Category: Music

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Alt-Napster

Do you know what the music companies want to offer you as an alternative to Napster?

They want you to pay them $10 a month for a subscription which allows you to listen to 75 songs on your computer without actually being able to download the file. You will only be able to access these files by being on the Internet. My guess is that they will also probably demand your credit card number and hit you up with advertising constantly while you are connected to their site. They will probably collect information about what you listened to and sell it to other companies to hit you with spam.

So they’re adding insult to injury by making you pay to be advertised to and exploited. Furthermore, it looks right now like the music companies will not cooperate and offer each others’ catalogue at a single centralized site, so if you have any kind of diversity to your musical taste, you will have to subscribe to multiple services at $10 or more a pop. That still excludes independent labels and most of the back catalogue.

It sucks. I don’t think people will buy it. In fact, it has prompted me to seek out alternatives to Napster. Right now, I’m trying Bear Share.

As you probably know, the music industry will not be able to shut down the alternatives to Napster because they rely on peer-to-peer networking instead of centralized catalogues.

They will deserve what they get.

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Cabaret (Pantages Theatre Toronto, 2001; Theatre Kent 1992)

Pantages Theatre, Toronto, April 23, 2001

“Cabaret”, after all, is still a musical.

You know– those dippy concoctions in which impossibly handsome lumberjacks sing schmaltzy love songs to dainty girls with kerchiefs in their hair while throwing them over hay stacks and pitch-forking in unison. Absurdities, in other words. Something which, in the right context, could be mistaken for a parody of something that is stupid it couldn’t possible exist in an original form.

cabaret129.jpg (31150 bytes)

The author with two members of the “Cabaret” cast, Theatre Kent, Chatham, Ontario (1992).
(Photos from 1992 Theatre Kent production of Cabaret, Chatham, On.)

Yes, you heard it here first: the musical is no more of an “art form” than ceramics or collectible dolls or the can-can.

So Cabaret is still a musical, and so, at some point, Sally Bowles sings a dippy love song about this man (Cliff) just maybe being the one who will turn out to be “different” from all the other one-night stands, and might be that one special person with whom she can build an enduring relationship and it’s obviously a showpiece number, and the audience is expected to applaud at the end of the song even though it occurs in the middle of what is supposed to be a play, a story, a narrative, and even though the guy is gay.

By the way– I have to rant about this for a moment– the theatrical tradition of applauding at the end of a musical number within a theatrical performance is absolutely disgusting, contemptible, idiotic, annoying, and stupid. I hate it. If the drama is worth watching, the last thing in the world you want is for the audience to suddenly break out into applause. The drama is supposed to flow from scene to scene. Contrasts and ironies are developed and intensified. Emotions are pitched. Characters are illuminated. But, suddenly: hey, great singing there Alphonso! Bravo! What a show-stopper! Now, what was the girl doing with the rope around her neck?

Most musicals– however– deserve the interruptions.  They are mostly pabulum, bland confections of trite melodic ditties.

“Cabaret” is not trite.  It’s a very acute, perceptive dissection of the critical period in German history.

But the audience was trained:  they applauded after every song.

Now, in all fairness, most of the singing in Cabaret takes place in the Kit-Kat club, so the applause is not as disruptive as it is for, say, “The Sound of Music”, wherein we all applaud the children going to their bedrooms, or a nun dancing on what is supposed to be a hillside.

As I said, for most musicals– a phony art form if ever there was one– the applause at the end of each song is not really a problem because I never hear it because I rarely go to musicals. Do I really want to see “Oklahoma”? No. Do I think “The Sound of Music” really illuminates the nature of the Nazi terror? Not a chance. Does “Oliver” move me to some kind of state of contemplative bliss? Oh, please…

For the record, I have seen some musicals, live, on-stage, as well as a few on film. Here’s a list that I can remember off-hand:

  • Oklahoma (so very weird)
  • The Producers (delicious and funny, because it mocks the musical)
  • The Sound of Music (compared to “Cabaret”)
  • Fiddler on the Roof (least bad of this lot)
  • Cabaret (a twisted work of dark genius)
  • Hair (a musical with pseudo-rock songs in it.  The Milos Forman movie version is interesting.)
  • Oliver (can’t remember)
  • Showboat (boring, sorry.)
  • Camelot (awful)
  • West Side Story (Natalie Wood’s vocals were recorded by Marni Nixon– need I say anything more about phoniness?)
  • South Pacific (dumb, dumb, dumb)
  • My Fair Lady (who cares)

I have also seen and enjoyed “Jesus Christ Superstar” live and on film, and “Evita” on film, but neither of these are really musicals. They are operas. The word “opera” is death at the box office, so they are advertised as “musicals”. Get it straight: “Jesus Christ Superstar” is an opera, in form and style and design. It has arias and recitatives and the entire narrative is contained in the songs. It is an OPERA. And so is “Evita”.

(Backstage)

Anyway, back to “Cabaret”. “Cabaret” is loosely based on a book by Christopher Isherwood that is a fictionalization of his life in Berlin during the rise of the Nazis. It’s really not a very good book. It’s interesting, and it’s not awful, but it’s not great literature. But he did create some memorable characters and we don’t really have very much good English writing on Berlin in the 1920’s or 30’s so it stands out. In 1951, a guy named John Van Druten thought so too and wrote a drama (not a musical) based on the stories and it was produced on Broadway with Julie Harris and it was deemed a success. In the 1960’s, Hal Prince decided to develop it into a musical and recruited a couple of guys named John Kander and Fred Ebb to create the songs. Joel Grey created an absolutely unforgettable “Emcee”, and in 1966 the Broadway production won 8 Tony awards including “Best Musical”. In 1972, Bob Fosse made it into an exceptionally good film– except for the awful casting of Peter York as “Cliff” and Liza Minnelli as Sally Bowles– which won numerous Oscars including “Best Director”. Joel Grey indispensably reprised his role as the Emcee.

The production I saw live at the Pantages was “directed” by Sam Mendes, who directed the film “American Beauty”. Did Sam Mendes actually direct this version? I doubt it. More likely, this staging of Cabaret was based on his original staging, but directed by Rob Marshall.

Now, odd things happen to brilliant talents in our culture. We live in a democratic, free society. The powers that be do not censor our literature or movies or theatre. That means, in theory, that you can say anything you want in a play or movie or book, and no one will arrest you and prevent people from seeing or reading what you have to say.

No. But we go one better: when someone presents a disagreeable message to us, a message that might imply that there are faults or sins or crimes in the way we– the collective “we”, the audience– act, we simply appropriate the message, repackage it, and make it into a cultural artifact.

Consider, if you will, the title song of “Cabaret”.

What good is sitting alone in your room?
Come hear the music play,
Life is a cabaret, old chum,
Come to the cabaret

A line from this song– “What good is sitting alone in your room”– has been appropriated by SFX productions for the advertising of the touring version of “Cabaret”. Obviously it means, in this context, don’t stay home watching television or playing cards or staring discontentedly at your spouse! Get up off your fat duff, whip out your credit card, and fork over $80 for a crummy seat at a large theatre and watch our packaged presentation of a musical that collected amazing critical reviews and therefore must be artistic and telling your friends you saw it will confirm your good taste. Get out! Have a great time! Make it dinner and a show, and stay overnight at the Ramada with the pool and sauna and calypso bar! Enjoy yourself! Live!

The trouble is, that’s not what the song means at all. In the context of the play, Sally is announcing her refusal to accept reality, or any kind of responsibility for the monumental evil that is closing in around her. When Cliff announces his disgust with the Nazis, Sally says, “but what has politics to do with us?” Cliff tells her that she is blind. And the play tells us that this diseased society– Berlin of the 1930’s– has opened itself to the infusion of Nazi ideals. And Sally blithely sings on, “life is a cabaret, old chum…” Is this the sentiment the audience wishes to identify with?

I grant you– the advertising itself might be playing with irony. But I doubt it.

In the original production by Hal Prince, another line did cause consternation. The Emcee does a little dance with a gorilla, while singing to the audience that, if they could only see her through his eyes, they would realize how beautiful and desirable she was. At the end of the song, he sings,

if you could see her through my eyes/
she wouldn’t look Jewish at all.

It’s a terrific line. It’s a fabulous line. It’s the entire heart and soul of the play’s anti-nazi sentiment. And it was rejected by the original producers and deleted from the production! Why? Because they thought it would imply that the play’s producers thought that Jews resembled gorillas? Yes. They thought Jewish Theatre-goers would be offended by it!

I am sometimes filled with wonder at this crazy world of ours.

Cabaret is a “concept musical”. That is, instead of lumberjacks singing to virginal maidens while dancing through the fields, the trees themselves sing. Just kidding. I mean that there is never any pretense that the music pops out of real-life situations into a tiny set-piece before the drama resumes. In “Cabaret”, the music is organically and symbolically linked to the drama, and becomes a metaphorical part of the narrative. The Emcee, for example, often intrudes on the action, singing a line, or, through facial expression, passing ironic judgment on the characters.

Ah… but in this new production, the Emcee has also changed.

In the original, Joel Grey was a magnetic, ambiguous personality. He invites you in to the Kit-Kat Klub, to leave your troubles outside and live for the moment. He urges you to enjoy life to it’s fullest without inhibition or hesitation. The ambiguity in this part is critical: he is simultaneously attractive and repulsive. He glowers and caresses, cajoles and demands. He is sexually ambiguous too– androgynous, asexual, an object of fantasy or domination. One minute he is rhapsodizing about the pleasures of a ménage a trois, the next he is a menacing storm trooper, winking to the audience– this is a game we all can play. The swastikas, the leather, the boots mean nothing. It is just another fetish. Grey’s performance is the richest, most entrancing element of the movie version, precisely because he doesn’t offer the viewer any shortcuts or simplified perspectives. While the owners of the club are beaten to a pulp by Nazi thugs, the camera cuts back to Grey, leering, laughing, chasing the cabaret girls in their lacey underwear. We’re all part of it…

In the current touring stage version of Cabaret, the Emcee looks more like Edward Scissorshands. He is pale, intoxicated, and diminished. He is, in the words of Joe Masteroff (author of the book of the original version), a “figure of doom”. During the first performance of “Tomorrow Belongs to Me”, the sinister anthem to the rising power of the disciplined Nazis, the Emcee bares his ass: it has a swastika painted on it.

The audience can relax: evil has been conspicuously labeled and we are inoculated against the seductiveness of it all.

Which brings to me a certain ambiguity at the heart of “Cabaret”. You have a number of likeable characters at the center of the story who indulge in various degrees of licentious behavior and then you have the big bad Nazis trampling through the scenery hauling everyone off, presumably, to concentration camps. I’m not sure we want to draw a moral from the story, but if we did, what would it be? Isherwood was gay, so surely he wouldn’t want to have suggested that sexual immorality– defined in the broad strokes of the KitKat Klub– leads, as a consequence, to repressive, authoritarian governments? Cliff (or Brian, in the movie) leaves Berlin because he sees the Nazis as a genuine threat while Sally is blind to them. So he has “come to his senses”. So he goes back to America where he could be arrested for having sex with another man, and where plays like “Cabaret” have to conceal the homosexuality of one of it’s lead characters in order to find an audience on Broadway.

It’s a neat ambiguity. But then, Isherwood always insisted that his perspective was that of a camera– recording, but not judging.

Conversely, the orchestra is now comprised of beautiful women. In the original, the orchestra consisted of lumpy middle-aged men garishly dressed as women. Why the change? I don’t know. The first view of the orchestra in the film version is quite shocking, disturbing. How far will people go in this place? What is this Emcee leading us into? Is there any sanity in this place?

The Toronto production is smooth and efficient and even somewhat elegant. The orchestra is extremely tight and well-mannered, though the New York Times reported that the original revival production tried to sound more “authentic” and raw, as a real orchestra in the real original clubs would have sounded.

Christopher Isherwood lived in Berlin between 1930 and 1933. He wrote, of course, but paid the bills with English lessons. It was here that he met Jean Ross and the other persons who inspired the character sketches of “I am a Camera”. Isherwood later moved to the United States and taught English and wrote screenplays in California. “I am a Camera” was not a great success until the dramatization by John Van Druten made it’s mark in the 1950’s. In this version, as in the later movie, Cliff Bradshaw’s homosexuality was downplayed.

A book inscribed to “Jean Ross”, from Christopher Isherwood himself, was recently offered for auction at $12,500 by James S. Jaffe Rare Books.

Hal Prince on the movie version of Evita:

I must say I think that’s where the movie failed for me. They didn’t take that into account. They didn’t bother to figure out what was behind its underpinnings in the first place – and JUST told the story.

Did you like “The Money Song”? I did too. One of the highlights of the show. But it wasn’t written for the original “Cabaret”. It was created for the film version. But wait– you saw it in a live production?! Dang right. The movies rule! After the success of the Bob Fosse film, the stage version incorporated “The Money Song” too. Cross fertilization? Or homogenization?

Movies rule? Bill, check yourself. According to Hal Prince, the returns on “Phantom” are far greater than the total returns on the movie “Titanic”. Why? Because “Phantom” has played to sold-out houses for 11 years at, like, $45 a pop, whereas “Titanic” played to sold-out houses for three months at about $8 a pop. Hal Prince reports meeting people who have seen “Phantom” 75 times. He thinks that’s great. I’m not sure I don’t think it’s sick. What kind of person, do you think, sees “Phantom” 75 times? Think about it.

In it’s first incarnation, the German officers in “The Sound of Music” did not wear swastikas.

We now believe, in fact, that it is one of the great terrible illusions that we create an automatic redemption in such events as the Nazi era. Dr. James Young, Professor of English and Judaic Studies, University of Mass.

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MicroMp3

Well, this story gets rather tiring after a while, right? Same old, same old.

This time, Microsoft is going to IE MP3. That is, they will do to MP3 what Internet Explorer did to Netscape.

In the new version of Windows, XP, the built-in Microsoft MP3 ripper will create murky, low-quality, bloated .mp3 files. Whoa! You don’t want that do you? Do you think most people are smart enough to just download and install a good CD Ripper like Music Match? Or might they just use the new built-in Microsoft music ripper, which creates proprietary Microsoft files (WMA – Windows Media Player format)? These files sound fine.

If Microsoft is at all worried about the Department of Justice’s anti-trust action, still pending, it doesn’t act like it. It continues to try to muscle in everywhere using the formidable clout of it’s monopoly on desktop operating systems to screw you, me, everybody.

But if people are dumb enough to adopt the new Microsoft standard and the Department of Justice doesn’t do it’s job, we will have no choice.

AAUAKAKGJAAAAGGGUUGGAUKKKKKK!!!

The sound of something being shoved down your throat. Like it?

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Jesus Christ Superstar (Film)

Looks, let’s get this straight about Jesus Christ Superstar. It is not what most people think it is. I don’t think it is even what Norman Jewison, the director, thinks it is. Least of all is it what Andrew Llloyd Webber thinks it is, though he wrote the music– nothing he did elsewhere in his career substantiated the promising intrigues of this modest little opera and film.

In short, some interpretations I’ve heard, which I think are wrong:

1. the movie is very “spiritual” and has led a lot of people to Christ. Look, it may be true that the movie has led some people to Jesus, but it’s not a very spiritual film at all. It’s very much about politics and power and organized religion as a social force. But God makes no appearance in this movie– he is conspicuously absent. The cheesy image of the sheep at the end (I’ll bet Jewison wishes he could take that one back.) is misleading. Jesus dies on the cross and, in this version of events, he stays there, leaving his followers and antagonists to wonder just who he really was.

Did you know there is even a web site devoted to very pious paintings of Ted Neely as Jesus? These are paintings of an actor playing Jesus, as if he really were Christ. Strange.

There are dozens and dozens of productions of this very expensive show– many of them by churches or religious groups. Even stranger. I mean, it’s agreeable– and certainly an improvement on the usual drivel many churches’ mistake for art, but it’s still somewhat surprising.

2. the movie is about a bad man, Judas, and how he grew jealous of Jesus’ popularity and betrayed him, only to be disappointed when he becomes a “superstar”. Oh please! Judas hangs himself because he realizes that he has caused the horrible death of an innocent man because he misunderstood the motivations of the Scribes and Pharisees. He thought Jesus was getting carried away with his mission and posed a threat to the foolish, innocents who surrounded him. When he realizes that the Pharisees and Scribes mean to kill Jesus, he understands that a) he has been just as foolish as Jesus, b) he has become the tool by which manifest evil will be committed, c) he is going to remembered as the man who betrayed the holiest man on earth.

3. the movie is about the different paths by which people come to find God. As I said, there is no God in this film. There are some stories about dark clouds blocking the sun during the crucifixion scenes, and about Norman Jewison running around modern day Israel pointing at archeological digs and shouting, “God is here”, but Jewison didn’t understand the opera, and tried to put a bit of a new age spin on things. Didn’t wash.

Significant Changes From Rice’s Original Script:

Original Caiaphas: “What you have done will be the saving of Israel,”
Movie Caiaphas: “What you have done will be the saving of everyone,”

Original Jesus to Pilate: “There may be a kingdom for me somewhere if I only knew!”
Movie Jesus to Pilate: “There may be a kingdom for me somewhere, if you only knew.”

Original Jesus, as he is mobbed by the poor and the lepers: “Heal yourselves!”
Movie Jesus: this angry, frustrated outburst is omitted.

Original: nothing
Movie: awful, schmaltzy song led by Peter and Mary on how they miss the guy: “Could We Start Again”. I believe the song was written for the original and then wisely omitted. The movie, needing an extra few minutes of scenery, resuscitated it, to ill effect.  The action, Jesus and Peter and Mary strolling in the hills, is cringy.

What does it mean? That Jewison tried to put a “correct” spin on the movie? Rice’s lyrics clearly imply that Jesus is deluded, and has begun to question his own mission. His irritated outburst at the mob of lepers and poor betrays a deep frustration with the demands put on him by an endlessly needy and desperate populace, and raises doubts about Jesus’ confidence in his ability to meet those demands. Then Jewison tries to make it sound like Jesus is one up on Pilate. And he tries to make it sound like Caiaphas is paying Judas an ironic compliment, when Rice meant to suggest that the betrayal is significant only to Israel.

What is the movie about? It’s about an extraordinary, complex man whose gifts and ideas generated intense responses in the people around him. The story constantly shifts focus from one constituency to another, from his disciples who hardly grasp what he means and hope to be famous some day, to Herod who finds him a curiosity, a joke, to Pilate who discerns the worth of the man, but sees him as a danger to himself, to Mary Magdalene doesn’t know how to love him, to the priests who see him undermining their legalistic authority. The utter clarity of the schematic should be apparent to everyone: all of the parties are self-interested, except for Jesus. Jesus is a shock to “Israel in 4 BC” as he would be today. He was the very definition of the word “provocative”. And you don’t have to believe that he was the literal son of God to understand this.

Without developing a theological treatise here, you could do worse than encapsulate the nature of his message thusly: blessed are the weak. This particular phrase has become a modern cliché, but it’s fundamental subversiveness should never be underestimated. All around us, we proclaim “blessed” are the strong, the successful, the rich, the able, the triumphant, the popular, the creative, and so on. To understand the subversiveness of Christ’s message, try to picture Pat Robertson standing in front of his earnest Republican cohorts, or Madeline Albright in front of the U.N., or Eminem at the Grammys, or Colin Powell in Jerusalem: blessed are the losers. Aint gonna happen.

On the other hand, picture former President Carter hammering a shingle on a house for Habitat for Humanity. Every president of the U.S. claims to be a God-fearing Christian, but Carter is the only one I know of who actually might be one.

The tragedy of the movie is that when Christ resists the temptation to play to the self-interests of those around him, they do him in. And so it will always be. I doubt if the reaction to Christ today would be any different. Those Christians who rave about how they can’t wait for his return have one serious problem: they won’t know him. If Christ returned today, he would not say, “blessed are the cheerleaders…”

And that’s what is being done to the original rock opera itself.

The movie was reasonably faithful to the opera (which was recorded before the show was produced anywhere) at least partly because it had to be: it was an opera. The terms were relatively fixed.

But do a quick search on the internet and you’ll find that it is being appropriated by people who don’t seem to understand or care what it means.

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Timothy

Some record company executive back in 1970 or so listened to a song about cannibalism and thought, hey, this could be a hit. And so we have “Timothy” by the Buoys, which had pretty well disappeared from the airwaves for thirty years until Napster gave it new life. Yes, people are using the Napster and the internet to share music files and one file that shows up a lot is “Timothy”.

Not since Chaplin’s “The Gold Rush” have people taken such delight in such a morbid possibility.

“Timothy” gets right down to business. The narrator is trapped in a mine shaft that caved in. “Everyone knows” the only ones left are Joe, and “me”, and Tim. When they finally reach the unfortunate trio, the only ones left are Joe and– long silence here– me. The chorus:

Timothy!
Timothy!
Where on earth did you go?
Timothy!
Timothy!
God, why don’t I know?

Well, we know why he doesn’t know. “My stomach was full as it could be/and nobody ever got around to finding…. Timothy.”

Uh huh.

Now, let’s not get sidetracked by the fact that the song is about cannibalism. And let’s not even begin to discuss the question of whether or not this is another one of those pernicious rock songs that promotes anti-social behavior, like eating your co-workers. Let’s focus instead on the reliability of the narrator, because he is quite clever. You see, he tries to get you, the listener, to share his sense of shock and outrage that Timothy has been eaten. He thinks that because he shares your presumed shock and outrage, that you won’t suspect him of being the instigator of this tragic development. Oh no. He says:

Timothy,
Timothy,
Joe was looking at you….

Ah ha! Yes, I may have eaten my co-worker, but it wasn’t my idea. Yes, yes. As your present co-worker, I feel a lot better now.

So where’s Joe? Why don’t we get his version of the story? Maybe he’s the one who really “blacked out just about then” and suddenly woke up with a full stomach.

And let’s look at that sequence of lines there. Joe is looking at Timothy after saying that he would sell his soul for just one piece of meat. Joe takes a sip of water and hands the bottle to the narrator saying that there is just enough left for one person. And then:

I must have blacked out just about then
‘Cause the very next thing that I recall
Was the light of the day coming through.
My stomach was full as it could be
And nobody ever got around to finding Timothy.

Now think about this. He blacks out but wakes up with a full stomach. Can you eat while you are unconscious? No. Do you suffer trauma to the head while chewing on somebody’s forearm? Not necessarily. Is your psyche so traumatized by the experience of dismembering a friend that it represses the memory of the experience? Well, that’s what he’d like you to believe. But, in fact, research has shown that …..

Wait a minute. You should never believe any sentence that begins with the phrase “research has shown”. Research shows whatever the researcher wants it to show. Which is not to say that research is always wrong. It’s just a warning: don’t believe somebody just because he says “research” says. Check it out for yourself.

So check it out for yourself: do people repress memories of horrific events? No, they don’t. I know– dozens of Hollywood movies have shown this exact thing and they are all “based” on true stories. They are all lies. Seriously, check it out: they are all lies.

Back to the research, and I’m serious here: some researcher talked to a number of people who had verifiable experiences of traumatic events. Everybody can remember the events. Nobody “repressed” the memories of those terrible events. They are always there, always available to the mind to consider and reconsider.  Survivors of the Holocaust can tell you the same thing: they have not lost their memories of their terrible experiences.

On the other hand, in almost every case in which people claim to have repressed memories of traumatic events, they have no proof that the events actually happened.

But that’s a separate issue.

Anyway, the guy says he can’t remember anything from that last swig of water to the rescue. Well, he’s a liar. I just thought you should know that. He just doesn’t want to remember. He should stop whining. He should rewrite the song. The chorus should be:

Timothy!
Timothy!
I was chewing on you.
Timothy!
Timothy!

God! What did I do?

Yes, yes, yes, I know that “Timothy” is a miner’s slang for a mule used underground for hauling cars full or ore to the surface. But the song never tells you that, does it?

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Baptized Banality

The Banner, a magazine of the Christian Reformed Church, reports that a Christian screenwriter and a Christian actor have put together a company called “Act One” which is designed to provide Christians with training in screenwriting for Hollywood Movies. Barbara Nicolosi and David Schall are the two entrepreneurs– or missionaries– depending on your point of view.

Some of the teachers in this program have writing credits for shows like “Batman Forever”. I’m not kidding.

It only cost $1800 U.S. for one month, including room and board. That’s pretty steep, in my view. A red light goes off in my head. Aren’t there a lot of scams in Hollywood? So many people want so badly to become celebrated Hollywood writers, directors, actors…. there’s a lot of snakes out there quite eager to take advantage of them. This couldn’t be one of those scams, could it? Do Mr. Schell and Ms. Nicolosi give their students a realistic assessment of their chances of actually selling a script to a Hollywood producer?

And what are their chances? About a million to one?

The truth is, if you don’t know somebody in a key position at a studio in Hollywood, your chance of selling a script is almost nil.

Schell says, “I know Christians on the sets of several sit-coms and soap operas who make a positive difference in what is shown on the screen by creatively intervening in productions whose messages or stories are heading into areas that run counter to a Christian worldview.”

That’s the key right there. That tells you a lot about where Schell and Nicolosi are headed.

When, I asked myself, does a sitcom or soap opera begin to head into areas that are counter to a Christian worldview?

1) at the moment they insert advertising?

2) at the moment they promote their actors as “celebrities” who deserve our admiration and emulation because they are famous for being famous?

3) at the moment they engage in escapist fantasies that allow viewers to avoid confronting real life issues?

4) at the moment they pass off inane and repetitious formulaic plot devices stolen from “Mr. Ed” and “Gilligan’s Island” as “original” work?

5) at the moment they add a laugh track, to convince the audience that these tired mindless jokes are actually funny?

6) at the moment they eliminate every brand name, political party, identifiable religion, pop song, television show, social issue, and financial concerns from every episode of every show, in order to appeal to the lowest common denominator?

7) at the moment they select only actors who are physically beautiful or colorfully ethnic or comically fat?

Who knows?

Well, I suppose we do know. We know that what they mean is that when the script editors of a soap opera want to have two of the characters commit adultery with each other, the Christian on the set will pipe up with, “Whoa Nelly!” and put a stop to it immediately.

The main problem with Christians and the arts is that most Christians see art has having a function beyond the revelation of things seen and unseen. This function is propaganda. The trouble with most Christians who see themselves as more sophisticated than that is that they see art as having another potential function: to entertain and make money.

What we need are more Christians who, like Bruce Cockburn, see art as the revelation of things really seen and unseen– a very biblical standard that most great atheist artists and almost no Christian artists adhere to religiously.

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DivX

If you thought the world’s fat-cat corporate copyright holders had a problem with Napster and MP3’s, you can bet they are about to go into cardiac arrest.

A few years ago, some companies tried to foist a new video standard on a largely unsuspecting, but not entirely stupid, public. It was called DivX. The basic idea was this. Here were all these huge, fat, rich Hollywood companies and here were all these movies that they owned and here were all these consumers– that’s what we are, after all, “consumers”– buying copies of these videos and watching them over and over again after only paying for them once.

Now, if you’re not a lawyer, you probably don’t often think about that situation and think things like, gee, how can we get them to pay for it every time they see it? And why shouldn’t we? Again, you have to be a lawyer…

So these people got together and decided that when the next generation of high quality digital video came out, they would rectify that situation by providing disks to people that would only play once or twice. And then, pffftt! Unless you paid again.

Just what the consumer was demanding at that time, as I recall. Yes, yes, we want to give Viacom and Warner Brothers and Disney Corporation and Bruce Willis and Robin Williams even more of our money!

Anyway, the system was called DivX. And, of course, the hacker community looked upon DivX and just hated it. They hated it for both good and bad reasons. They hated it because like everyone in the world they hate to pay more than they need to to get what they want. But they also hated it for a good reason. The good reason is that these big Hollywood companies and actors already get way more money than they deserve for foisting their disgraceful products upon us. They already annoy us to death with product tie-ins, commercials, outrageous prices for food at the movie theatre, and deceptive advertising.

So the hackers set to work.

It’s not very clear to me (or anybody, apparently) where DivX 😉 (the “;)”, a winking emoticon, is part of the name) came from. It is rumoured to be a hacked Microsoft product. In any case, what DivX 😉 is is a “codec”, a computer process whereby video is compressed into small files so it can be downloaded and copied from computer to computer. It is a very good one, though not necessarily the best, nor the most readily available. But it is good enough to make it reasonable for people to copy movies off of DVD players and distribute them– illegally, of course– through the internet.

The lists of movies available tell you something about the kind of personality involved. You’ll find “The Matrix” and “The Cell” and “Terminator” and “Star Wars” on many sites. You won’t find many copies of “The Sound of Music”… yet.

The only missing piece right now is the equivalent of Napster to really take the whole thing mainstream. But it’s coming. Oh yes, you can bet it is coming.

One browse of the newsgroups devoted to topics like DivX;) and desktop video should be enough to convince anyone that a tidal wave of perverse ingenuity is at work out there and it is bent on completely destroying the entire system of copyright and distribution now in effect.

Is that a bad thing? I don’t know. The problem, as always, is how will artists get paid. On the other hand, the artists don’t get paid now. The lawyers and investors and accountants and manipulators and cheaters and liars get paid. They get paid enormous sums.

I do know a few things though.

In my opinion, all of this underground activity will not destroy either the music or film industries. Most people will continue to buy CD’s and DVD’s. Knowledgeable hackers and aficionados will use the technologies to access every form of recorded entertainment known to man, but most people still want to pop a video into the console and sit back and munch on popcorn and not give a thought to copyright law and fairness and justice for all.

The entertainment monoliths will have to be nimble and quick. They will have to keep coming up with improvements and enhancements that keep them a year or two ahead of the hackers. They will have to begin to offer CD’s and DVD’s at reasonable prices.

The only thing I’m sure they won’t do is take the high road or offer anything of value to anybody unless they really, really have to.

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Notes on Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”

I believe the kitchen chair is an allusion to a woman’s attempt to domesticate a man, to get him to commit, to become part of her home, like the furniture, children, and appliances. She ties him to her kitchen chair: she holds him with her domestic hospitality, her nurturing love. But then she cuts his hair– takes away the strength he feels he has as a strong, independent man. But he says “hallelujah” because he loves her.

Seems to be a religious bifurcation here between those who see the “cold and broken hallelujah” and those who see the song as paean to the ultimate triumph of love. The key would be the last lines:

And even though it all went wrong
I’ll stand before the lord of song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

Seems you could have it both ways, but I think it means that John Cale’s interpretation is right: it’s a cold and lonely hallelujah. The sight of Bathsheba on the roof compels you to love, arouses the desire and unquenchable longing, but “love is not a victory march”– there is no final consummation that endures, but in the unquenchable longing is spiritual beauty, the ability of a human to cry out “hallelujah” no matter how broken his circumstances.

In a sense, is this a hymn to Cohen’s life as a rambling gypsy womanizer who never settled down?

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Abba Babble

Get this– from the Toronto Star, April 2, 2000:

Buried in their songs is a complex artfulness disguised in simple pop formulas, a carefully crafted infectiousness that resonates in the group’s shimmering four-part harmonies, crisp, Scandinavian enunciation, and deceptively easy rhythms. These songs, these performances, are the work of pop music geniuses. They reel us in every time we hear them.”

And one day we will all come to believe that Gilligan’s Island is really an existential drama about the dread with which modern man faces technological domination.

Their names are Bjorn Ulvaeus, Anni-Frid Lyngstad (the red-head), Benny Andersson, Agnetha Faltskog (the blonde). Anni-Frid, Bjorn, Benny, Agnetha: Abba.

Faltskog no longer has anything to do with music. Lyngstad is into environmental causes. Benny plays accordion in some obscure folk band somewhere in Sweden. Bjorn is promoting a musical, “Mama Mia” based on Abba songs.

The most disgusting aspect of this revisionism is the pompous self-importance it allows small-time talents like Bjorn Ulvaeus.

You know, I could have sort of liked Abba a little, if I hadn’t read this drivel.

 

“Serious music critics now rank Ulvaeus and Andersson’s songs with those of the Beatles and the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson, and their musical weight in European culture alongside Grieg and Sibelius.”

Exactly which serious musical critic?  Let me assure you, serious music critics do not rate Abba with the Beatles or the Beach Boys or even, probably, with Bobby Sherman.  Well, okay: with Bobby Sherman.

What is this? Some kind of neo-con aesthetic putsch? You have to believe that only an idiot who is unaware of the Beatles’ career beyond 1965 could make such a statement. The kind of idiot who never listened to Revolver, Rubber Soul, Sergeant Pepper’s, White Album, Let it Be, and Abbey Road. As for the Beach Boys, well, yeah, lyrically there’s not much to choose from, but please name me a single Abba song that, in terms of musical imagination, could be uttered in the same breath as “Good Vibrations”.

Exactly which Abba song can be compared to “A Day in the Life”, “Eleanor Rigby”, “Norwegian Wood”, “Penny Lane”, or “Fool on the Hill”?

You want to know something else? The girls were never all that good-looking either.

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MP3’s

Let me make it clear, first of all, that I have no desire to save the music industry. The music industry consists largely of blood-sucking vampires who abuse, deceive, and exploit raw talent. A pox on all of their houses.

But, I do want artists to be paid for their work.

It is clear that there is no way to stop people from using the internet and their computers to freely copy music. It’s too easy. Even if you wanted to pay for the music, it is easier to download a copy from the internet than it is to buy a CD at your local record store.

But if the music industry can no longer sell enough CD’s to pay their artists, how will the artists be paid?

Here’s my solution: the government should impose a surcharge on all personal  internet accounts. The surcharge will be collected by all Internet Service Providers and remitted to an organization managed by representatives of the musical artists community. All artists who wish to be paid for their music will have the option of joining or not joining. This organization will find a way to track the volume of downloads for each member artist. Based on these numbers, each artist will be compensated directly from the fund.

The amount of the surcharge will probably only have to be about $2 or $3 a month or less.

The beauty of this plan is that the government is not required to monitor anybody’s downloads, or try to regulate internet usage. All it has to do is impose the fee and ensure that the money is funneled directly to the artists (and not to the parasitical music industry itself).

The only problem with this proposed system is that someone will have to develop a way of monitoring downloads and tabulating the numbers for each artist. I rather think that the makers of Napster, faced with multi-billion dollar law suits from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) would be more than happy to comply. As for all those people who are paranoid of government intervention, it should be stressed that the monitoring is done by the proposed artists’ agency and not by the government or the recording industry.

There. Done. A remarkably simple and effective solution. I hereby copyright it.

All I ask is mere .01% of the take.