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Good news! I’ve overcome my profound Electoral Affective Disorder to assemble yet another mood-elevating, hall-decking, merry-making Christmas mixtape. This one—my eleventh, for all you completists—kicks off with Charley Pride, one of only three African-American artists in history to be inducted into the Grand Ole Opry, and it only gets funkier and more festive from there.

Because I Just Can’t Help Myself, Random Musings RE: U2’s No Line on the Horizon

So here we are, a dozen years to the day since the release of U2’s first perceived failure, POP. Their second album, October, didn’t set the world on fire in 1981, but U2 weren’t huge then, expected to do big numbers every time out of the gate.

Today also marks the U.S. release date of No Line on the Horizon, U2’s 12th and longest-in-development studio album, though of course it leaked weeks ago and has been streaming on U2’s Myspace page for a week already. U2-biquity week here in the U.S. began last night, with the airing of the first of the band’s every-night-this-week live performances on The Late Show with David Letterman. A raft of radio show appearances and a Good Morning America slot are also booked for the next few days, and secret gigs are rumored at Boston’s Paradise Theatre (recording site of the two of the best bootlegs from U2’s early period) and on the Fordham University campus.

There is also a Comcast commercial in heavy rotation on late-night promoting a new deal that will give subscribers on-demand access to previously-released U2 videos and concerts presented in high-definition for the first time. (I just cancelled my Comcast service a couple of months ago. Thanks, Boys!) U2 made the rounds of the U.K. outlets last week, performing a four-song set on the room of the BBC’s Broadcast House last Friday, and generally appearing on so many Beeb shows that some people accused the government-funded entity of making itself U2’s publicity arm.

Great times, if you’re a U2 fan, of which there are many. And if you’re one of the many who despise U2, perhaps for the very shock-and-awe saturation of the media campaigns that accompany each new album release, well, it’ll all be over in a week or two. Maybe.

Anyway, the fact that No Line on the Horizon is being issued officially on the same day as POP feels significant, because POP was the final album of the band’s Adventures in Irony Phase that began with the paradigm-shifting Achtung Baby in 1991. And after two relatively safe returns-to-form, U2 are once again back in more experimental country with No Line. There’s a symmetry there that I haven’t seen anyone mention. (More symmetry: U2 will also be playing U.S. stadiums this year for the first time since 1997. And Bono’s cut his hair again. Meaningful connections abound!)

No Line‘s looooooong gestation period, and the aborted Rick Rubin sessions, were both danger signs, I thought. Time was, the fact that Achtung took an entire year to make was taken as a sign of how arduous that particular U2 album was. But with the exception of 1993’s tossed-off-in-three-months-and-all-the-better-for-it Zooropa (the most underrated U2 record), every U2 album since then has taken longer than that. And not, presumably, because Bono is away campaigning on behalf of AIDS-stricken Africans most of the time. (He wasn’t in 1996, for example, when U2 were making POP — the album they said they had to release before its time because the PopMart Tour was already booked!)

I’m just relieved that the new record — for all my fears to the contrary — is good. I was nervous even before they pushed its release from November (the month of Achtung and How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb) to March (the month of The Joshua Tree and again, POP). The choice of “Get on Your Boots” as the lead single did nothing to reassure me. I don’t dislike the song, but it sounds too much like “Vertigo,” and it isn’t in any way representative of the tenor of the album. Worse, it has the same, lame sloganeering-as-lyric that afflicted the prior two U2 full-lengths.

But fear not: Complexity is back. Depth is back. The need to listen more than a couple of times to get it is back — I haven’t felt that about a U2 album since POP. And Zooropa was the last time the pendulum of my reaction to a U2 record swung from hate to affection like this. The day No Line leaked, I was mocking it via I.M. to several parties as I listened, all of whom seem to have come ’round to liking the album. I degraded my own virgin listening experience. Another reason why listening to music the way I do, mostly — sitting at a computer — is no way to do it, no matter how high the bit-rate of your files, or how good your speakers are.

Sure, it might have been better without the bet-hedging, foursquare U2 safe cuts: “I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy” tonight feels like more of the Classic U2 Pastiche that felt reassuring on All That You Can’t Leave Behind in 2000 and troubling on Atomic Bomb in 2004. But “Magnificient” and “Breathe” sound like classic U2, too, and they’re marvelous. (Bono’s opening rap on “Breathe” reminds me of Mick Jagger’s delivery on the Some Girls country parody number “Faraway Eyes.”) “Moment of Surrender” and “Fez – Being Born” and “Cedars of Lebanon,” meanwhile, push the boys out of their comfort zone, with thrilling results — they’re as good as Eno’s collaborations with David Byrne on Everything That Happens Will Happen Today last year. Though you get the feeling it took Eno a quarter of the time to get there swapping files via broadband with Byrne as it did physically in the studio with U2.

I’ve read probably close to two dozen reviews at this point, beginning with the major Irish and U.K. papers, all of which issued glowing notices that I first suspected were inflated. But, no — the U.S. critics tend to like the record, too. Nobody thinks it sucks except Pitchfork, and their pan of it is — as my pal J. Freedom du Lac said to me today — as unsurprising as Rolling Stone‘s five-star rave.

The more interesting domestic write-ups I’ve seen have come from The Los Angeles Times’ Ann Powers, my pal J. Freedom’s in the Paper of Record, and from the Chicago Sun-Times’s Jim DeRogatis — usually the U2-hating half of the the Sound Opinions duo. (I’ve even left a voice message this week on the Sound Opinions listener-feeback line expressing my surprise and delight at DeRogatis’s favorable verdict on the album.)

Most critics seem to agree there are only six or seven essential tracks among the eleven on this album; tellingly, nobody quite agrees on which those are. There are pockets of consensus: Everyone loves “Moment of Surrender,” while nobody is much impressed by “Get on Your Boots.”

Welcome back, guys.

Well, Since You Asked . . .

What did I think of Bruce?

I think you don’t try for subtlety at the Super Bowl. I think the Prince halftime show of two years ago is the only one I can remember ever being any good at all (although that one was really good). I think Bruce just carries his own gospel choir around with him everywhere he goes nowadays. I think he let Landau talk him into putting in that snippet of “Working on a Dream,” which sounds like a Born in the U.S.A. B-side to me, but not in a bad way.

All things considered, I thought Bruce was great. He generated more excitement in 12 minutes than Tom Petty has in his entire 96-year performing career. I mean, to play the Super Bowl and emerge with your dignity intact is no small thing. (I died a little when U2 did it in 2002. “Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bridgestone Nokia Clear Channel FedEx Nike Tribute to 9/11 Victims! Yeee-haaaaaaaawww!”)

Bottom line, I was not embarrassed to be a fan the way I usually am when an artist I admire plays the Super Bowl. And closing with “Glory Days” might’ve even been Bruce’s sly acknowledgment that with 60 just around the corner, even his expiration date could be looming. I never thought he played that song enough live anyway.

Well, yes, he was out of breath. Not sure what that was about. Just last August, I saw him play a three-hour, five-minute show with no apparent undue physical strain.

This Damn List Gets Longer Every Year

Time was, I allowed myself one Christmas-album purchase per year. In 2003, it was the immortal James Brown’s Funky Christmas, or the latest “Millenium Collection” compilation containing its key tracks (“Go Power at Christmas Time,” “Soulful Christmas Tree,” “Santa Claus, Go Straight to the Ghetto”). In 2005, it was Christmas with Johnny Cash, which is an innumerable reissue of previously-released material, too. 2006’s big splurge was Sufjan Stevens’ set of five Christmas EPs, a purchase that continues to pay rich dividends. (But I might have bought A Jolly Christmas with Frank Sinatra that year, too.)

2006 saw the first of my annual Christmas compilations, which are probably the reason things are just really geting out of hand now, with me buying different compilations by the same artists, for crying out loud.  I’m way over $50 since this year’s CD, Santa Claus and Popcorn, was finished:

Julian Koster, The Singing Saw at Christmastime
Various Artists, Savoy Christmas Blues (for my mom, ostensibly)
Frank Sinatra, The Christmas Collection (ditto; and I’ve already bought The Chairman’s Jolly Christmas, but Grant-Lee Phillips sang “An Old-Fashioned Christmas” at Aimee Mann’s Christmas show this year, and I had to go after that one )
Various Artists, A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector
Various Artists, Ultimate Christmas Cocktails

Let’s not even talk about the individual-track purchases, or the tunes obtained via torrent. I must be stopped.

Rave On!

Sarin Foo and Sun Rose Wagner, reviewed in today’s Paper of Record.

I interviewed one of my heroes today.  That’s never happened before.  Watch this space for details!

Leon . . . Live?

Storied session man Leon Russell turns in a perfunctory performance at the State.  Also, the B-52s’ first album in 16 years, and the Waco Bros. long-overdue first live set, reviewed yesterday in Media Mix. 

This Is More Difficult than It Looks.

Tougher on your hands, too. The photo above is from Hudson Beach, New York City, last weekend. The one below is from Santa Monica, Sept. 2003. Getting older, just so you know, does not make this any easier.

Still, I wish there were more of these things around.  There are only two in the country, apparently.  The ones I used to play on in Santa Monica are known locally as the “traveling rings,” while they’re “swing-a-rings” in NYC.

They’re Bringing Waxy Back!

Huh. I’ve actually spent time trying to hear the difference among 256-kbps AAC files vs. 128-kbps AAC vs. 200-ish kbps LAME-encoded MP3. Meanwhile, those vinyl-loving luddites are fortifying their positions. Or so I hear.

My review of Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder’s marvelous Friday-night show at the Birchmere with the Whites got held for a day, but it’s in today’s Paper of Record.

Santa’s Big Olde Bag, opened

DO YOU HEAR WHAT I HEAR?

Prologue: This is Christmas music! The first voice you hear is that of De’voreaux White as Argyle, the poontang-loving young limo driver who spent a memorable late-80s Christmas Eve locked in the parking garage beneath “Nakatomi Plaza” (actually the 20th Century Fox building) in Los Angeles. They made a movie about it, and that film is universally hailed as the greatest Christmas movie of all time. It’s called Under Siege. No, wait, it was Passenger 57. Um, Sudden Death? No, no, only kidding, merry-makers. It’s Die Hard, the once and future king of action pics.Once can only hope that IMDB is not an accurate reflection of De’voreaux’s recent career: His last screen credit is from eight years ago, in Shadow Hours. In the role of “Second Tranvestite.” Hey, remember when Ray Charles shot at a very young De’voreaux when he tried to pinch a guitar from Ray’s music shop in The Blues Brothers? That was awesome.

Santa’s Got a Big Old Bag. (The Bellrays, 2005) – Yep, Lisa Kekaula, that mic is on.

Ding! Dong! Death! (May Be Your Santa Claus!) (Sufjan Stevens, 2003; preacher recording found by Andy Cirzan, origin unknown) – A mash-up, albeit a very primitive one, of my own design. I started out with like, half-a-dozen pieces culled from Sufjan’s remarkable set of five Christmas EPs recorded each December from 2001 through 2005, and in June 2006. The latter is the one that includes “Christmas in July,” as well as “Jupiter Winter,” “Sister Winter,” and “The Winter Solstice,” most of each stand out as notably depressing even among this, whose five volumes comprise one of the most muted Christmas albums ever. Thanks for bringing us all down, Sufjan.

Save the Overtime (For Me). (Dees, Gallo, Knight, Knight, Schwarzenegger, 1983) – Surely the best of the Governator’s collaborations with Gladys Knight and the Pips. Squats are an excellent exercise.

I Don’t Intend to Spend Christmas Without You. (Margo Guryan, date unknown) – She’s a creepy broad, ain’t she? But tuneful.

Brian Wilson Reveals All. Behold the startingly revelatory, probingly incisive, revealingly probing, piercingly insightful secrets of Wilson’s creative process explicated here. Josh du Lac got some good stuff out of Wilson a few weeks back, like the fact that Phil Spector is “Zany!”

Melekalikimaka. (Al Jardine, Mike Love, 1974) – “’Melekalikimaka’ is ‘Merry Christmas’ in Hawaii talk-a.’” This kind of thing, really, is what this compilation is all about. A powerful argument that Jardine and Love were the real brain trust behind the Beach Boys.

Pearl Harbor Didn’t Work Out, So . . . (Steven E. DeSouza & Jeb Stuart, 1987) – I had a film studies textbook in college that claimed Die Hard was subtly, or perhaps unsubtly, racist, sexist, xenophobic and every other damn thing, just because it’s about a heroic white Reagan-voter who takes down a crew of slumming Royal Shakespeare Company types, including ballerina Alexander Gudanov and some American guy who looks eerily like Huey Lewis. The film supposedly espouses contempt for invading Japanese conglomerates, professional women who eschew their spouses’ last names (lots of stuff about that Rolex on Holly McClane/Gennaro’s wrist that Hans Gruber is hanging on at the end of the movie) and relegates not one but two black actors to sidekick roles. What an awesome movie.

Daddy Won’t Be Home Again for Christmas. (Merle Haggard, 1973) – This just in: Hag’s a shitty father. No clue here what’s keeping him away. Not prison, since he can write that “little check” that he’s hoping, puzzlingly, “will fit.” Is “forget” a really hard word to rhyme?

Sleazy Con Men in Red Suits. (Randy Kornfield) – Jingle All the Way is remembered as an epic, cautionary failure, but which I submit to you is not even among the five worst films released in 1996. Freed from its distracting visuals, the film’s audio, tastefully excerpted here, reveals a surprising profundity and even grace. Well played, Randy Kornfield, well played.

Christmas Present Blues. (Jimmy Webb, ?) – My prose is not worthy.

Snokenstein. (?) – The first of many, many treasures here that I appropriated from Andy Cirzan’s bizarro Christmas compilations as featured each year on Sound Opinions. Andy is on the show again this weekend, and I fully expect him to bring plenty of obscure wonders and oddities that you can bet will show up on my compilation next year.

A Great Big Sled. (Brandon Flowers, 2006) – Nobody will ever accuse Flowers of being a great lyricist, but I would have been delighted to have penned the line “little boys have action toys for brains” myself. I’m living proof it can last a long time. Way better than anything on Sam’s Town, the lyrically-impaired Killers album released a couple months prior to this.

The Ultimate Stretch. (Journey feat. Gov. Arnold Schwarzengger) – I just love hearing The Terminator talk over that opening vamp of “Don’t Stop Believing.” I guess we’ll never know whether Tony Soprano finished all 30 of the pushups.

Reindeer Roll Call. (Kornfield) – Listen to how Arnold is just mercilessly taunting Sinbad as he outruns him. “I’m having a good time now,’bye!” If you’ve seen Pumping Iron, then you know that workaholic salesman Howard Langston is probably the role truest to Arnold’s real-life personality, especially once his competitive juices get flowing. Jingle All the Way really does require repeat viewings to fully absorb its many insights into the Gubernatorial mind.

. . . and many, many more!

It’s Irish Genius Week in my Clip File!

po-faced /ˈpoʊˌfeɪst/ Pronunciation Key – Show Spelled Pronunciation[poh-feyst] – adjective, Chiefly British. having an overly serious demeanor or attitude; humorless.

And U2 Week in the Style section at the Paper of Record, apparently, what with yesterday’s gushing front-page profile of Bono, my review of the 20th Anniversary reissue of The Joshua Tree in today’s paper. Maybe I’ll post a longer version of that review here. Or maybe I’ll just say “enough is enough” and get on with my life, too much of which has already gone to cutting that thing down to the not-ungenerous length at which it ran. Verily, writing about your sacred cows can be a tricky business.

The other Irish genius of whom I speak would be Samuel Beckett. The National Theatre of Great Britain Production of his 1961 Happy Days starring Fiona Shaw is at the Kennedy Center’s Terrance Theatre for a short run of concluding the day after tomorrow. I reviewed it for DCist. Not exactly light entertainment — for that, there’s A Christmas Carol 1941 at Arena, which I took my parents to the following night; DCist review forthcoming — but, you know, thought-provoking, imaginative, ballsy. Beckettian, I guess.

Judgment Day Plus Ten

Or “judgement” day, but I’m going with the spelling used by the producers of the Greatest Film of All Time, which of course I don’t need to tell you is James Cameron’s 1991 apocalypse-contraception epic, Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

In 1992, I got my driver’s license and French-kissed a girl for the first time. But the highlight of 1991, the year of Achtung Baby and Use Your Illusion I and II (I wouldn’t buy Ten for a year, or Nevermind for several more after that), was definitely T2. It was the first film for which I bought the screenplay. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve re-purchased the film each time a new VHS or DVD edition was released.

August 29, 1997 is the day that film told us half of the human race, give or take a few million, would perish in a nuclear exchange instigated by SkyNet, the artificial intelligence network entrusted with all the assets of the U.S. military. When SkyNet unexpectedly becomes self-aware, it decides that its human masters are a threat and takes preemptive action. You’ve all seen the movie. The 2003 release Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, revises the date of Judgment Day for obvious reasons, having an aging Arnold tell us, “Judgment Day is inevitable” and actually letting us see the beginnings of it in a surprise downer ending. But T3, although a decent-ish genre flick if not compared to its two brilliant precursors, was neither written nor directed by James Cameron, the auteur behind the first two, so it ain’t part of the canon as far as I’m concerned.

Anyway. We’ve lasted another ten years. Congratulations, everybody! Does that mean Michael Jackson is 50 today?

Sustainable Community

Well, this is a bit odd. But only a bit.

I’m writing this from my old office in the house I lived in in glorious Ventura, CA from late 2000 until early 2005. This is day four of my first return visit to the Golden State since I moved to the District two years ago. I saw my ex, with whom I remain on friendly terms, for the first time in two years last night — she made dinner — and we’ll be hanging out together with some mutual friends this evening and tomorrow.

I shared a Studio City apartment with two really cool people with whom I’ve lost touch for about five sad months in mid-2005, but for most of my California experience, I lived in this town, in this house. Ventura is so beautiful it’s a little bit heartbreaking to come back and realize I gave this place up. I had good reasons for moving, and the two years I’ve lived in DC have been the two happiest of my life. But still.

When I came to Ventura, I had just turned 24, and the place (and of course, the relationship that brought me here) seemed full of promise. Two years later, it’s exactly as I left it. All the stores and restaurants I remember are still here . . .

. . . including a few whose survival I never understood . . .

. . . and most significantly, the original, non-News Corp.-affiliated Kwiki Mart!

Salzer’s, my favorite record store (with apologies to Amoeba, which surely has a more wide-ranging selection but to which I never developed a sentimental attachment) remains. When I stopped in yesterday afternoon, Frank remembered my face, though I think he had to get my name off my credit card. I asked if he still had his band, and he told me they would be playing tomorrow night at a new bar that’s opened up since I left, a place downtown called It’s All Good. (Their booker must have better taste than whoever chose the name, I guess.)

Since I haven’t really found an indie record shop to favor with my commerce in DC, I was eager to drop some cash at Salzer’s. I got the new Rilo Kiley CD, Under the Blacklight, which came with a free vinyl single. (Not only does Salzer’s regularly beat chains like Borders on price, even if you’ve let your KCRW membership — usually good for $2 off every CD you buy — lapse; they also give you freebies like singles and posters. What’s not to love?) Also, since I’m catching up on Spoon and the New Pornographers, I got a pair of catalogue titles; Gimme Fiction and Electric Version, respectively, along with A Year in the Wilderness, John Doe’s new solo record, featuring, appropriately enough “The Golden State.”

Anyway, I went to my old house after that, greeted my old cat, and set out to run one of my old routes.

With it’s moderate temperatures, low humidity, varied terrain, sparse traffic, and of course, its beauty, Ventura is a runner’s paradise. It’s more known as a surfer’s paradise, of course, but I never quite got the hang of that.

After running all summer in the heavy, humid DC air, to run in a place where I can actually stand to wear a shirt comes as a shock to the system.

I carried my camera in my bottle-belt and took these shots while I was out puffing along.

Anyway, after dinner and a catch-up visit with the ex last night, I went back down to Los Angeles, where I’m staying with my beloved professor from the UCLA Professional Program in Screenwriting, and her two dogs. Today I’m back up in V-Town at least until tomorrow night.

Earlier this afternoon, I was tooling around downtown. Like I said, it’s all exactly as I remember it. Which shouldn’t be strange, but given how quickly Columbia Heights, where I live now, is changing, and how constant the change in Chantilly, VA, where I grew up has been, it’s odd — and comforting — to find some continuity.

I happened to be walking by the post office earlier, and I thought I’d stop in to get another look at the WPA mural I remember. Since I was already there, I figured I should ask if they have the new Marvel Super-Heroes stamps. I recognized two of the four postal clerks working the counter. And when I asked for the super-hero stamps, one of them remembered me. Specifically, she recalled that I was the guy who never wanted to use a meter strip to send a package if I could decorate the box with dozens of stamps instead. Nice.

Tomorrow I’m going to try to get to Sylva’s, which has relocated since I was a member, and Ralph’s Comic Corner. Viva Ventura.