Mother Monster: Lady Gaga's Born This Way

One would think Lady Gaga would be a little on the tired side. Since 2008, the newly minted "Mother Monster" has pulled off a lightning speed climb from obscurity to international superstardom. She's released three Billboard topping albums and become the subject of scathing celebrity gossip (including a false accusation of having a penis). Gaga has also acquired over 38,000,000 Facebook likes (that’s more than Obama). And she's now wrapping up her gruelling Monster’s Ball world tour. Born This Way is Lady Gaga’s latest full-length, shocking, absolutely fabulous record. With an incredible – almost inhuman stamina – she has proved to the world, once again, that she in an endless source of creativity, talent and energy.

Yes, that’s right, I said “fabulous.” Music elites, please feel free to write off my endorsement of this record and the artist behind it. But I’m a firm believer that just because something is popular doesn't mean it's rubbish. Her head-turning (well, more like neck-breaking) ensembles alone have caused quite a ruckus. By attending award ceremonies and wearing dresses made of meat, Muppets, or bubbles, she has the masses arguing over whether she is an activist or a loon; an artist or an attention starved phoney. And the controversy does not stop with the outfits. Media outlets, fans and naysayers have labelled her as everything from grotesque to genius due to those elaborate live performances, over-the-top music videos, controversial lyrics and political outspokenness. Love her or loathe her, the icon and her music have a substance we have not seen in a mega star in years.

Betwixt and Between: The Polarity of Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift

“I think there are different kinds of fame. There’s a fame which is plastic and about money and then there’s a fame when no one knows who you are but everyone wants to know who you are.” – Stefani Germanotta (Lady Gaga)

“Nothing is permanent. So I’m very grateful every second that I get to be doing this at this level. My response to anything that happens, good or bad, is to keep making art.” – Taylor Swift

Unlike the deeply distressing confessional songwriting mode and music of such classic heart-on-their-sleeve singers as Marianne Faithfull and Joni Mitchell, or even the ultra-suffering effigy of the late, lamentable Amy Winehouse, Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift are self-curated performance artists whose homeopathic medicine doses are dolloped out to us in artfully crafted personas always on the verge of revealing their wounds but never quite arriving at divulging it all the way. They are practically tantric in this regard. Their massively popular primal therapy sessions, conducted in ritualized public spaces and thus akin to ancient Roman colosseum spectacles, and delivered in real-time diary entries of the most flamboyant sort since Madonna, have become a kind of cultish conceptual living theatre designed to permanently suspend gratification for worshipping audiences whose fervor almost approaches the stunned crowds gathered to writhe before the early Beatles.

Go Big or Go Home: Fake Sugar by Beth Ditto

Beth Ditto performing at the Echo Music Awards in Berlin, Germany, in April, 2017. (Photo: Tobias Schwarz)

When the British vocalist Adele first graced the airwaves with her beautifully powerful voice, few music critics thought the strength of her voice and the openly personal nature of her songs could be matched. To some music fans Adele set a new standard of excellence that couldn’t be met by anybody of her caliber -- until now.

Beth Ditto's debut record Fake Sugar (Virgin) is a powerful pop/rock record that taps all the same emotional notes as Adele, without the sentimentality. Even though the album was released June 16 without much fanfare it is one of the strongest debut albums I’ve ever heard. It has a balance of intensity and emotional maturity with some mighty fine musical hooks to boot. Produced by Jenn Decilveo, Fake Sugar is virtually faultless in its execution. The mix is a marvelous collection of thumping downbeats and disco-infused pop numbers all supported by Ditto’s tough, honest and relentless attitude towards love, identity and society. And underneath all that angst she expresses is an earthy honesty that is more Patti Smith than Katy Perry. While I appreciate the performance art of Lady Gaga, who has an equally strong voice, I’m put off by her overproduced music and highly commercial sound. Her songs don’t have the depth of Beth Ditto. Fake Sugar is accessible pop, but it’s not trying to reach a musical compromise.

Trying to Make the Old New Again in Oklahoma! and A Star Is Born

Jordan Barbour and Jonathan Luke Stevens in Oklahoma! at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival  (Photo: Jenny Graham)

Every few years or so someone mounts a major revival of Oklahoma! (1943) or Carousel (1945) on Broadway or in the West End – or in the West End and then on Broadway – and critics fall over themselves proclaiming that this rendition of a Rodgers and Hammerstein blockbuster is fresh and relevant and reaffirms their rock-bound standing in the musical-theatre canon. But no production in my experience has managed to transcend the tinny, pedantic banalities of Oscar Hammerstein’s lyrics or the embarrassing pseudo-populist vernacular, which makes the fake poetry in The Grapes of Wrath sound like Walt Whitman by comparison. God knows I should have known better, but I checked in on the latest Broadway Carousel, directed by Jack O’Brien. But though the choreographer, Joshua Peck, came up with one thrilling number (“Blow High, Blow Low,” showcasing the dazzling high stepping of Amar Ramasar as Jigger Craigin), the dialogue, with its hopeless attempt at mimicking the sound of turn-of-the-century Mainers, sank the performances of the talented cast, Jessie Mueller, Joshua Henry, Lindsay Mendez and Renee Fleming among them. (Plus there was no fucking carousel.)

There are two new versions of Oklahoma! these days, one on each coast. I skipped Daniel Fish’s at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn (which prompted The New York Times’s Ben Brantley and Jesse Green, in “conversation” on the front page of the arts section, to outdo each other with kudos) but sat through Bill Rauch’s, which is selling out the big house at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, where Rauch is artistic director. Rauch and Fish seem to be in competition for the most up-to-date twenty-first-century revival of a classic musical. At St. Ann’s Ado Annie is in a wheelchair, but Rauch has cast a man, Jonathan Luke Stevens, as Ado Andy, and a woman, Tatiana Wechsler, as Curly. Two same-sex couples versus one disabled actor: Rauch wins the virtue sweepstakes hands down.

Cracked Mirrors, Part One: The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Singer-Songwriter

Brian Wilson in action, 1966.

“The men and women who produce works of genius are not those who live in the most delicate atmosphere, whose conversation is the most brilliant or culture the most extensive, but those who have had the power, ceasing suddenly to live only for themselves, to transform their personality into a sort of mirror.” – Marcel Proust

The inimitable Elvis Costello once remarked, with his typical sarcastic bravado, that writing about music was like dancing about architecture. Now, far be it from me to contradict one of our greatest singer-songwriters, as well as one so prominently featured as a prominent Island in my own musical criticism over the years. However, some exception must be taken to the talented Mr. Costello’s observation. First of all, let’s readily admit that he is utterly correct, in so far as music, and especially the songs that it conveys to us, are both best appreciated in the temporal immediacy of the listening experience itself. But reflecting on their origins, their blueprint, so to speak, can often clarify how such songs so powerfully occupy the landscape of both our overall culture and our own personal lives. 

Checking Out “Checking In” – The Season Premiere of American Horror Story: Hotel

Last Wednesday, creators Brad Falchuk and Ryan Murphy checked us into the fifth season of their anthology horror series, American Horror Story, with a gore-packed hour-long premiere. The episode, aptly titled “Checking In,” introduces us to this season’s setting of The Cortez Hotel and an assortment of bizarre and fascinating key players. Like the previous installments of American Horror Story, the fifth season (subtitled Hotel) tells a new, self-contained story with many familiar faces stepping into fresh characters. Falchuk and Murphy have hinted that American Horror Story: Hotel will be the season that ties American Horror Story’s previous story arcs together at last into one cohesive (and undoubtedly messed up) narrative through the use of flashbacks and crossover characters. Whether it does indeed all come together or not remains to be seen, but Hotel’s return to the present day Los Angeles from season one’s Murder House storyline certainly bodes well for fans looking for closure. As a fan looking mostly for fun, the episode's gorgeous setting and wild performances bode well for me too.

Advocacy and Accuracy: Kirby Dick's The Hunting Ground

A scene from Kirby Dick's The Hunting Ground.

“Despite significant progress over the last few years, too many woman and men on and off college campuses are still victims of sexual abuse.”

– Vice President Joe Biden at the 2015 Academy Awards 

The persuasive power of advocacy journalism and documentaries is undeniable, but they have their detractors in large part because they offer viewers only one perspective or one that is not even-handed. Think of the conversation around An Inconvenient Truth, Davis Guggenheim’s 2006 Oscar-winning film about Al Gore's efforts to explain global warning. Yet Guggenheim’s recent foray, He Named Me Malala, is an inspiring portrait of the Pakistani teenager and 2014 Nobel Peace Prize, Malala Yousafzai, which I expect has few detractors, at least in the West. Or consider the highly popular Making of a Murderer, the Netflix series that revisits and forcibly challenges a decade-old murder conviction. This documentary series, reminiscent of Errol Morris’ 1988 pioneering The Thin Blue Line has elicited viewers’ visceral outrage about the original conviction. Although the filmmakers have been generally praised for their muckraking efforts, a few critics, notably Kathryn Schulz writing in The New Yorker, persuasively provides a counter argument.

A similar controversy has been stirred by the incendiary The Hunting Ground about the prevalence of sexual assault on American campuses and the apparent indifference of university administrators in addressing the complaints of the victims. Writer-director Kirby Dick and producer Amy Ziering, who previously collaborated on the documentaries Outrage, about homophobia among American political elites, and The Invisible War, about sexual assault and its cover up in the military, do provide a disturbing picture of a serious problem. If seen in isolation from the critical responses to the film, most viewers likely will be enraged by what has been occurring on American campuses as portrayed in The Hunting Ground.

Splat: James Gunn's Superman

Superman (David Corenswet), looking glum. (Warners Brothers.) 

The beginning of James Gunn’s new iteration of the Man of Steel is somewhat promising: Superman (David Corenswet) has intervened to prevent a foreign war, and Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) is running a successful PR campaign to convince people the supposedly apolitical Supe took sides and broke international law. But things rapidly devolve from there. A giant robot machine thingy from the aggressor country is terrorizing Metropolis, except it’s really not a giant machine robot thingy, it’s regular sized, and it’s not really a robot, it’s a supervillain under Luthor’s sway. I’m sure the supervillain’s name was mentioned, but I missed it, and he’s sort of indistinguishable from Luthor’s attack squad, The Raptors, who are either robots or superbeings themselves. Luthor breaks into the Fortress of Solitude and discovers that the message from Jor-el (Bradley Cooper) and Lara (some woman I thought was Lady Gaga but wasn’t) that Superman can only listen to half of—because the second half was damaged—is actually a message telling the Man of Steel to enslave the earth and rule over it. (I’m pretty sure that’s not canon.) Luthor also has a private prison in a “pocket universe” where he keeps his enemies and ex-girlfriends, and there are portals in and out that are in danger of decaying and becoming black holes that could destroy Earth. I think the guards in this prison realm are also Raptors but they might not be. When Superman is captured and put in one of the cells in the pocket universe, there’s a superbeing in his cell who can turn his body into Kryptonite, which is how Supey is kept under control. The superbeing is kept under control because his alien baby is in a cell opposite with someone else who will kill the alien baby if the guy in Superman’s cell doesn’t do what Luthor wants—which, as stated previously, is keep Superman under control. Lex is, of course, a combination of Elon Musk and Donald Trump, and it turns out he’s in league with the aggressor country because he wants to develop the lesser one as Trump wants to do with the Gaza Strip. Also the Justice League, which consists of Green Lantern (Nathan Fillion) and some really deep cuts from the DC stable, Hawkgirl and Mr. Terrific, is around to help Superman out when needed. Maybe. Green Lantern refers to the group as the “Justice Gang,” and Hawkgirl objects to the name, which you’d better find funny because it happens 87 times. I have no idea what Mr. Terrific’s superpower is, but he’s really good with tech stuff. Not to mention another supervillain called the Engineer—not sure what her powers are either—and a murderous clone of Superman, just for fun. Exhausted yet? I sure am.

Reporting For Battle: A Rolling Stone Coup

As a child, Michael Hastings dreamed of becoming a war correspondent.  “I remember drawing a map of the Middle East and watching CNN nightly with my dad,” he recalls, referring to his fifth-grade interest in the 1991 Persian Gulf conflict. “One day, I even asked my teacher if I could skip gym class to hear a speech by General Norman Schwarzkopf.“

But it’s his Rolling Stone profile of another general in another war -- Stanley McChrystal, until last week the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan -- that has provided Hastings with the scoop of a lifetime. Even before the magazine hit newsstands Friday, the online version had pundits across America correctly predicting that the military leader was toast. The story quoted him and his staff dissing President Barack Obama, Vice-President Joe Biden and several other members of the administration. For Hastings, only 30, this All the President’s Generals moment came while he was back in Afghanistan. I’ll call him Michael, since we’ve known each other for many years and he hails from my town (Burlington, Vermont). That’s why I’ve done several interviews with him, including one last Tuesday when his name suddenly became a household word.

The Saddest Singer on Earth: Amy Winehouse and The Blues

Introduction:  Welcome to My World

“When I’m singing, I’m happy. I’m doing what I can do, and this is my contribution to life . . .”
– Anita O’Day (an early incarnation of Amy)

Incredibly enough, Amy Winehouse passed away ten years ago this summer. But this is a story about her sad music and the sad music that inspired it, not a story about her problems or the flaws that caused them. Born September 14, 1983 and died July 23, 2011. That’s her biography, plain and simple. Her own autobiography, however, is mostly embedded in her two releases while still vibrantly alive and brazenly sashaying, her debutante surprise Frank in 2003 and her surprisingly mature masterpiece Back to Black in 2006, and that autobiography is considerably more complicated than her actual personal history. They are the light and the dark sides of both her real character and her chosen edgy persona, as well as of her deeply impressive musical artistry, the first one inspired by her love of Sinatra (or rather his ring a ding-ding Rat Pack spirit), the second one inspired by her love of oblivion (or rather by its lack of awareness).

Ten Plus Three: The Best of 2013

This past year in music was significant for many things, but who would have guessed that British acts of the 1960s would be vital 50 years later? Consider the following artists who all released new albums this year: Justin Hayward, Eric Burdon, Paul McCartney, Black Sabbath, Roy Harper, Eric Clapton, Richard Thompson and David Bowie. But with the old, we also heard from new artists including Arcade Fire, Serena Ryder, The Sheepdogs and Lady Gaga, all with varying degrees of success. The jazz world had plenty of new releases showcasing the healthy state of jazz and blues music. Classical music, albeit with the smallest portion of the pie, continued to milk the old favourites (Bach, Beethoven and Brahms) and the anniversaries of Verdi, Britten and Wagner, all treated with healthy and hefty CD box set re-issues. 

But the year really marked the fallout of EMI’s end in 2012. This year Universal Music Group (artists) and Sony Music (publishing) added EMI’s massive back catalogue to their rosters, which reduced the corporate ownership ranks by one. Nevertheless, smaller labels such as Dine Alone, Yep Roc and New West still managed to maintain a business plan while issuing some pretty good records. The Canadian upstart label Arts & Crafts celebrated 10 years in the business, proving it is possible to have a successful label while maintaining artistic integrity. 

The following is a list of ten previously reviewed favourites, plus three additional releases that were too good to ignore.

Taylor Swift's "Shake it Off": It's Only a Dance Party

Like, something kinda awesome happened this summer. On August 18, Country music superstar turned pop idolette, Taylor Swift, released a dance video in support of her latest single, "Shake It Off." The video, still in circulation, shows the young superstar in a self-parodying comedic romp through a wide range of dance styles: ballet, b-boy, emotive modern dance, Lady Gaga-esque robotic show dancing and twerkingframed by competitive rhythmic gymnasts leaping through their ribbon spirals and squadron of cheerleaders. The premise of the video is that these athletes and performers represent a closed society of hard-bodies and high achievers to which the deliberately self-deprecating Swift remains an outsider. She is a klutz. She falls when she attempts a ballerina’s curtsy. She can’t even make ribbons look pretty. It’s quite funny, a true satire with dance, in all its many-genered splendour, at the centre. Which in itself should be something to smile about. But instead the innocuous dance numbers, although joyously and satirically presented, have provoked controversy.

The Man Who Made Us Listen Outside Our Comfort Zone: Dick Clark (1929-2012)

“I played records, the kids danced, and America watched.” - Dick Clark (1929-2012)

Dick Clark said his job had been simple, “I played records, the kids danced, and America watched.” And it looked simple too. Watching a series of interviews a day or two after his death on April 18, 2012, I was struck by how completely ordinary he was. There was no flash, no attempt to show off any deep research; as he spoke with Creedence Clearwater Revival, or Abba, he appeared to be a regular guy talking to other regular guys (or gals, as the case may be). He might insert a little joke but for the most part it was, “How are things?” or, “What do you do in your spare time?” The fun came from the answers. Van Morrison mumbled, “I go for walks…”

Dick Clark was part of the music scene for most of my life. Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993, in the Non-Performers category, he joined such luminary managers, producers, and businessmen as Alan Freed, Sam Phillips and Ahmet Ertegun. Does he belong in their company? You’re darn right he does.

Cycles of Transformation at The National Ballet of Canada

Genevieve Penn Nabity and Christopher Gerty in The Four Seasons. Gerty was injured and replaced by Larkin Miller in the performance our critic attended. (Photo: Carolina Kuras.)

Dancers in leaf-green unitards slip into a line at the rear of the stage, their arms raised overhead, wrists connected, fingers fanned into a vessel-like shape—a motif in David Dawson’s The Four Seasons. Subtle yet striking, the gesture suggests an offering, a quiet acknowledgment of something greater than oneself. Dawson, a British choreographer with a distinguished European pedigree, has built his career on crafting works that channel this sense of humility and connection into movement, transforming classical ballet into a language of both physical and spiritual exploration. His choreography demands not only technical precision but also an ability to embody its emotional weight, asking dancers to balance control with a sense of surrender—to the music, to the movement, and to the larger themes it seeks to express.

Off-key: Ricki and the Flash

The following contains spoilers.

Meryl Steep’s terrible performance as Ricki Rendazzo, a ‘rock chick’ who left her family years ago to try for music stardom, only to end up fronting a minor bar band in Tarzana, California, is only one of the many drawbacks of Ricki and the Flash, a movie whose truthfulness is as elusive as Ricki’s dreams of success. As the ‘aging’ Rendazzo, Streep is all pouty lips and pained expressions, outrageous outfits and excessive makeup; what she isn’t is a flesh and blood character. But Diablo Cody’s screenplay doesn’t allow for anyone to create anything memorable on screen and Jonathan Demme’s lazy direction – he’s never been worse – only underlines the emptiness and hackneyed nature of the movie.

Christmas, Dylan and Music that Matters

“So this is Christmas, and what have you done? / another year over, a new one just begun...”

Christmas is like that isn’t it? John Lennon got it right. There’s the implied long wait, the excitement building, then the event, and it’s over. So this is Christmas? Now it’s over, and what have we done? Well, if you’re anything like us, at our house, you’ve simply had another year run by uncontrollably past. It could be that your Christmas was like John’s old partner George's was when he was “simply having a wonderful Christmas time...ding, dong, ding, dong...” I’m certain that for many that describes it. We move from one party to the next, eating too much, drinking too much, obviously spending too much. What began as a simple birthday party for the son of God, has turned in to this big...thing.

Mini Masterpieces, Mostly: Cannes Lions Awards 2013

For the last thirty years, I’ve had a movie tradition that I don’t share with anyone else. It goes back to 1981, while at Montreal’s Concordia University, when I got a chance to attend a school showing of the Best TV commercials from the Cannes International Advertising festival, saluting the best ads from around the world and put out as a cinematic compilation for our edification. It was a stupendous program (I still remember the highly inventive Australian LEGO ad which copped the top prize that year) and one I made sure to catch each year even after I moved to Toronto soon after, once in a restaurant, the (defunct) Groaning Board which showed them and a couple of times as screeners when I reviewed them. (For a couple of seasons, the program on offer was the London International Advertising Awards, which doesn’t seem to be that different overall then the Cannes batch.) Mostly though I saw them at the Bloor cinema at the end of the calendar year, a tradition which ended briefly when the Bloor closed in 2011 and which after a two year hiatus, has now returned in the new revamped Bloor Hot Docs documentary cinema. Fortunately, its quality remains and except for one bone headed decision, its program is as clever and entertaining as ever.

Now known as The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity (are they trying to hide the advertorial bent of the selections?), the program, which has been around since 1954, and based on Cannes since 1984, celebrated its 60th edition in June 2013. It is a jury selected compilation of what are considered the very best ads in the world, from TV, cinema and, increasingly, the Internet. (Astoundingly, more than 35,000 entries were received in 2013.) And after thirty years of viewing the commercials, it’s easy to see certain patterns in how different countries make them, often reflecting what we have to come to know as their national character.

A Counterculture Chick: Melissa Leo's Half-Century

Ever since her first bona-fide professional acting gig on All My Children, an urban myth has dogged the 1984 casting of Melissa Leo: that she got the part during an audition process in which Julia Roberts was a fellow contender. The untruth has been repeated over the years on any number of celebrity web sites.

“It’s a bogus story,” Leo said during a February telephone interview from New York City, where she had gone to find a gown for Sunday night’s Academy Awards. ”While I was working on the show, I had the same manager as Eric Roberts, her brother. She was 15 then and visiting from Georgia. He asked if I’d take Jules to the set. She was a delightful, wacky teen who had no idea what to do with her life, except meet Sting.”

Leo’s progression from a one-year stint on the ABC soap opera to a best supporting actress Oscar nomination – for playing the feisty mother of two sons with prizefighting dreams and their many sisters in The Fighter – has followed a sometimes rocky road. After more than 70 films and TV programs, at 50 she is finally on the Hollywood A-list.

The Rump of the Sixties: The Doors – A Lifetime of Listening to Five Wild Years by Greil Marcus

Looking over the pieces I've written in the last year, I've spent a good deal of time dealing with the troubling legacy of the Sixties. Even my next book, which I'm now writing and preparing for publication, begins with the early promise of that decade and follows the subsequent ones as if tracing the endless ripple of a pebble tossed in the sea. My preoccupation is not based on my age either (although I grew up in the Sixties), or holding on to some sense of nostalgia for better times. I'm also not locked into the glory days of my youth (they weren't very glorious to begin with) and clinging to some talisman against the bitter cold. Although there are some people I know who decided to stop listening to music, reading books, and seeing movies that didn't conform to the values they treasured when they were young, I'm not grappling with the Sixties, either as an idea or a time and place, as a means to avoid the realities of the current decade. Quite the contrary.

As far as popular culture goes, for me, it still lives and breathes in the present. For instance, I'd love to write more about contemporary music; why I'm mesmerized by Matthew Friedberger's sinewy guitar that snakes its way through The Fiery Furnaces' "Two Fat Feet" from their debut 2003 album Gallowsbird's Bark; how Seattle's Fire Theft seems to effortlessly embody in their single "Chain," an emotional hailstorm, the void left by Nirvana; or, the impish joy I hear in Rachel Nagy's libidinous "very nice" that kicks off The Detroit Cobras' "Ya Ya Ya (Looking For My Baby)," a full-tilt boogie that would make John Lee Hooker smile; on how I'm moved in the most peculiar way by The Handsome Family's "Weightless Again," a song that both laments and justifies suicide in a manner as wistfully satirical about the subject as Steely Dan's "Any World (That I'm Welcome To)"; or why Okkervil River, on I Am Very Far, and the Decemberists, on The King is Dead, continue to rehabilitate our notions of what constitutes musical Americana.

As much as I continue to enjoy new music, it's still too immediate, too much of its time, for me to reflect back on it with any real authority. It has yet to trace its own path into the future where it might find a meaning for itself beyond what it represents now. What I enjoy in writing about Sixties culture is the task of putting to the test the relics that have stood the test of time, as well as the things that haven't; that is, figuring out what new meaning continues to breathe life into work that could have (and maybe should have) expired a long time ago. In a sense, that's the underlining theme of The Doors – A Lifetime of Listening to Five Wild Years (Public Affairs, 2011), where critic Greil Marcus ponders the dark magic of the L.A. group The Doors, a rock band dead for over forty years now, but hardly gone from cultural relevance. In examining what they mean today, indeed how they've endured both on the radio and as part of the embroidery of the lost Sixties, Marcus not only reveals the obvious (that they weren't really a group of their time), but that they somehow (despite this) characterized their time, and took on the leaner, meaner, violent side of that decade's demise. (As Marcus reminds us, they weren't one of the 'love' bands.) And their best music, like that pebble in the sea I mentioned earlier, continues to ripple along as if they never went away.