Tex informs me that Brooks & Dunn actually do have some cred - he informs me that in the 1990s there was a sort of Renaissance in country music, and that they were part of it. Indeed, I missed that - though I do remember poor hapless Bob Mothersbaugh backstage at the Club Lingerie talking backstage to a young guy with a baseball cap turned around backwards who was A/R for BMG. "C'mon man, sign my band" Bob was satying. And the baseball cap said, without batting an eyelash "I'm sorry, I can't. But do you know where I can find some good country music acts?"
Yesterday I did not blog as I was tired enough to actually get some sleep. However, I did hear the new Micheal Nyman disc, which is called "Sergun" ir something like that. It's an "east meets west" type disc with Nyman developing a backdrop for some Indian Classical musicians. I gave it a lukewarm, though not negative, review, but honestly if it were buried in a pit of excrement a thousand feet deep I would've somehow extracted it and re-buried it in one a thousand feet deeper. It's that terrible. I liked the early Micheal Nyman Band, and certainly I enjoy minimalism and music that owes a debt to Cornelius Cardew and all that. But in recent years I feel Nyman is just too easily satisfied and that he has the Warholvian idea that he can just touch any two measures of music with his magic brush and somehow bring it to life. This wore out its welcome in mere seconds, and I could barely make my way through the disc. It was putrid.
Speaking of Warhol, did you know that you can now get a DVD of "Lonsome Cowboys" in Europe? Only thing is, it's dubbed in Italian! See http://www.rarovideo.com/eng/schede/lonesome.htm
The original is hardly tolerable as it is, and I can't imagine how additionally bad it would be in an Italian dub.
A friend of mine who works at the University of Michigan graduate library told me that the day Jennifer Granholm was elected Governor of Michigan, the lesbian/feminist employees were backslapping and high-fiving all day long, so glad were they to see a woman get the job. Well, guess what - now they're all gone. Granholm's education finance reforms eliminated their jobs.
Last night I saw the restoration of Dudley Murphy's The Emperor Jones (1933) which heretofore has only been seen in a version cobbled together from 16mm TV prints in the 1970s. It was like an entirely different film - the dull visual quality and choppy condition of the older version really did make an impact on how the film holds up, although in the old version Robeson's dynamic edge still came barrelling out of the screen, so that kept interest in the piece high all these years. In the new version you get complete lines of dialogue (for a change), lovely photographic quality, an improved sense of Dudley Murphy's direction, and you also get an idea of how good Dudley Digges portrayal of Robeson's slimy white sidekick is. It was actually Digges' part that took the hardest hit in terms of censored dialogue, and in the cut and paste version his characterization borders on caricature. Not so here - Digges' performance is actually a very modern, complex portrayal of a many-sided individual with no loyalties, much as you'd expect from an actor in a post-Lee Strasberg film. Overall, The Emperor Jones is a VERY modern film for 1933, although if made today they couldn't get away with using the "n-word" as often as it is heard. Having seen the "old" The Emperor Jones several times I really appreciated seeing the ending with no splicemarks nor missing bits of soundtrack, I was never able to make out quite what was going on in that sequence before. Also the sound quality of the film was GREATLY improved, to the point where you could really enjoy the fine Gospel arrangements that J. Rosamond Johnson contributed. Thank you Library of Congress!
Uncle Dave Lewis