Event Preview: Trit95 Announces Self-Titled Debut LP on Dream Recordings

                       Trit 95 Vinyl LP pre-order link

Event Preview:  Trit95 Announces Self-Titled Debut LP on Dream Recordings

   Very excited that this Vinyl record is being released on Dream Recordings.   This blog began as a "local music blog" back when those were themselves a rarity, music blogging either being non-locally oriented or located in New York.  One of the thing I learned during that period is that people who participate in a local music scene are very interested in reading about themselves but rarely interested in reading anything other than that.  Who could blame them?  When I stopped writing about local music, I lost most if not all of that audience.  One thing readers have proven NOT to be interested in over the years is blog posts about bands on my own label.  I've spent plenty of time going back and editing this blog- basically deleting the original posts and grouping them together thematically, and I know that the posts that generated the least interest over times were those that dealt with my own personal record label and those bands.  People don't come to this blog to read about those things.

   This record is a compilation of all the tracks Trit95 has self-released, mixed and mastered for the first time, and produced as a vinyl record.  It's been a great experience, and it has reinforced some observations I've made over the years about working with artists, specifically, that it is much easier to work with an artistic person if you can speak to them face to face.  That really goes for everything- trying to do things over phone, or text or email is 100% more difficult than a face to face meeting, so the fact that Tristan lives in San Diego and could actually see Mario and talk to him (Mario Orduno), was great. 

  I've loved his patient/nonchalant attitude about the process- a common experience for me over the years is that you are putting out a record by an artist with little or no prior experience in the business of music and no representation at any level.  As a result, they are often anxious- of course, because it's important to them and want to rush the process.  I often advise people who are seeking to hire me as a lawyer that the one thing I can not abide from a client is impatience, because it simply does not allow me to do my job properly.  I can't say the same thing to artists- that is what Mario is for- because I would not be good at handling those sort of relationships- but the feeling of waiting for an inexperienced artist to finish up a record and then moving IMMEDIATELY to the "when is it coming out?" stage is common and frustrating- not only for me, I'm sure but for other labels as well.

  I have high hopes for this record, even though it's a compilation of previously material. I think... the way we've handled it and Trit95's lack of prior vinyl releases is enough to make it legit.  I'm concerned that he's going to get poached from us before we get to put out our agreed upon LP of original material, but that is very much part of the business.

   

Movie Review: Civil War (2024) d. Alex Garland

 

Western Forces flag from the film Civil War (2024) d. Alex Garland

Movie Review

Civil War (2024)

d. Alex Garland

   I haven't written about movies since I wrapped up my Criterion Collection phase, which lasted a couple years.  One of the things that I noticed, writing about movies on my blog, is that so many people have critical opinions about movies that is pointless to try to add something.  Contrast this to the considerable paucity of opinions about amazing authors like W.G. Sebald or Thomas Bernhard.  The other issue that I noticed writing about movies is that they are such a group production, starting with the planning of the shooting of the film, followed by the actual shooting of the film, followed by the post-shooting production of the film to the marketing and distribution, to write about a movie is not to write about an individual work of art but, largely speaking, a massively capitalized financial endeavor undertaken at the behest of a multi-national corporation. 

   Rare is the film that inspires me to state an opinion, but Civil War, directed by Alex Garland, is one of those films.  I am a huge fan of Garland which largely stems from me learning that he was the author of The Beach before he started working in film.  Starting in 2010 he directed a series of films that began to establish him as a significant creative voice- beyond the impact of the writing of The Beach and the film of the book, which he also directed and was released in 2010.  In 2014 Ex Machina was released. I didn't see it for years- I think it must have been on Netflix when I finally did, but there is no questioning that it is a really interesting movie. In 2018 he adapted Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer, which didn't perform very well with audiences or critics, but I happen to think it an amazing movie, personally.  In 2020 there was season one of Devs, which I watched and enjoyed, again I thought Devs again demonstrated that Garland was working with a distinct, impressive, artistic vision.

   Civil War really delivers on this artistic promise in a way that I believe is not being fully appreciated by the discourse, which seems to be driven on either the message or non-message sent by centering the press in the narrative.  What the discussion over this artistic decision lacks is the literary context of the story of the film.  Garland has crafted a picaresque, or tour of horrors, that relates clearly to artistic antecedents extending to the Odyssey and older.  His choice of war photography/journalism as his vehicle is the only option available to him, or anyone else, to tell this story.

   Compare the story of a contemporary Civil War to the experience of Goya, who, between 1808 and 1814, toured Spain to document the Napoleonic Invasion in a series of 82 etchings.  They are currently on display at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, apparently for the first time ever (?) and I had them in mind when I saw Civil War because I'd visited the museum the day before and seen the exhibition.   Goya, following the practice of the time, simply traveled around Spain as a gentleman and took sketches which he then turned into etchings.  The etchings are frank and intimate, the war photography of their time.  Back then, people can, and often did, set up picnics and viewing parties for battles on nearby hills- it was a practice that extended through the start of the Civil War in the United States, and it was a different mode of warfare.

   Garland, seeking to tell a contemporary story, needs contemporary tellers, people present to document the horror.  Each scene in Civil War is a different stop on the tour of horrors, meant to illustrate a different aspect of the overall message, which is that war is a horror.  There should be no issue regarding what Garland's hidden message is when it is right there in plain sight.  That message is enough, and it's a message that has been delivered more or less consistently, interspersed with the opposite opinion, that war is the highest glory of man, for thousands of years.

  I can understand why a lay viewer might not LIKE Civil War- there is plenty not to like for a viewer who is just out for a Sunday matinee at the local AMC.  My partner, for example, won't even see the film for her (justified and accurate) belief that the violence contained in the film is too much.  If you are a viewer looking for a really wide scope battle picture you are going to be disappointed by many of the slow and intimate scenes that largely revolve around dialogue.  If you have strong political beliefs of one kind or another you might take issue with what you might think are the hidden sympathies of the filmmaker.   These are all valid negative lay opinions about the film as a popcorn, matinee movie at the multiplex. 

  I can't understand why a critic would say Civil War is anything other than a great movie.  I believe every critical review I've surveyed fails to engage with the historical context of the artistic form- picaresque- that Garland is utilizing here.   Picaresque is not an art form with a moral imperative, it is from the 18th century and it is meant to simply usher the reader along through the literary equivalent of a series of pictorial engravings.  Each scene is Civil War is an actual "scene," the visual equivalent of a moving Goya etching from Los Desastres de la Guerra.  If you don't understand that connection from the past to the present, you don't understand the film. 

   

Harlem - 1,001 Books: A Library of America

 Harlem - 1,001 Novels: 

A Library of America

1.  The Street (1946) - Ann Petry

2.   Invisible Man (1955) - Ralph Ellison

3.  Passing (1929) - Nella Larsen

4.  Home to Harlem (1928) - Claude McKay

5.  If Beale Street Could Talk (1974) - James Baldwin

6.  Big Girl (2022) by Mecca Jamilah Sullivan

7.  Ruby (1976) by Rosa Guy

8.  Stories From the Tenants Downstairs (2022) - Sidik Fofana

9.  Bodega Dreams (2000) - Ernesto Quinonez

10.  The Ballad of Black Tom (2016) by Victor LaValle

11.  Daddy Was A Number Runner (1970) - Louise Merriweather

12.  Hoops (1981) - Walter Dean Myers

13.  Cool World (1959) - Warren Miller

14.  A Hero Ain't Nothin But A Sandwich (1973) - Alice Childress

  Harlem was my favorite sub-chapter thus far in the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America list.  The top eight titles on that list of 14 are all really worth reading for any student of American literature.  This is also the first substantial body of non-white authors in all the states so far- that's all of New England and now New York.  I wouldn't insert my number one pick from the Bronx (Charming Billy by Alice McDermott) into a combined list above the five slot here.  There wasn't any point in this section where I felt like the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America was a waste of time, as has been the case at some points when I've been slogging through a second or third tier work of detective fiction set in upstate New York or rural New England.   Editor Susan Straight also included her first work of genre-science fiction/fantasy after snubbing H.P. Lovecraft in New England.  Her pick, The Ballad of Black Tom, was curious  but an interesting departure from the rest of the list.

   There was a greater sense of history in Harlem than the Bronx- writers of the Harlem Renaissance helped in that department, but the more recent books were interesting as well. All in all the strongest sub chapter yet. 

Black Vinyl, White Powder (2001) by Simon Napier-Bell

 Book Review

Black Vinyl, White Powder (2001)

by Simon Napier-Bell

  Simon Napier-Bell has one of those "only in England" biographies that starts with him leaving Public School in the 60's to be a tour manager for pre-Beatles English skiffle bands, living in London as the Beatles emerged, managing the Yardbirds and Marc Bolan and then going on to manage the band Japan before managing Wham! Along the way he saw A LOT, which inspired him to write this book, which is a history of the UK music scene with an emphasis on, yes, THE DRUGS.

  What drugs?  Mostly speed and cocaine with some coverage of heroin, hash, LSD and E.  Readers familiar with the events depicted- basically the music industry from the early 1960's through the 1980's from the perspective of a music industry professional who lived in London (Except for that full year he spent abroad for "tax purposes" lol);  but the anecdotal style, interspersed with well sourced quotes from various music magazines and general press interviews, is breezily readable.   I'm not sure I learned anything reading Black Vinyl, White Powder but for those generally interested in the history of pop music in the 20th century it makes for a good addition to the book shelf.   The index is hilarious. 

Passing (1929) by Nella Larsen

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Passing (1929)

by Nella Larsen

Harlem,  New York City

New York: 50/105

Harlem:  14/14

     OK! Done with the Harlem chapter of 1,001 Novels: A Library of America and done with the Bronx/Harlem subgrouping from New York, i.e. the black and brown part of New York City.  Loved the Harlem books, but the Bronx titles were a bummer.  Passing is last up because I thought I had already read this book but couldn't find any record of it.  I ended up checking out the Netflix movie associated Audiobook from the library because it's only four hours long and listened to it during a run.  Passing really seems like more of a novella but it's gone firmly canon- it was on the Atlantic Great American Novel list from last month.

     After listening to the Audiobook I'm still not sure whether I've read it before or not- parts seemed familiar, but I did not remember the ending, and I feel like I would have remembered the ending if I actually had read the book.  The craziest part of this book is that it's about these two friends, both light skinned African American women from Chicago.  One "Passes" and marries a white man, who is also a virulent anti-black racist, the other marries a black Doctor.  They both end up in New York, but the book begins with the black friend recounting a meeting with the passing friend's husband, who calls his wife the n-word as a term of affection because "she gets darker every year."   It's wild. I'm going to go watch the 2021 Netflix movie just to see how they handle it in the movie.