(Items from the Vault)
Badfinger -Magic Christian Music Capitol
Original Release: 1970
Reviewed by Adam D. Miller
In 1968, a group called The Iveys auditioned for Apple Records, a new London-based record label that was formed by The Beatles in an attempt to use their fame to promote new talent. Longtime Beatles cohort Mal Evans was impressed with the group and decided to produce them. Unfortunately, their first single flopped, and The Iveys’ debut album, Maybe Tomorrow, did not receive a proper release.
In 1970, the group decided to give it another go. Their name was changed to Badfinger (Paul McCartney’s working title for “With A Little Help From My Friends”) and Magic Christian Music was released in 1970
Although it contains fourteen Beatles-influenced pop gems, Magic Christian Music is not a regular album. It is, in fact, the soundtrack to a lesser-known Peter Sellers film entitled The Magic Christian. The film’s title song (and incidentally, the first track on the album) is the Paul McCartney-penned “Come And Get It,” a song specifically written for Badfinger to record. The track became Badfinger’s first hit single, not only in Britain, but also the United States, paving the way for a career that would come to flourish in the 1970s with further hits like “No Matter What” and “Baby Blue.”
Despite the fact that the group’s first hit was written by Paul McCartney, most of Magic Christian Music was actually written by Badfinger members Pete Ham and Tom Evans. These tracks, though not nearly as popular as “Come And Get It”, evoke British Invasion and psychedelic influences, recalling earlier British groups like The Kinks and The Hollies, particularly on tracks like “Crimson Ship” and “Dear Angie.”
Since Magic Christian Music is a soundtrack, and not a regular album, it isn’t as cohesive as an album usually would be. Some of the tracks were taken from the discarded Maybe Tomorrow album, while others such as “Crimson Ship” were recorded specifically for the soundtrack. As a result, it comes across as more of a compilation than an album. Beatlesque, but original, it acts as early evidence of the post-Beatles pop movement that would continue through much of the early seventies, with Badfinger playing a key role.
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The Replacements - Let It Be Restless Records
Original Release: 1984
Reviewed by Kid Spill
In a display of both genius and gonads, publishing house Continuum Books nudged open the iron gates of obsessive music fandom by soliciting a variety of music insiders to write a collection of books about individual rock and roll albums. In this publishing series, entitled 33 1/3, each author was directed to choose an album that had influenced their life, their art, and their culture - a task of immense import considering the authors (Warren Zanes, Elizabeth Vincentelli) and the material that was selected (Joy Division, Jimi Hendrix, the Smiths). As it had to be done by someone, Colin Meloy, the cerebrally sexy and accessibly bizarre frontman for mad rockers The Decemberists, chose Let It Be by seminal rock band The Replacements.
Like the Velvet Underground before them, The Replacements were simultaneously underrated and wildly influential. Fans of the band’s blood-on-steel back-alley sound provoke comparisons to the particularly committed devotees of the Smiths and the Pixies. While all bands were critically acclaimed and got their due in so-called indie circles, their significance was never really grasped by the mainstream in the manner of some of their pseudo-contemporaries like Nirvana.
After forming in 1979, The Replacements stumbled through the morning-after debris of the 70s punk scene, and through the course of several albums, explored a few different genres. They eventually forged a confident sound that emerged on Let It Be as more gravelly rock and roll than a compendium of anything else. Released in 1984, Let It Be is often and justly pointed to as the pinnacle of perhaps the best rock band of the 1980s.
The album is flawed and strange, but incredibly good. The timeless factor of Let It Be is staggering. Both “I Will Dare” and “We’re Comin’ Out” could easily be, and perhaps were, the blueprint for much of the now fresh-sounding grubby beer-hall rock. “Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out,” which clocks in at an Olympic 1:51, is Black Flag enough to excite punk fans and melodic enough to suit standard rock purists. “Black Diamond” is half nouveau-roadhouse and half stadium thrasher rock, and while it doesn’t exactly contribute to the overall righteousness of Let It Be, the track is maybe a necessary dud on an album that is magnificently raw and unrefined - one is directed towards the track “Gary’s Got a Boner” for further confirmation of the rough sensibility.
An exemplary song on Let It Be is “Androgynous,” which, in my twisted fantasy, is what Kathleen Hanna’s sixth grade piano recitals sounded like, had she possessed Paul Westerberg’s tobacco-pickled throaty style. On “Androgynous” (as well as on “Fuck School”, a track from 1982), Westerberg ably shows off his sweet and salty, nearly idiot-savant writing. A rock entity in his own right, Westerberg has an earnestly guttural voice and a penchant for unswerving lyrical honesty and earnestness - he sounds much like a sweaty punk kid clamoring to express himself. Which, as the attitude and quality of Let It Be suggests, I suppose he is.
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H.G. Wells - The Time Machine/The Invisible Man
Originally Released 1895
Reviewed by Shel Desormeaux
Wells’ first novel, The Time Machine, is a commentary on the division of British classes and a warning that human beings don’t necessarily progress. The Invisible Man is the story of a man who renders himself invisible, only to find that he can’t reverse the process. And as cool as it is to be able to walk amongst the visible and do as he pleases, it’s not what he thought it would be, and he drives himself mad. At least, that’s what the Coles notes say.
I’m kidding, I’m kidding! I think I just heard Miller choke on his hummus. Don’t worry, boss, I read them.
The passage of time doesn’t mean that people are going to become better, smarter and more productive human beings. The Time Machine, released when Wells was just twenty-nine years old, conveys his theory that bigger, better and faster technology can only make us reticent, and thus we cease any attempt at becoming better people. In essence, we wind up dumbing ourselves down because it’s easier. Doubt about the future of mankind was a theme that ran through many of Wells’ subsequent works.
The Invisible Man is disturbing in a different way. It’s hard to imagine having too much freedom, but when freedom is literally without limits – permitting one to cavort naked and steal from strangers – and is irreversible, it can drive you crazy, like anything of which one indulges in too often.
I don’t think Wells is an overtly talented writer, but the scene in which the title character ingests the potion that will render him invisible to all is pretty impressive: “The pain had passed. I thought I was killing myself and I did not care. I shall never forget that dawn, and the strange horror of seeing that my hands had become as clouded glass, and watching them grow clearer and thinner as the day went by, until at last I could see the sickly disorder of my room through them, though I closed my transparent eyelids.”
Of course, Wells is right with an idea that runs through both works: if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. As often as H.G. Wells, and many before and after him, warned of these inevitabilities, they went ignored and like many novels of many times, they became classics, which doesn’t necessarily mean we pay their lessons any heed.
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The Office Season 1&2 BBC Video
Starring Ricky Gervais, Martin Freeman, McKenzie Crook.
Originally released: 2003
Reviewed by Brighid Mooney
BBC's two-season series The Office has been endlessly compared to Fawlty Towers in its brilliant depiction of an obscenely obnoxious main character. But where Basil Fawlty was an exaggerated figure, The Office manager David Brent is devastatingly human. What makes the show so effective and so funny is that its characters are three-dimensional and fully realized, its comic fodder is culled from stark reality, and it stays true to life from the beginning all the way to its memorable finale. There are no jokes, no laugh tracks, and no requisite happy endings, but The Office is a comedy in the same way that real life can be painfully and appallingly comical. It's all about the awkward and uncomfortable silences and the would-be romances, rivalries, and office politics that are known to anyone who has ever experienced life from a cubicle.
Life in the office can be a soul-crushing endeavour, and nowhere is this more true than in Slough's Wernham-Hogg. In addition to all the normal aggravations of daily office work, the staff at Slough now has to contend with the very real possibility of losing their jobs. Their arrogant and self-aggrandizing boss, David Brent, falsely assures them that they have nothing to worry about, but throughout the first season there is an undercurrent of anxiety about who might be made redundant. Helping to relieve the tension, the office at Wernham-Hogg is filled out with a variety of supporting characters who all seem to suffer fools quite gladly, their obnoxious boss most of all. The irredeemably sleazy Chris Finch, Brent's friend and sales rep, pops into the office occasionally to tell crass jokes and then disappear. There is also Tim, the sensitive everyman who at 30, still lives with his parents and longs for more out of life. Tim pines rather unrequitedly for receptionist Dawn, who is settling for reliability in her engagement to longtime boyfriend and warehouse worker, Lee. In between putting up with Brent's appalling behaviour, and flirting with Dawn, Tim maintains his sanity by winding up Gareth, the sycophantic, uptight team leader. "I could roll a six," Tim says of his potential lot in life, "I could also roll a one. So I think sometimes, just leave the dice alone."
Heading it all up is Brent: horrendous, self-obsessed, and at times, almost unwatchable. What saves him from absolute contempt is the fact that despite taking obnoxious to previously unknown heights, his egotism is decidedly transparent. Beneath a veneer of mistaken self-confidence lives an insecure, lonely mess of a man. It's almost enough to make you disregard your irritation and opt for pity, until he brings out the guitar or regales you with his "very powerful" poetry. His interactions with the rest of the cast are sometimes a lesson in pure discomfort, and his confessions to the camera about his brilliant management style are laughably immodest, but it makes for some of the most truthfully hilarious television ever made. "When confronted by a difficult problem," he sincerely advises, "you can solve it more easily by reducing it to the question, 'How would the Lone Ranger handle this?'"
The culmination of the series is an unforgettable finale, which is as funny, heartbreaking, and disappointing as only real life can be. The increasingly awkward relationship between Tim and Dawn comes to a head and Brent casts off his pretentious brave face as he finally gives in to his own humanity. It is an ending that some may find unsatisfying, but which is absolutely effective, and an appropriate closing to an almost perfectly drawn show. It will be interesting to see if the impending American version can turn out even half as good.
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Greg Proops – AudibleProops Audible.com
Reviewed by Brighid Mooney
If TV watchers rely on Television Without Pity for merciless accounts of their favorite shows, world watchers turn to Greg Proops' comedy without pity, AudibleProops, for a satirically astute assessment of all that is newsworthy. "An aural missile from the left coast aimed directly at the heart of America," the bi-weekly comedy series on Audible.com is a chance for Proops to wax comedic on politics, current events and multitudinous public figures. But AudibleProops is a far cry from his best known and comparably innocuous work on the improv television series Whose Line Is It Anyway?, and the hints of sarcasm, rancor and vitriol that escaped the censors of network TV are now allowed to flow fulsome and unrestrained through the boundless reaches of cyberspace.
Despite an admittedly leftist bias, liberals and conservatives alike are fair game for the misanthropic wrath of Proops, who seeks "to destroy everything that's wrong with America." Whenever freedom is being trounced upon, whenever logic is being exasperatingly cast aside, whenever stupidity, absurdity or ineptitude threaten to take us over, Proops is there with a snarky comment to expose the comedy and the irony of the situation. Proops is relentless in his satire, taking shots at everyone from George Bush and his cronies, to Rush Limbaugh, Michael Moore, and Paris Hilton. Unfailingly intelligent, verbose, and malignant, Proops makes no attempt to be politically correct or universally agreeable, and happily rants on issues like smoking, steroids, gay marriage, and the war in Iraq. "I'd like to go on the record and say I am for both gay marriage and steroid use," he quips, "and if you can combine them, so much the better." Marked by the smug derision of someone who knows he's smarter than most of the rest of us, AudibleProops is peppered with both foreign words and profanity and is punctuated by overt sound effects and the echo of his own laughter.
Notoriously contrary, Proops has an almost unparalleled contempt for humanity as well as nearly everything that the majority adores. Sometimes entire shows are devoted to laying out all-inclusive lists of things he hates, and you can rest assured that something you enjoy will make the cut. But even if you disagree with him, the "hip and sophisticated" will still be able to find plenty to laugh at. The jokes do occasionally get bogged down by righteous indignation or the sometimes unavoidable seriousness of the topics at hand, but Proops seems to recognize this when it happens, promising less whining and more jokes when it does. The only episode completely devoid of the funny is the aptly-named "No Jokes," recorded September 13, 2001, in which Proops forwent comedy in the interest of urging Americans to stay calm, use good judgment, and not rush to anger.
Proops' style of acidic comedy may not appeal to everyone, but he promises not to turn anyone away. If you're looking for a comedian that will respect your intelligence as much as you respect his, Proops may be your man. And if you're tired of media jingoism, government run amok, and the reign of reality television, and seek smart, witty commentary on the endless stupidities that permeate our culture, AudibleProops won't disappoint. "I don't ask that you agree with everything I say," he warns, "just that you chuckle occasionally. In other words, you're entitled to my opinion."
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