Author: Angela Sanchez

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The new record from the Norwegian composer Kaada is a beautiful thing, immense in scope yet startlingly intimate. But, while it plays on a theme – Death; the record, after all, is called Closing Statements – its songs, taken as a cycle, sometimes feel too content to color within the lines.

The LP, out today via Mirakel, offers more than its fair share of supple moments. Songs like “Farewell,” whose gauzy piano borders on faux-Romanticism, occasionally blur the lines between stringed instruments and electronic samples – to great effect. On a song like “Useless, Useless,” it’s even unclear if you’re listening to an acoustic guitar or a sample. The bed for this one is lustrous. “Hey, Unfair, That Was My Exit,” taking cues, perhaps, from its wistful title, is a juicy piece for piano, offering staccato rhythms over more even-keeled Satie-an refrains. “Home In The Dark,” the closer, is eerily epic.

When listened to straight through, though, as a statement of sorts, it blends together far more than when you cherry-pick its excellent, yet individual offerings. Maybe this was Kaada’s intention, to create a kind of Part-like flow between like-minded material as a sort of commentary on how death binds us. (Even its cover implies its cyclical nature.) I admit, I’ll bite. But, while the LP is pretty good when ingested in one sitting, it’s, frankly, pretty incredible when you skim and scan the surface of it. There you have it, kids.

Now, no review of Kaada these days would be complete without the requisite Mike Patton reference. The duo have collaborated on two different recordings, the first – again, keeping in mind songs like “Useless, Useless” – doing an amazing job of blurring the line between organic instrumentation and electronic-generated sound. And there are elements of Romances, the pair’s debut, on display here, for sure. But, while an assist from Patton could have lent more abstraction to the palette, I like what Kaada produced with methods solo. I just don’t know if the tender, almost music-box-like piano a minute into “On The Contrary” would have survived the Patton editing machine unscathed. And the record has lots of beautiful moments like that.

All in all, it’s a fitting rumination on death, a gentle kind of brushing over of the subject that doesn’t get bogged down with minutiae but still manages to get the little details right.

METAL DAD: THE BOOK IS AVAILABLE NOW. COLLECTS YEARS 3 & 4! Click here.

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The Crawling Hand (Episode #106)

Dan: An astronaut is stranded in space without oxygen, yet somehow does not die; he then crashes back to earth, where a boy and his Swedish girlfriend come upon his severed arm. And that’s when things get weird. The Crawling Hand has everything going against it: It’s cheap, broadly acted, doesn’t make a whole lot of sense and pretty boring for a movie about a severed hand. It’s also a first-season episode, chock-full of Early Installment Weirdness such as green silhouettes in the theater and Joel eating a pellet each time he operates the bridge controls. For all that, it isn’t too bad. The film at least has Alan Hale, Jr., playing the sheriff (it’s fun to close your eyes and imagine you’re hearing the younger version of the character he played in Giant Spider Invasion), and some pretty effective camerawork. As for the episode, the riffing is way more reliant on puns (courtesy Josh Weinstein) and repetition than it would subsequently, but a few moments do stand out. A gesticulating actor prompts Servo to muse, “I wish I had command of my arms like that.” And Alan Hale’s presence prompts some predictable Gilligan’s Island references, and my favorite was when he opens a letter and Crow reads, “Dear Skipper, why haven’t you sent help? Signed, the castaways.”

Tony: I thought it was a grape that Joel got every time he behaved. Regardless, it’s nice to see the very first nationally televised episode available again. Even at this early a stage it was interesting to see the formula for the show starting to gel.

Extras: “Don’t Knock the Strock,” a profile of Crawling Hand director Herbert Strock, which makes a semi-convincing argument that the movie deserves at least a little better than its reputation.

The Hellcats (Episode #209)

Dan: It feels like MST3K did a hundred of these late-60s biker epics, and even the best of them weren’t all that good, and The Hellcats is very far from the best of them. By way of plot, we have an undercover cop who’s killed by an associate of the gang, and so his girlfriend and brother then infiltrate the gang, as totally happens. Beyond that, it’s one phony-seeming biker ritual after another, with parties, drag racing, ritual combat, and a weird recreation of a medieval rack. It’s a tribute to the crew that they manage to make something even fitfully entertaining out of this, and as an episode, Hellcats is surprisingly good, even if a lot of jokes center on how damn confusing the whole thing is. I enjoyed the gang’s meeting with crime boss Scorpio (Servo: “Tell Scorpio to use his codename!”) in his car, where a German Shepherd is sitting proudly in the back seat. “You’re late,” says the boss. “Don Fido is mad,” interjects Servo. Host-segment wise, this is the episode when the writing staff had left Minnesota to hobnob with the network execs, and so the segments are all flashbacks, framed with each character keeping some kind of journal. Thankfully, this was the first and last time MST3K attempted something akin to a clip show.

Tony:  They only did thirteen shows in the second season, and three of them were biker flicks. They all tended to blend together for me. The guys still seemed to have fun with this one. I read that the writers thought the flashback segments seemed like a good idea at the time but, according to Michael J. Nelson, “It took just as long to write the introductory material as it would have to to an entirely new show.”

Extras: The movie’s trailer, where we’re informed that “the Hellcats do what they want to, even if somebody gets killed.”

Santa Claus Conquers The Martians (Episode #321)

Dan: Between MST3K, Rifftrax and Cinematic Titanic, I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve watched this movie — whatever the number, it’s more than Citizen Kane or Casablanca. As holiday traditions go, however, I’d much rather sit down to Joel and the bots teeing off on this Christmas not-classic than just about anything else, even if it edges close to the territory of being too stupid to make fun of. (As I think I noted when reviewing Cinematic Titanic, when you’ve got actors in green body paint and funny hats pretending to be Martians, making fun of the writing or the acting seems kind of beside the point.) This one is really about the host segments anyway, most prominently “A Patrick Swayze Christmas,” which could only have come from the mind and pen of Michael J. Nelson and is probably the best holiday-themed bit they ever did. (Lest we forget, here’s the choral version.) And I love Servo’s recitation of “A Child’s Christmas in Space,” in which the reindeer start exploding like balloons in the vacuum of space until Joel talks him down.

Tony: This is one that I pretty well know by heart, and there was a very good reason that this was also included in a set called “MST3K: the Essentials” (along with the ubiquitous Manos, the Hands of Fate). This is a classic, with a wonderfully odd movie, on-target riffing, and the great host segments. I still wish I had one of those Wham-O Air Blasters though…

Extras: A newly recorded intro by Joel Hodgson, the movie’s trailer, and the wraps for this episode when it appeared on The MST Hour (a syndicated version of the show that split each show into two hour-long episodes and was hosted by Mike Nelson as a narrator based on Jack Perkins).

Eegah (Episode #506)

Tony: Eegah was one of the very first episodes that Rhino released to DVD, and that’s because this is another one of the best shows Joel and company had done. The movie featured giant Richard Kiel as a prehistoric caveman discovered in the California desert by a scientist, his teenage daughter Roxy, and her singing boyfriend. With all the craziness going on, the thing the guys seemed to want to harp on quite a bit was the boyfriend, played by Arch Hall, Jr. Crow referred to him as “Cabbage Patch Elvis” (actually a pretty fair assessment). One nice thing about filming in the desert is that it gave them a chance to do an obligatory dune buggy driving scene, which caused Roxy to shout, “Whee!” (and Tom to respond, “Stop saying ‘whee’! Nobody says ‘whee’!!”) It also provided one of the shows lasting taglines, when Roxy’s dad and the teens go off in search of Eegah. As they were walking away, he had the oddly sounding dubbed line, “Watch out for snakes!” This line was often used as a callback in other episodes, and even became the name of the tour that the new MST3K cast did last year where, appropriately enough, they took another swing at Eegah. This episode also featured one of my favorite inventions, the Porkarina, a large pig-shaped instrument that provided the distinctive music for rural shows like Green Acres.

Dan: Like Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, this is classic, top-ten MST3K, with the greatest call-back joke in the show’s history. Like a lot of classic MST movies, this one tries to do two things at once and so fails at both: it wants to be a horror-thriller while also launching its hero as a rock and roll teen idol. Fans who saw the new cast tackle this movie on the Watch Out for Snakes tour last year can attest that its stupidity and incompetence is more than sufficient to survive a return riffing.

Extras: A new intro from Joel and the original trailer for the movie.

I Accuse My Parents (Episode #507)

Tony: This holds a special significance for me, for when I worked as a volunteer at the first MST3K ConventioConExpoFestARama, I showed this episode to the con-goers. Proceeded by a short extolling the wonders of “The Truck Farmer” (Crow: “Worship the Truck Farmer at the church of your choice!”), the movie itself was a cautionary tale so prevalent when this was made in 1944. It’s about a young man named Jimmy who wins an essay contest where he talks about how great his parents are, when in reality they’re a couple of neglectful lushes, where Tom (as Jimmy’s mother) exclaims, “Mirror mirror on the wall. Will I make it to last call?”. Jimmy later gets a job in a shoe store, where he meets a girl and ends up getting mixed up with gangsters. One thing leads to another, and before you know it, Jimmy’s accidentally shot a man. At his trial, Jimmy takes the opportunity to declare to the judge, “I accuse my parents”, which sounds like a good title for a movie, doesn’t it? But the more I think about it, the more I realize that, while Jimmy’s Mom and Dad were far from adequate, they really had nothing to do with any of the serious crimes that Jimmy committed! Another great episode from Joel and the bots.

Dan: I’ve always kind of liked this movie — it’s a pretty well-executed example of its type, and if the songs aren’t very good, there’s something likable about the whole thing that makes it a pleasant watch. And how many of us have adopted the phrase “french-fried potatoes garnish” as a result of this movie? Or is it just me?

Extras: Another new intro from Joel, the wraps for this episode when it appeared on The MST Hour, and the documentary “The Man on Poverty Row: The Films of Sam Newfield”.

Shorts Volume 3

Tony: This was the rarest disc out of the four, as it was only available if you bought the aforementioned MST3K Essentials set from Rhino’s website. Not only that, but some of the shorts contained within are from episodes that Shout! Factory were unable to release. I think my favorite ones here were the earliest ones, mainly because they were the ones I saw most often. I’m particularly fond of “Speech: Using Your Voice”, where the venerable host reminds us that you must be heard (John Heard?), you must be understood (Huh? Whaa?), and you must be pleasing (Do I please you? Do you find me pleasing?). I also enjoyed “Aquatic Wizards”, which featured kids being taught to water ski by instructors referred to as Chad and Connie Slab-body. In one scene with a 9-year-old towing a 7-year-old skier, Crow notes, “This has got litigation written all over it.”

Dan: My sentimental association with this one: “Once Upon a Honeymoon” was the first Mystery Science Theater I ever saw, when I was still in college and a friend of mine got Comedy Central. The first few shorts in this one are kind of duds in my view, but it picks up as it goes, with “Design for Dreaming” being the best of the bunch. It’s simultaneously futuristic and incredibly dated, and an amazing relic of post-war America; Mike Nelson’s plea “Someone invent rock and roll!” is the perfect response.

I’m glad to see that Shout! Factory is finding a way to re-release some of these harder to find episodes, and including new extras with them as well. It gives us all something to do while we wait for the premiere of season 12 on Netflix. Enjoy, and watch out for snakes!

Here’s the funny thing, though: there are indeed tons of those and their suggestions were so good and so varied that I only had a handful of them. Leave it to your friends to remind you just how much you have left to learn about whatever it is that you think you know a lot about. This was an exercise in humility, to be sure.

Bands making their Dizzy Heights debuts this week: Van Morrison, The Replacements, MIKA, Gorillaz, Mojo Nixon, Eurythmics (!!!), Donna Summer, Bananarama, and Barenaked Ladies. And I’m pretty sure you know exactly which songs I played from each artist.

Thank you, as always, for listening.

Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel (1945, from before there were Tony Awards) and Lerner & Loewe’s My Fair Lady (1956, Tony winner) are unquestionably part of this exclusive club–no first names necessary for these legendary duos. Their standards are etched in our memories. But their books, adapted from venerable source material, are thought to pose challenges for contemporary audiences. I say “thought” because I prefer to think that audiences can roll with the punches that pop up between classic tunes (quite literally in the case of Carousel, where wife beating is a a plot point), and that adapters and think piece writers are making too big a deal out of all this. #MeToo is a valuable reckoning, and I hope a turning point. But it’s foolish to expect the past to be woke to today, as standards of acceptability shift at tweet speed. We should learn from what’s come before, not try to deny it, or bury it.

As it happens, audiences new to the stage versions of Carousel and My Fair Lady, as I was, may not notice anything out of the ordinary. (I only know the 1954 film version of the former, a botch, and the faithful transcription that is the 1964 adaptation of the latter, a Best Picture winner.) I regret missing the 1994 revival of Carousel, which, among other things, won Audra McDonald her first Tony Award (in the supporting category) and is said to have had book and score in perfect harmony. There’s no such equilibrium this time around, in what is best enjoyed as a concert version between talking. There is much to savor: former opera diva Renee Fleming, in her musical theater debut, bringing down the house with “You’ll Never Walk Alone”; the ensemble in a cheering “June is Bustin’ Out All Over”; Jessie Mueller and Joshua Henry’s plaintive “If I Loved You”; and Henry’s knockout first-act closer, “Soliloquy,” an eight-minute aria about fatherhood that every dad should listen to once in a while, as refreshment for the job. Thankfully, before he departed the film of Carousel, Frank Sinatra recorded “Soliloquy,” but he doesn’t blow the door off the hinges like Henry does. The cast album will be a treasure.

Carousel is a reminder of how rich musicals can be. While many current shows are content to dish out the fast food, this is a full-course meal, with an elegant production (Santo Loquasto) that immerses you in New England of the late 19th century, and some exquisite ballet besides (Justin Peck is the choreographer). But the show isn’t as confident as Rodgers and Hammerstein’s later South Pacific and The King and I, and director Jack O’Brien has muddled it further. The show focuses on the star-crossed love and wayward marriage of carnival barker Billy (Henry) and millworker Julie (Mueller); he treats her poorly, curdles with frustration, and is killed before the birth of his daughter. Languishing in purgatory, he gets a chance at heavenly redemption if he can help Louise (Brittany Pollack), who at 15 is mocked for her parentage and has some difficult life choices to make.

This offbeat, and downbeat, scenario, adapted from Ferenc Molnar’s play Liliom, plays more smoothly in Fritz Lang’s 1934 film, which starred Charles Boyer. Not enough is made of the supernatural element, which here wastes the great John Douglas Thompson as the avuncular Starkeeper, and the musical’s happy ending comes too quickly and feels perfunctory. Reading about the show it’s clear that Rodgers and Hammerstein, uncertain where to go next after the legendary Oklahoma!, were also conflicted about it, and did what they could to dispel its darkness. Today the controversy resides in Julie’s embrace of her wife-beating husband, something Louise quizzes her about. Then, she accepted it (“the slaps felt like a kiss”); now, she says nothing, leaving us further confused about an already passive character, which the gifted Mueller brings to partial life only through her command of the songs. (Acting-wise, the show is stolen by Margaret Colin, who, like Thompson, has a non-singing role, that of the jealous carnival owner, and perks up the first act with her flinty performance.) Casting Henry, from The Scottsboro Boys, as Billy further clouds the issue by adding a racial dimension to the show; this is a difficult role to pull off, and while Henry nails the singing his performance is opaque. The best intentions to “update” Carousel have only bogged it down, stranded it in changing times.

My Fair Lady has it easier. Director Bartlett Sher, a dab hand at R&H for Lincoln Center, pulls out the usual stops for L&L in the same venue, with a typically handsome production. George Bernard Shaw’s baked the gender and class conflicts into his play Pygmalion, and the adapters lifted much of it off the page as they converted them into song after glorious song (“Wouldn’t It Be Loverly?”, “The Rain in Spain,” and “I Could Have Danced All Night” for openers). The comically difficult transformation of flower girl “guttersnipe” Eliza Doolittle (Lauren Ambrose, in her terrific musical debut) by the stuffy linguist Henry Higgins (Harry Hadden-Paton, in his New York debut after West End shows and Downton Abbey), and the serious rift that roils their relationship after she’s successfully introduced as a member of London high society, is fully realized on the page and on the stage. (It wasn’t easy; Rodgers and Hammerstein had no luck with it. For an excellent history of the show, and Shaw, and phonetics, do purchase the Lincoln Center Theater Review at the Beaumont.)

The cast is splendid: Norbert Leo Butz as Eliza’s wayward dad, Diana Rigg as Henry’s disapproving mum, Allan Corduner as Higgins’ faithful Major Pickering. Not a streetlamp or flower is out of place. Sher doesn’t mess with perfection, but he has made one addition, at the very end, which firmly grounds the show in our era. I’m not sure it was necessary, as what comes immediately before it, to set it up, almost makes it superfluous. When I saw the show, Hadden-Paton was working very hard on finding Higgins, perhaps a bit too hard (Rex Harrison, ideal now and forever, casts a very long shadow). “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face” allows some warmth in, and he seemed to relax, freed of notes of caricature that he may have eliminated altogether some week later. But it’s Ambrose’s face that will haunt you. I wasn’t sitting very close, but I could see every expression that came across it, and she communicated so much–gratitude, tenderness, resolve. At 40, she may be “too old” for the part, yet a younger performer couldn’t convey so much expressively. I’m still thinking about it, how lived-in it was. In a few moments she’s Eliza and everywoman, and without prodding My Fair Lady is renewed for our cultural moment.

Popdose presents – exclusively – from Brooklyn-based indie blues-soul singer/songwriter James VIII his newest track, “Blueberry Wine”.

With such a wide range of influences, James VIII’s sound is not easily categorized into any one genre, but he defines it simply as soul music. In his own words, this is “music made with conviction and passion. You can hear someone’s heart when they wear it on their sleeve and that’s what I pursue every time I step on stage. I close my eyes, let my face look as ridiculous as it feels inclined to look, and lose myself in expression. I’m not trying to sound like anything or anyone in particular really, I’m just trying to get a feeling across in a way that will resonate.”

About the song, he says, “This song only took about 20 minutes to write, because it sort of felt like I had already heard it, or knew it somehow. The message; the melody; the arrangement – it all was sort of right there in my ear from the beginning, so the song came really quickly, and it became something that I am really proud of because everything about it sort of just feels right. ”

Listen and decide!  The ears have it.

James VIII will release his VIII E.P. on June 1, 2018.

www.jamesviii.com/