Review: 'Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir '

There's no way to miss a noir when you're face to face with one. The story is always the same. There's always some world-weary private dick or ne'er-do-well who falls hard for a femme fatale or a less dangerous woman in the possession of some loathsome mug. You know you're looking at a noir because the image is drained of color, shadows crowd the frame, and you're never, ever in the country. You know you're hearing it because noir speaks a tangy language all its own.

Originally published in 1998, Eddie Muller's Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir has to be the ultimate noir survey because it hits all the noir signifiers square between the eyes. Naturally, it has to cover the most important and iconic films, and it has all the usual suspects: Laura, The Maltese Falcon, Nightmare Alley, Gilda, Touch of Evil, and so on, as well as a few less typical selections such as Psycho and neo-noirs such as Chinatown. It better show us something to, and with ample stills and striking poster art, it tics that box too. Where Muller really goes above and beyond is in his telling. He speaks fluent noir, and Dark City reads like Dashiell Hammett's auto-bio. 

Dark City is now available in an expanded and updated edition.

Review: PJ Harvey's 'White Chalk' and 'White Chalk-Demos' on Vinyl

PJ Harvey tended to work in phases, beginning her career with a couple of psycho-blues breakdowns, continuing with a couple lusher, more somber productions, then onto two relatively traditional yet eclectic rock and roll records. Then came the outlier. There's nothing quite like White Chalk in Harvey's oeuvre, or any other rock artist's for that matter. White Chalk sounds like it was flown in from some hard-to-pinpoint era when people still lived in log cabins, lit the night with bonfires, and whispered of phantoms haunting the surrounding woods. Harvey plays ghost throughout every aspect of the record from her washed out image on the cover to her lyrics awash in death to her weightless vocals that never push into her trademark Beefheart bellow. Yet her banshee shrieks that climax the album will drag chills up your neck more assuredly than any of her earlier, more forceful stances. The archaic arrangements of hollow piano and acoustic guitar, dulcimer, zither, concertina, harp, and so on contribute immensely to the singular mood. Even on the odd occasion Harvey and co-producers John Parish and Flood opt for electricity, they use decidedly old-fashioned tools such as the Mellotron and the minimoog (courtesy of former Beefhearter Eric Drew Feldman). Harvey created specific sustained moods on each of her first four albums, but she had never done it as masterfully or specifically as she did on White Chalk. It's so specific that I'd feel as weird playing the album at any time but Halloween season as I would playing "Jingle Bells" in July. White Chalk is haunting, sincerely scary, beautiful, poetic, autumnal, gloomy, and my very favorite album by an artist who made several of my favorites.

White Chalk is so old-fashioned that it also feels wrong listening to it on any format but good old vinyl, and I've spent the last decade or so kicking myself for not grabbing the wax upon its 2007 release before it went out of print. So it's the album I've been most looking forward to since last year's announcement that the whole Harvey catalog would be remastered for vinyl. I'm not disappointed. Without any fanfare or even an indication on the LP jacket, inner sleeve, or labels, White Chalk spins at 45 rpms. It sounds fabulous. The vinyl is flat and quiet with a properly centered spindle hole. My copy has a series of unfortunately-placed scratches during the a capella opening of "Broken Harp", but this is more likely a flaw particular to my copy than a production error.

This release's accompanying disc of demos isn't radically different from the main feature. White Chalk - Demos sounds like White Chalk stripped of everything but Polly Jean's contributions. That means it's great because Harvey's work on White Chalk is great, but it's no substitute for the final album and no font of revelations either. It does make one fully appreciate the little ear-catching touches Harvey's collaborators added. White Chalk - Demos may have been of more interest to non-completists if it included the itunes-only bonus track "Wait", which is a really good song in the folk-rock mode Harvey had previously only attempted on "Good Fortune" from Stories from The City. Still, I'm glad it was not appended to the proper album because it strays so far from the utterly perfect mood of White Chalk.

Review: 6 Vinyl Reissues from Traffic

The Spencer Davis Group introduced the world to the precocious soul howl of teenaged Stevie Winwood. That singer and multi-instrumentalist did not fully explore his creativity until he veered out of Davis’s lane and into Traffic in 1967. With the co-leadership of former SDG-roadie Dave Mason, a more distinctly English and whimsical songwriter in the Syd Barrett mode, Traffic created one of the most delightful and imaginative debuts of rock’s most delightful and imaginative year. Mr. Fantasy pools hard rock jamming, raga rock, wyrd folk, spacey ballads, jazz parodies, woodwinds, sitars, harpsichord, and Mellotron without ever sacrificing fully developed songwriting for gimmicks or self-indulgence.

 

Such precision and concision was still in effect for Traffic’s self-titled second LP, though it was something of a less psychedelic affair. Mason had left the group after their debut due to standard-issue “artistic differences,” but rejoined to help Winwood, drummer Jim Capaldi, and woodwinds-player Chris Wood flesh out a skimpy selection of songs, the best of which is the surreal “Forty Thousand Headmen”. Interestingly, Mason’s contributions include “Feelin’ Alright”, a simple song more in line with the work of a soul outfit like the Spencer Davis Group than wacky Traffic. It became Traffic’s best known song and a genuine rock and roll standard. Winwood definitely should have been allowed to sing it, though. Mason’s vocals are rough throughout the record.

 

Mason was gone again after the album Traffic, and the band Traffic seemed deader than dead. However, sessions for what would have been Winwood’s first solo album in 1970 organically morphed into a new Traffic album when he asked for Capaldi and Wood’s assistance. John Barleycorn Must Die pointed out a new direction for Traffic. Now the emphasis would be on longer yet disciplined jams and more sincere jazz. Fortunately, the songwriting has recovered after the somewhat half-hearted Traffic and tracks such as “Empty Pages” and “Freedom Rider” rank among the band’s best. The instrumental “Glad” became a classic rock radio staple for decades to come.

 

Review: 'Summer Movies: 30 Sun-Drenched Classics'

What should be considered a "summer movie"? The first thing that may come to mind is anything featuring Frankie, Annette, and a whole lot of bikinis and sand. Or you may think of a summer movie as any you first saw as school let out and the sun seemed to stay out right up until bedtime. For me, Return of the Jedi is a summer movie not because of its metal bikini and Tattooine sand but because I very clearly remember seeing it in the summer of '83 and having it loom over that whole season of freedom and play. 

John Malahy isn't quite that loose with his definition of "summer movie," but his new book Summer Movies: 30 Sun-Drenched Classics does look at nearly every angle of what that term could mean. Yes, he throws a beachball to Frankie and Annette (Beach Blanket Bingo), but he also includes such disparate movies as Jaws and its bloody beach water, Caddy Shack and its seasonal silliness, and Do the Right Thing and its sweltering summer discord. There are B-grade things like Beach Blanket Bingo and high art like Bergman's Smiles of a Summer Night.  

Because the films vary so much in style, genre, and quality, I'm not quite sure to whom Summer Movies would most appeal. That variety nearly renders it a book of randomly assorted movies even as Malahy is always sure to bring his discussions of each film back to the season that is their ostensible connecting thread. Still, his writing is insightful enough and the book is a nicely designed hardcover with lots of full-color photos. 

Review: PJ Harvey's 'The Peel Sessions 1991-2004' on Vinyl

John Peel was likely the UK's most revered DJ, and being summoned for one of his BBC "Peel Sessions" was way cooler than a command performance for the queen. Peel called on PJ Harvey eight times from October 1991 to May 2004, and she participated in one final session in tribute to Peel eight weeks after he died on October 25, 2004. From those nine sessions, Harvey selected a dozen performances for her 2006 CD compilation The Peel Sessions 1991-2004. 

While Harvey's inaugural Peel session is considered one of the series' best, possibly because it captures her before she'd even put out Dry, the four performances she selected from it feel a bit redundant because they are all songs from that debut that do not differ significantly from the recorded versions aside from Steve Vaughan's extra wiry, extra distorted bass sound. They're all great songs performed well, but The Peel Sessions really gains value when PJ Harvey works through less familiar material or less familiar arrangements, which is what she does for the remainder of the disc. "Naked Cousin", a Rid of Me outtake that finally found a home in 1996 on the Crow: City of Angels soundtrack, is flat-out awesome--as devastating a song and performance as any on Rid of Me. I've loved her take on Willie Dixon's "Wang Dang Doodle" ever since I heard her do it totally solo on 120 Minutes in '93, and the full-band version here is considerably wilder. Her and John Parish's voice/guitars reading of "Snake" contains a vocal even more uncontainable than the one on Rid of Me. A completely fuzzed-out version of the Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea bonus track "This Wicked Tongue" sounds like a return to Rid of Me's lo-fi aesthetics in the days when PJ had polished up her sound on disc considerably. Her voice and guitar reading of "You Come Through" from the tribute session is much more intense than the airily atmospheric version on Uh-Huh Her.

That back two-thirds of The Peel Sessions renders the disc nearly as essential as PJ Harvey's proper albums, so it's very conscientious of Island/UMe to include it in its current PJH vinyl reissue campaign. It sounds just as full-bodied as the other LPs in this campaign.

Review: 'Prince and the Parade and Sign “O” the Times Era Studio Sessions 1985 to 1986'

Prince completed a wild amount of work in the two-year period it took to promote 1999, make the Purple Rain film and its phenomenal soundtrack, record the very different but stealthily complex Around the World in a Day, write and record a wealth of additional unreleased material, and mastermind successful projects by protégés such as Morris Day and the Time, Apollonia 6, and Sheila E. By 1985, Prince had definitely earned some time off. Instead, he spent the next two years doing more of the same. 1985 through 1986 was almost a mirror reflection of the two years that preceded it. Like Around the World, Parade is an under-appreciated, highly creative, and very unique record. There was another movie, though Under the Cherry Moon was hardly the commercial, career-making smash Purple Rain was. There was another masterpiece: the monolithic double-album Sign O’ The Times. And as 1983 began with the solidification of the band that would work in genuine concert with Prince during his most brilliant stretch, 1986 ended with that band’s dissolution and the beginning of the end of Prince’s most potent work and cultural impact. 

As he did with those fertile years of 1983-1984, Duane Tudahl tracks Prince through the next two with Prince and the Parade and Sign “O” the Times Era Studio Sessions 1985 to 1986. Like Prince and the Purple Rain Era Studio Sessions, this new book is a thick, tremendously detailed day-by-day account of not only Prince’s studio work but also his stage work, film work, and personal activities. So along with spending time with him as he creates and seemingly rejects Parade and tries to make a towering triple-album called Crystal Ball but settles for the double-LP Sign O’ The Times, we also get first-hand accounts of his souring relationships with the Revolution and long-time girlfriend Susannah Melvoin. We learn of the very hard work Prince put into all of his recording projects as well as the apparent effortless magic of his songwriting. We learn of the human behind the apparent superhuman, who could be petty, mean, and childish, but also generous, tender, and funny. This period is also when Prince fully became the superstar he’d only previously pretended to be and developed a rather unlovable celebrity complex that may have been more than a little responsible for the ends of his most significant personal and professional relationships. I certainly don’t think the fact that the Revolution’s end coincided with the end of Prince’s best work is a coincidence.

 

That fact seemingly sets up Tudahl’s next book as potentially disappointing or borderline irrelevant in light of his fascinating and wholly necessary two books that precede it. Yet I want to keep reading because even when he was working below his abilities, Prince is always fascinating and his dedication to none-stop creativity is eternally inspiring.

(Disclosure: Rowman & Littlefield, the publisher of Prince and the Parade and Sign “O” the Times Era Studio Sessions 1985 to 1986, owns Backbeat Books, the publisher of my books The Who FAQ and 33 1/3 Revolutions Per Minute: A Critical Trip Through the Rock LP Era).

Review: 'Underexposed! The 50 Greatest Movies Never Made'

Films that stall out before production have always held an allure for cineastes. What might have been if Hammer Films really had made that adaptation of Vampirella starring Barbara Leigh in the seventies? What if The Beatles really did star in an adaptation of The Lord of the Rings for Stanley Kubrick? What if the Stones played the droogs in a Kubrick-less Clockwork Orange or if Robert Rodriguez had remade Barbarella with Rose McGowan or David Lynch and Mark Frost had made a zany Steve Martin/Martin Short comedy called One Saliva Bubble? 

Joshua Hull runs through 50 of these "what ifs" in Underexposed! The 50 Greatest Movies Never Made. The crypto-movies he discusses are always most interesting when there is sufficient details about what they would have entailed. An entry on Neill Blomkamp's Alien 5 is essentially pointless since Hull provides no information about the treatment or script aside from a description of a few pieces of concept art. When details are sparse, the author provides synopses of the attached filmmakers' movies that were actually produced, which doesn't really scratch the itch this book promises to scratch, and his pun-heavy text is an acquired taste. But when Hull relays sufficient details about a Tim Burton-era Batman sequel featuring Nicolas Cage as Scarecrow and Courtney Love as Harley Quinn, a William Dozier-era one in which Adam West's Batman and Yvonne Craig's Batgirl would have faced off against Godzilla, and Steven Soderbergh's proposed 3-D musical about Cleopatra with songs by Guided by Voices, Underexposed! earns its keep. 

The book's what-if poster art is generally very cool too, but it would have been even cooler if all of the artists had made an effort to recapture the poster art style of the given film's era as Dave O'Flanagan (the unproduced John Hughes romp Oil & Vinegar), Nick Taylor (David Cronenberg's pre-Schwarzenegger Total Recall), Rachael Sinclair (Vampirella), and Mary Levy (Batman vs. Godzilla) did.

Review: 'The Who Sell Out' Deluxe Double-LP

The Who were constantly on the look-out for a gimmick, and when Pete Townshend feared his latest batch of songs weren’t fierce enough and lacked a sense of overall purpose, managers Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp suggested he unify them with a pseudo-pirate radio concept full of zany adverts and wacky station identification spots. Thus, The Who Sell Out was born. With its completely unselfconscious humor, sensitive performances, sumptuous harmonies, and songs that may have lacked ferocity (well, not “I Can See for Miles”) but wanted nothing for beauty and harmonic complexity. The album’s light-touch, colorful cartoonishness, and lack of pretension (well, not the operatic “Rael”) have made it the favorite of a lot of Who fans, including myself. The Who Sell Out certainly hasn’t been played to death as Tommy and Who’s Next have been, so it still feels fresh in a way that so many Who war horses no longer do. So if you were to, say, sit down for several hours to pore over a 5-CD box set devoted to Sell Out before digging into a 2-LP Sell Out vinyl set, you probably wouldn’t even get sick of it!

Review: 'Moonlighting: An Oral History'

 

Not since the days when Adam West played comedy straighter than Gary Cooper or Micky Dolenz serially broke the fourth wall had there been anything like Moonlighting on TV. At a time when Dallas’ soapy entanglements passed for drama and Family Ties’ laugh-track clichés passed for comedy, Glenn Gordon Caron’s neo-noir absurdist romantic-comedy sparkled brighter than Cybill Shepherd through a diffusion filter. And unlike Batman and The Monkees, Moonlighting was pitched squarely at adults, what with its fixation on boinking.

As welcome as Moonlighting was in a mid-eighties television environment notoriously lacking in imagination, multiple issues conspired to derail its magical run. Stars Shepherd and Bruce Willis loathed each other. Shepherd loathed Caron. Caron often seemed intent on keeping his stars from sharing screen time. Shepherd successfully got Caron booted from his own show.

Review: ''Sukita: Eternity"

The covers of albums such as Wish You Were Here and Nevermind are regarded as art because of their provocative and unusual compositions. However, with a photographer as focused as Masayoshi Sukita behind the camera, the simplest shot can become iconic. Take his work on the sleeve of David Bowie’s “Heroes”, which features nothing more than the artist chest up against a featureless backdrop. Yet the striking clarity of Sukita’s black and white and Bowie’s unnatural pose are as powerful and unforgettable as any flaming businessman or money-grubbing water baby.

Eternity presents the breadth of Sukita’s work in a halting package. Though they haven’t crossed into the culture the way his photos on the covers of “Heroes” and Iggy Pop’s The Idiot have, Sukita’s portraits of Marc Bolan (who, like Bowie and Pop, is the subject of an entire chapter), Klaus Nomi, Bryan Ferry, David Byrne, The B-52’s, Ray Charles and Quincy Jones, Joe Strummer, and Elvis Costello punching himself in the face are also potent. Sukita may be at his most arresting when working with Yellow Magic Orchestra, who were up for having their faces painted or plastered with newsprint or propelled through the air amidst a flurry of cassette tapes. Such photos deliver all the striking character of Sukita’s work with Bowie and Iggy and the conceptual ingenuity of those Pink Floyd and Nirvana covers.