Out of Print Gems: Orson Welles' "Julius Caesar"

Orson Welles enjoyed an ascent to fame that befitted his monumental talent. Soon after his infamous War of the Worlds broadcast of Halloween 1938, he signed a movie contract that gave him total control over films he would make for RKO; he immediately proceeded to make Citizen Kane, commonly named the greatest movie ever made. Even before then, though, Welles had already established himself as a rising star of both theater and radio - arenas he would combine with his Mercury Theater on the Air.

Welles' first work with the Mercury Theater (as a stage company) was a controversial but well-received production of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, which he transposed into contemporary, fascist Italy. In July 1938, Welles and his company recorded a comparatively traditional version of the play for Columbia's "Entré" division, edited only for time. Welles' familiarity with Shakespeare is evident throughout his body of work - he adapted both Macbeth and Othello and based Chimes at Midnight on five of his plays - and it shows in his reduction of Julius Caesar to its essence, leaving a version that really excites and lasts exactly an hour and a half. Welles himself narrates stage directions and plays Cassius; his inimitable voice and typically dynamic performance superbly complement those of the rest of the Mercury cast, who are every bit as great here as in Citizen Kane or The Magnificent Ambersons. It's a worthy interpretation of one of Shakespeare's great political tragedies and a wonderful, overlooked highlight of Welles' remarkable career.

Interested parties can download the recording here. [Contact me if you would like to access the file but the link doesn't work.]

My Top 10 Albums of the 90s: (5) Play - Moby

[This is the sixth in a series of ten posts. The list'll be revealed as entries are written.]

Electronic music had always been an underground affair – from its birth in Raymond Scott’s living room and cramped German recording studios, on through the spread of house music in the 1980s – and despite an unprecedented creative and popular boom in the early 90s as it became ubiquitous in clubs, it wasn’t until later in the decade that it finally found crossover acceptance. Though the Chemical Brothers and Daft Punk (among others) became widely-known stars, it would be Moby who would find the greatest mainstream success, and in the process, become synonymous with electronic music, as far as the American buying populace was concerned. The commercial peak arrived in 1999 with Play, which became the first album to have all its tracks – 18 in total – licensed for commercial use. Moby’s very ubiquity made him a polarizing figure among aficionados, as did the recognition that his grand emergence coincided with a movement away from the pure techno that characterized his early career. Play does contain a few up-tempo club tracks (“Bodyrock,” “Machete”), but the emphasis leans heavily on the emotionality he courted on 1995’s Everything Is Wrong. To that end, Moby famously would go directly to the source, deriving most of the album’s vocal samples from old folk and blues recordings. Though the originality of pairing roots music and house rhythms would certainly have earned attention on its own grounds in 1999, Play retains its appeal even after a wave of imitators (not to mention subsequent, lesser Moby material) thanks to the skill with which the arrangements match the hooks. Many tracks are built around little more than piano and drums; others are constructed from similarly plaintive sound loops (as on the ethereal “Porcelain”). This quiet thoughtfulness imbues Play with a unique beauty, sustained from its beginning through to the otherworldly closer “My Weakness.” Critically, of course, Play is a piece of electronica: music whose evolution depends entirely on that of technology, and whose sound, by definition, thus reflects the time of its production. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the album, then, is the very timelessness it creates by synthesizing pieces of music produced decades apart. This timelessness makes Play a pioneering achievement – not just in the genre it helped bring into public consciousness, but in music as a whole.

2010 World Series, Pt. II

A previous post included a link to the KNBR broadcasts of the first two games of the 2010 World Series, featuring Duane Kuiper and Mike Krukow and extracted from the Giants' championship DVD box set. Interested parties can now follow the link below for the broadcasts of Madison Bumgarner's shutout gem in Game 4 and the final baseball game of 2010, Game 5. [Contact me if you would like to access the files but the link doesn't work.]

Download here.

DISCLAIMER: These broadcasts are offered solely for the convenience and enjoyment of Giants fans, and the blogger makes no claims to the copyrights thereof. Listeners are encouraged to purchase the DVDs from which these files were extracted for themselves (see link at top).

My Top 10 Albums of the 90s: (6) Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space - Spiritualized

[This is the fifth in a series of ten posts. The list'll be revealed as entries are written.]

Jason Pierce first earned his cult following in the late 80s as the frontman of Spacemen 3, a band whose swirling, drone-based psychedelia was informed by an open, monumental intake of mind-altering substances. Pierce’s chemical dependencies would remain intact as his career advanced, but his palate would expand to include an array of other experiences that extend beyond temporal mundanity. 1997’s Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space (released under the name of his post-Spacemen group Spiritualized, of which he was the only constant member) marks the fullest expression of this continuum of transcendental forces – with pain at one extreme, love at the other, and drugs to be found anywhere in between (or sharing both ends simultaneously). Armed with his ambitious plan to cover the human emotional experience in an album, Pierce spares no effort in creating a sound that is, remarkably, appropriate for the task. Indeed, between its strings, horns, and roaring guitars, Ladies and Gentlemen is one of the largest-sounding albums ever recorded. Predictably, Pierce also employs a choir, but like few others, he does so without sounding sanctimonious, or even clichéd. That he is able to provide a genuine context for its familiar, rapturous sound speaks to the strength of his convictions,  but also, more importantly, to his unique talent. Certainly, his belief in the curative powers of his music is no act: various editions of the album are actually packaged like medicine, and it’s intended to be consumed as such. Yet even possessed of similar experiences at the hands of drugs, love, and isolation, few other songwriters could so faithfully convey the overwhelming sensations that come out of them. Pierce makes it look effortless, complementing his pointed, direct lyrics with vocals that effortlessly shift to cover any mood, from the quiet hope of the title track to the intoxicated resignation of “Cop Shoot Cop.” Ultimately, Ladies and Gentlemen is an unqualified success as a lush, immaculately constructed album, but it’s the openness and vision of its tremendously skilled songwriter that lend it its staying power – precisely the grandeur and resonance the man had intended.

2010 World Series, Pt. I

As the San Francisco Giants rode a tidal wave of dominant pitching and timely hitting to an improbable World Series championship in 2010, fans were left with a conundrum: whether to follow the games as they were broadcast on TV - complete with Fox's insufferable Joe Buck/Tim McCarver announcing crew - or to listen to them on the radio, as called by former Giants and beloved, longtime Bay Area broadcasting icons Mike Krukow and Duane Kuiper. Happily, the championship box set solved the issue by offering the Fox telecasts with an option to switch to the KNBR audio. The DVDs are a must have for any serious Giants fan, offering the ideal viewing conditions for all 5 of the World Series games (even if the radio broadcast was rather choppily edited to fit Fox's visuals).

In the orange afterglow of October, the internet has been lit up with requests for someone to share copies of the original KNBR broadcasts. I'd like to offer the next best thing: the radio broadcasts as issued on the DVDs, ripped as mp3s and edited down to make them sound as seamless as possible. Interested parties can follow the link below for the broadcasts from the shootout in Game One and the Matt Cain gem in Game Two; audio from the two remaining wins will be forthcoming. [Contact me if you would like to access the files but the link doesn't work.]

Download here.

DISCLAIMER: These broadcasts are offered solely for the convenience and enjoyment of Giants fans, and the blogger makes no claims to the copyrights thereof. Listeners are encouraged to purchase the DVDs from which these files were extracted for themselves (see link at top).

The Thrilla on Manila

In 1908, the United States was at a managerial crossroads. Teddy Roosevelt, who had ascended to the presidency following the 1901 assassination of William McKinley and won reelection in his own right in 1904, was legally eligable for another term but chose not to run. He retained his massive popularity, and in 1912 would run for office again, this time as a member of the progressive "Bull Moose" Party; he would split his old support base with his former colleagues in the Republican Party, opening the door for Democrat Woodrow Wilson, who would enter the country into World War I and be instrumental in the postwar restructuring of the western world. In the meantime, the 1908 election pitted Roosevelt's protege William Howard Taft against the most important also-ran in American history, the thrice-defeated William Jennings Bryan.

In a quiet way, the 1908 election also heralded the arrival of a newcomer that would prove by far a more important political player as the century progressed than either of the two men running for president, namely, the sound byte. The advent of the Edison phonograph - as owned by many Americans and experienced by countless more at entertainment parlors across the country - had by then progressed sufficiently that the two candidates were convinced to record speeches that would be sold at Edison outlets nationwide. Though the speeches sold well, it would be a stretch to claim they had an enormous (or even significant) outcome on Taft's eventual landslide victory. Still, they humbly symbolized the dawn of a new era in the extension of the American election down to the common man, and even served to create the first-ever presidential "debates" when the aforementioned parlors would set up "dialogues" between opposing phonographs for public consumption. In all, 22 two-minute canisters were recorded in 1908 - 12 by Taft, 10 by Bryan - and have now been digitized and compiled on CD by Archephone Records.

Certainly, as historical curiosities their appeal is almost unrivalled, offering as they do a chance to hear the voices of the fattest president in American history and the prosecuting attorney of the Scopes Monkey Trial. Yet the recordings are revalatory far beyond their old-timey charm, not only as a source of insight into the minds and personalities of two manifestly intelligent men, but also - more sadly - as evidence of the denigration of American popular politics into something profoundly bland and noticably dumbed down.

Appropriately, the centennial of the Taft-Bryan recordings marked the appearance of the most widely distributed presidential debates in American history, simulcast online for the very first time. The speakers themselves offered no surprises. Republican candidate John McCain - an intelligent man and devoted politician, but not a dynamic public speaker - retreated too often to "my fellow Americans" for dramatic effect and was predictably forgettable in the midst of a presidential race he could never have won. Future president Barack Obama also stayed true to form, offering a well-scripted if platitudinous series of remarks in the confident tone that understandably won him multitudes of admirers.

The contents of the debates were as color-by-numbers as the men who delivered them. Each candidate danced around taking any concrete stances even as the two discussed what purportedly were the hot button topics on whose basis American voters were supposed to choose their candidate. The vapidness of the arguments was compounded as both camps attempted to reach out to the nation's lowest common denominator (see: dumb kids). As reported so lustily by media outlets and dried-up late night tv (see: SNL), the GOP was boldfaced in its stilted folksiness, canonizing Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber in a desperate attempt to reach the everyman. However, the Dems were just as bad, urging American youth and audiences of The View to "BaRock the Vote" and ruining the words "hope" and "change" for decades to come. Neither Obama nor McCain made any concerted appeal to their intelligence in their pursuit of votes, neglecting what ultimately should be the job's primary qualification out of fear of alienating any sector of the voting populace.

The Taft-Bryan recordings, by contrast, showcase both candidates making rational appeals to their audiences and trying to win votes by explicitly outlining the policies they intended to implement in the Oval Office. Though the issues they discuss - trusts, railroads, and American activity in the Philippines, among others - are in many cases no longer at the forefront of the national consciousness, it's nonetheless remarkable to hear American politicans laying their cards on the table. Nor is this only evident in speeches on the future of Roosevelt Progressivism: Taft's talk on the "Rights and Progress of the Negro," for instance, addresses the sticky issue of racial politics with a directness that is both touching and possessed of a brave honesty whose modern-day absence is in many ways responsible for the continued existence of America's racial demons. The most stunning of all the recordings are one apiece from each candidate recorded not as political statements, but as reflections of their characters. Taft displays the same sensitivity he showed in his discussion of black Americans' status in a speech called "Irish Humor," where he suggests that humor had helped sustain Irish immigrants through their enormously difficult transition to American life. Bryan, meanwhile, uses a 3000-year-old grain of wheat as the basis of a staggering meditation on immortality:

It is inconceivable to imagine any Presidential candidate issuing a similar statement today - any such revelation of depth of character could only be seen as too elitist, religious, or strange, and in any case would be tantamount to political suicide. Yet listening to recordings like these could remind modern politicians of the benefits America enjoyed as a consequence of having had the most educated founding fathers in world history. If we're lucky, one day we'll see the transposition of politicians unafraid to openly lead with their minds to a modern political context; until then, we can enjoy listening to one of the terribly few aspects of life that was better in 1908 than it is today. (You can buy Debate '08 from Amazon or directly from Archeophone.)

My Top 10 Albums of the 90s: (7) Illmatic - Nas

[This is the fourth in a series of ten posts. The list'll be revealed as entries are written.]

Today, it’s impossible to look back on the world of hip hop from outside of the East Coast/West Coast duality: the turf war not only permeated nearly all of the important rap to emerge during the nineties lyrically, but also claimed the lives of at least two of the era’s most iconic performers – Biggie Smalls and 2Pac – and both in dramatized, violent fashion, at that. It’s easy to forget, then, that the during early nineties, following the spectacular success of Dr. Dre’s The Chronic and Snoop Dogg’s Doggystyle, the East Coast scene found itself in a state of critical and popular decline that threatened to permanently surrender both profit and posterity to Los Angeles. With both sides of New York’s rap scene (the spare brutality of Run D.M.C. and the playful intelligence of the Native Tongues movement) seemingly having run their course by the time of the release of A Tribe Called Quest’s classic Midnight Marauders in 1993, a reawakening was called for. As it happened, the call would be answered almost overnight with the release of two debuts soon turned universally acclaimed masterpieces: the Wu Tang Clan’s Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) and Nas’s Illmatic. The two share in common an uncompromising honesty about the ugliness of life in the gang-dominated inner city, and an equally uncompromising, eloquent sense of humor in the face of these challenges. But where 36 Chambers employs a spare production style – one whose harsh minimalism would set the tone for much of the East Coast gangsta rap to follow – Illmatic features a sound indicative of the stylistic crossroads that characterized its time. The album points ahead to many late 90s hits with moments of larger-than-life, sample-based production (including a virtuosic interpolation of Michael Jackson’s “Human Nature” on the closing track, “It Ain’t Hard to Tell”) while elsewhere retaining the jazziness that permeated the vibrant alternative scene of the first half of the decade. The result is a fascinating, eclectic foundation for Nas’s rapping itself, which instantly announced him as one of hip hop’s foremost MCs and certainly stands tall among the greatest one-man performances ever recorded. Like most great gangsta rappers, Nas presents himself as conflicted on thug life, intrigued by the fame and power, seduced by the money and women, but also plagued by the guilt, fear of death, and destruction of innocence suggested by the chilling album cover. Nor are these conflicts limited to the consequences of gang life. After all, how many rappers so (justifiably) cocky about their creative and technical mastery of their art would lend perhaps their greatest song a refrain of “the world is yours”? Nas manipulates these contradictions to make Illmatic a fascinating series of technical and lyrical contrasts, alternating his flow and following passages built around dizzying syntax with others whose direct emotional approach relies on the pull-no-punches spirit of the blues: Life’s a bitch and then you die/That’s why we get high, cos you never know when you’re gonna go. Despite arriving in what was still the relative infancy of the rap album as an entity unto itself, Illmatic set a standard that may never be equaled – a work even more impressive on its own terms than the East Coast renaissance that launched in its wake.