Review: 'A Fine Line Between Stupid and Clever: The Story of Spinal Tap'

This year marks the historic forty-first anniversary of This Is Spinal Tap, and as everyone knows, the forty-first anniversary is always the most special. So what are we getting from team Spinal Tap this milestone year? What aren't we getting is more like it![?] There will be a new Spinal Tap movie, a 4K Criterion reissue of an old Spinal Tap movie, a new Spinal Tap album, a reissue of an old Spinal Tap album, and a reissue of another old Spinal Tap album. That's a lot of Spinal Tap!

Review: 'Burning Down the House: Talking Heads and the New York Scene That Transformed Rock'

Talking Heads are one of the few truly big bands that one could credibly describe as "enigmatic." Despite selling lots of albums and having four members recognizable enough that you don't have to be a super-fan to name them all, Talking Heads are a group that raises a lot of questions because they followed a path very different from any other band. Most of the band came from extremely privileged backgrounds; so how did they end up as residents of a dog shit-strewn club best known for spawning punk? How was the band's novice rhythm section capable of playing such angular art rock? How did someone as defiantly geeky as David Byrne become one of the most recognizable rock stars of the eighties? How did a stripped down four-piece swell into a veritable orchestra of percussionists, vocalists, and other supplementary musicians who played more like front-liners? What did the members of the band who weren't really calling the shots feel about all that?

Review: 'On Record 1978: Images, Interviews & Insights from the Year in Music'

Four decades ago, budding rock journalist G. Brown went to work for The Denver Post. Writing for a major daily paper, he got access to an incredible assortment of talent—everyone from The Who to Peter Tosh to Blondie to Black Sabbath to Talking Heads to The Clash to Parliament. Since he was working for The Denver Post and not, say, Punk or even Rolling Stone, Brown’s assignments also included pieces on Barry Manilow, Anne Murray, Chicago, Chuck Mangione, and the like, and his interview questions were apparently of the “So, can you tell me about your new album?” variety.

G. Brown’s new book On Record 1978: Images, Interviews & Insights from the Year in Music is kind of odd. It consists of utterly neutral, 300-word write ups on 200 of the artists he covered in 1978 peppered with quotations from period interviews and illustrated with a welter of B&W press photos. Consequently, On Record 1978 reads like a compilation of press releases. However, as you move from The Cars to Wings to ELO to Rod Stewart to the Bee Gees to Chaka Khan to Linda Ronstadt to ABBA and so on, the books morphs into a fairly pleasing nostalgia balm that basically manages to capture the spirit of 1978 in a shallow nut shell.  

Review: 'True Stories' Blu-ray

A mayor who never talks to his wife directly but talks with his hands incessantly. A gregarious yet lonesome soul determined to find a wife. An amateur voodoo practitioner. A woman dedicated to cuteness. A woman devoted to lying in bed. A woman simply devoted to lying. A narrator who finds them all worthy of wonderment and love. These are the inhabitants of Virgil, Texas, the mythical setting of True Stories.

David Byrne directed a few music videos to gear up for his transition from Talking Head to filmmaker, and there is music video style aplenty in his feature debut. Besides the actual musical interludes that include the “Wild, Wild Life” video, there’s the rhythmic editing, seemingly nonsensical juxtapositions, people and ideas that don’t exactly lead anywhere, and emotional focus that transcends meaning that beam through the entire picture. With their script based on some of Byrne’s doodles, Stephen Tobolowsky and Beth Henley string together the disparate characters of True Stories into something that makes sense even as it doesn’t not strive to make sense. When it’s all over, you do not want to say goodbye to any of these Virgil citizens even though they are flawed, even though they tend to lead you down narrative dead ends, because Byrne the director and Byrne the narrator present them with such judgment-free affection.

In a time when the nation is so divided along party and state lines, when real villains devoted to nothing more than what is worst for every American trample the United States, it is both heartening and sad to survey Virgil’s fairy land of mutual understanding and acceptance. Even that married couple who haven’t spoken to each other in years seem to do so more because they want their own entry in the Guinness Book than because they don’t love each other. The film itself finds a liberal from a signature New York City rock band welcomed into the heart of American conservatism. Did an America like this ever exist? I don’t know, but 90 minutes with True Stories is a warm escape from the America forced upon us today. Somehow this films makes laziness, the refusal to communicate adequately, conscienceless consumerism, and complete untruthfulness charming even in a time when America’s worst monster embodies all of these sins.

The Criterion Collection’s blu-ray edition of True Stories presents the film with its customary flawlessness. The Texan landscape is vivid, each frame is free of scratches or blotches, and the soundtrack ripples and booms. That entire soundtrack makes its CD debut (though you may not find things like Annie McEnroe cooing “Dream Operator” great listening when divorced from images of the world’s weirdest fashion show) and leads the way among several choice supplements.

The best video extra is a new hour-long documentary on the film, though it would have been nice if more of the cast members were among its talking heads. There are also shorter new documentaries about how the film’s locations have aged and Tibor Kalman, the graphic designer who masterminded the film’s opening montage and advertising campaign. Vintage material includes a 30-minute making-of featuring many of the original cast members in character (John Goodman on a tour of the house that served as the Ewing homestead on Dallas is pretty priceless) and 14 minutes of fairly interesting deleted scenes. The packaging is also praise worthy, especially the newsprint booklet designed as a mock tabloid.

Review: 'Talking Heads Chronology'

Jagged and unpredictable, Talking Heads get the live retrospective they deserve with Eagle Vision’s new compilation, Talking Heads Chronology. One moment David Byrne is cooing otherworldly sounds during a level check at The Kitchen in 1976. Flash to an amateurish trio shoe-gazing awkwardly at CBGB a year earlier. Byrne stutters through music-devoid introductions back at The Kitchen. Suddenly, Jerry Harrison has joined the fold, and both the musical and video quality spaz into focus on “The Old Grey Whistle Test”, 1978. A swarm of curly fans trumpet their new favorite band soberly outside the Entermedia Theatre later that year. The confines of NYC clubs and TV studios expand to open-air festivals; the band doubles its ranks for the “Remain in Light” shows. Jar from artful black & white to flat-video color to rich film stock. In little over an hour, Talking Heads Chronology covers much ground while traipsing behind a band that covered even more. The results are as unsettling and thrilling as the music that jets from sparse, angular garage rock to enveloping funk. David Byrne evolves from timid scarecrow to bubblegum-legged sock monkey to big-suited icon to snow-capped elder statesman during the exhilarating Rock and Roll Hall of Fame reunion.