Peter Falk, 1927-2011

Though the grind of the traditional continuous streak of summer midterms demands the bulk of my time and attention, I'm compelled to offer a brief appreciation in memory of Peter Falk, who died yesterday at the age of 83. He's best remembered, of course, as Columbo, a the titular character of a show carried exclusively by Falk's inimitable capacity to play an unremarkable-looking man who was nonetheless believable as an infallable detective. He also brought a grandfatherly charm to The Princess Bride that made him the only castmember to compare with the otherworldly lovability of Andre the Giant. The greatest role of his career was a small but indelible turn in Wings of Desire, where he played himself, Peter Falk - an angel who'd surrendered immortality for a chance to live among the mortals he'd only been able to watch from afar, and never regretted it. It was precisely that strength of character, as manifested in real life, that made Peter Falk a hero to me: one who overcame half-blindness (also in his right eye), certainly to great success and acclaim, but more importantly, with the humor and fortitude that endeared each of his characters to so many. It feels most appropriate to end with a baseball story of his: "I remember once in high school the umpire called me out at third base when I was sure I was safe. I got so mad I took out my glass eye, handed it to him and said, 'Try this.' I got such a laugh you wouldn't believe."

In Memoriam

Out of Print Gems: "Chimes at Midnight"

Past posts have dealt with Orson Welles, and they, like most stories about him, have concerned a decline in luck and resources that, unusually for Hollywood, was not precipitated or accompanied by a decline in talent. They've also noted that by a combination of curious disinterest and copyright disputes, many of his films have been released on home video only on VHS - or in some cases, never at all.

Chimes at Midnight (also called Falstaff) falls somewhere in between. The film has been sporadically released by different companies, often at a dearth of expense that (intentionally or not) mirrors the making of the film itself. "Official" DVD copies are available in Spain, and nowhere else. Unsurprisingly, the prints of Chimes that do circulate are often pretty shoddy, further complicating the already muddy original audio, recorded four and a half decades ago on substandard equipment. Yet the film is truly outstanding. Welles' enormous familiarity with Shakespeare allowed him to condense five Shakespeare plays - Henry IV Pts. 1 & 2, Henry V, Richard II, and The Merry Wives of Windsor - into a perfectly coherent narrative with minimal added dialogue. His enormous corpus make him an even better Falstaff than he was an Othello; his naturally resonant laugh rings true to the larger-than-life lovability of the character, and his formidable acting chops really bring out a usually underemphasized sadness that makes his hard breaks all the more touching. Direction is carried out with the flair you can almost come to take for granted in his work: deep focus as characters listen in on what would otherwise have been soliloquies; seemingly cavernous palatial sets that given the budget, in reality, couldn't have been; and a similarly miraculously choreographed battle scene, making the Battle of Shrewsbury out of a handful of extras and expertly contrasting the hilarious sight of a walrus-sized man crammed into a suit of armor with shots that suggest how awful the battle must really have been. Greed and inertia may see to it that Chimes at Midnight never sees the release it deserves, but thanks to the glory of the internet, at least can never be lost. Interested parties can download the film here.

[EDIT 8/30/2016: Against nearly impossible odds, the best case scenario has played out, and the Criterion Collection has been granted access to the best of all existing elements and allowed to remaster the film to their peerless standard. Chimes at Midnight was at long last released today for the first time on American home video (and the download link consequently disabled). It's a landmark day for film.]

Gnarls Barkley - "Live from the Astoria 2"

Gnarls Barkley played a show at London's Astoria 2 on June 8, 2008 that was filmed, purportedly for release on DVD. As with many other events in the lifespan of the casual collaboration between Cee Lo Green and Danger Mouse, the DVD news quietly receded from circulation as the two artists turned their attention to different things. The show did, however, get aired as part of a series of live concerts hosted by internet has-been corporation MSN, and subsequently made the rounds on Youtube. Over the course of the show Gnarls runs through highlights from both studio albums. St. Elsewhere's "Just a Thought" receives an unbelievably intense rendition (see first video, below), while "Transformer" is performed in the wonderful acoustic version first widely heard in 2006 on Live from Abbey Road. Though the concert was sparing in terms of the usual, eclectic selection of covers, the group does run through an excellent performance of Radiohead's "Reckoner" (off of the then-recent album In Rainbows; second video below), which went on to be one of the Gnarls's most popular videos on Youtube other than its hit. An mp3 version of the set - excellent other than a few lamentably (and poorly) bleeped obsceneties from the original online broadcast - is available here.

VHS of the Month: "San Francisco 49ers 1989 Video Yearbook"

[VHS of the Month covers movies only - or best - commercially available on VHS.]

The 1989 San Francisco 49ers were perhaps the finest team ever assembled. It's rightfully remembered as an offensive juggernaut, having featured the game's smartest, most clutch quarterback and greatest ever wide receiver, both in their prime; a runningback/fullback duo that combined for over 2400 yards and 8 TDs; and a backup quarterback who threw for 1000 yards and 8 TDs. People forget, though, that they also featured a dominant defense, featuring stars Ronnie Lott, Charles Haley, Keena Turner, and Bill Romanowski, and ranking 3rd overall in the NFL that year. It's true that the team's explosive offense helped it score an astonishing 126 points in 3 playoff games, but it was the defense alone that yielded 100 fewer points - that's 26 in total - to opponents in those same contests. And of course, the year culminated in an unprecedented laugher of a Super Bowl, a 55-10 thrashing of John Elway's hopelessly outmatched Denver Broncos. The 1989 Video Yearbook presents a game-by-game recap of the 14-2 regular season, and a more in-depth look back at the 3 playoff games (including the Super Bowl XXIV highlights advertised on the cover). Featuring the same glorious melodrama that has endeared NFL Films to sports fans for generations, the Yearbook has nonetheless fallen out of print, like all of the original team videos celebrating the Team of the 80s. However, it's an excellent testament to a squad whose unbelievable prowess was poetry in motion and is ideal to track down for any hardcore football fan, whether a member of the success-starved 49er Faithful or not.

My Top 10 Albums of the 90s: (1) OK Computer - Radiohead

[This is the last in a series of ten posts.]

Radiohead's towering landmark OK Computer is probably chosen as the best album of its decade more frequently than any other album from any other decade. Unsurprisingly, it has been analyzed from all conceivable angles, its every attribute dissected and submitted for critical approval. Most of its critics sing the same praises, and most of these are merited. In the scope of the band's career, for instance, OK Computer does mark a quantum leap. For all its shining moments on The Bends, it was here that Radiohead transcended its Jeff Buckley-esque wails and grunge-derived guitar roars and emerged sounding like no other band in the world. Inevitably, though, reviewers of OK Computer feel obliged to discuss the album's significance as a product of the 1990s: they portray the decade as one of greater uncertainty than any other since the 1960s, and go on to praise frontman Thom Yorke's prescience and name "Fitter Happier" the most "important" track on the album. In doing so, they forget that every era in human history was seen as a time of transition by those living through it (see: Dylan's times a-changin' in 1964; Dickens' best of times and worst of times in 1859; or Shakepeare's winter of discontent in 1591). More importantly, though, amidst all the grandiose stabs at significance, they also tend to completely overlook the album itself. OK Computer is not the album of the 90s because it captured some angsty zeitgeist, preserving the feel of war in Kosovo - or of life after the death of Cobain or the birth of the internet - for posterity. Rather, its success lies in Radiohead's newly expanded sound, accompanied by tighter songwriting that belied the group's burgeoning confidence. While songs like "Airbag" still featured the powerful angularity in Jonny Greenwood's guitars that had made "Creep" a worldwide hit, the majority of OK Computer's tracks explored different textures. On "The Tourist," Greenwood's guitar is subdued to a languid wash, while the superlative "No Surprises" lends it Beach Boy reverb, echoing cleanly off into eternity; significantly, "Climbing Up the Walls" features Greenwood's emergence as an arranger, showcasing the measured dissonance that would later define such pieces as "How to Disappear Completely." The high standard set by Greenwood and human drum machine Phil Selway - the precision on "Airbag" is truly impeccable - is matched step-for-step by Thom Yorke. His lyrics are sharp and poignant, yet (generally) free of their standard, occasional descent into melodrama. His vocals, meanwhile, are perhaps his strongest ever, effortlessly ranging from his snarling growl ("Electioneering") to his trademark, soaring falsetto (the end of "Karma Police") - sometimes, as on the epic "Paranoid Android," in the course of a single song! The story of the album is, if anything, more dramatic knowing that within three years, Radiohead would scrap most identifyable aspects of its sound and recreate itself for the album's equally acclaimed follow-up, Kid A. On its own, though, OK Computer stands as an album of very nearly incomparable quality - made of and for the 1990s, but extending forever beyond them, note-perfect.

Wayman Tisdale - "The Fonk Record"

Following an outstanding career at the University of Oklahoma - one which saw his number retired and the national award for best freshman named after him - and a gold medal in the 1984 Olympics, Wayman Tisdale was taken with the second pick in the 1985 NBA Draft. Though his professional career was marked by a number of excellent seasons, Tisdale remained as widely known for his delightful personality and surprising virtuosity on the bass guitar as his performance on-court, and he actually retired early in 1997 to focus on his music. Unfortunately for some of the fans the Tiz made in the NBA, he chose to make his career in smooth jazz. Though his music was always well-played and immaculately produced, it nonetheless was prone to much of the generic feel endemic to the genre, and Tisdale may thus have never enjoyed the full commercial success his extramusical celebrity should have afforded him. In 2007, to the dismay of basketball fans nationwide, Tisdale was diagnosed with cancer that would remain an issue for the rest of his life and lead to the partial amputation of his right leg the following year. He carried on through his illness with characteristic grace, and even founded the Wayman Tisdale Foundation to raise funds for fellow amputees without enough money for prosthetic limbs. However, he died suddenly in May 2009, an abrupt end that not only robbed the world of an inspiring, gentle spirit, but even worse, seemingly took him without a chance to say goodbye. The October 2010 release of The Fonk Record therefore came as an enormous surprise. For one thing, it contained recordings made gradually over the course of 12 years, without any outside attention. It was also naturally strange to hear Tisdale more than a year after his death, not only on the bass, but even singing. Most disorienting of all, though, was that the album's name turned out to accurately describe its contents: it really is nothing less than an honest-to-god funk album, and one that could have been pulled out of a Bootsy Collins time capsule, at that.

Even without the added novelty of Wayman Tisdale releasing an album like The Fonk Record, it would have been odd to find anyone recording this kind of music in 2010. After all, by most any account, though it lived on in derivative forms, the funk proper had died by the early 80s: P-Funk ran out of gas, James Brown was reduced to a used carbon copy of himself, and Sly Stone literally disappeared into a tear in the fabric of time and space. Yet upon investigation, Tisdale's move makes perfect sense. Funk had been born in the context of a sad state of affairs for black Americans in the late 60s and early 70s, when the choice for socially concerned black popular musicians was either to produce a soul-searching affair like What's Going On or simply to forge ahead and (admittedly, anachronistically) Tear the Roof Off the Sucker. In the face of life-threatening - and, according to subsequent interviews with his widow, painfully debilitating - illness, Tiz, like so many of his bass forebears, turned to the fountain of funk as a source of spiritual comfort. It's as much a testament to his strength of character as his musicianship that The Fonk Record genuinely manages to be as good as the story behind it would make his fans hope. Perhaps Tisdale's wisest decision was to remain true to the genre and ensure that the music never feels overly sentimental. So though there are some moments rendered more meaningful by circumstance - when Tiz sings "there ain't never gonna be another jam like this" on his George Clinton duet "This Fonk Is 4U," or when his bandmates transform the breakup ballad "Been Here Before" into a goodbye to Wayman - the album remains, first and by far foremost, an excuse to simply have a great fucking time. It's the most appropriate goodbye conceivable, and convincing proof that he was as gifted a musician as he was a basketball player or a human being.

Out of Print Gems: Smetana, Stauss, & Stravinsky

Since the advent of recorded music, classical music has remained the hardest type to collect: after all, a popular composer is likely to have his pieces recorded by every label in the business, and the process of tracking down the definitive recording of any composition is usually as difficult as it is subjective. A further consequence of the continual rerecording and reissuing of classical music is that inevitably, as record labels change formats, switch owners, or cease to exist, some recordings fall out of print - even those once considered outstanding, or even authoritative.

Two such works are offered here. The first collection consists of the only recordings led by the famous conductor Jascha Horenstein to have fallen out of print, originally issued in 1954 on the Angel label, #35101. The A-side contains Igor Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms; the B-side, Richard Strauss' Metamorphosen for 23 Solo Strings. It has been unavailable commercially since its original release. The second is from a 1965 German release, Telefunken 30237, a 10" record featuring selections from Má vlast by Czech composer Bedřich Smetana, conducted by Joseph Keilberth. These recordings have been sparesely reissued on CD in Europe and Japan but are not available in the United States; these files in particular, like the Horenstein recordings, were ripped from LP. The recordings are uniformly excellent, particularly Horenstein's Psalm CL and Metamorphosen and Keilberth's Vltava. They can be downloaded here.