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Friday Music Cue: Dirty Old Man

This week’s Cue is Dirty Old Man by The Three Degrees.  Amazing niteclub set, one tight Philly jam and what are perhaps the three greatest drag perfomaces ever committed to film. Bite it, Dreamgirls!

Friday Music Cues #1: ABC

Before marriage and fatherhood crushed John Jay's spirit he called every Friday morning on the way to work and played a rousing song for me through his Blackberry. The sound quality was terrible (why I gotta hate on Blackberry? Because they continue to ignore our overtures for sponsorship, that's why. But we're still open to discussion, Big Evil Berry!), but it was always a sweet and even moving gesture, and on certain caffeine-laced mornings JJ would break into his best Bill Murray style lounge singer voice and accompany New Order, The Smiths, or The English Beat. Pretty narrow repertoire, but a good one.

In homage to those halcyon days I’m going to try posting some musical clips each Friday a.m.. This little scene is from Clerks 2, which I completely missed when it came out, but flying back from London on Virgin Atlantic it was one of the movies you could call up on the tiny screen on the back of the seat in front of you (the best way to travel is immersed in films and back episodes of BBC series) and it really got to me. The film was a huge step beyond the charming and clever but lo-fi original. C2 is a living cinematic universe, geeky and irreverent (the anti-Lord Of The Rings rant is sublime) but surprisingly complex and ultimately quite moving. Rosario Dawson is also insanely hot here and reminds me of my super-fine cousin Allison. Maybe it’s the naughty librarian glasses they both wear or the fact that she too has all the fly dance moves down. In this scene, when she’s trying to teach Dante how to dance, you feel yourself falling in love with her as he so clearly is; the choreographed dance number midway through is a ballsy act of faith on Smith’s part that connects the whole film to a deeper realm--the place where the magic that old musicals believed in exists, and people break into song and dance and fall in love and are redeemed on a sunny afternoon-even in New Jersey. All in all: best sequel since Aliens.

Soft and Wet and Slightly Unformed

There’s an ace show of remarkable photos of a pre-fame Prince at the Black and White Gallery in New York, through March 17^th.

Photo: Robert Whitman

Shot in 1978 just before Prince’s music career really began, his look in the photos is Superfly/Beat Street and a little gritty, but those bewitching doe eyes haven’t changed. Prince’s musical hero at the time was Joni Mitchell, and she’s recalled saying she remembers seeing him in the front row, staring at her with his enormous eyes. It’s amazing to look at this young man on the street of Minneapolis and think of how much extraordinary music would come out of him.

 

Waiting In Vain (I Don't Want To)

On the way home from seeing Dean and Britta at the super-plush National Arts Club last night (more on that tomorrow, but check out Lorenzo’s pics here), I was delighted to come upon my favorite subway musician, Corey Frye, on the platform of the Union Square stop on the L. I’d first seen him last summer, on a Sunday afternoon in August when I’d been out too late the night before and the relentless summer heat had ceased to be something you could reckon with. It was the 14^th street stop on the Downtown F that day, and Frye was perched on a little stool, strumming his guitar and singing in a voice both plaintive and consoling, joyful and tremulous. It was that rare occasion where you’re glad the train takes forever to arrive. I can't quite recall the songs, but I think it was Van Morrison, Marley, the kind of things that sound nice around a campfire. He sang ‘Waiting In Vain’ that day, and the unfettered tenderness in his delivery caught the six or so of us standing around a little off guard. A lovely young woman with already-reddened eyes sitting alone on a bench began crying quietly.

I checked out Frye’s MySpace page and while his original compositions are sweet, on first listen they didn’t capture my imagination. However, I don’t think it’s his songwriting that lacks. Frye needs an audience to connect with, and even the harried, disinterested iPodded drones of the subway seem to respond to him, and he in turn opens up. A current is passed, and exchange completed. Like James Baldwin said about jazz music in a nightclub, ‘it was made and used on the spot’.

I saw him on one particularly raw day in early February and he looked sad and lost, as did everyone else. But last night he turned his face upwards when he sang, and his eyes radiated kindness, and his feet twisted and turned as he navigated the chords. I thought of the Joni Mitchell line:

Kids with the jitters in their legs
And those wide, wide open stares

Perhaps I was particularly attuned to such magic after the show I'd just seen, but as the Brooklyn-bound L and the 8^th Avenue-bound L both pulled in on opposite sides of the platform I could barely hear them, and Frye kept right on singing.

Palorazzi

Check out the array of new shots on Meerkat’s longtime associate Lorenzo di Flaneur’s flickr page. Lorenzo is the nom de photo of a fellow who’s worked in the indie film scene and camped out at some cool bars and music venues around the world for the last decade plus, leading me to define his job description at one point as “attending every important cocktail party in the world.”  He got friendly with a lot of cool cats along the way and snapped pictures all the time. I’m hereby coining the term ‘Palorazzi’ in reference to Lorenzo, which I define as the taking of photos of celebrated and talented people but  from the perspective of a fellow party-goer than a sweaty shouting man on the other side of the velvet rope. Lest this be confused with something fabricated like the patent unreality of reality TV, homeboy really is pally with a lot of these folks, and as a professional partygoer with an iconic photographer’s eye, you’ll often feel as though you were living his very rock and roll, very glamorous life, too. And he doesn’t discriminate on the basis of fame--to him the go-go boy at Eastern Bloc can be as fascinating as the Oscar nominee (has anyone else noticed the tattoos on Helen Mirren’s hands-very visible as she poses with all the awards she’s picking up lately? Could she get any cooler?). I’m so completely into his vision and am making it a project to promote his work—I’d so much rather see shots of these folk in their natural habitat, drinks in hand, than standing and posing for a bunch of soulless photographers in the employ of Bonnie Fuller. Check out his take on Helen, Parker, Jake, Lina, Madsteez, Antony, JCM, Yoko, and Joe G-L (above).

Best Band Name Ever weds Best Valentine's Day Card Sentiment Ever

Thanks to action-squad, via stereogum.

Standing In The Way Of Control

This is my first find in London-and they're from Oregon! Or somewhere in the States. I think. For all I know The Gossip has been all over Stereogum and Pitchfork, but they're new to me, and rowdy and jangly and pretty fierce.

"See his pug-nosed face.."

On Series Two of Extras Ricky Gervais makes the point that success is not necessarily better than obscurity, particularly if it leads to David Bowie writing a song about how pathetic you are. Gervais recounts how he told Bowie what kind of song he wanted for the scene(“..maybe it could be quite retro, something off Hunky Dory, with an anthemic chorus, like Life On Mars..“) and Bowie’s masterfully sardonic response in this interview with the Onion A.V. Club.

Gently Weeping Prince

“One of the first YouTube clips I ever saw was lost performance footage of a godhead ax solo Prince performed at the 2004 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony. If (this) performance were given to me as an MP3 file I wouldn’t have cared about (it). This illuminates one of those depressing paradoxes about rock ‘n’ roll: very often, profoundly exceptional guitar playing is boring to listen to.” Chuck Klosterman in Esquire. He goes on to describe how flawless, masterful guitar playing just sounds effortless, or studio-enhanced, unless you can actually see the sinewy, athletic and uninhibtedly sexual act of rocking that shit out. Case in point is said Prince performance.

Reader's Tips

Here's a list of great things online, many of them pointed out to me by friends and readers; I’ll update as I get them together.

Really fine mp3 site that’s truly eclectic but soul driven, with classics from Change, Ella Fitzgerald and De La Soul as well as startlingly good remixes and mash-ups: dilate.choonz

If you’re in need of some funky fresh lyrics to put you in the spirit check out eight fantastic old school hip hop video.

It would be unfair to Daniel Craig and Clive Owen to enter Scottish rugby player Sean Lamont into their little competition; follow the link to see him from the front and do make sure your boss isn’t standing behind you. Always a good idea to assume our links are NSFW as that’s just how we roll here at meerkat. Thanks to omg.

Pete Wentz interviews Robert Smith and they discuss South Park. Entertainment Weekly did it but Stereogum extracts the meaty pulp.

In a neat coincidence Esquire's music critic Andy Lager’s weekly podcast features lullaby versions of Cure songs.

Colt Brennan, U of HI star quarterback. I have really got to start getting into ESPN2. Thanks to Kenneth in the 212.