, tilts & leans & charges. Some concepts he beats you over the head with, others he drops oblique poetic imagery that demands more interpretation than identification--& he seems to know exactly the right place to use each approach. (For instance, "Who Stole the Soul?" never flat-out declares "Black people shouldn't have to pay taxes," but "Burn Hollywood Burn" bluntly proclaims...well, "burn Hollywood burn.")

Speaking of "Burn Hollywood Burn," it just so happens to be one of my favorite songs of all time, & also one of the first major feature tracks in history: 3 emcees from different crews getting together on a record hadn't really been done before. All respect due to Chuck & Cube, but Kane dominates this song with a top-10-all-time rap verse. Another item that ties this with It Takes a Nation... as my favorite P.E. album is the presence of the iconic "Fight the Power," reused here from its original appearance on the Do the Right Thing soundtrack & later as a single. (One of my most prized possessions was the cassingle, but it got destroyed when my buddy Nick flipped his car.)

Another major element that contributes to the inimitable P.E. sound is the Bomb Squad's production. Even the work they did with artists ranging from Ice Cube to Bell Biv DeVoe never quite captured the frenzied, chaotic feeling of the first few P.E. albums. The production mindset here takes hiphop's sample collage principle to the extremes, approaching avant-garde or musique concréte. Layers upon layers of samples adorn each track: wordless vocals, instruments, dialogue snippets, sound effects, lurching or writhing or exploding or imploding in & out of the mix, making the whole record feel like it's just short of careening completely out of control. It's an even more bruising listen than It Takes a Nation..., which had a few more sedate songs where you could catch your breath. This one is righteous mayhem from top to bottom.

One bruise on this album is the almost-throwaway micro-song "Meet the G that Killed Me," a brief demonstration of how the HIV epidemic proliferated, particularly in the Black community. P.E. got in hot water for the first lines of the song, "Man to man, I don't know if they can, from what I know the parts don't fit"--which is, first of all, a pretty stupid line (don't play coy, Chuck, you know exactly how they can). On the one hand, this is one of the only times P.E. said something homophobic. On the other, it does seem to blame gay men for proliferating HIV, which plays into a common witch-hunting narrative of the time. I did, and do, expect better from Chuck & co.

Public Enemy's 3-album run from 1988-1991 was a wild moment where songs about Black Power, reparations, the Panthers, police brutality, etc. were sitting right near the top of the pop charts, & white teenagers were buying the records & sporting the t-shirts just to piss their parents off. The '92-'99 RATM had a similar feel, but P.E. was even more significant because they were BLACKITY-BLACK & made rap music through & through. That moment will never be duplicated--not by Public Enemy or anybody else--& as it turns out, nobody else even really tried.

150 Films/150 Days #03: Films 11-18

To open the new year, I began this series, 150 Films in 150 Days, as a means of returning to my screening habits of old. Click the link to read the Series Introduction.  The general idea is to return to my film school roots of obsessively watching all the films from all the places all the time.  

The Comprised List is over 150 films deep with integral films missed from the past 10 years and beyond, as well as a few just for popcorn giggles.

I'll be making regular posts of 5-10 films at a time, including my screening notes, random and unedited.  Each film will be listed with the release date, relevant creative contributors, the means of screening, and a written response.

After the screening, I will assign a level of recommendation to each film as follows: 

HR-highly recommended, R-recommended, N-neutral, F-failings too extensive to appreciate (hopefully never or rare).

The first film watched was February 1, and the final day will be June 30 (exactly 5 months).  

All are welcome to watch along.

Films 11-18:  Screening Notes added soon - need time to transcribe and decipher my notes ;

11.  Noah (2012):  Watched on Prime Video, 02/11.  Directed by Darren Aronofsky, Performances by Jennifer Connelly, Russell Crowe, Anthony Hopkins, Cinematography by Matthew Libatique. 

Screening Notes:  

Recommendation Level:  N

12.  Venom (2018):   Watched on Hulu, 02/12.  Performances by Tom Hardy, Michelle Williams, Produced by Tom Hardy, Cinematography by Matthew Libatique. 

Screening Notes:

Recommendation Level:  N

13.  The Little Things (2021):  Watched on HBO, 02/13.  Directed by John Lee Hancock, Performances by Denzel Washington, Rami Malek, Jared Leto.

Screening Notes:

Recommendation Level:  N

14.  The Meaning of Hitler (doc, 2020):   Watched on Hulu, 02/14.  Directed by Petra Apperlein and Michael Tucker.

Screening Notes:

Recommendation Level:  R

15.  Judas and the Black Messiah (2021):  Watched on HBO, 02/15.  Directed by Shaka King, Produced by Ryan Coogler, Performances by Daniel Kaluuya, LaKeith Stanfield, Jesse Plemmons. 

Screening Notes:

Recommendation Level:  HR

16.  Baby Driver (2017):  Watched on DVD, 02/16.  Directed by Edgar Wright, Performances by Ansel Elgort, Jon Bernthal, Jamie Foxx.

Screening Notes:

Recommendation Level:  R (if you stop after Act 2), N (if you watch until the end)

17.  Super 8 (2011):  Watched on HBO, 02/16.  Written and Directed by J.J. Abrams, Produced by Steven Spielberg, Performances by Elle Fanning, Kyle Chandler 

Screening Notes:

Recommendation Level:  R

18.  The Hunger Games (2012):  Watched on Hulu, 02/17.  Directed by Gary Ross, Performance by Jennifer Lawrence

Screening Notes:

Recommendation Level:  N

The Optical Files #26: Heavy D. & the Boyz - Big Tyme (1989)

Heavy D. walked a thin line back in the day, achieving significant success on the pop charts without alienating the hiphoppers. He did this on the strength of craftsmanship & personality. It hasn't been cool for a long time to like Heavy D.'s style of music (except at age 14 I asked for & received this CD for Christmas 1999 because I was a weird kid), but nobody can deny his absolute mastery on the microphone. Enunciation, rhythm, breath control, flow were all impeccable, & he had the stage show to match it.

Big Tyme was his commercial breakthrough, propelled by the singles "Somebody for Me" & "We Got Our Own Thang," which opens the album with an uptempo new jack swing production by Teddy Riley (his only beat on the album). It has a more glossy, radio-ready sound than the beats by Hev's DJ Eddie F., who produces most of the rest of the album with a comparatively rugged, sample-based boom-bap sound. Eddie does have some pop tricks up his sleeve though; "Somebody for Me" is just as polished but the drums hit harder.

Outside the well-known singles, we have songs like "A Better Land," the (for the time period) obligatory conscious song that opens with an MLK speech sample. The social commentary is light--basic come-together rhetoric--but Hev sells it with his genial, good-times personality. The overall feeling of the album is cozy, warm & welcoming, in an early De La Soul way, which makes it all the more jarring to hear Hev drop a big homophobic f-slur a few songs later in "More Bounce," his one attempt to sound tough on the album.

My favorite song on the record actually might not be a rap song--the overweight lover switches it up on us & drops "Mood for Love," a mellow dancehall reggae song with a more hiphop drum pattern. The Jamaican-born emcee sounds completely convincing singing in patois, & it points toward the more pure reggae-oriented stuff he did near the end of his career/life.

Big Tyme isn't my favorite Heavy D. album (I prefer the slightly rougher stuff he did later) but it's an important document of a still-underappreciated talent. Rest in peace Dwight Arrington/Heavy D., 1967-2011.

Nightmare Alley - Featured Film of Interest - Highly Recommended

Nightmare Alley is fantastic filmmaking, fantastic film viewing, and visually spectacular.  Guillermo del Toro does film noir with a carnival backdrop, and it's everything you would ever hope.  He utilizes his seemingly hand picked cast to exhilarating levels with performances that match the elite storytelling and visual style.  Guillermo and his special brand of magical realism at its finest.  Any questions?

Links:

DelToroFilms.com - Official Fan Site

Nightmare Alley Official Site

The Optical Files #25: KRS-One - Spiritual Minded (2002)

KRS infused spirituality into his music since the beginning, but there was always a vague non-denominational pluralism to it, mixing bits of Christianity, Islam/NGE/NOI & (especially) the Rastafari movement, while preaching hiphop as a religion unto itself with the 1996 founding of the Temple of Hiphop. It always seemed like any 1 religion was too small to contain Kris's worldview, so it was a bit surprising in 2002 when he dropped Spiritual Minded, a full-on gospel rap album complete with church choirs & bible citations in the liner notes for each song. On the other hand, the African-American Christian church is tightly entwined with the history of hiphop, & it's common for rappers of Kris's generation to use its aesthetics & messaging in their music. But I'm very unqualified to speak on that, so I'll move on.

Despite the gospel trappings, in some ways Spiritual Minded sounds like any other KRS-One album. There is a mixture of messaging & rappity-rap, usually within songs rather than between them. He uses a lot of his time on the microphone bemoaning what he sees as the woeful state of commercial hiphop: "Take It to God," "South Bronx 2002," "Never Give Up," "The Conscious Rapper" & more all center on this theme. Like I said, typical topics for him, & the bars are up to his usual standard. But somehow, Kris's born-again righteousness makes his condescending attitude harder to swallow here than it is on his more secular albums. On Spiritual Minded, he's not just being preachy, he is literally preaching. Also, the older I get the less utility I see in loudly complaining about the materialism of mainstream rap because (a) it's never going to change & (b) life's short, enjoy what you enjoy. 

A few songs stand out for their more focused content. "Good Bye" is one of the most intriguing, a new-agey gospel sounding song about losing loved ones, to death & otherwise. "You gotta die before you die so when you die you don't die." "The Struggle Continues" is an odd message song about, among other things, how we should bring back prayer in schools. I would have thought Kris would be in favor of the separation of church & state, but apparently not. "Ain't Ready," aside from having a laughable chorus challenging rival churches, choirs, ushers, deacons etc. to something akin to a rap battle, suffers from "no true Scotsman" syndrome where Kris accuses Christians who don't Christian like he Christians of not being real Christians. Then there's the album's single, "Take Your Tyme," a big choir-heavy song that's dedicated to slut-shaming. If you've read more than 1 or 2 of my writeups in this series, you'll know how I feel about men preaching to women about how they should conduct themselves sexually, & that shit's no better when it has a choir robe on. Fuck this song.

I've written here before about how the early 2000s were not a good time for indie hiphop production, & this album is no exception. There's a cheap quality of production here, lots of low-budget MIDI & brickwalled compression. When it breaks out of the FL-back-when-it-was-called-Fruity-Loops rut, there are some memorable beats, like the Domingo-produced "Never Give Up," with a smoky chorus sung in Cantonese. Domingo, the best beatmaker Kris worked with during this era, also laces "Know Thy Self," another boom-bap highlight. The closer, "Power," is another more analog production, with live guitar & keys & eerie layered vocal harmonies. The rest of the beats, though, tend to be pretty forgettable.

As we all know, Kris's shift to gospel wasn't permanent. After this he went right back to making secular albums--with roughly the same level of lyricism, better production, a little more cursing & a little (very slightly, but still) less high-&-mighty. All of which is fine by me.

The Optical Files #24: Geto Boys - The Geto Boys (1990)

Rest in Peace Collins Leysath/DJ Ready Red, 1965-2018

After I wrote about their 2005 album The Foundation last week, the universe must have known I was in the mood for some more Geto Boys, so the random number generator blessed me with an opportunity to revisit their 1990 self-titled album. Most people, including me, think of this as the Geto Boys' debut LP, but really it's more of a rerecorded compilation. There are only 2 wholly new songs ("Fuck Em" & "City Under Siege"). Most of the tracks are rerecorded, rearranged songs from their 2nd album Grip It! On That Other Level. One of the most controversial songs, "Assassins," is re-recorded from Making Trouble, the 1988 debut album by a group called The Ghetto Boys, where it was written & rapped by a completely different person (Prince Johnny C).

It's important to understand that at this stage, the Ghetto/Geto Boys were not a group so much as a brand masterminded by Rap-a-Lot founder J. Prince. He wanted to create an identity for southern hiphop, & after a few false starts, decided the way forward was the headline-friendly shock tactics of gangsta rap taken to the extreme. He fired the overly Run-DMC-derivative Johnny C & Sire Jukebox in favor of the more streetwise southern drawls of Willie D & Akshen (re-christened Scarface in keeping with Making Trouble's sample collage "Balls and My Word"), & promoted backup dancer Bushwick Bill to emcee status.

The second person most responsible for the sound & impact of the 1990 Geto Boys album is another label executive: Rick Rubin, who made it his return to hiphop after pivoting to rock in the mid '80s. I'm not sure exactly what about the Geto Boys caught his ear, but I imagine he, like Prince, saw the commercial potential of their no fucks given, "let's piss off the world" attitude. (The Def American release proudly displays a big disclaimer on the front cover stating that their distributor objected to the album's contents, & indeed Rubin cut ties with Geffen over this record & had to find new distribution.)

Rubin's classic-rock-loving fingerprints are all over this album, from the remixed "Gangsta of Love" riding a "Sweet Home Alabama" sample (the original sampled Steve Miller's "The Joker," of course) to the breakneck pace of the album, with micro-gaps between the songs giving the listener no time to catch their breath. Still, most of the strongest beats come from the original Grip It! production. DJ Ready Red (R.I.P. 2018) was an unsung musical asset to the group. The skanky guitar & harmonica of "Life in the Fast Lane," the horns in "Mind of a Lunatic" that stab the beat like Bill's knife, one of the earliest hiphop samples of Curtis Mayfield's "Superfly" in "Do It Like a G.O."...each song has a unique, memorable identity thanks to Ready Red's ear.

Lyrically, each emcee was comfortably exploring their own territory even at this early stage. Face is mostly interested in storytelling (as in solo tracks "Life in the Fast Lane" & the iconic "Scarface"), Willie is all macho bluster mixed with some street knowledge ("Read These Nikes" & "Let a Ho Be a Ho"), & Bill is eagerly exploring the depths of violence & degradation in the proto-horrorcore "Mind of a Lunatic," as well as "Size Ain't Shit." The misogyny of some of the tracks, like "Gangster of Love," is impossible to take seriously, especially considering how unpleasant & violent many of the boasts are. Like Kool G Rap in his sex songs, the Boys are bragging about their sexual prowess to a mostly male audience, in language aimed at men, which is an interesting arrangement & goes to show how thin the line between macho shit & homoeroticism really is.

The Geto Boys' music was always influenced by the sociopolitical issues of the day. Here, they connect Reagan & Noriega on "City Under Siege," discuss how systemic racism is backed up by economic inequity in "Do It Like a G.O." while extolling the virtues of keeping their label independent & black-owned, & pointing out the hypocrisy of the moral outrage over their music in "Talkin' Loud Ain't Saying Nothin." Although they got more mature later on, they were never so much politically educated as they were full of piss & vinegar, of which this album (& maybe "Fuck a War" from We Can't Be Stopped) is the best expression.

Similar to Malcolm McLaren's creation of the Sex Pistols in 1970s Britain, what started out as a cynical business decision to make a band that would sell ended up producing authentic artistry that revolutionized a genre. J. Prince was trying to hit a lick & somehow ended up assembling one of the greatest hiphop groups of all time. The Geto Boys for me has an edge on We Can't Be Stopped because it has more focus & fewer solo songs. (A few of those go a long way, as demonstrated here.) Despite its weird status as somewhere between album & compilation, to me this is one of the Geto Boys' best discs.

The Optical Files #23: Outkast - ATLiens (1996)

After Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik, Outkast suddenly found themselves with a lot more money, a lot more prestige, and a responsibility to be stewards of the Southern rap culture. They responded to these circumstances by crafting their debut album's bigger, more colorful, more ambitious (with a whole ass comic book in the liner notes!) little sister, ATLiens. Where its predecessor was fully produced by ONP, Outkast themselves took the helm of 5 out of 15 songs on the new album, & committed themselves to original composition & live instrumentation even more fiercely than before. This is high-profile production work from the duo, including the first 2 singles, "Elevators (Me & You)" & the title track, which are arguably the album's most iconic songs.

ONP's relative absence here is a mixed blessing. On one hand, all 5 of Outkast's self-produced beats are spacey, trippy, stone-cold classics (my favorite is probably the Dan the Automator-style reverb synth soup of "ATLiens"). On the other thing, there's one thing absent from this album that I've come to expect from Outkast: horns! Everybody knows I love a good horn arrangement, & ONP's are always godly. On ATLiens they only show up as brief stabs through "Decatur Psalm," leaving me with a brass jones so bad I almost have to put on "Spottieottiedopaliscious" after this album finishes to get me back to equilibrium. Otherwise, ONP is in top form here, from the wordless background vocals on "2 Dope Boyz (In a Cadillac)" to the new-agey piano of "13th Floor/Growing Old" to the languid Daniel Lanois-esque guitar on "Millennium" (which contains the album's best bar: 3Stacks's "a monster truck done came & ran over my picket fences"). 

Lyrically, the album is full of gems like that. You can hear Andre's new woke (borderline Hotep?) consciousness developing in songs like "Babylon" & the album closer "Growing Old." The duo makes statements of purpose standing in opposition to consensus reality--as if their group name & album title weren't enough--in songs like "Mainstream," assisted by Goodie Mob members (which back in the early 2000s was my favorite song on the album).

Okay, last & definitely least, let's talk about "Jazzy Belle." Fuck this song. No matter how "woke" Andre got, he never got woke enough to realize that policing women's behavior is none of his damn business. "Jazzy Belle" is 4 straight minutes of slut-shaming & homophobic slurs. It's times like these when I have to remind myself that the guys were barely 21 when this album was made, & god knows I said some equally stupid shit at 21, about women & otherwise. But at what age do boys magically become accountable? (That's a rhetorical question.) Sure, Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik has equally cringey stuff in it, but that album feels like it's made by teenagers--supremely talented teenagers, but still. For better or for worse, ATLiens feels like the work of mature, seasoned artists with critical perspectives, so bullshit like "Jazzy Belle" is much harder to swallow in that context.

150 Films/150 Days #02: Films 6-10

To open the new year, I began this series, 150 Films in 150 Days, as a means of returning to my screening habits of old. Click the link to read the Series Introduction.  The general idea is to return to my film school roots of obsessively watching all the films from all the places all the time.  

The Comprised List is over 150 films deep with integral films missed from the past 10 years and beyond, as well as a few just for popcorn giggles.

I'll be making regular posts of 5-10 films at a time, including my screening notes, random and unedited.  Each film will be listed with the release date, relevant creative contributors, the means of screening, and a written response.

After the screening, I will assign a level of recommendation to each film as follows: 

HR-highly recommended, R-recommended, N-neutral, F-failings too extensive to appreciate (hopefully never or rare).

The first film watched was February 1, and the final day will be June 30 (exactly 5 months).  

All are welcome to watch along.

Films 6-10:  Screening Notes added soon - need time to transcribe and decipher my notes ;

6.  Poltergeist (1982):  Watched on HBO, 02/07.  Directed by Tobe Hooper, Produced and Written by Steven Spielberg. 

Screening Notes:  

Recommendation Level:  HR

7.  Halloween (1978):   Watched on Prime Video, 02/08.  Directed by John Carpenter, Performance by Jamie Lee Curtis. 

Screening Notes:

Recommendation Level:  HR

8.  The Lighthouse (2019):  Watched on Prime Video, 02/09.  Directed by Robert Eggers, Performances by Willem Dafoe, Robert Pattinson, A24 Film.

Screening Notes:

Recommendation Level:  HR

9.  The Wolfpack (doc, 2015):   Watched on HBO, 02/10.  Directed by Crystal Moselle, In collaboration with Mukunda Angulo and brothers.

Screening Notes:

Recommendation Level:  R

10.   Pharma-Bro (doc, 2021):  Watched on Hulu, 02/10.  Directed by Brent Hodge, Blumhouse Productions. 

Screening Notes:

Recommendation Level:  N/F

The Optical Files #22: Geto Boys - The Foundation (2005)

Every hiphop head has certain rappers we defend like it's our job. One of mine is Richard William Stephen Shaw, better known as Bushwick Bill (R.I.P.). He may not have been the most graceful on the microphone--in fact, he might not have had any of the attributes I usually look for in an emcee (wordplay, creative flows, musicality). He may have been offbeat a lot of the time. But his uniqueness made up for it. Bill was just different. Scarface is one of the greatest ever, & Willie D is a fascinating emcee in his own right, but Bill was always the soul of any Geto Boys endeavor. He was coming off a rough few years when the guys reunited to make The Foundation, which proved to be their swansong. He hadn't released any music in a few years, he was having money troubles, & his family woes seemed endless. Scarface, on the other hand, was hot off the release of The Fix & was making major moves as president of Def Jam South. This tension--one group member at a professional apex, another near a personal apogee, with Willie somewhere in the middle--makes for a fascinating listen tonally.

After the usual J. Prince spoken word Rap-A-Lot intro blends into "Declaration of War," it becomes apparent that Face has modulated his baritone vocal somewhat upward to allow Willie the low end. That has always been the Geto Boys arrangement, but you can tell that special care has been taken here in the mixing and performances to ensure that each emcee has a distinct vocal presence. Despite the budget packaging (4-panel booklet with low-res artwork, grayscale printing on the CD itself) a lot of craft went into this album musically & technically. Although Tone Capone & Cory Mo put in serious work, the beatmaking hero of this album is Scarface himself, who produced 5 of the 13 proper songs. Face's production has always been simple, funky & tight. "Yes, Yes, Y'all" does a lot with a little--mainly a single piano loop & drums made for the Boys' pocket flows. Unfortunately, the song contains the album's only 2 homophobic slurs, but it also has a delightful exchange between Face & Bill: "They say the Beatles was the biggest/N***a fuck Paul!"

As usual for a Geto Boys album, each member gets a solo song, & the highlight is Scarface's "G Code," another of his self-produced beats, an anti-snitch anthem driven by orchestral strings & synths with a sung hook & an absolutely epic sound. I remember being so mad when I heard the instrumental a few years later in a car commercial. (I mean, get your money I guess Face, but we all know that money wasn't going toward child support.) Another great Scarface beat is "What?", featuring more spooky synths with a moody, pulsating bass. Bill dominates this one, taking the opportunity to taunt the police, while Willie's verse is mostly tough guy bluster. There's a lot of said bluster from Willie on this album, so his solo track, "Nothing to Show," is a nice change of pace, dropping OG knowledge about getting your money right & streetwise financial literacy.

When Bushwick Bill passed away, I wrote this on Facebook: "...It's a shame so many people couldn't see past the freakshow element of a four foot-tall, one-eyed gangsta rapper with an odd, offkilter delivery. His subject matter was shocking, obscene, profane, but he was never mindless about it. He was fearless with his audiences. He tore his heart out and offered it to you, showing you the demons that lived there, begging you not to ignore your own. Bill was the most radically honest rapper of all time, and we need more radical honesty in hiphop. In fact, it's the only way forward." That radical honesty is best displayed in the album's 2 confessional tracks, "I Tried" & "Leanin' On You," where Bill brings the other members up to his level of frankness. In "I Tried," a song about personal failures where the hook admits "sometimes I guess my best ain't good enough," Face raps about a destroyed romantic relationship, Willie addresses his mother, & Bill vows to be the best father he can be amid the broken pieces of his life. "Fuck it I'm dying, done with struggling for mine/Sleeping on fans' floors, ain't no use to me lying/Changed my name for anonymity, slick/But a four-feet dwarf that be on television's hard to miss." 

Bill's contribution to "Leanin' On You" is equally poignant, asking the listener to imagine being a one-eyed dwarf like him: "You'd never make it, life's not fair/Everywhere you go, people point, people laugh, people stare." But it's Willie who steals the show on this song, once again choosing to address his relationship with his late mother: "Sista girl, I didn't know what you was dealing with/Pointed the finger at you, now I'm feeling like an idiot/But I'm wiser now, & I've seen the world/It's messed up how they treat us Geto Boys & girls." 

Even Bill's solo song, "Dirty Bitch," another revenge fantasy and closer tonally to his earlier Chuckie days, is touching if only for the wretched emotion that comes through. Bill was a writer who was willing to show you the parts of himself that other people keep hidden, & unlike later rappers to plow that field (Eminem comes to mind), there was always a sense of proportion & higher purpose to his work rather than shock for shock's sake. "Dirty Bitch" is also the only beat contribution from Rap-A-Lot's legendary Mike Dean, with subtle strings & sparse drums accompanying a horror movie soundtrack-worthy piano.

For some people, the Geto Boys are synonymous with rude, abject proto-horrorcore & squeamish spectacle. They are certainly all of that, but to me they are also the most forthright, emotionally naked group in rap history. Their music is keenly intelligent without being pompous, accomplished without being showoffy, righteous without being preachy. The Foundation is a severely underappreciated piece of work.

 

Bressonian Quote #27 - Notes from a Master Filmmaker

"If an image, looked at by itself, expresses something sharply, if it involves an interpretation, it will not be transformed on contact with other images.  The other images will have no power over it, and it will have no power over the other images.  Neither action, nor reaction.  It is definitive and unusable in the cinematographer's system. (A system does not regulate everything.  It is a bait for something.)" - Robert Bresson

From:  Notes sur le Cinematographe/Notes on the Cinematographer (1975)

The Optical Files #21: KRS-One - Keep Right (2004)

In 2003 I met KRS-One at a book signing & told him he changed my life. So obviously I was right there on release day to pick up Keep Right, & I used to crank it during those 90-minute round-trip commutes when I worked at Dulles Airport. Even with those rose-colored glasses, I had forgotten just how strong this album is. It isn't quite up to the standard of its predecessor Kristyles, but the songs are consistently good & it doesn't sag under its 51-minute weight.

Like I mentioned in my writeup on Kool G Rap's The Giancana Story, the early 2000s were not great years for indie hiphop production because music publishers were cracking down on sample clearance & a lot of beatmakers were afraid to use samples. Similar to that G Rap album, a lot of the beats on this album feel a bit too low-budget MIDI, & there are no real big-name producers. Kris kept this one in-house. (DJs are another story, though, as the album has scratch appearances by Q Bert & a young Statik Selektah!) Not all the beats are lackluster, though--"Me Man" by Domingo has a swaggering funky drum loop with a keening, ominous classical violin; "I Been There" by B. Creative rides a sinister piano loop with tasteful, reverb-drenched floating synths & staccato bass that stays just this side of being overproduced; Kris's frequent collaborator Soul Supreme from Inebriated Beats hits a home run with "Let Em Have It," an energetic uptempo track with horn stabs & Latin percussion. The Blastmaster himself contributes one beat to the pile, "The I," featuring a glittery orchestral sample & a typically rugged Mad Lion appearance. At least you can never accuse Kris of falling into the trap a lot of other veterans find themselves in, embarrassing themselves by trying to trend-hop & update their sound. The Teacha has no desire to court the mainstream. He always keeps it boom-bap, or at least boom-bap adjacent.

If the beats on Keep Right are not always stellar, the lyrics make up for them. KRS always has opinions, but depending on the album, he's gone back & forth between focusing his commentary on sociopolitical matters & targeting wack rappers & the state of the industry. On this album he leans more toward the latter, with songs like "Phucked" (largely about rappers who didn't take his advice to stay independent). But Kris is from the true school, so you never get a bunch of preaching without a whole lot of rappity rap, & for that I, at least, am grateful. The best balance is my favorite track on the album, "You Gon Go?" produced by Ten. On a slightly Preemo-esque, nostalgic sunny sounding beat, Kris bigs up his own live show while showing us how to separate the pros from the weekend warriors. "I'm still standing, & rappers be mad mad/Cuz they know they'll get burnt like the American flag in Baghdad/All they do is blab blab, that head chatter/Why the dopest emcee always a dead rapper?" Sadly, this song's assessments of the sorry state of hiphop in 2004 ring eerily true today. But I've been around long enough to know that's not so much because he was so prophetic but more because of how little anything really changes.

The Optical Files #20: The Beatles - Please Please Me (1963)

My uncle Jerry was the only one in my family who heard music the way I heard it. He gave me this CD (along with With the Beatles) for my 12th birthday in 1997. I was just starting to play the drums, & he told me to practice by playing along to these songs. It would keep my playing simple, straightforward & tight, he said. It was the first time somebody had encouraged me to not just passively listen to music, but to engage with it as a participant.

(It's also why, to this day, I will tolerate no Ringo slander. To counter an apocryphal Lennon quote that I doubt he ever actually said, Ringo may not have been the best drummer in the Beatles, but he was the best drummer for the Beatles.)

A few years later, when I was a high school freshman & still didn't know much of anything, an older classmate told me he was in a punk rock band. When I asked if they played originals or covers, he looked at me like I'd asked if he wiped his ass with toilet paper or aluminum foil & scoffed "we're not a COVER band." Then he spat on the ground as if the very phrase "cover band" had left a rancid taste in his mouth. Only later did I learn that this rock & roll disdain for covers came, indirectly, from the Beatles. They created the concept of the self-contained rock band who wrote their own songs, played their own instruments, created their own arrangements, conceptualized their own artwork, etc. (The original liner notes by Tony Barrow, which my CD reproduces, say "Producer George Martin has never had any headaches over choice of songs for The Beatles," demonstrating how unusual this arrangement was for the time.) Given that, perhaps it's a bit surprising that only 8 out of 14 songs on their debut album are originals. It's even more absurd when you realize that the McCartney/Lennon-penned songs are vastly more interesting than the covers, with the possible exception of "There's a Place."

I enjoy revisiting albums I know really well but haven't played in a while. You notice little things with fresh ears, like just how impressive the nimble, twisty arrangement of "Ask Me Why" really is. Of course, Paul's bass is easy to overlook until you tune into it, then it's impossible not to hear how incredible his runs & scales are. This is apparent right from the opener, "I Saw Her Standing There." "Lead bass" indeed.

On this listen I also noticed the nice balance of rock & pop on the record. It opens & closes with a pair of ferocious rockers, plus we get "Boys," "Please Please Me" (which I always thought & continue to think is about oral sex), & "There's a Place" along the way, while the rest of the album is mellower early '60s pop. There's even a Burt Bacharach tune! Another element I noticed on this listen is how finely matched John & Paul's voices are (& George to a certain extent, though he stands out when he sings lead, especially on "Do You Want to Know a Secret"). Their vocal identities were still developing, but it seems like a conscious choice to attempt to sound like one another to make duets like "Misery" smoother. Actually, most of the time it's more like John is trying to sound like Paul rather than the two meeting in the middle. The exception, of course, is "Twist and Shout," where John sounds more like John Lennon than John Lennon. Apparently he was getting over a cold, but whatever the cause, the raging, ragged vocal performance makes me feel like I'm standing in a dingy basement club in Hamburg listening to a road-hard band's last number of the night.

I've always thought about the Beatles the same way I think about the Wu-Tang Clan: it's once-a-century astounding that they even existed. That 4 guys with THAT much talent, vision & innovation could (a) exist at the same time & place, (b) find each other, & (c) manage to cooperate enough to create multiple albums together almost beggars belief. But it happened, & Please Please Me is the seminal text from which all rivers flow.

150 Films/150 Days #01: The First 5 Films

To open the new year, I began this series, 150 Films/150 Days, as a means of returning to my screening habits of old. Click the link to read the Series Introduction.  The general idea is to return to my film school roots of obsessively watching all the films from all the places all the time.  

The Comprised List is over 150 films deep with integral films missed from the past 10 years and beyond, as well as a few just for popcorn giggles.

I'll be making regular posts of 5-10 films at a time, including my screening notes, random and unedited.  Each film will be listed with the release date, relevant creative contributors, the means of screening, and a written response.

After the screening, I will assign a level of recommendation to each film as follows: 

HR-highly recommended, R-recommended, N-neutral, F-failings too extensive to appreciate (hopefully never or rare).

The first film watched was February 1, and the final day will be June 30 (exactly 5 months).  

All are welcome to watch along.

The First 5 Films:  

1.  The Master (2012):  Watched on Hulu, 02/01.  Directed by PT Anderson, Performances by Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Joaquin Phoenix.

 

Screening Notes - Scratch notes from pen to paper to you, no edits:  

PT Anderson with this cast - I mean, what else need be said.  Epic fantastic filmmaking.  Soundtrack insane and necessary storytelling element.  Much to consider and discuss.  Obviously the parallels with scientology cult-like nonsense is of interest, but more intrigued in exploring Freddy and his arch (written 30 mins in).

Oh wow, that was jus a lovely twisted spectacular ending.  Pulled the whole damn brilliant thing together.  Wow, just wicked good.  Laughing aloud after the final shot for all the right reasons.

Recommendation Level:  HR

2.  The Matrix Resurrections (2021):   Watched on HB0 - simultaneous theatrical release, 02/02. Directed by Lana Wachowski, Performances by Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss.

 

Screening Notes:  Well, that wasn't very good, ha.  A bit disappointed.  I think I went in with higher expectations than realized.  Not sure why, as the original is the only one I feel any connection to.  I did appreciate and find humor in the meta narrating self-parody aspect.   

Recommendation Level:  N

3.  Licorice Pizza (2021):  Watched at Alamo Drafthouse, 02/03.  Directed by PT Anderson, with an eclectic cast of choice. 

Screening Notes:  PT Anderson at age 16 taking us on a joy ride thru the Valley.  How could it not be quirky as hell and fun?  And it was.  Loosely autobio inspired coming of age story, sorta.  Can't quite process my full impression of the film that a friend described as "masturbation of character development" on the screen.  I would add of set-pieces and antics strung together by a thin narrative, and that was just fine.  PT is one of those filmmakers that has reached a level in which he can break some rules magnificently, because he's just that damn good.  Not quite what I expected, but PT candy for the eye and just so fun.  

Stylistic and filmmaking decisions intriguing as always.  This may be a slow-burn.  I'm not sure what I just saw - I say with a giant grin.   

Recommendation Level:  HR

4.  Don't Look Up (2021):   Watched on Netflix, 02/04.  Directed by Adam McCay, Performances by Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep. 

Screening Notes:  Wow, that was horrifyingly on point!  And clever as hell.  Like Idiocracy - on the nose and it hurts, but this one knew how close it was.  For our times specific.  Communal temporal expression - Reflections of 50's monster movies and Dr Strangelove.

Recommendation Level:  HR

5.  The Thing (1982):  Watched on Blu-ray Disc, 02/06.  Directed by John Carpenter, Performances by Kurt Russel and Wilford Brimley. 

Screening Notes:  My first John Carpenter film - that's right.  With consideration of my sometimes disconnect with the cinematic language of this lineage of horror, I really liked it.  More to say at a later date.  Some damn interesting and unique filmmaking and shot decisions that I think I really like. Carpenter has my attention.

Recommendation Level:  R