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Nigel Godrich Talks From the Basement
An interesting interview with the great music producer Nigel Godrich in The Quietus.
I guess the obvious place to start is the inspiration behind From the Basement…
NG: It was quite a few years ago when I was having a conversation with Beck about Rock &‘N’ Roll Circus, the film made by The Rolling Stones in the 60’s. At the time they didn’t feel it was good enough because it was basically a little bit plotless, just them hanging out with their friends playing music. But now it’s really interesting to watch all these really great people - the Stones, John Lennon, Eric Clapton - just hanging out and playing. Beck and I both felt that somehow, something had been lost in the way that people film music. It was a lot more basic in those days, and now MTV has destroyed the way that people film performing because suddenly it became about the agenda of who’s filming it, the performance of the director, the shaky cameras…
The other thing, I got this old Whistle Test DVD that blew me away. It’s such an intimate atmosphere that comes over so well, and it’s a shame to think that of the great artists that are around at the moment, no-one is recording them in that way. It will be some sort of horrible, corporate logo embezzled version, which is a shame.
What are the benefits of capturing a performance in such an intimate environment?
NG: I think it provides something very, very direct between the performer and the audience. When Talking Heads did ‘Psycho Killer’ on the Whistle Test, when David Byrne talks to the camera and goes straight into the performance…it makes the hairs on your neck stand up, because you feel it’s just for you. You can tell they were comfortable, and that’s why it worked.
Waffle Shop/Talk Show
If you find yourself in Pittsburgh between 11PM and 3AM Friday and Saturday nights, there’s only one place to get great waffles with your talk show and that’s Waffle Shop. They also have a brunch on Sundays if your sleeping patterns are a bit more conservative.
If you happen to be interesting, hop up on stage for Talk Show:
Live Your Best Life Ever!
Newsweek:
In January, Oprah Winfrey invited Suzanne Somers on her show to share her unusual secrets to staying young. Each morning, the 62-year-old actress and self-help author rubs a potent estrogen cream into the skin on her arm. She smears progesterone on her other arm two weeks a month. And once a day, she uses a syringe to inject estrogen directly into her vagina. The idea is to use these unregulated “bio-identical” hormones to restore her levels back to what they were when she was in her 30s, thus fooling her body into thinking she’s a younger woman. According to Somers, the hormones, which are synthesized from plants instead of the usual mare’s urine (disgusting but true), are all natural and, unlike conventional hormones, virtually risk-free (not even close to true, but we’ll get to that in a minute).
Continue reading the article for more horrifying details.
Teen Commits Suicide with Live Web Audience
Biggs was not the first person to commit suicide with a webcam rolling. But the drawn-out drama — and the reaction of those watching — was seen as an extreme example of young people’s penchant for sharing intimate details about themselves over the Internet.
Was seen by who? I don’t see the problem as young people sharing intimate details with others. I see the problem as one young man who committed suicide. Another problem is the development of this into some sort of media culture incident.
As a matter of fact, this obsession the media gets with individual cases of personal drama is far more common and disturbing than “young people’s penchant for sharing intimate details about themselves over the internet.” Think about how certain cases get turned into serial dramas.
For example, Jean-Benet Ramsey and Lacy Peterson are victim celebrities– individuals who had no interest to the public until they became the victims of gruesome murders. After they had been killed, they were developed into archetypes by local and national media so that they fit into generated story lines.
We are meant to believe these murders and suicides are indicative of national problems. This is probably a defense mechanism. As a culture we have a hard time accepting random acts of violence, derangement, or death. We become obsessed with motives and storytelling to try to squeeze some sort of moral out of personal tragedy because we refuse to accept the possibility of meaningless violence and chaos.
(Isn’t Batman supposed to punch me now?)
The Reason Obama/Biden is Winning
A right-wing reporter asks some blatant McCain talking point attack questions to Joe Biden. Biden deftly and concisely handles each of the charges and asserts himself as a formidable and experienced running mate.
This is the reason Obama/Biden is winning. None of these straw man talking points stick and the ridiculous rhetoric of middle-class tax cuts somehow being Marxist makes the right sound like fools.
Even when the interview is skewed to the extreme the attacks just don’t make sense. At least the trivialities of the Bush campaigns against democrats had some focus and possible validity (i.e. perhaps Kerry did change his mind on some positions), the attacks by the GOP this cycle have been so far removed from anything real that they’ve fallen on deaf ears.
The View From Roanoke
The Guardian’s Gary Younge is following the presidential campaign from Roanoke, Virginia, in a series called “The View From Roanoke”. So far the series is superbly well written. Something about Younge’s outsider perspective gives things a refreshing neutrality and clarity.
An evening with the Garsts lays bare the depths of America’s political polarisation. A night out with many liberals could well produce the same confusion about what motivates the other side. The problem is not just that people do not agree with each other. It is that at times they don’t even seem to know each other politically beyond caricature. A sizeable section of both the Democratic and Republican base believes that the only reason the other exists is because they are either deluded, bigoted, misinformed, misanthropic, greedy, gullible or godless. Both believe that their information pool is contaminated - one by the liberal media, the other by the mainstream corporate media. The issue is not that there’s no middle ground, it’s that there’s little in the way of common ground.
The Most Trusted Man in America?
An interesting profile piece on Jon Stewart and The Daily Show in the Times. It reminds me that I should probably start watching it again.