A top ten list of Ben Folds

July 10, 2008


I’m not ashamed to admit that, unlike many, I actually really really like Ben Folds. Both his solo stuff and with the Five.

There. I said it. Take away my cool kid badge.

(Or wait. Is it cool to like him? Or not cool? He, like Sufjan Stevens, Death Cab for Cutie and any other indie singer/songwriter/group that caters to a more sensitive side, are often reviled in popular culture. Which would make them perfect for indie rock. But then indie rockers are, at times, tired of their cuteness, which makes them perfect for popular culture. Help, I don’t know if I’m supposed to like or hate him! What’s Pitchfork claiming this week?)

Ahem.

As happens with some of my favorite musical artists, I have had a slight renaissance with Ben Folds. You know how it is – one of his songs popped up on my iPod, and I remembered, “Hey, I really like this guy,” and then I listened to an entire album and BAM, there you go, I was back in the thick of it, getting to know the EPs that I only barely listened to and making new judgment calls on songs I didn’t care much for a few years back.

But why? Why Ben Folds? Admittedly, he’s a little too cute at times. He’s overly sarcastic, and 85% of his songs are about the meaningless lives of people you don’t care about and never would remember if you met them.

And maybe that’s what I like about it. Those people. Those situations. Ben Folds writes snarky songs that at times are touching. He’s not a piano player looking for heart strings – he’s a comedian that happens to be great at writing songs, and at times those songs are nearly heartbreaking.

Look through his catalog. There are a lot of names, there. Old friends and fictional characters and people you wouldn’t expect outside of an episode of Arrested Development. There’s an entire cast of craziness and longing and friendship and nostalgia wrapped up in those songs.

Nostalgia. That’s it. Every song is emotional, whether funny or clever or sad. And every song brings another tale. Ben Folds isn’t a songwriter – he’s a storyteller. Which is, to say, he’s a songwriter who tells stories. Which is, to say, he’s the best kind of songwriter there is.

My top ten Ben Folds songs, whether with and without the Five (in no order):

1. “Army (live)” – Ben Folds Live
The only really great song off of The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner is made better without the rest of the band by enlisting the help of the crowd to stand in as the horn section.

2. “Best Imitation of Myself” – Ben Folds Five
We all have a façade, and “Best Imitation of Myself” describes it.

3. “Eddie Walker” – Naked Baby Photos
My favorite of Ben Folds’ characters, “Eddie Walker” takes a look at his life, seemingly validating his existence.

4. “Evaporated” – Whatever and Ever Amen
Every Ben Folds album has a sappy closing song that makes you think that, yes, the guy has bad days. This is the best of them.

5. “Fred Jones, Part 2″ – Rocking the Suburbs
A company newspaperman, forced out after 30 years, takes a long look at himself and realizes that he’s viewed as nothing more than dead space. A classic tale of experience being trumped by fresh, upstart talent, Fred Jones comes to terms with the fact that he’s “forgotten but not yet gone.” Shades of About Schmidt.

6. “Landed” – Songs for Silverman
This is just a nice song. That’s all.

7. “Late” – Songs for Silverman
About Elliot Smith. The first time I heard it was at a Ben Folds concert in Sioux Falls a few months before the album came out. He announced it as a song about a friend, and we all figured it was Elliott, who had just passed away. And then, he sang “Elliot, man, you played a fine guitar. And some dirty basketball.” And we knew. And I’ll disclose, with the song played live and the emotion in the room and great lyrics about a great musician, I had to fight back a tear or two. They didn’t come out, mind you. But there were there. Stinging.

8. “One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces” – Whatever and Ever Amen
The first song I ever heard from Ben Folds, “One Angry Dwarf” is a tale of comeuppance. Those people who thought they were so cool before? Well fuck ‘em.

9. “Philosophy” – Ben Folds Five
I also think this is a really nice song. It’s the “Brick” of the first album – the song everyone knows and everyone wants to hear.

10. “Zak and Sara” – Rocking the Suburbs
It’s scary how similar this couple – Zak without a “c,” Sara without an “h” – is to other couples I’ve met in real life. That is, until Sara turns out to be crazy.

And an honorable three-way mention, as well:
11. “Bitches Ain’t Shit” – Supersunnyspeedgraphic: The LP
12. “Get Your Hands Off My Woman” – Super D
13. “Twin Falls” – Naked Baby Photos
Two hilarious, yet beautiful covers (of Dr. Dre and The Darkness, respectively) followed by a cover of Built To Spill.

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BMOWP Classic Album - Flood

May 20, 2008


FloodFlood by They Might Be Giants

Today, I rediscovered Flood.

It’s not that I forgot it existed – it’s just that I forgot I’d liked it. I rediscovered it in a very specific way: I plugged the CD in, turned up the volume, and sang along with “Birdhouse In Your Soul” as loud as I could. In doing this, I discovered that, after at least a decade since last listen, I still knew all the words.

All of them.

This is by far the most embarrassing thing I’ve done this year.

In case you haven’t been keeping track, it’s not cool to like They Might Be Giants. Aside for a brief time in the early 90s, it’s never been cool to like They Might Be Giants. In fact, during that brief time it was only tolerated – it was an appreciated side-route that ultimately ended in a dead end, a funny little hobby disc on the level of “Detachable Penis” by King Missile.

Somewhere along the line, TMBG realized this. Fortunately for them, they had a built in talent for creating catchy and obscenely childish songs – perfect for, you know, writing children’s albums. Which is the path they’re headed down now – children’s artists with a fruitful background in alternarock.

However, during the Brief Time of Tolerance, TMBG put out two fantastic albums: Flood and Apollo 18. Flood is the most memorable, easily lifted by some of the band’s most recognizable songs – the aforementioned “Birdhouse In Your Soul,” “Particle Man,” “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)”.

After that, Flood seems pretty light – you’ve got the songs that everyone knows, and you’ve got a bunch of filler. Yet, that’s not the case. As I’d listen to each song, I’d remember the hooks, the lyrics and the subtle humor that, during a career as “gifted and misunderstood student,” I naturally latched on to. It was a mix of intelligent lyrical talent, goofy-ass music and pop sensibilities.

Amazingly, Flood tackles some pretty deep subjects, and does so in a way you wouldn’t expect – not through quirky wordsmithing but through pointed questions and statements, poignant in their simplicity. “Dead” takes a look at the legacy of death (”Now it’s over I’m dead and I haven’t done anything that I want”). “My Racist Friend” highlights the embarrassment of being associated with an overly bigoted friend (”Out from the kitchen to the bedroom to the hallway/Your friend apologizes, he could see it my way/He let the contents of the bottle do the thinking/Can’t shake the devil’s hand and say you’re only kidding”). “Lucky Ball and Chain” laments the loss of a long-time love (”Confidentially/I never had much pride/But now I rock a bar stool/and I drink for two/just pondering this time bomb in my mind”).

But it’s not all somber; the serious messages aren’t as common as, say, round-about lyrics about science. And that’s okay with me – the entire legend of TMBG is built upon songs that are embarrassingly catchy. Catchy to a fault, almost – so good that it’s impossible to take them seriously. They’re pure pop boiled down to the molecular level: short, funny parodies of real music.

Here’s the thing: They Might Be Giants is a fun band. Seriously fun. Foot-stomping, geek-inducing, science-based dorky fun. No, it’s not cool to like them. But it wasn’t cool to like chemistry either, and those people are making a good living being eggheads.

If only listening to They Might Be Giants was equitable to learning chemistry on a professional level.

To which I say, “Minimum Wage!”

“Yah!”

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The differentiation of fans

May 16, 2008


REMSince it’s release, I’ve been getting a lot of play out of the newest REM album, Accelerate. It’s good. Not Automatic for the People or Life’s Rich Pageant good, but good all the same – a return to when REM was making their style of music, when Out of Time and Automatic for the People had propelled them into the rock stratosphere.

Though I am one of the few who enjoyed Monster, I understand how many didn’t care for that album. For those people, Accelerate may be a godsend – it seems to be the album that was meant to come between Automatic for the People and New Adventures in Hi-Fi. This is what Monster could have been. What it should have been.

Listening to the album, and in turn filtering throughout the entire REM canon, I’ve been thinking about the differentiation of fans, and how the longer a band has been around, the more diverse their fans become.

In the early days of a band, most fans are similar. They like a band because they like the first album, or the first single, or whatever. There’s less to choose from, so every fan is essentially a carbon copy of the next. They’ve all been brought together by one set of songs, creating a community of support for the band that’s near fanatic.

Take that band and look 20 years into the future. The fans aren’t carbon copies anymore. Some have left. Others have grown. The bandwagon has taken on more and more fans until the originals are shoved to the back. Tastes diverge and branch out again, until one fan is hardly recognizable from next.

There are currently three generations of REM fans. The first generation is filled with lifelong fans – those that caught on with REM when they were still a smaller, more independent band – the IRS years through the initial major label signing; Murmur through Document.

The second generation - my generation - caught on somewhere between Green and Automatic for the People. We’re the generation that grabbed a hold of them as radio classics and hung on for dear life. We’ve held on because we still hold great memories from those songs and from the band at its peak.

The new generation probably views REM with a longing nostalgia. I doubt many fans are created through the albums alone, instead relying on an older sibling or coworker who loved the band in the 80s and 90s, or though rock radio (or classic rock radio).

Even with fans grouped together like this, there’s a vast differentiation. If you ask 100 REM fans what their ten favorite REM songs are, you’ll get 100 completely different answers, with the total number songs reaching the hundreds.

It shows the power of a non-tangible creative outlet. There are no right or wrong choices – it’s all dependent upon tastes. Though fans are often lumped in together, the longer a band has been together, the more every fan is different. Like a musical fingerprint, every fan is unique.

What it comes down to is that the larger you get, the more wide sweeping your fan base becomes.

And the harder it becomes to satisfy everyone.

Someday I’ll talk about the REM mixtape that set me up as a fan – and why my favorites are so heavy with IRS year classics even though I’m more of a second generation, Automatic for the People guy.

Until then, here are my choices for the 15 best REM songs. How different are they from yours?

“Begin the Begin” – Life’s Rich Pageant
“Belong” – Out of Time
“(Don’t Go Back to) Rockville” - Reckoning
“E-Bow the Letter” – New Adventures in Hi-Fi
“Electrolite” – New Adventures in Hi-Fi
“Fall on Me” – Life’s Rich Pageant
“Find the River” – Automatic for the People
“Finest Worksong” - Document
“Man on the Moon” – Automatic for the People
“Perfect Circle” - Murmur
“Swan Swan H” – Life’s Rich Pageant
“Try Not to Breathe” – Automatic for the People
“Walk Unafraid” - Up
“What’s the Frequency, Kenneth” - Monster
“World Leader Pretend” - Green

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The (Oscar) Week at Misc. Asst.

February 24, 2008


A few movie themed entries popped up over at Misc. Asst. over the past two weeks. Check them out.

2/13

Top 10 Movies of All Time - Dave
A week early in support of the writers strike.

2/25

Inaccurate Vernacular: Top 10 Foreign Language Films - John
IV’s back (finally!) with the top ten films in languages I never bothered to learn.

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My Favorite Movies - Fargo

February 23, 2008


Fargo (1996)

FargoHow we think of movies depends on the atmosphere in which we first see them.

I first noticed this with books. And I believe it holds up well with movies. Like books, your surroundings and your place in life weigh heavily into your enjoyment. A comfortable couch vs. a slimy movie chair; a freewheeling summer during college vs. a period marred by a difficult breakup; an emotional harmony with the main character vs. a complete dissonance.

Movies are driven by our feelings, and because we’re directly connected to those feelings, movies become real and likable. What seems like a simply visual medium is actually tempered with emotion – an emotion that brings us to tears or sends us into fits of laughter.

For this reason, I never flinch when someone tells me their favorite movie. It could be something I find too traditional or too easy. It could be a movie I saw and hated. Those are my emotions. Not theirs. So what if someone’s favorite movie is Titanic, or Batman & Robin. They have their reasons.

And with Fargo, I have mine.

Fargo is a movie about a blustery cold winter in Minnesota. And a bunch of murders. And a pregnant police woman. And an over-exaggerated accent. It’s a quirky movie about double crossing and crime and trust, and it’s all set on the frozen plains of Minneapolis and Brainerd – an unlikely setting for a classic film, no doubt.

To this day, I still don’t know what stuck so solidly in my mind about the movie. I was blown away the first time I saw it, at a theater in Sioux Falls with a group of close high school friends. I didn’t think movies like Fargo were made, sarcastic and funny and at the same time symbolic and serious.

It was the first time I had ever heard the term “dry humor.” I loved it, and still do. I love the bleak, cold, empty scenes along the Minnesota highways. I love the struggle between Gaear Grimsrud and Carl Showalter, the harebrained schemes, the unraveling of reality and the shocking, yet incredibly funny final scenes.

Ultimately, Fargo is an insanely original film. There’s nothing like it. It brought the mystery back into neo noir and made dry humor popular again. It helped bridge that weird area between late 80s-mid 90s mass produced comedy and today’s embrace of dramedies with indie sensibilities. Fargo was one of a kind, and I rooted for it. I got behind it, like a candidate that had no chance of winning and – surprise! – made a solid showing at the polls.

Maybe that’s the connection. Fargo is wonderful, a movie for the ages, justifiably selected for AFI’s 100 Years, 100 Movies and wrongfully left off of the updated list. It’s a who’s who of character actors and an award winning script. It was an odd choice for classic status, but it forged ahead and made its mark on the landscape, both reintroducing the world to Francis McDormand and saving the careers of the Coen brothers.

And all I could do was root for it, cheer it on as it went on an improbable run through the Oscars and onto the shelves, packaged in a special edition complete with a bloody wood chipper snow globe.

Fargo is everything I like about movies. There isn’t an aspect of the movie that’s out of place. Every item on my wish list is covered. It was the right time. It was with the right people. And it has held up against time itself.

Don’t ‘cha know?

Top Five Coen Brothers Movies that Aren’t Miller’s Crossing or No Country for Old Men

1. Fargo (1996) – See above.

2. The Big Lebowski (1998) – I see how many lists this has made over the past week and wonder why it didn’t make the cut. If I did my eleven favorites instead of ten, it would be on the list.

3. Raising Arizona (1987) – If Adaptation is one of two Cage movies I can stand, this is the other.

4. O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) – A great soundtrack mixed with a clever adaptation. This was the beginning of my George Clooney mancrush. Dapper Dan!

5. The Hudsucker Proxy (1994) – It was a big budget failure, but I still kind of like it. It has much lower expectations when first watched on HBO.

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My Movie List - Eric Swanson

February 22, 2008


Eric Swanson has been a close friend ever since I let him copy off of my Algebra papers. Now, he runs through blogs like they’re cordwood, starting and killing at least five in the past three years, including “Letters to Keith Law,” “Letters to Famous Nouns,” and countless others that have been lost to the blogosphere dunk tank. He also plays guitar.

I was going to do a list of my ten favorite movie characters, but everybody knows that Walter Sobchak (The Big Lebowski) and Doc Holliday (Tombstone) are sweet. So I’m not doing that. Here’s something I really know and love: my top ten movies that some people think suck, but are actually great (a.k.a. awesomely bad).

These are in no particular order, except for number one.

1. Point Break - Oh man what a great movie. Seriously, I think that the best five dollars I have ever spent was on a copy of this movie at Target. Too many great things to mention and we’ve all seen it, so I won’t add more.

Hard to pick my favorite quote but here goes.
Johnny Utah - “I’M AN FBI AGENT!”

2. Red Dawn - I have often wished that I could watch this movie for the first time again. When the Commies parachute in and start blowing kids and teachers away- pure cinema gold!

The quote was easy for this one.
Various - “WOLVERINES!”

3. National Treasure - I saw this movie in the cheap theater and it is awesome. I don’t know what it is about Nic Cage, but I am willing to watch him go through the most ridiculous situations (see also #s 4 and 7)

Alyson and I laughed out loud in the theater at this quote.
Young Ben Gates - “Are we knights?”

4. Face/Off - This movie would have been an easy pick for number one if not for Point Break. Nic Cage Rulz (when he’s in action movies). I gonna take a break here and watch this movie.

Lots of sweet quotes including Travolta being lame, but I like this one
Dietrich - “Hey Sean, How’s your dead son?”

5. The Rundown - People laugh at me when I tell them this movie is sweet. Then, The Rock takes out a building with his shoulder. ‘Nuff said.

Quote
The Rock’s shoulder - “BOOM!” (building falls down.)

6. Bloodsport - What needs to be said about this movie? Not a lot. Frank Dux enters a fighting tournament called The Kumite and fights a bunch of weird guys.

Quote
Some Weird looking guy - “OK USA”

7. Con Air - Nic Cage is sweet and this movie also has Steve Buscemi, Ving Rhames, John Cusak, John Malkovich and even Dave Chapelle. Plus, the plane totally drags a Corvette through the air and takes out the Hard Rock Cafe. C’mon, you can’t argue with that.

Quote
Cameron Poe - “Put..the bunny…back…in the box”

8. The Running Man - Arnold is forced to enter a future game show where prisoners run from weird gladiator types, including a lite-brite guy! And Richard Dawson is in it!

Quote
Ben Richards - “I’m not into politics, I’m into survival.”

9. The Mummy - I couldn’t decide whether to include this, or Bad Boys 2. I like this one a little better, so I went with this. It’s awesome and it’s funny in a bad movie kind of way. Brendan Fraser: not just Encino Man anymore.

Quote -
Evelyn - You were actually at Hamunaptra?
Rick - Yeah, I was there.
Evelyn - You swear?
Rick - Every damn day.

10. They Live - Rowdy Roddy Piper finds special sunglasses that allow him to see which people are aliens as well as the subliminal messages they have put all around us. What more can I say?

Quote
Nada - I’m giving you a choice: either put on these glasses or start eatin’ that trash can.

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My Movie List - Ed Champion

February 22, 2008


Ed Champion formerly wrote at Ed Champion’s Return of the Reluctant, one of the best lit blogs I ever found. He’s since quit all of that, instead focusing on something called “real life” and writing at the old site with a new name: Edward Champion’s Filthy Habits.

The Top Five Great Films That People Seem to Forget About

1. O Lucky Man!
Recently issued on DVD (finally!), Lindsay Anderson’s masterpiece is a stirring Candide-like depiction of a coffee salesman played by Malcolm McDowell at the mercy of societal afflictions. He is opportunistic, dissolute, and exploited. He tries to reform, but can’t. The only way he can find a way to integrate into society is through a smile. Depending upon your point of view, this may or may not be a good thing. But this film is a pleasant and wildly entertaining Rorschach test that I try to watch every year or two and that deserves far more attention than it has received.

2. Naked
This bleak and emotional offering from Mike Leigh features an intense and hyper-intelligent performance from David Thewlis. You find yourself asking: Who is this asshole? And why is he so interesting? Why is he so resistant to the kindnesses of other people who take him in? Would he continue to stubbornly rebel against society no matter what? Or is Leigh suggesting, much like Anderson, that society is the greatest threat to the individual? You might be seeing a trend in my choices here. The British post-kitchen sink filmmakers (although Leigh probably would hate to be identified as such) seem to be greatly concerned with the damaging form of social constructs in a way that I wish American filmmakers would likewise take on. (Neil LaBute perhaps comes closest, but even his fiery vision has been abdicated for dreck like The Wicker Man.) Until some daring American iconoclast comes along who ISN’T David Lynch, we have this amazing film and Leigh’s oeuvre as a whole.

3. After Hours
When people ask me what Scorsese film encapsulates who he is as a filmmaker, I look to this bravura cinematic performance, which is aided by the improbable combination of Michael Ballhaus’s incredible cinematography and Griffin Dunne’s performance as a yuppie milquetoast. It’s also an intriguing historical document of a mid-1980s New York that has sadly disappeared. I moved to New York last year hoping to find the crazed dregs depicted in this movie, but I’ve been largely disappointed. The “New York as hell” metaphor is here, but played far more comically than in any other Scorsese film. And you’ll never see the line “Surrender Dorothy” in quite the same context again.

4. Thieves’ Highway
Jules Dassin was, to my mind, the only one of the Hollywood Ten who mattered. And this film is an engaging working-class take on noir that is quite unlike any other picture of its type. Depicting the infrequently seen niche of brave truckers who delivered produce in rackety rigs throughout California, the film centers on Richard Conte — a war veteran trying to find dignity while suffering at the hands of solipsistic capitalists. But if politics ain’t your thing, well, this is one hell of a revenge flick. One can’t always settle down in life, but Conte does his damnedest to and finds that life choices and the amoral vagaries of others force out ontological shades he hadn’t expected. This film couldn’t be made today, but thankfully Criterion has seen fit to release it on DVD.

5. Delicatessen
Before settling into a minor art house complacency with Amelie, French filmmaker Jean-Pierre Jeunet (together with his then partner Marc Caro) was a bawdy and brazen filmmaker. This wonderful dystopic comedy has some of the most crazed visuals I’ve ever seen — crazy yellows, greens, and browns reflecting an environment now devoted to a landlord using his tenants for meals. And while Caro and Jeunet had CGI on their side with their other great movie, City of Lost Children, Delicatessen takes more chances, with a crazed plaster-falling finale that recalls the final showdown in Dead Alive (Peter Jackson — another filmmaker who has grown complacent!). There’s even a sweet love story and a wonderful montage that juxtaposes sex and maintenance (later recycled in somewhat diluted form for a scene in Amelie).

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