The Two Costellos: Elvis Costello Live at the El Mocambo & Live at Hollywood High

What a difference three months makes! The two recorded 1978 Elvis Costello shows – Live at the El Mocambo and Live at Hollywood High – are completely different from each other in tone, attitude and musicianship but, more importantly, they mark the coming of age and the maturation of Costello as a significant presence on the musical scene.

Costello, coming off a derided show in New York, landed in Toronto for a late night set, scheduled for March 6 at the city’s fabled El Mocambo club. The concert was to be broadcast live on radio; when news got out, the city erupted into a frenzy. People began lining up almost half a day before the 11:30 pm show, in the generally vain hope of scoring one of the 300 tickets available (minus those going to industry and record folk, of course).

By the time Costello hit the stage, expectations were remarkably high. To say he exceeded them was an understatement. Live at the El Mocambo, all 49 minutes of it (not including the encores which were not broadcast or recorded), is one of the best live shows ever put to disc, right up there with the 1971 Allman Brothers Live at Fillmore East. As with that show, you can only wish you’d been there when you listen to it.

Is Film Criticism Dead? #5

My colleagues [Susan, Kevin, David & Shlomo] have previously and majestically destroyed Andrew O' Hehir's ignorant article "Film Critics: Shut up already!" I support them and their opinions whole heartedly. But I feel as if my position on the subject would be trite, so I'm shifting the looking glass from film criticism to the film industry's impact on it. Here are some disparate observations.

Beg, Scream & Shout!: The Flirtations' Nothing But a Heartache

When I was a kid, I treasured my transistor radio. Tuning into the local rock stations, I always found myself eagerly waiting to hear some song I fell in love with days earlier. Unlike today's Mp3 and IPad generation, where you can pick your tunes from a vast library you program on your player, there was an element of surprise to radio listening. You never knew when that favourite song would turn up. Sometimes you left your transistor on - with the ear-plug close by - just in case the DJ slipped in the tune, a track that changed the way you walked that day.

In 1969, one song that barely got any airplay (but certainly changed the way I walked) was The Flirtations' pop masterpiece "Nothing But a Heartache." The Flirtations were a black American all-female R&B band from South Carolina, but they actually made it big in England. They did it with a sound, too, that echoed the exuberance of the very best of Motown. "Nothing But a Heartache" was an indelible part of what was termed England's Northern Soul genre. In the late sixties, Northern Soul had emerged out of the British Mod scene. The music consisted of a particular style of black American soul based on a heavy backbeat combined with the quick tempo of Detroit's pop sound. But one of the key ingredients of Northern Soul was the manner in which the singers would convey heartbreak. It wasn't by expressing despair, but instead, by providing leaps of pure exhilaration.

Les Bon Temps: The Post-Katrina Angst of "Treme"

Most northerners are familiar with the French Quarter and the Garden District, historically popular New Orleans tourism destinations. But we probably have had limited knowledge about Faubourg Treme, a section of the Big Easy with a heroic legacy. Under 18th-century French and Spanish colonial rule, slaves had Sundays off, allowing them to gather in Congo Square to sing and dance. Many wore makeshift costumes with an indigenous flair -- the origins of contemporary Mardi Gras, in which elaborately dressed “tribes” parade through the Crescent City.

The Borrower: The Egregious Oeuvre of James Cameron

For the sake of the blog, I finally broke down and watched James Cameron's Avatar on DVD. Let me get this out of the way right off the top: It's a better movie than Titanic. That’s not saying much since I think that 1997 disaster flick is one of the worst films to ever win the Best Picture Oscar. In Avatar, Sigourney Weaver seems to be having fun in her tough-broad scientist role, and there's a couple of scenes here and there that at least got a chuckle out of me, but that was between long bouts of boredom while I watched cartoon characters (because this film, except for the sequences at the military base, is a computer-generated cartoon) frolicking around hippie-dippie landscapes. And don't get me started on the teeth-grinding dialogue or the stupid shoot 'em up at the end.

Book: I.O.U.: Why Everyone Owes Everyone and Nobody Can Pay

One of my favourite subjects in high school was economics because I was curious about how banking, high finance and political budgets work within Canada. (One of the favourite books explained government spending using guns and butter.) I took a course in my first year of university as well that was larger in scope by looking at political economic systems in Russia, China and the United Kingdom. While the details bogged me down, greatly affecting my grades, the macro-economic picture was much less illusory. These courses helped me understand the economic forces in the world and I applied that knowledge to a better understanding of “the big picture.”

But when the so-called “financial crisis” of 2008 occurred, I struggled to understand how the mechanics of the financial system were breaking down, literally on a weekly basis. Suddenly everything I learned in school didn’t fit the current economic malaise. It was a blend of investment bank failure, the collapsing automotive industry and the housing market in complete turmoil mostly in the United States with trillions of dollars at stake. So reading the stories and hearing about which bank failed, what government bailout was going to help which company and how the burst of the housing bubble was leaving people homeless, it left me numb. I didn’t know what to think or who to believe; I was simply struggling to understand what it meant to the world economic system and therefore what it meant to me. Something had changed systematically and my fundamental knowledge of economics wasn’t enough.

The Killing Joke: Censorship in South Park

On April 21th, 2010 Matt Parker and Trey Stone were boldly unable to go where they've gone before. A week earlier, they had celebrated their 200th episode with a plot revolving around the Muslim prophet Muhammad's invincibility from ridicule and the town's desire to harness similar powers within South Park. The episode, inoffensively named "200," directly asked us if whether they were portraying Muhammad in an offensive manner or not. They placed him in a U-Haul van, in a mascot's outfit, behind a black bar labeled "censored." He does remain silent. They asked us if we would be offended hearing him speak or if we could allow ourselves to see his legs move. They weren't mocking Muhammad. They were mocking how we've come to censor our thoughts and ideas, not out of respect for the subjects brought up, but instead because of fear.

Is Film Criticism Dead? #4

Andrew O'Hehir's recent Salon piece on film criticism has understandably struck a nerve with my colleagues on this site. I agree with both Susan and Kevin that critics losing their long-time jobs on major newspapers, magazines and trade publications is tragic, but I’m not sure it matters all that much. The new generation of film critics coming up the ranks just aren't worthy to inherit the mantle of the relatively few good film critics and film writers we still have.

Long gone are the days when a talented critic like Pauline Kael could tub thump for a favourite movie, like Barry Levinson’s wonderful comedy Diner (1982), and actually turn that film, which was dumped by its studio, into something of a hit. Siskel and Ebert did the same for Carl Franklin’s terrific thriller One False Move (1992), which had been under the radar until they shone a light on it. These days, critics are only taken seriously as negative factors. In fact, some movies are now not even press screened in hopes that the movie can get a decent weekend box office before the reviewers take a whack at it. But since those movies are generally bad, they likely would have been financially unsuccessful regardless of whether the critics were able to pan the movie in advance of its opening.

Is Film Criticism Dead? #3

I wasn't going to weigh into this issue for a couple of reasons. First, both Susan and Kevin had done such a good job here taking the mickey out of Andrew O'Hehir's ridiculous Salon column "Movie Critics: Shut Up Already." Secondly, I've not been a film critic for over 20 years, so I didn't think what I had to say would be timely. But then I read Kevin's piece and it brought to mind why I decided to quit film criticism as a profession in 1989. I guess I saw the writing on the wall for both what the profession was becoming and what I was becoming within that profession -- neither of which I particularly liked.

It all began with a long-forgotten Weird Al Yankovic flick called UHF (1989). Never saw it; never wanted to. One afternoon, I was attending a concert at the Ontario Place Forum (now the Molson Amphitheatre), when a film-critic acquaintance of mine sat down beside me. He will remain nameless to protect the guilty. We shot the breeze about what we were up to for a bit and then he told me a story. He was working for a free newspaper (it no longer exists) writing film reviews. He'd been assigned the aforementioned Yankovic 'classic' which he told me he hated, and wrote a review that basically indicated same. After he handed the assignment in he got a phone call from his editor. It seemed the film's production company was buying a big ad for this film in that week's paper. The editor asked this critic if he'd mind changing his review to something "more positive". And he did.

Is Film Criticism Dead? #2

It’s pretty clear from Salon critic Andrew O’Hehir’s article, with its Alfred E Neuman What-Me-Worry attitude, that he really has no grasp of the bigger picture at stake here – as Susan so aptly put it yesterday. But why should he? What’s becoming increasingly obvious today is the manner in which careerism has infected journalism, so much so that O’Hehir (as a critic paid to ask questions) refuses to examine why certain film critics are no longer considered employable while others are.

I’ve been somewhat fortunate that I came into the profession in 1981 just as the line started to blur between critical and consumer-friendly journalism. Looking back, I think I've had a pretty satisfying career and accomplished things on terms that I found agreeable. That’s partly because there was a time when you could distinguish yourself from puffery by, to quote one sharp radio producer, treating the audience as voyeurs rather than consumers. In those days, if your goal was to be smart, articulate and informative, it could get you hired. It’s almost the opposite now. I’ve lost three jobs as a film critic in the last few years not because I wasn’t doing my job, or forgot how to write, or talk, or had nothing of interest to say. I was relieved of my duties because I held to the same standards I originally brought to my work -- and those standards in the business have now radically changed.

Is Film Criticism Dead? #1

Dorothy Parker

Film critic Andrew O’Hehir in Salon recently lamented the end of film criticism with the idea that even if it is on its death bed, and critics are losing their jobs, quit griping about it. Write about movies, he says, instead of your wounded pride.

There are a few of us at Critics at Large who have been at the short end of that ugly stick and we don't feel quite as glib about heading to the dustbin as Mr. O'Hehir does (it's also a lot easier to take that stand when you actually still have your paying job as a film critic). But let's digress no further.

Let's hear instead from Susan Green:

Jeezum Crow! That’s a traditional term used by old-time native Vermonters, a disappearing breed, to express anger but avoid blasphemy. Last week a piece by Andrew O’Hehir on Salon.com targeted another disappearing breed, film journalists whose work appears in print. His point seems to be that critics who have lost jobs -- such as Todd McCarthy, recently fired by Variety after 31 years -- or are concerned that could happen in the near future should stop discussing this trend.

Creepin' Under Your Skin: Jakob Dylan's Women and Country

This album creeps in under your skin from first note to last. Starting with a great song called “Nothing But the Whole Wide World,” Jakob Dylan is heading for the vast expanse of the American West, but not out of nostalgia, but rather like taking an opportunity, or a chance, at self-discovery. Women + Country contains songs that are mature, honest and unpretentious. On the track, “Everybody’s Hurting,” one gets right into the dirt and grime of labour-intensive work in the fields. Dylan works the land of relationships on “Smile When You Call Me That” presenting a story of a tough breakup: "I’m drunk and you’re insane/I can’t quit and you won’t change." But the storyteller accepts full responsibility for his actions and cries out for her return. The 11 tracks on Dylan’s second solo album create an exquisite journey through space and time; stories of relationships with women, nature and God. It’s a confidant, thoughtful record beautifully produced by T-Bone Burnett whose sublime touch has done wonders for Dylan’s compositions. Clearly, Burnett has made a difference by creating sonic textures appropriate for both the song and the singer. Jakob Dylan deserves no less.

-- John Corcelli is an actor, musician, writer, broadcaster and theatre director.

Back From Oblivion: The T.A.M.I. Show

A couple of weeks back, in my piece on the declining art of the film poster, I wrote about "Captain" George Henderson and his wonderfully ramshackle film poster shop, Memory Lane. It was while visiting George's shop in 1980 or so that I first encountered James Brown's performance on the T.A.M.I. Show. (The acronym translates as Teenage Awards Music International.) George used to smoke cigarette after cigarette and watch videotapes of movies or TV shows as you plowed through his goods. Taking a break from one fruitful dig, I talked to George for a couple of minutes and then turned to look at what he was watching. Playing on his small TV set was a Betamax tape of the T.A.M.I. Show. What I watched was a revelation as James Brown sang, shimmied and shook his way through four outstanding, mesmerizing songs. The piece de resistance being, of course, "Please Please Please." In the song, as Brown begged his now-absent girl to take him back, he fell hard to his knees in despair. One of his Fabulous Flames back-up singers rushed to his side, patted him repeatedly on his back and helped the slumped and exhausted singer to his feet. Brown's capeman, Danny Ray, came up behind him and placed an elaborate cape over his shoulders as the two men helped Brown off stage. During all this, the band and back-up singers kept going. Before he could be led off, Brown stopped, screamed, threw off the cape and stumbled back to the mic. He did this four times with the same scenario played out each time. He didn't break character until well after the song finished. George turned to me and said "that is a man possessed." Though George was referring to the story being told aurally and visually in the song, I also took it to mean that Brown would do anything to make all that he did on stage memorable (he was called The Hardest Working Man In Show Business for a reason). I didn't see who came next (that in a moment) as I had to leave, but that was my first encounter with the legendary 1964 T.A.M.I. Show.

The Body: Revisiting Deliverance

Poet and author James Dickey was once asked by TV host Dick Cavett what his novel Deliverance was about. “It’s about why decent men kill,” he answered dryly. That’s certainly the plot of both the 1970 novel and John Boorman’s feature film (1972). But it’s also like saying Macbeth is about why kings get ambitious. The power of Deliverance actually lies somewhere beyond the plot and into something more mysterious and fragile like the body. The story is about four Atlanta businessmen – the macho wilderness man Lewis (Burt Reynolds), the beefy, insecure insurance salesman Bobby (Ned Beatty), the affable musician Drew (Ronny Cox) and the thoughtful Ed (Jon Voight) – who decide to canoe down the (fictional) Cahulawassee River in Georgia in order to “commune” with nature before the river valley gets flooded and displaces the mountain locals. With the exception of Lewis, who is a man’s-man like the deerslayer of James Fenimore Cooper (or De Niro’s Michael in The Deer Hunter), and Ed (who has joined Lewis on a few expeditions); the other men are complete innocents. The locals they encounter are also deeply reserved folks isolated from the world these suburban males inhabit and some – like the young boy who duets with Drew on the famous “Duelling Banjos” – are part of inbred families. Lewis and friends, feeling their own false sense of superiority over the inhabitants, still take on the river as if to tame the body of water. What they discover along the way, however, is that nature can’t be tamed and the body is a vulnerable entity.

Political Music: When They Don't Know Or Understand What They're Singing About!

As irritating as actors like Sean Penn and Woody Harrelson can be when they mouth off about political issues they don’t understand, I think musicians and singers are even worse. That’s because they can shove any ignorant messages they want to into their songs and then immediately record them. Actors have to wait for the right film or play to come along that reflects their views and sometimes that never happens.

I was reminded of this while listening to a new Starbucks CD entitled World Is India, a compilation featuring Indian music spanning the last 45 years or so, including tracks from Ravi Shankar, R. D. Burman and Asha Bhosle. But it was a song, "Mother India," from a group I didn’t know named Fun-Da-Mental that caught my attention. The disc’s liner notes indicate that the group is a highly politicized (read left-wing) England-based group which was created to address the issues surrounding the Asian communities in Britain. "Mother India," which was recorded in 1995, is supposed to be a paean to the strong Indian women behind the country’s great men, so imagine my surprise when I overheard a reference to Palestine and on closer listen heard the group praise "Leila Khaled, freedom fighter of Palestine."

How an Arab terrorist who was involved in two major airline hijackings, fortunately without any attendant loss of innocent life (but not for lack of trying), finds her way into a song about India is odd. However, upon further research I discovered that the group, which is led by Aki Nawas, who is Muslim, takes many of its cues from the anti-Semitic Nation of Islam and has released albums with tasty titles such as Why America Will Go To Hell and All Is War (The Benefits of G-Had). They’ve also compared Osama Bin Laden to Che Guevara, which makes sense only if you recognize that the two men are both terrorists and not the heroes Fun-Da-Mental makes them out to be.

#100

As a way to celebrate our 100th blog on Critics at Large, we've assembled samples of some of our favourite pieces over the last few months:

Books: Philip Kerr's Berlin Noir

Many years ago, when I was trying to come up with a good idea for a novel, I hit upon the notion of setting a murder mystery in Nazi Germany before or during the war - I don't quite remember which. I thought of having the hero work as a private detective in Berlin. I mentioned this idea to a friend of mine who said, "Oh, you mean like Omar Sharif in Night of the Generals?"

Yeah, uh, just like that. I dropped the idea, but Philip Kerr didn't. He went on to write an acclaimed series of novels about Bernie Gunther, a former Berlin cop who worked as a private investigator in Nazi Germany. The novels, now numbering six that go under the broader title of Berlin Noir, are set before or after the war, but not during. Now, I have no illusions that if I'd stuck with the idea that I'd ever come up with anything nearly as fantastic as Kerr has. His six books do many things well. First, they are well-structured murder/political mysteries, they’re exceptional character pieces, and third (and probably most importantly), his series of books has given me a far greater understanding of everyday life in Nazi Germany than most histories I've read. None of the books shy away from the rampant anti-Semitism of the time. In fact, in the early books, Gunther's clients are frequently Jewish asking him to look into the disappearance of a loved one. A Quiet Flame, the fifth book, even raises many disquieting questions regarding Argentina's anti-Jewish policies after the war.

Lo-Fi Love: Really the Blues? A Blues History Compiled by Allen Lowe: Volume One (1893-1929)

In the case of this extensive history of the blues, the first of 4 volumes, the whole is definitely the sum of the parts. Allen Lowe, who compiled the set of 9 CDS, has carefully articulated the larger musical picture of blues by assembling spirituals, folk songs and jazz tunes that have been identified as blues-based compositions be the artist white or black. The sound of these old, lo-fi, monophonic 78s and cylinder recordings is as clean and clear as I’ve ever heard from a major label. But getting past the sound fidelity is the whole point here because it’s the music, the voices and the spirit of real performances that has been effectively captured. The remarkable musical and historical journey on disc is aided by Lowe’s companion essay on a CD-ROM. Highlights include “Viola Lee Blues” by Cannon’s Jug Stompers and “Crucifixion” by pianist, Arizona Dranes. The set also includes inspired performances by Jelly Roll Morton, Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, Johnny Dodds and Lonnie Johnson. These artists are mixed into a collection that includes early Minstrelsy, Appalachian Folk songs, Gospel and New Orleans Street bands.

-- John Corcelli is an actor, musician, writer, broadcaster and theatre director.

Sounds of Yearning: Coachella Music Festival

Before “Kandi” captivated me a few months ago, I had never heard of One EskimO, British indie-rockers who’ve been on the scene for six years. The four-minute song is a cut from their eponymous 2009 album woven around a much older number by Candi Staton that’s actually titled “He Called Me Baby.” My affection for the tune includes what I’ve since learned about her life story: From an Alabama farming family, as a child she picked cotton and sang in church before forming a gospel group with a sister in the 1950s. A decade later, her genre was soul, followed by disco in the mid-1970s and eventually what’s now known as Christian music. Along the way, there were about two dozen albums, four husbands (some of them abusive), five children and a bout with alcoholism.

Listen to the Lion: Greil Marcus's When That Rough God Goes Riding

When That Rough God Goes Riding, the new book by critic Greil Marcus (Mystery Train, The Shape of Things to Come) opens a lot of doors. It does so by going through the process of randomly dipping into the fascinating and turbulent music of singer/songwriter Van Morrison. Marcus isn't writing a biography here of this perplexing pop figure; nor is he setting out to draw a chronological study of his many albums, from the masterpieces (Astral Weeks), the vastly underrated (Veedon Fleece), the deeply satisfying (Saint Dominic’s Preview, Into the Music), or the failures (Inarticulate Speech of the Heart, Poetic Champions Compose); this book instead is about articulating how listening to Van Morrison is a rich and complex experience.

Morrison began life in East Belfast forming one of the hardest rock groups in the sixties called Them. Their hit song “Gloria” was a blast of teenage lust that left The Rolling Stones sounding mannered by comparison. His solo career, which began with the conventional 1967 pop hit “Brown Eyed-Girl,” turned mystical in the seventies where within his best music you could hear Morrison speaking in tongues and conjuring the foreboding voices of Leadbelly, Muddy Waters, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and John Lee Hooker, as if he were inviting these ghosts to a poker game where they could all happily collect their winnings.

When That Rough God Goes Riding (named after the kick-off track for his sublimely unsettling 1997 CD The Healing Game) isn't trying to make any one point about Van Morrison’s music, rather Marcus takes us inside the meaning of Morrison's singular voice, a voice that can reveal unspoken truths when he sings. Therefore, there’s no summation of Morrison’s career, a career that’s both satisfying and desultory. Marcus delves instead inside the grooves of songs, albums and lost tracks, in order to map out what he calls a quest for “moments of disruption, when effects can seem to have no cause, when the sense of an unrepeatable event is present, when what is taking place in a song seems to go beyond the limits of respectable speech.” Marcus’s own writing in When That Rough God Goes Riding also goes beyond the respectable speech of conventional criticism and reveals the hidden impulses and pleasures that great artists call up in a critic who is drawn to their work.