Steve Martin’s comedy Meteor Shower lived up to its name, streaking in and out of the Booth before I had the chance to review it. Well, OK, I had the chance, but a certain fatigue stayed my pen, and before I knew it its brief engagement had come and gone. In truth, I didn’t write about it because, like every other show by Martin I’ve seen (including the hokey musical Bright Star), it evaporated minutes after I saw it. It’s a slight farce about a couple, achingly responsive to each other’s feelings (Amy Schumer and Jeremy Shamos), who let their guard and hair down when confronted by a more extroverted pair (Laura Benanti and Keegan-Michael Key). It’s suggested early on that they’re the introverts’ subconscious come to life, leading to a bit of slapstick amidst, yes, a meteor shower. Schumer and Key picked up some Broadway cred in their debuts, stage journeyman Shamos will surely get a new gig soon, my beloved Benanti’s back to playing Melania–and Martin, like Ethan Coen, will keep getting slipshod plays produced. “Next!” is about all I can say.

Farinelli and the King is another case of stardust getting in everyone’s eyes. Mark Rylance was the toast of New York for his dazzling comic performance in Boeing-Boeing a decade ago, winning a richly deserved Tony. (It’s one of a handful of plays I’ve seen twice in their runs.) Two more Tonys and an Oscar later he’s pretty much got the keys to the city in the pocket, but he doesn’t do much more than jingle them in this inert hunk of fictionalized bio-drama, written by Claire van Kampen, a noted composer. (And Rylance’s spouse, which I’ll leave right there.)

With all those awards it’s only fitting that Rylance should play a king, and here his lordship is as Spain’s Philippe V, who we encounter in a deeply agitated state, fishing for goldfish in a fishbowl. That’s a promisingly funny-weird start, so perhaps the play will head in the direction of The Madness of George III, another tale of eccentric monarchy. But then it starts doodling and dawdling, as the queen, Isabella (Melody Grove), frets about her errant elder husband’s condition. (What we would call “bipolar” today.) Then, the solution–the legendary castrato Farinelli (Sam Crane) performs before the monarch, and the king is charmed, and calmed. Tired of touring, Farinelli stays on, disturbing the court, which finds the Italian singer’s attention suspect. So, maybe Amadeus and a story of intrigue is in the offing?

No, I’m afraid nothing of interest happens, as Rylance does little bits of business and Farinelli sings, and sings, and sings. “Too many notes!” as the emperor remarks in Amadeus, and for me, a little trilling of Handel goes a long way. There’s a lot of it here, ably performed by counter tenor Iestyn Davies, who shadows Crane as inconspicuously as possible onstage. But under the direction of John Dove no compelling storyline emerges. Late in the second act, there’s a plot turn involving Farinelli and the queen that suggests darkness ahead, but this too is dispelled. There’s a few things to look at–Jonathan Fensom’s handsome two-tiered set, in the handsome Belasco, with some audience members arranged around the stage, Lorraine Ebdon-Price’s costumes, the goldfish. All this high-culture atmosphere is however imprisoning, and I felt welded to my seat, crushed by poshly appointed boredom. I can forgive a king of actors this indulgence, so long as he promises to visit his loyal subjects with an actual play the next time he comes.

The turkey is on the platter, but you may not want to take a bite. This one is RARE.

What are you giving us here?

Joe Jackson – Couldn’t I Just Tell You
Duran Duran – Ordinary World (Acoustic)
Lindsey Buckingham – Peacekeeper
Peter Gabriel – Quiet Steam
George Harrison – It Don’t Come Easy
Michael Penn – No Myth (Acoustic)
Nelly Furtado – Turn Out The Light (Chris Vrenna Tweaker Mix)
Gregg Alexander – The Game Of Love

There’s much to celebrate about Pissing Stars, the second solo LP – out today on Constellation Records – from Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Thee Silver Mt. Zion co-founder Efrim Manuel Menuck. Let it be celebrated, then: this is an underworld and understated tour-de-force, a patchwork-ish collection of ambient compositions whose sense of dread and drone calls to mind some of Menuck’s earliest work. But it’s also brilliant for reasons Menuck hasn’t really been brilliant before. Calling to mind, at times, a basement Scott Walker, Pissing Stars works on a scale far smaller than much of what crescendo-crazed Godspeed You! Black Emperor fans might come to expect, and its willingness to take chances and dwell in the sonically obscure (and, yes, sometimes miss targets) is downright shocking, especially given how much form and formula a GY!BE record like last year’s Luciferean Towers exhibits.

Much of the record is about the texture of minutia, the way a sound can evolve when engulfed by dissonance. Though Menuck, in press materials, suggests grand connections between Pissing Stars and the romance of an American celebrity and the son of an arms dealer, the theses herein work hard at staying small. The funereal “The Beauty Of Children And The War Against The Poor” might make some big pronouncements about the priorities of the Western world but what really sets the stage is a dirgish and profoundly subtle piano motif and the murmuring, sometimes slighted, of electronic pulses. “Black Flags Ov Thee Holy Sonne,” the wonderfully epic, nine-minute-long opener, concerns itself with drones and interjected shards of noise-color. “A Lamb In The Land of Payday Loans,” a departure, has an inside-out anthemic quality, no doubt, but the song that follows it, the beautiful “LxOxVx/Shelter In Place,” is a sea of heavily processed bass and guitar whose driving, though drummer-less, refrains give way to a mouthful of white noise. The closing title track might exhibit even hints of pop sentiment – it’s just tough to make it out from beneath the layers of wondrous grime and fuzz Menuck heaps all over it.

There are lesser compositions – “The Lion-Daggers of Calais” is interesting but doesn’t develop or breathe or generate heat the way other tracks here do – but, all in all, Pissing Stars is a sturdy collection, a fitting sequel to Menuck’s first solo LP, 2011’s Plays “High Gospel.” It all, though, for me, boils down to that opener, “Black Flags,” where Menuck whimpers in borderline-falsetto over minimal, though distorted, guitars or unfurls, on loop, an almost Old Testament-worthy bit of prayer-moan that swells into drone. This is magical and difficult and sometimes downright ugly music, and Menuck delivers it in self-serious tones, honoring the noise as much as Godspeed You! Black Emperor once honored the sound of running off the rails. A great record for the droning, dying light in all of us.

When this show goes live, it will be my lovely wife’s birthday. I am a lucky guy, because my wife is awesome. This show is dedicated entirely to her. Yes, I did one of these last year, too, but this is all-new material. Plus, I debut my new Dizzy Heights bumper, courtesy of Simple Minds’ Jim Kerr. Yay!

LOTS of bands making their Dizzy Heights debut this week, including a couple of long-overdue bands: Morrissey (solo), Possum Dixon, Dead Milkmen, Felony, Q-Feel, Erasure (!), White Town, Blancmange, Makana, Alphaville and, somehow, Oingo Boingo. I just assumed that I played them months ago.

Thank you, as always, for listening. And happy birthday, sweetie. 🙂

Amy Rigby has been doing her thing since she was a member of The Shams (when I first saw her) and slicing through pop mediocrity from the time she released her first solo album, the now-legendary Diary Of A Mod Housewife.  She hasn’t slowed down one bit, as proven with her latest opus, The Old Guys.

The heavy “Good Day Sunshine”-style bass into the shimmering guitar chimes opens up the album on “From philiproth@gmail.com to rzimmerman@aol.com”, a lyrically witty yet touching piece; what makes this so good (let alone a strong lead-off track) is its steady propulsiveness; again, Ms. Rigby’s sense of humor shines through on “Are We Still There Yet?”, a tongue-in-cheek look back over the shoulder at the ’90’s and “Playing Pittsburgh” has very warm and muted keyboard/ringing guitar interplay mixed into a groove and some great textures along with powerful vocal gymnastics from Ms. Rigby.  Again, a gripping bass riff powers the track “Leslie”, a haunting song about a fallen soul – hypnotic and a high point; the title track has “pop single hit” written all over it; catchy, bouncy, crisp and equally thoughtful.  I love the recording-in-the-garage sound and feel of “New Sheriff” – very ’60’s and instantly grabs my attention and “Slow Burner”, at moments reminded me of The Pentangle in a few places – an elegant, slightly mysterious piece that reminds me of sparkling water.

I doubt I could really add much more to this; if you know Amy Rigby’s music, she only gets better with every subsequent release.  Whether she’s recording with her husband, the eternally-brilliant “Wreckless” Eric Goulden or solo, Ms. Rigby always delivers something meaningful and powerful.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

The Old Guys will be released on Friday, February 23rd, 2018

http://www.amyrigby.com/

Radio City With Jon Grayson & Rob Ross:  Episode Forty Nine

Just because you like it doesn’t mean it’s the best. But again, just because it’s the best doesn’t mean you’ll like it. There’s a lot of territory in-between and that’s why the Isn’t That Awful podcast is here. Take careful note of the lack of punctuation, because it’s important! The Isn’t That Awful podcast seeks to find the good in what is regularly considered “low brow” entertainment. 

In each episode, two commentators go head-to-head and bring comparable entertainment topics to the table with one critical mission: find appreciation for a pop culture artifact that typically isn’t celebrated.

In the inaugural episode, pop culture and political commentator Josh Dobbin, author of the book Of Love and Snackcakes and Other Short Works, submits Wanted Dead or Alive as his choice for reappraisal. The ’80s action reboot stars Rutger Hauer (Blade Runner, Hobo With A Shotgun), Gene Simmons (Runaway, KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park), and that “dicky-faced” guy. Writer Dw. Dunphy digs into the cult favorite The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension and explores why it is the MOST EIGHTIES of Eighties genre movies; even more ’80s than if there was a movie titled 80s Movie (there probably is).

Check out the podcast below or on Apple where you can subscribe to receive Isn’t That Awful, and don’t forget to comment below!

Isn’t That Awful Episode One

This podcast will be on the Popdose site as well as for subscription via iTunes and other podcast aggregators. Subscribe and let people know about Isn’t That Awful, as well as Popdose’s other great podcasts Radio City with Jon Grayson and Rob Ross, David Medsker’s Dizzy Heights, and In:Sound with Michael Parr and Zack Stiegler.

Film genres can be susceptible to changing tastes. Hollywood has abandoned many ideas that were once standard. But that doesn’t mean the impact those genres had went away. This series looks at discredited genres of film and how their techniques can still be seen in modern film. This month, we look at spoofs.

It’s not a coincidence that the most famous parody films came at a time when New Hollywood was becoming “New Hollywood.” For many years, spoofs were what marked the growing geek culture surrounding cinema. And as film tropes became quickly apparent, filmmakers were eager to subvert them. Citizen Kane is fondly remembered not for its story but for the fact that it deconstructed classic Hollywood’s techniques.

When most people think of spoof films, most people think of the works of Mel Brooks, Monty Python, or of movies like Airplane! Some snobs are quick to remind us that we shouldn’t forget the early works of Woody Allen. What these films all have in common is that they recognized things that were critically scorned but enormously popular with audiences.

Classic monster movies, westerns, silent movies, disaster films – all of these were critical jokes in the 1960s and 1970s. Comedians were eager to show big Hollywood producers exactly where they were wrong. Spoofs represented the best of the underdog spirit of comedy – a bunch of nerds showing the big Hollywood gurus that they understood audiences better than their bosses.

But the films – Mel Brooks’ parodies in particular – also had affection for the films they were mocking. They wanted to share their love of schlock and not only mock it, but examine why it connected with audiences. That’s probably why Roger Ebert used to say his biggest influence as a critic was the movie parodies in MAD Magazine.

And after years of having tropes reflected back at them, audiences were able to examine these tropes on their own. Meme culture is centered on the same sort of jokes that Airplane! was based on. Take a scene from a movie, make a joke over it that shows how ridiculous the logic in the scene would be in real life or how ridiculous it is in the context of the film, and you have instant nerd credibility.

Ironically, as audiences got smarter, spoofs got dumber. Starting with the Wayans Brother’s Scary Movie, the films didn’t seem to want to score points against anyone. They only wanted to remind people of something they saw on TV once. It has the same effect as having a conversation with a seven year old about something he or she just witnessed. The genre reached its nadir with Friedberg and Seltzer, who view actual jokes with the same attitude as someone being asked to vacuum the living room. It’s a chore not worth doing, and they’ll do everything possible to avoid doing it. Even good parodies like Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story and Black Dynamite are treated badly by studios and cannot hope to garner anything more than a cult following.

But spoofs never went away. They just became incorporated into the modern reboots.  Studios knew that they were dealing with an audience that would call them to task if they got anything wrong – just look at the much maligned Batman vs Superman. And they also knew that the budgets they were spending on blockbusters meant they had to hire people who had the same affection for comic books that the Zucker brothers had for cop shows.

When the Marvel Cinematic Universe was launched, the audience for the Iron Man and Avengers movies was well versed with the characters. Furthermore, they’d already spent decades making jokes about the characters and laughed at the attempts in the 1990s to make them “edgier” and more serious. Making a movie like Tim Burton’s Batman would have been asking for trouble.

So Disney and Marvel hired Joss Whedon to direct The Avengers. Whedon was at the time famous for his TV shows that tore science fiction and horror tropes to shreds. Shows like Firefly deified Whedon in the eyes of geek culture.

Whedon’s meant that Disney wanted to make the same jokes that the fans were already making. And they got it. When I think about my favorite scenes from that movie, I think not of the action scenes but of the moments of humor where Whedon was practically making a spoof of superhero movies. Loki is defeated when the Hulk grabs him mid speech and smashes him to the floor. It’s a scene right out of Airplane! The characters also make fun of each other using spoof dialogue. When Captain America asks Tony Stark what he is without the armor, Stark replies that he’s still a billionaire playboy. It reveals what was on everyone’s mind already – that crafting personal struggles for superheroes is inherently difficult as they’re meant to be larger than life.

This trend continued with practically every reboot. The studio hired an established cult figure that used the opportunity to make fun of the franchise’s past. JJ Abrams rebooted both Star Trek and included a red shirt joke as well as several jokes about Captain Kirk’s promiscuity.  In Star Wars: The Last Jedi, there is a scene of Luke Skywalker tickles Rey’s hand and claims that sensation is The Force. The James Bond reboot Casino Royale included a scene where he exclaims that he doesn’t give a damn if his martini is shaken or stirred.

All of those moments are based on things that people would not have noticed in the past. Before home video, the only way people would have noticed specific moments to spoof is if they went to the theater repeatedly. After a generation, some filmmakers used the medium as a way to pay homage to moments they remember from their youth. But the new generation of filmmakers realized that everything they were making fun of was a shared moment. It was almost impossible to treat Luke Skywalker with reverence anymore. And people like Abrams had a template to follow.

Spoofs will likely never come back as a popular genre. But they don’t need to make a comeback. All of the best aspects of spoofs have been incorporated into the very blockbusters they were trying to destroy. And the audience is certainly still present. They’ve just moved onto message boards, where a macro image that takes three minutes to build gets the same audience. Parodies used to be the one, hip genre that captured a geek audience. Now that the geek audience rules Hollywood, they’re free to show every trick they learned from Spaceballs.