In September 1977, Bing Crosby was recording his television special “Bing Crosby’s Merrie Olde Christmas.” Slated for a guest appearance in the show was a rather unusual choice – Ziggy Stardust himself, Mr. David Bowie.

Bowie was scheduled to sing a duet with Crosby of “The Little Drummer Boy.”

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The pair seemed an odd fit artistically, but commercially it made sense, at least in theory. Bowie was then seeking to somewhat mainstream his career, and the producers of Crosby’s special no doubt hoped that a young, ultra-hip performer like Bowie would bring in a demographic not normally inclined to tune in to a very old-fashioned holiday special.

But Bowie balked at the choice of songs; he thought “Little Drummer Boy” was wrong for him, and asked the producers if he could do something else.  So, as The Washington Post described the scene:

Just hours before he was supposed to go before the cameras, though, a team of composers and writers frantically retooled the song. They added another melody and new lyrics as a counterpoint to all those pah-rumpa-pum-pums and called it “Peace on Earth.” Bowie liked it. More important, Bowie sang it.

(more…)

The summer is young, and already two MARVEL comics properties – “Thor” and “X-Men” – have barnstormed into theaters to excellent reviews and boffo business (“Thor” slightly underperformed domestic expectations, but still has made nearly half a billion in worldwide receipts). And coming in July, the star-spangled avenger himself, Captain America, will at last get his own big-budget showcase.

More MARVEL madness looms next summer, with a reboot of “Spider-Man,” possibly another “Wolverine” (if the sequel’s Japanese production can get back on track after this year’s tsunami temporarily derailed it), and of course, MARVEL’s piece de resistance, “The Avengers.”

The Avengers represents the apex of MARVEL’s long term strategy for its movie properties: Each character will have their own series, as well as make guest appearances in other character’s movies. And all will join forces in the Avengers’ own series, bringing Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, Hulk, Black Widow, and others together as a team, just like in the comics.

One of the great joys of reading MARVEL comics has always been the shared universe these characters inhabit; seeing them team up or face off in each other’s books made for a thrilling reading experience. That MARVEL is trying to replicate this phenomenon in the movies is daring, to say the least, and maybe unprecedented. (more…)

“Music was my salvation really, and always has been.” – Joey Ramone

Years ago, a young woman sat across from me on a near-empty train. She looked like she had been crying. Pulling her sweatshirt sleeves down over her hands, she leaned her head against the window, a distant look on her swollen and scarlet countenance.

I was listening to the Ramones at the time, and took a chance. I moved over to the seat next to her and said hello. She seemed shocked by the abrupt intrusion, but very quickly recovered and managed to make some small talk with me. After a few moments, I offered my headphones:

“You wanna hear something?” I asked.

She took my measure for a long moment before, against what was surely her better judgment, slipping the headphones on. I pressed play and Cretin Hop poured into her head. After a second she put her hands over the phones, drawing the music further in. Beat on the Brat followed; she listened for a minute, then, mirabile dictu, her lips unfolded like tiny wings and a smile took flight on her face.

“I’ve never heard this,” she said, too loud.

“I know,” said I.

“Who is it?”

“The Ramones.”

“What are you, their agent?”

(more…)

Praise be, they’re back.

MTV has recently announced the triumphant return of Beavis and Butt-head. Original series creator Mike Judge is on board to produce new episodes which will air on the one-time music network later this year.

As John Altschuler, head writer for the new series, explained to Rolling Stone, “In the years since Mike quit doing ‘Beavis and Butt-head’ he realized that there was a lot to make fun of.”  The pair will reportedly be the same Metal-loving, nacho-chomping numskulls they were back in the day (the last episode of the original series aired in 1997), but with a twist: instead of sitting on the couch and watching and pillorying music videos, they will now be sitting on the couch and taking aim at clips from YouTube and reality shows like “Jersey Shore.”

No doubt that modern pop culture (culture! Imagine I wrote that with a straight face) will provide much fodder for the un-dynamic duo, but I wonder…

Beavis and Butt-head seemed so much a product of their times, those gay ’90’s, when the Cold War ended with a whimper and the nation could afford a President with nothing better to do than chase interns around the Oval Office. Beavis and Butt-head both rode and propelled this peculiar, peace-dividend zeitgeist; Americans loved hanging out with these horny, semi-retarded boys, because really, what else did we have to do? (more…)

Robert Plant was once derided as the least-talented member of Led Zeppelin. His voice was notoriously uneven live and his prissy stage manner earned him the derogatory nickname “Percy” among his band mates. It is widely known that Plant was not even Jimmy Page’s first choice for Zeppelin frontman – Steve Winwood was among those who passed on the gig before Plant signed on.

In the post-Zep era, however, something surprising happened. John Bonham passed away (God rest his smutty soul). John Paul Jones retreated largely to the background as arranger and producer for various artists. And Jimmy, well, Jimmy has had long stretches of inactivity, punctuated by mostly mediocre albums with mostly mediocre collaborators (some are upset by Jimmy’s recent visit to Cuba, but I submit that Coverdale and Page is by far the worse crime).

Plant, meanwhile, has had a profoundly diverse and prolific solo career. In the 1980’s he reigned the Top 40 charts with slick, well-crafted pop hits like Big Log and Tall Cool One. The 90’s saw his best and hardest-rocking solo album, “Fate of Nations,” as well as a briefly resurrected partnership with Page that produced two albums and several tours. (more…)

If you haven’t seen ABC’s breakout hit Wipeout, then, well, I just feel sorry for you.

You may instead have been watching critically acclaimed, scripted dramas like Big Love, or award winning educational programming on Discovery or National Geographic. Hell, you may have been reading a book or spending quality time with loved ones. If so, you have been wasting your time.

—–

The premise of Wipeout is fiendishly simple: Everyday schlubs and schlubettes brave the “largest obstacle course in the world” – the last one standing wins $50,000. The course itself changes from week to week, but consistently features various moving apparatuses that don’t merely stand in the way of contestants, but actively seek out and pummel them before tossing them mercilessly into the icy water below. All this while sports broadcaster John Anderson and comedian John Henson deliver running, wise-ass commentary reminiscent of the two geezers from the old Muppet Show.

But a written description could never do justice to the genius of this show, which must be seen to be apprehended. Wipeout is gut-bustingly, laugh-out-loud funny. You will not believe some of the shots these poor bastards take to the head, stomach, and groin, risking humiliation and injury for our amusement. If you’re the squeamish sort, never fear: The course is said to be so padded that, no matter how brutal the wipeouts look on TV, there is virtually no chance for actual bodily harm. If true, that makes me feel a little better about the peals of Mr. Burns-like guffaws it draws out of me and a little less guilty about the warm fuzziness it brings to my otherwise exhausted and icy heart. (more…)

I started out trying to write a typical, end-of-year, best of list. I really did. I agonized for days over the best movies I had seen in 2010. But every time I had something I was sure of on my list, I realized that it really wasn’t that great after all. In fact, it was downright disappointing. My list grew shorter the more I considered the matter, until at last I was left staring at a blank page (this will come as little consolation, I know, to our esteemed editor Mr. Nolte, who was promised said piece in a timely manner.)

The problem, I decided, was two-fold. For one, I am a crank and a pessimist, and becoming more so with every passing hour it seems. And for another, we are living in era of chronic political, cultural, and creative decay of the kind that afflicts all empires in their twilight (Of course, I don’t have to tell you that the two are not unrelated, and that the latter is very much a proximate cause of the former).

So there we have it. I cannot give you a best of, because what I have seen this past year has been mostly dreck – occasionally tolerable dreck, but dreck just the same. So instead I shall give you the only honest list a pessimist can give, and that is my top letdowns of the year, the movies that were advertised as good, and should have been good…but weren’t. Shall we begin? (more…)

Fans of a certain costumed web-slinger have been dismayed by a string of recent developments which have threatened to bury the crime-fighter’s sterling reputation under a mountain of kitsch and banality.

First, there was the departure of director Sam Raimi and his crew from the lucrative Spider-Man movie franchise. Raimi had helmed three episodes of the block-buster series that has earned an estimated $1 billion worldwide. And despite what many fans felt was a lack-luster third movie, there was never any doubt that Raimi – a Spider-Man fan from way back – perfectly translated to film the heart of the Spider-Man universe, which was always the character of Peter Parker and his relationships with the women in his life, especially Aunt May and long-time love Mary Jane.

Despite his spectacular success, however, Sony studios didn’t trust Raimi to make his movies the way he wanted, and reportedly made life so miserable for him that he walked. Instantly, the studio announced that they would be rebooting the franchise with a new director and crew, sending Peter Parker back to high school and re-casting the story with trendy young actors and promising (sigh) that the new Spidey will be delivered in 3D.

Great.

This lamentable focus on youth and style over story and character is not limited to Spider-Man, of course. Raimi’s first two Spidey films may have been shot in 2D, but the characters were so well written and acted that the story felt 3D. But never mind. Like everything else, the new Spidey must be targeted to teens and tweens, who don’t know from story and couldn’t care less about plot (witness the Twilight abominations). (more…)

AMC’s Zombie series “The Walking Dead,” which concluded its first season last night, received (mostly) kudos from (mostly) liberal critics.  And some of this praise is deserved: The acting is first rate, and the show looks gorgeous – the directing, cinematography, and make-up are feature-film calibre, no question.
 
But the series also has some serious flaws, which critics seem loathe to mention.  The writing is uneven.  Some of the characters are disappointingly cliche and two-dimensional (the smart Asian kid, the redneck who beats his wife, etc). And some story points are way too obvious set-ups for way too obvious payoffs – when a character makes a big deal about it being her birthday at the beginning of the episode, you may rest assured she’s going to be Zombie chum at the end of that episode.

But perhaps most unforgivable is that for a zombie show, “The Walking Dead” features a surprising dearth of zombies. Except for the first few action-packed episodes, most of the series seems to consist of people talking about what they’re going to do if the zombies find them.  
 
So why such gushing praise from the critics?  Liberals love zombies, because they terrorize in the aggregate and lack individual will, volition and character, and so lend themselves easily to being used as a metaphor for any sort of large scale environmental, economic, or military catastrophe.  This allows the film-maker to engage in “social commentary” (lucky us), which liberal artists love to make more than art and liberal critics love to praise more than critique.  George Romero pioneered this approach with “Night of the Living Dead,” which used zombies to cast a light on race relations, and “Dawn of the Dead,” which satirized America’s mall-culture commercialism, among others. (more…)

Just before Christmas rumors began to leak out of Hollywood that Sam Raini’s Spider-Man 4 had run into trouble.  Nonsense, came word from Sony; the production is only on “holiday break,” all is well in Spidey-Land, and your favorite web-slinger will be swinging into your local multiplex on May 6, 2011 as planned.  

What a difference a new year makes.  Apparently, those rumors were true after all:  Variety is reporting that sources from Sony confirm that the production is on hold, perhaps indefinitely, and that a May 2011 release is now unlikely.

The reason?  It seems there are deep and perhaps intractable differences between Raimi and the studio regarding the quality of the latest script, the structure of the proposed plot, and even the choice of villain for this fourth outing.  Raimi is said to be keen on the Vulture, with John Malkovich to fill the bald baddie’s bird suit.  The studio, however, reportedly fears that the Vulture – an elderly character in the comics – is a poor choice of villain for a tent-pole, summer franchise film.  It’s unclear whom the studio would prefer, but clearly they are angling for more ‘hip’ than ‘hip replacement’ to bedevil Peter Parker’s alter ego. (more…)

Dear Hollywood,

I’m sorry, but things just aren’t working out.

That’s hard to hear, I know, and believe me, it’s hard to say. After all, we’ve had some great times together. But let’s face it – those great times are few and far between these days. In fact, things have been going downhill for a while now, and we both know it.

Remember when we would be together all the time, three or four times a week, even? Well, how often have we been together this year? Three or four total, I think, each time more painful and embarrassing than the last. The Watchmen? Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen? How did it come to this?

I guess my feelings began to change when your interest in CGI, which I thought cute at first, became your full blown obsession. Suddenly, that’s all you seemed to care about, and everything you made began to look like a goddamn cartoon. Well, I’m sorry. I’m just not that into cartoons.

By the way, about all those times I told you “Oh, that CG looks so real…I couldn’t even tell” – I faked it. It looks like shit, and doesn’t fool anyone. About time someone told you to your face. (more…)

Part 3 – 1976, The Big Bang

(Author’s note: Apologies to all the readers of “The Vault” who wrote in wondering when the next chapter was coming. I promise I have not abandoned this series, and have been grateful for all the suggestions and critiques of the previous posts, which can be read here and here. As always, comments and criticisms are welcome at mpatterson.column@gmail.com)

–

October, 1975. A Roxy Music concert in London, England. Budding bassist Steven Severin meets a striking young woman named Siouxsie Sioux. “She had some mad outfit that she had hired for the night and I had dyed white hair and a 1950s Lurex jacket,” Severin later recalled. “It was a match made in heaven.”

A few months later, in Sussex, classmates from St. Wilfrid’s Comprehensive School form a band. They call themselves Malice, and feature on guitar a young man named Robert Smith. In January, 1976, they begin rehearsing in a rented church hall on Thursday nights, cutting their teeth on David Bowie tunes; in April they are joined by guitarist Porl Thompson. Later that year they rename themselves Easy Cure before settling, eventually, on just the Cure. (more…)

On October 13th, Bob Dylan released an album of Christmas standards entitled Christmas in the Heart. The reaction from critics, and much of the public, has been: Is this some kind of joke?

“Hearing Bob hack out the words ‘With angelic host proclaim/Christ is born in Bethlehem’ reminds one of grandpa clearing his throat after finishing a glass of eggnog,” wrote Joseph Brannigan Lynch at Entertainment Weekly.  It’s no joke, writes Andrew Ferguson in The Weekly Standard; it’s worse than that – Christmas in the Heart is a deliberate “affront, a taunt,” to fans and downright “embarrassing.”

–

So, is it really that bad?  Not really.  Dylan’s work tends to inspire either over-praise or over-criticism, and this album is no exception (though receiving far more of the latter).

My reaction upon hearing the record lurch to life with “Here Comes Santa Claus ” in my ear buds was first to laugh; whether a joke or not, this shit is funny. Mostly because Dylan sounds so uncharacteristically jovial and (yes, I’ll say it) jolly, even.  My second reaction was relief – it’s nice to hear that from Dylan for a change. (more…)

Earlier this year, I rented and re-watched the entire series run of Cheers. Towards the end of the series, the hayseed junior bartender Woody Boyd (Woody Harrelson) decides to run for city council. He is encouraged in this endeavor by psychiatrist Fraser Crane (Kelsey Grammer), the bar’s resident elite, who acts as Woody’s campaign manager.

Fraser masterminds Woody’s campaign as a social experiment: He is convinced that anyone, even a bumpkin, can get elected, simply by spouting vague cliches. His advice to Woody? Don’t be specific on the campaign trail – just repeat empty slogans like “change.”

When I saw this, I burst out laughing – perhaps this is where Axelrod & Co. received their inspiration for Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign theme, I surmised. (more…)

What is horror?

The word comes down to us from the Old Roman, horrere, which means literally “to stand on end” (as in hair) or “to shiver,” whether from fear or cold – Ovid refers to the “chill-bearing breath” of the North Wind (Metamorphosis, I.65).

Halloween is a unique holiday, marked for the celebration of the chill bearing, when demons and witches are allowed to come out to play and scare the bejezzus out of us – or at least, that’s how it used to be.

Over the last decade or so, Halloween has become less about creep and more about camp; Dracula and Frankenstein costumes replaced by Octomom and Obama masks (OK, those are more scary). What I want to do here is help those who would like go old school this year, and have a truly frightful All Hallows’ Eve.

(First suggestion – avoid bars. Like St. Patrick’s Day and New Year’s, Halloween brings out the amateur drinkers, a more loathsome species than any undead thing you may encounter. No, Halloween is best spent alone with someone special to snack on in the dark, with something scary to read, listen to, or watch.) (more…)

What happens to an artist whose creative peak has long past? That is the question which looms like a sustained E chord over the new documentary It Might Get Loud, a strange and wonderful cinematic ode to the electric guitar by director Davis Guggenheim. whose previous credits include An Inconvenient Truth (don’t hold that against him).

It Might Get Loud’s central conceit is simple and elegant in principle, but surprisingly messy and complex on screen: Take three eminent guitarists of differing styles and generations, interview them individually, get them to open up about their relationship with their instrument and then, for the film’s climax, throw them together on a sound-stage surrounded by guitars and see what happens.

Guggenheim’s choice of guitarists is a surprising one that somehow makes sense; Jack White of The White Stripes and The Raconteurs (in his 30’s), The Edge of U2 (in his 40’s), and Jimmy Page of The Yardbirds and Led Zeppelin (in his 60’s). (more…)

OK, first things first: U2 put on a great show in FedEx Field in Washington D.C. on Tuesday, September 29, 2009.

This was a relief, because the previous Saturday they had turned in a dismal, oddly disjointed performance on “Saturday Night Live.” But three days later the boys were back in fighting shape; it was, in fact, one of the hardest rocking shows I’ve ever seen them give — and I have seen my share of U2 shows (my lifetime total is now somewhere in the double digits).

The show opened with several numbers from the woefully under-appreciated new album No Line On The Horizon; the thrilling and unique “Breathe,” segued into “Magnificent,” a tune which doesn’t quite soar as as high as it wants to, but comes closer live than on record. The lackluster “Get On Your Boots” was followed by Zoo-era favorite “Mysterious Ways,” bringing the stadium down and prompting Bono to remark, “Well, it’s a warm night after all!” He then gave a preview of the rest of the set: “We have old songs; we have new songs; we have songs we can barely play!” (more…)

Part 2 – In The Beginning

1965.  Cafe Bizarre.  Greenwich Village, New York City.

An unknown band takes the stage and begins to play.  The electric viola weeps an unearthly, hypnotic lament, as the singer chants: “Not a ghost-bloodied country, all covered with sleep, where the black angel did weep…’”

–

Perhaps The Black Angel’s Death Song was just a little too bizarre for Cafe Bizarre.  Perhaps the song’s rumored anti-communist message did no go down well in deep-red lower Manhattan.  For whatever reason, The Velvet Underground are promptly fired from their first regular gig for playing the strange and dissonant tune they had been warned not to play.

But the Velvets had secured their future nonetheless:  Andy Warhol was at Cafe Bizarre that night.  He described the audience as “dazed and damaged” after the performance – Warhol loved it.  He took them into his fold and became their manager, producer and sponsor.  He helped them secure their first record contract; he painted the cover for the first album, The Velvet Underground & Nico. (more…)

Ah, August.

Hot.  Muggy.  Sluggish. School approaches; summer vacations are over or nearly so. The new television season is weeks away. And even in a good movie year  – which 2009 has decidedly not been – all the best blockbusters have come and gone by now.

What to do?  You could watch that stupid cat video on YouTube for the 1,000th time, or…you could watch a surfer get a major bite down from a giant man-eating fish.  Sweet!

Yes friends, The Discovery Channel has the answer for our late-summer, entertainment withdrawal doldrums. For twenty-two years now, Discovery has devoted an entire week of August or July programming to real life sea monsters: They called it Shark Week, and lo, it was good.

Shark Week is always fun, but this year’s installment has been especially tasty. ”Blood In The Water” kicked it off, a terrific two-hour documentary about the real-life happenings that inspired Peter Benchley’s Jaws – the 1916 New Jersey shark massacre. (more…)

Part 1 – Introduction

The bats have left the bell tower, the victims have been bled… - Bauhaus, “Bela Lugosi’s Dead”

Goth is dead.

Well, OK, maybe not.  But if it is not dead, exactly, Goth certainly isn’t what it once was.  In this, Goth is rather like conservatism – with which it shares much (more on that later) – a glorious 1980’s heyday, followed by a confused 1990’s…and a disastrous 2000’s. 

–

True, some elements of Goth limp along in the new millennium, having been cannibalized by, and absorbed into, mainstream culture.  In some instances, co-opted bits of Goth have been so deracinated as to seem entirely anomalous – witness the black hair, black eyeliner, and black nail polish of the latest American Idol runner up; like claws on a cow, once dangerous and distinct trappings draped on an entirely neutered and non threatening pop singer. (more…)