Love Song by Rainer Maria Rilke

How can I keep my soul in me, so that
it doesn't touch your soul? How can I raise
it high enough, past you, to other things?
I would like to shelter it, among remote
lost objects, in some dark and silent place
that doesn't resonate when your depths resound.
Yet everything that touches us, me and you,
takes us together like a violin's bow,
which draws *one* voice out of two separate strings.
Upon what instrument are we two spanned?
And what musician holds us in his hand?
Oh sweetest song.



*Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 - 1926), circa 1920. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images) @ PicApp

Spinal Tap Is Back From the Dead

Some time ago, watching TV, I saw the trio, “Derek Smalls,” “David St. Hubbins,” and “Nigel Tufnel,” who together compose Spinal Tap – not as the rock band in spandex that they are, but as themselves in real life, Harry Shearer, Christopher Guest, and Michael McKean, respectively, looking old and gray in laidback shirts, carrying their acoustic guitars, singing Spinal Tap songs unplugged and country-style. They were insistent, in an interview, that while there is some clamor for their return as the now Legendary Losers of Rock, it isn’t going to happen, though of course they’ll see.

And they did see, and so shall we, on June 16, when Back from the Dead, a new album from Spinal Tap is scheduled for release, and on June 30, when they are scheduled to perform in the Wembley Arena of London.

It’s hard to imagine how I would personally receive this album beyond the music. After all, the movie This is Spinal Tap was a remarkably precise mockumentary / rockumentary of an ageing British rock group touring in America.

We enjoyed the music in 1984, but more importantly, we laughed our heads off. Why the hell not? The music, the staging, the backstage bantering, the debauchery, and the philosophizing are on target, as if you’re watching either some hugely popular rock group or some serious documentary about rock. The film irreverently poked fun on the demigods of rock, with oblique references to Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Jimi Hendix, Judas Priest, Deep Purple, to name a few – and, my oh my, how we enjoyed laughing at all of them.

In important ways we are freed from them, from the hold they think they have on us rock fans, and, more importantly, the hold that we don’t know they have on us. Watching This is Spinal Tap we are finally able to separate the music from the faces, the craft from the oddities, if not stupidities.

Now, 25 years later, Spinal Tap is back. The get-up of the guys has changed since I last saw them on TV; or, has not changed, if you look at the old movie poster – it all depends on where you’re coming from or from what era. Looking at a recent photo, the hook, the laugh seems to be still there. The eponymous title track also sounds groovy. But gone are the days of glam rock and spandex. So who will be the joke on?

If anything, the idea will only be a kind of nostalgic revisiting, and the first buyers will be the oldies. Spinal Tap, in 1984, were already growing old and growing to be nobodies; the rest of them are gone past growing old now. Let’s see how the young ‘uns will buy it.

*Spinal Tap Dolls photo by Dmason @ Flickr

Checkout the writeup and song stream on Billboard:
Exclusive: Spinal Tap Debuts Song, Comes 'Back From The Dead' For Album

Carnival Song by Tim Buckley

I have just discovered Tim Buckley and am at a loss for words. I will let the music sink in first, but here's a sampling of his poetry.

Carnival Song

The singer cries for people's lies
He will sing for the day to bring him night
The circus burns in carnival flame
And for a while you won't know my name at all
But sing and dance and love for pennies and gold

The juggling clown smiles to me
And every frown we agree is glad
The nighttime comes to bring the bums
From Bowery heat to crimson streets of wine
But magic lands will never touch our sands

Your children smile in single file
They learn mistakes that others make
They see although they cannot know
The needs they'll need to have their greed grow wild
But dance and sing, for others bring the shame
And for a while you won't know my name

*My Name is Tim photo by BLEXBOLEX @ Flickr.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

On the one hand, it’s hard not to like X-Men Origins: Wolverine. It does feed that conditioned enjoyment and acquired taste of following Superhero tales. Plot loopholes are not that important, when you are following the movie as you have followed the previous movies, the television series, and the comic books. And if so, that means you have invested the narrative with sentiment and nostalgia, and you can’t simply let go of that. On the other hand, it’s hard to like it too much either.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine possesses that promise which many comic books and movie prequels have also promised – that it will give you a taste, a sip or maybe a drink, from the well of origins, from where everything had begun, from where everyone derives his identity, from where one gains a glimpse of destiny. We have allowed many Superhero narratives to play with our minds regarding these beginnings (and deaths): Superman, Batman, X-Men are just three of the narratives we’ve embraced too much not to follow through.

I think this promise, embedded in the narrative and the promotional ads, is all we can take with us with satisfaction after watching X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

In terms of production bombast, the movie is a middler. Not bad, but oftentimes you find yourself distracted because of the flawed special effects, which always remind you of the images’ artificiality. The scene where Wolverine tries out his new claws, or where he blows up the chopper and walks away, are just a couple of the embarrassments. There are much more, which alerts you that this movie is not Dark Knight or Lord of the Rings. Such shortcomings it makes up for in terms of razor-sharp editing, the drool-over-your-pants display of superhero powers by each mutant character, and the fabulous opening billboard, where two wolf-men go through several wars side-by-side. For that superb opening alone you already get you money’s worth.

Though, like Dragon Ball Evolution, it fails in sticking too much to the formula. Once again we get that obligatory ‘training’ or ‘mentoring’ stage, where the hero must work side by side with fellow warriors and learn the hard way. This is, of course, a genre convention. But it takes too much screen time (in both films), and we wonder when all of these would fall neatly into the human (mutant?) drama; but they never do fall into place. Here we see a bunch of half-baked supporting characters that muddle the emotional force of Logan/Wolverine’s inner struggle; and when one by one they die, we don’t care at all.

One reason why the ‘death’ of the love of Logan/Wolverine’s life doesn’t affect us too much is the muddled path which leads us squarely into this ‘tragedy’; so many things have happened; so many people we’ve already met; and yet this very turning point has not been particularly earned yet. As such, it comes out quite contrived, especially since it (the death) and she are supposed to represent the climax of Logan/Wolverine’s revolt against his own nature, which is embodied at worst by his brother.

But, as I’ve mentioned, the promise of revelation about Wolverine’s beginnings is what carries you through the film. The drama between Victor Creed and Jim Logan and their family, what all of it is worth, is the most important contribution of the film, both to our (profound) human need for reason and rhyme and our (conditioned) consumer’s need for supernatural explanation, which actually points back to the human need.

This drama has been played and replayed since time immemorial – Cain and Abel, Esau and Jacob, King Lear, The Adarna Bird, East of Eden, Hannah and Her Sisters, to list some odds. One sibling is brooding, selfish, dying of need for love, but unable to say so, ruthless, and one sibling is much like the other, made of the same stuff, but with a different shade, dying of need for love too, but doesn’t give a damn whether he gets it or not, because he is self-sufficient, disaffected, wanting to love back but repelled and unaware, because the other sibling is too selfish, just like him and yet so unlike him; how they are alike and how they are different – this is their sure downfall and their possible salvation.

The very family of these siblings drives them to despair, and the very redemption of a family is what they would give everything to have. This is why – over the death of a girlfriend – the death of Logan’s ‘foster’ parents, no matter how brief and unnecessary to the plot, is more affecting.

This is the drama of X-Men Origins: Wolverine which we can chew on long after the film, with the help of great performances by Hugh Jackman and Liev Schreiber. And the ending – the removal of Logan/Wolverine’s memory – is the greatest tragedy of all; from now on he is Lost and left to wander on his own, no longer hating and plotting to kill his very brother, enabled but struggling against his own beastly nature, but no longer able to love him and be loved by him either, which is their freedom.

The film alludes to Tolkien in one scene, from the back of a truck: “Not all who wander are lost,” a sticker said. This is our hope that goes out to Wolverine, that the origin of origins would somehow, someday be restored.

*X-Men Origins: Wolverine LEGO photo by u7k6a123 @ Flickr

U2’s Cedars of Lebanon, Breathe, Yahweh, & Grace

In the last post I made some observations about the direction that U2’s No Line on the Horizon took, especially musically, and how it was in a peculiar sense a kind of homecoming.

Lyrically, meanwhile, the songs are a continuous exploration of metaphysical – and many times, very basic – questions. In yet another post, comparing “Magnificent” and “Cedars of Lebanon” to Green Day’s “Know Your Enemy,” I mentioned how U2, in the last three albums, have been singing practically only about Love. Not about “romantic love” as Bono emphatically clarifies in “Miracle Drug,” but a love that “makes no sense of space and time.” A love that “takes strangers in,” whether strangers, who are starving to death by the thousands, or a rock star, who “needs God’s help.” In other words, the songs have been explicitly Christian.

This is not altogether news, since these Irish rockers come from Roman Catholic and Protestant stocks. The ‘homecoming,’ lyrically, happened from Pop to All That You Can’t Leave Behind. It is, indeed, a great risk that the band had taken, when, from crooning with devil’s horns in third-person, Bono (once again) started singing about Love – a risk, because we all know the contempt half of the world has for anything Christian. The cover of All That You Can’t Leave Behind alluded to Jeremiah 33:3, and the record ended with the track entitled “Grace,” which is unmistakably a testimony of Christian belief. Toward the end, the song goes,

Grace...
She carries a world on her hips
No champagne flute for her lips
No twirls or skips between her fingertips
She carries a pearl in perfect condition

What once was hurt
What once was friction
What left a mark
No longer stings...
Because Grace makes beauty
Out of ugly things.

From then on, this theme has been more and more pronounced. On the one hand, the risk could have resulted to some kind of sour reception, just like when Bob Dylan started doing religious songs beginning with Slow Train Coming onto Saved (the first was a commercial success, perhaps for its novelty, and the next was just simply too much to accept). But the music from All That You Can’t Leave Behind was simply fantastic that one would be hard-pressed to dismiss it as anything less than great. What’s more, America – and the rest of the world – was momentarily humble and meditative at the time, what with the historic 9/11; back then you could sing to “Walk On” and just put your tears on auto-pilot.

But then U2 came up with How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, and lyrically the band took it so much further – further than their younger days, when they sang anthems for the youth straight out of the book of Psalms. How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, as in the previous, punctuated the statement once again with the last track, this time with a song entitled “Yahweh.” The imagery is even more staggering in its directness:

Take these hands
Teach them what to carry
Take these hands
Don't make a fist no
Take this mouth
So quick to criticize
Take this mouth
Give it a kiss

Yahweh, Yahweh
Always pain before a child is born
Yahweh, Yahweh
Still I'm waiting for the dawn.

This is how it is to dismantle an atomic bomb, and they got a Grammy for the record, overshadowing ‘the return of mimi.’

No Line on the Horizon, no doubt, is a continuation of this lyrical trajectory. One would not miss this, just browsing on track titles alone, like ”White as Snow,” “Moment of Surrender,” and “Unknown Caller.” The ‘comedy’ referred to in the track “Stand Up Comedy” – which, along with “Get on Your Boots,” sounds like it could have come from the previous album – suggest both the classical and Christian idea of the term, that is, that the end will be happy, not to say triumphant.

Interestingly, though, what would have meant seamless lyrical continuity following the records’ last tracks was curved. If the earlier report was true that the songs in No Line on the Horizon plus more were supposed to be released as two records entitled Daylight and Darkness (in that order?), then that would give a clue to the track-succession decisions and the lyrical exploration.

Following “Grace,” which was quiet confession and celebration, and “Yahweh,” which was an humble and hopeful prayer, then “Breathe,” from No Line on the Horizon, would have been a logical continuation. The song is now more upbeat, an exhortation in a form of ‘good news,’ the good news of having found grace and not being able to keep it to yourself. But “Breathe” was second to the last track, and instead we have the whispery “Cedars of Lebanon” as punctuation, almost a comma.

Instead of the ‘comedy’ of “Breathe” or even “Magnificent,” we have an elusive song, this time not content, though fully founded on, the hope in a ‘comedic’ ending. The reference to the cedars of Lebanon is vague, thoughtful at best. There is almost no question that U2 meant it to activate several word associations, since they are wont of doing this.

As with older songs, like “Pride (In the Name of Love)” and “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” the song seems to allude to historical events, specifically the Cedar Revolution, which was launched as a call to the ejection of Syrian military from Lebanon. If so, this would highlight the contemporary issue of American military presence in the Middle East and American foreign policy. But there are other characters in “Cedars of Lebanon,” apart from the child drinking dirty water and the soldier.

Many have already noted the biblical associations: Cedar wood was used to construct King Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem so that the presence of Yahweh could come down; Moses ordered the priests to use cedar barks for the Jewish ritual of circumcision and the ritual cleansing of lepers; and Isaiah compared the Lebanon cedars to the pride of the world.

Throughout the song, what comes through are glimpses of inward-looking people, snapshots of faces doing some mundane activity, whose thoughts we could only guess, and the incoherent thoughts of someone wanting something. These images and the word associations put together suggest a sober demonstration of what it’s like to be alone, to be in deep thought at least and to be in deep shit at most, and an exhortation to “choose your enemies,” which could be an enemy in the social, physical sense or an enemy within.

*U2 Lego photo by Dunechaser @ Flickr

I read these for insight on what goes on in Bono’s mind:
Bono: Grace Over Karma
Bono: In Conversation with Michka Assayas

The Producers of U2’s No Line on the Horizon (Interscope)

U2’s No Line on the Horizon has been released to critical acclaim, and while it has been earlier reported that this album was supposed to be experimental, relative to the band’s last two studio albums, All That You Can’t Leave Behind and How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, and with the coming on-board of Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno – both experimental producers par excellence – this record did not turn out to be entirely experimental.

The production history of the album reveals some interesting threads. Coming from Achtung Baby and Zooropa, and transitionally through Pop, the last two records of U2 before No Line on the Horizon have been driven by stripped-down rock, ushered in by the trio of songs – which I personally feel are yet to be achieved again – “Beautiful Day,” “Elevation,” and “Walk On.” In these two records U2 simultaneously made their music and image accessible again, at the same time, quite elevated into instant classics, now impossible to parallel. It’s as if they have aged; they have arrived in some place where there is no longer any backdoor; and they are neither going to be young again coming out the front door to surprise us nor precarious underground artists trying to break open some window or wall to create new entrances or exits.

U2 was originally at work on the new record with Rick Rubin, famed for his label American Recordings, who was earlier reported to have urged the band to go “back to basics.” Rubin had successfully produced Johnny Cash in his “back to basics” American Recordings, making him once again relevant to the young, by, ironically, highlighting what Cash was – that is, old and therefore legendary. In retrospect, musically, this seems no longer possible for U2, or if it were, it would prove to be a digression; at least for now that they ain’t anywhere, literally, near their graves. All That You Can’t Leave Behind is as basic as it could get for these guys, and they had to move on from there.

But where?

The exit of Rubin and the entrance of Eno and Lanois provided a glimpse of this would-be direction forward. Lanois had been a constant collaborator, producing U2’s now classic early works, The Unforgettable Fire and The Joshua Tree. Lanois seems to have provided a kind of musical continuity in these two albums, in such preoccupations with certain types of reverberating sounds and round tones. A musical quality in these albums is also somehow felt in Lanois’ production of Bob Dylan’s Oh Mercy, which of Dylan’s records of that period, production-wise, sounds more like U2 than Dylan. Lanois was also with U2 when they went experimental berserk, producing Achtung Baby, and with the band when they returned ‘home,’ producing the last two records, All That You Can’t Leave Behind and How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. (Incidentally, he was also with Bob Dylan when he returned [or was it left, yet again?] ‘home,’ with Time Out of Mind, which many critics characteristically described as ‘ghostly’ – which is a Lanois trademark.). So, in more ways than one, U2 with Lanois is another homecoming.

Lanois in the 1980s also produced the music of Horizon’s co-producer, Brian Eno, specifically Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks, The Pearl, and Thursday Afternoon. Eno himself is known for his landmark musical experiments, as synthesizer player of Roxy Music, as solo ‘inventor’ of wildly original ethereal music, and as record producer.

The most interesting thing about U2’s No Line on the Horizon, in fact, is that we never hear the ghostly and the ethereal in the foreground, as we would expect after reading the producers’ names and reading that U2 was going experimental again – though it looms in the background and it blankets all spaces in between silences and phrases.

There were some exciting anecdotes about how the band did live recording and kept many first takes. This ensured a kind of raw music that was most certainly U2, and what had been added or what influence came in compositionally and production wise through Lanois and Eno was tempered by these liberating recording decisions. We hear in the songs both the experiments in scales and progressions of The Edge and Adam Clayton, which in themselves evade untrained ears, and the echoes, reverbs, and delays of the ambience devised by Lanois and Eno. The recording process ensured that performance took precedence.

Also, a part of the album was reportedly recorded in the context of Bono’s participation in the Festival of World Sacred Music, and this provides another clue to how the record would eventually sound. The experiment then is in keeping with the band’s musical (and lyrical) trajectory. It does not digress coming from the last two records, and neither does it retreat. In many ways this is the logical next-album after How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. The stripped-down, the ghostly, the ethereal, the raw, the sacred, brought in by the quartet and the duo – these all bloomed and turned into the record which we now have.

Green Day’s Know Your Enemy

The new single by Green Day, “Know Your Enemy,” pushes all the right buttons of commercial appeal to set the stage for the band’s new album, 21^st Century Breakdown, which is slated for release on May 15. The song is a radio-friendly pop-punk track, and the chorus activates the last-song-syndrome, with its easy-title-recall chanting. The point of the song, lyrically speaking, suggests continuity with their critically and commercially acclaimed American Idiot album, specifically via an oblique but nevertheless political reference to the “enemy.” The lyrics go this way:

Violence is an energy
Against the enemy
Violence is an energy

Bringing on the fury
The choir infantry
Revolt against the honor to obey

Overthrow the effigy
The vast majority
Burning down the foreman of control

Silence is the enemy
Against your urgency
So rally up the demons of your soul

Do you know the enemy?
Do you know your enemy?
Well, gotta know the enemy

There is a pent-up energy brewing, whose outworking is quite the reverse (but parallel?) to U2’s No Line on the Horizon, with a line (in “Cedars of Lebanon”) that goes:


Choose your enemies carefully ‘cause they will define you
Make them interesting ‘cause in some ways they will mind you
They’re not there in the beginning but when your story ends
Gonna last with you longer than your friends.


Whereas the old timers have come storming with good ol’ rock with All That You Can’t Leave Behind and How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, culminating before Horizon with the cover of The Skids’ “The Saints Are Coming” (with Green Day) and singing only practically of Love (listen to “Magnificent” and “Stand Up Comedy), finally coming ‘round to some musically “spiritual” modes with Horizon, the young ‘uns are apparently tired of the slowburn and calling on all punks to unite, until they themselves give the signal to light some flame with butane.

The album titles as well have uncanny continuity, with the former Grammy Winner’s blunt phrasing referring to one-and-all (or one-and-everything) finally giving way to a kind of a general assessment of the state of the nation. Timely and spine-tingling, given the economic crises which Uncle Sam is facing.

So, come May 15, ten days from now, will the irony hold – a new, commercially successful album like the outing five years ago, out of the ruins of a failing Old Man today?

War Child presents Heroes (Parlophone / Astralwerks)

I just got a hold of the newest charity album sensation, Heroes, produced by the War Child organization. As their website describes it, “War Child protects children in the world's most dangerous war zones who have no-one else to turn to… by

· reintegrating child soldiers with their families

· getting children off the streets, after war has forced them to leave home

· separating children from adults in prison

· rebuilding schools destroyed by war

· lobbying politicians to do more for children affected by war

· empowering the public to get involved.”

With the same premise of ‘the older generation empowering and placing faith on the next generation,’ War Child asked iconic music artists, including Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder, David Bowie, Brian Wilson, The Kinks, and U2, to select a song from their now pop-canonical repertoire and nominate an up and coming artist to produce a new version of the song.

The artists alluded to, the upstarts, the landmark songs, and the promise of fresh renditions lend credibility to the album’s subtitle “The Ultimate Covers Album,” though the very wide range of expectations invited by such a lineup, which also includes songs by The Clash, The Stooges, The Ramones, Joy Division, Roxy Music, Blondie, Elvis Costello, and Bruce Springsteen, not fully delivers.

There isn’t any throwaway track, if money’s worth is the question, but the result is quite uneven. Take for example the opening track. Beck’s signature techno-orchestration and riffs greet us and drive his version of “Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat.” You stomp your feet to the groove and wait; the track ends, though, and, at first, it seems to fall flat, if one considers the high-drama of ‘Beck-doing-Dylan-as-the-headline.’ You’d think, his done this before and better. But the grumble ends there, since, after all, it’s a good track, and it grows on you. And that’s what the album as a whole is like – not bad at all, and it gets better every round.

The Kooks’ version of “Victoria,” Hot Chips’s “Transmission,” and Peaches’ “Search and Destroy,” while fascinating tracks on their own, remind you of the originals and how they do not quite measure. Meanwhile, better tracks, like Scissor Sisters’ “Do the Strand,” Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ “Sheena is a Punk Rocker,” and Estelle’s “Superstition,” again while worthwhile efforts, remind you of the achievements of the great tracks, like Lily Allen and Mick Jones’ “Straight to Hell,” Elbow’s “Running to Stand Still,” The Like’s “You Belong to Me,” and the title-track, TV on the Radio’s “Heroes.” The strength of the latter group is their nearness to the originals, which in the principle of the whole concept of the record, should not be good; but since they have not strayed too far – in the case of Elbow and The Likes, not too far even from the performative qualities of the original artists, not just the original songs – the power of the evoked are still drawn. For these tracks put together, the CD is worth having in your collection.

(My only frustration was that when I finally got my copy in roundabout way, I found out that there was a CD (the North American release), which contained one other track – Adam Cohen’s version of his father Leonard Cohen’s profound “Take This Waltz,” which would have been altogether differently anticipated.)

But Duffy’s “Live and Let Die,” Rufus Wainwright’s “Wonderful / Song for Children,” The Hold Steady’s “Atlantic City,” and Franz Ferdinand’s “Call Me (Live)” are gems. Vocal performances come through almost like tears running down your eyes. The freshness of the melodic phrasings and the arrangements come about not from being completely new nor yet too derived, but from the fine balance between what these artists are bringing in from their own well spring and the oceans that are the originals.

No matter the disjunction between song and cause, or the often pathetic motivation of class guilt or race-superiority complex, not so many things are worth our hard-earned money than a hope like War Child’s. As its website highlights, “All UK profits made by our record label EMI will be donated to War Child UK. Here's how your money can help:

· £10 can feed a street child in the Democratic Republic of Congo for a week

· £30 is all it takes to reunite a former child soldier back into the security and support of their family.

· £3,000 can pay to rebuild an entire school after it has been destroyed by war - giving hundreds of children the chance to get an education and escape the poverty they are trapped in.”

For more details, check out:

War Child's official Heroes webpage

The official UK mini-site for the Heroes album

War Child Music

War Child International

War Child Canada

War Child Holland

War Child UK