Variety Souncheck Blog

Morrison's spirit lives on at the Sunset Marquis

Sat, 09 Feb 2013 01:01:25 +0000

The Sunset Marquis — the infamous celebrity hideaway that has served as a second home, work space and party pad to the stars for most of its 50 years — was converted into the Morrison Hotel on Thursday night, attracting such notables as Gary Oldman, Harrison Ford, Billy Bob Thornton and “Gossip Girl’s” Ed Westwick to savor a surfeit of iconic photos of rock royalty.

Photographer/curator Timothy White, who’s been a Sunset Marquis regular since the mid ’80s, convinced management and the New York-based Morrison Hotel Gallery owners that the photos and the hotel’s storied corridors were a perfect match. “It should be the best photos by the best photographers of the biggest stars,” recalls White of his pitch. “That’s what this hotel should be about. It’s about Hollywood history and music history and it should be reflected on the walls.”

A peek at the collection bears this out, from Joel Brodsky's Adonis-like portrait of a shirtless Jim Morrison to Elliot Landy's gorgeous album cover shot of Bob Dylan's "Nashville Skyline." The Stones, of course, are heavily represented, including Eddie Kramer's priceless backstage shot of Mick Jagger and Jimi Hendrix at Madison Square Garden in 1969 -- get yer ya yas out, indeed!

Julian Lennon, one of the featured photographers, reveled in the opportunity to be judged on his own terms. “Photography has definitely taken over my main focus in life,” the musician-turned-shutterbug told Variety. “It allows me to breathe creatively rather than have that Lennon stigma of Beatles and everything else with the music where every single thing I do is compared to everything else. It’s expected but it’s a little annoying.”

http://www.typepad.com/site/blogs/6a00d8341bfc7553ef013480867d72970c/post/compose

Justin Timberlake announces post-Grammys concert in Hollywood

Fri, 01 Feb 2013 19:54:28 +0000

Justin Timberlake will hold his first live concert in years on Feb. 10 at the Hollywood Palladium, just hours after he performs at the 55th annual Grammy Awards.

The pop star announced the show this morning on Twitter.

"The 20/20 Experience begins at @thepalladium on Feb 10th," he tweeted.

Timberlake's new album, 20/20, arrives March 19. According to The Playlist, David Fincher will direct the music video for the pop star's new single "Suit & Tie," which also features Jay-Z.

Tickets for the Hollywood show go on sale tomorrow at noon/PT.

Follow Stuart Oldham on Twitter

Listen to "Suit and Tie":

The British Invasion extends to America's pastime

Thu, 25 Oct 2012 01:21:39 +0000

If the phrase “Long Live Rock!” is drowning out the declaration “Play ball!” it might have to do with the way The Who has been in the news as of late. The group’s mastermind, Pete Townshend, has been front and center with his long anticipated autobiography, “Who I Am,” currently positioned at No. 3 on the New York Times best sellers list, while a 36-city U.S. tour that will see the group perform its ambitious rock opera “Quadrophenia” kicks off Nov. 1. Now the Who’s music has become the offical anthem of the World Series being aired on Fox Sports.

The deal is the latest coup by music publisher Spirit Music Group headed by Mark Fried, who has been instrumental in reanimating Townshend’s music for modern audiences across a variety of platforms.

For the series between the Giants and the Tigers, signature tunes like “Going Mobile,” “Behind Blue Eyes,” “I Can See For Miles” and “Bargain” will be edited and matched to in-game play, as well as used in game promos, during highlight shows and in custom web content.

The deal was conceived to incorporate a mix of appropriate tracks and re-mixes into the broadcast, and look for creative ways to embed the music organically across all of Fox’s platforms. In addition to active licensing of the songs, Fox Sports will be helping promote The Who brand via frequent sportscaster mentions of the music and the band’s upcoming tour, featured use of the band’s images, album art and web and social links on Fox’ website.

According to Spirit president Fried, “The music of The Who is as powerful and propulsive today as when it was first introduced, so using their songs to soundtrack one of the country’s premiere sporting events seems a perfect fit.”

A Wolf with considerable bite

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 21:36:48 +0000

In today’s landscape of fly-by-night sensations, YouTube phenoms and marginal chart toppers, it’s the lasting voices like Springsteen, Dylan and the Stones who continue to provide the kind sustenance that’s both nutritious and satisfying. And it’s not because they’re merely “survivors,” it’s because they’ve never rested on their laurels as mere nostalgia acts. And even though his name doesn’t invoke a similar level of idolatry, Peter Wolf belongs in their company.

So it was especially gratifying to see Mr. Wolf in the flesh, and in the intimacy of Hollywood’s Hotel Cafe on Friday night, to show the initiated and uninitiated alike (of which I was clearly the latter) how it’s done.

I’d always known Wolf as the dynamic frontman for the J. Geils Band, which had reunited this past summer for a tour that included Wolf as lead vocalist. (The fact that he married Faye Dunaway back in the day — 1975 to be exact — only added to his swagger and rock-royalty status.) But what Wolf displayed on Friday night was a command of the stage, his band, and a variety of musical styles that took the breath away.

He also was equally adept at playing the raconteur, dropping names like carpet bombs of his rock and blues associations as a rising artist, whether it was having eggs at two in the morning in Boston with Howlin’ Wolf or doing “chicken hops” (short-hop plane flights between tour destinations) with the likes of Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins. Wolf’s a storyteller in his music, too, with a voice both honeyed and granular, with every lyric clearly heard — no mean feat when so many of today’s singers appear more interested in establishing a mood than setting the scene.

But it was the breadth of Wolf’s solo material, much of it co-written with Will Jennings, that provided the evening’s most shining nuggets. Whether it was the on the down-and-dirty “Homework,” from the 2002 album “Sleepless,” or his Nico Case collaboration, the gorgeous ballad “The Green Fields of Summer,” from the much-lauded “Midnight Souvenirs” LP (2010), Wolf’s voice displayed a maturity and personality that well-nigh might be unmatched in the current pop ephemera.

And Wolf knows it. At one point he chided the audience for not paying close enough attention. “S’cuse me for a second but I thought this was a listening room” he complained at one point. “If you wanna talk, why don’t you go the fuck outside and talk?” Needless to say, the room was rapt from there on.

Backed by a top-notch, five-piece band that ranged from blues to Americana to straight-up rock, Wolf could not have been in finer company. One Wolf original, “Wastin’ Time” from his 1996 album “Long Line” — a rollicking, Dylanesque medium-tempo ballad with swirling organ, electric and acoustic guitars — sounded like it could have been a track left off of Dylan’s “Planet Waves” with the Band. But unlike Dylan, Wolf’s voice has only gotten better with age.

Wolf will wrap up his solo tour at New York’s City Winery on No. 3

Janelle Monae rocks Nokia's house

Fri, 28 Sep 2012 19:48:18 +0000

As part of the Nokia-sponsored Social Media Week, whirling dervish, pan-genre virtuoso Janelle Monáe played to a packed house at Nokia L.A. Live on Tuesday night. Dipping heavily into her “ArchAndroid” songbook — the breakthrough 2010 album that mixes classic Motown-inspired R&B, hip-hop, New Wave and glam with startling seamlessness — Monae once again showed off her ability to mix theatrics with supreme musicianship. She’s part James Brown, part Prince, part Bowie and all girl power.

The exclusive concert was designed for Nokia to showcase its recently released new mobile music streaming app, Nokia Music.

Among the celebs in attendance, Tristan Wilds (“The Wire,” “90210”), “Project Runway”-winning designer Anya Ayoung-Chee, model-actress Liberty Ross (“Snow White and the Hunstman”), singer-songwriter Luke James, actor-musician Tyler James Williams (“Everybody Hates Chris”) and Big Boi (pictured), who joined Monae on stage for "Tightrope."

Photo: Vivien Killilea

The Stones in their early glory

Wed, 26 Sep 2012 22:30:33 +0000

Among avid Stones fans, the question of which lineup was best — the original quintet with Brian Jones, or the one with Jones’ replacement, Mick Taylor — varies with whomever is being asked. There’s really no right or wrong answer, but for those who know the Stones mostly from its current incarnation, with core members Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts and Ron Wood, who filled in for Taylor in 1975, the film “Charlie Is My Darling,” which chronicled the group’s 1965 tour of Ireland just after they released their breakthrough single, “Satisfaction,” will be enlightened by the Stones’ early mystique, and why it endures after all these years.

This long-bootlegged gem directed by Peter Whitehead and produced by Stones manager at the time Andrew Loog Oldham — considered a kind of Holy Grail for fans, just as “The Rolling Stones Rock & Roll Circus,” filmed in 1968, was until its release on laser-disc in 1996 — surfaces on DVD and Blue-ray at a time when interest in the Stones has come full circle during its 50th anniversary. This beautifully photographed B&W film, with added footage overseen by director Mick Gochanour (co-producer on “Rock & Roll Circus”) and producer Robin Klein, offers neither the end-of-the ’60s foreboding of “Gimme Shelter” nor the hedonistic excesses of “Cocksucker Blues,” Robert Frank’s unreleased documentary about the Stones’ 1972 North American tour. Instead, “Charlie Is My Darling” is a comparatively benign look at a group that’s just realizing its artistic and commercial potential, and a bit taken aback by its popularity. Think “Hard Day’s Night” meets “Don’t Look Back.”

The documentary touts some of the earliest existing live footage of the band, and it’s riveting. At this point in its growth, the Stones were already sparking pandemonium at its shows, with one sequence showing an Irish crowd rushing the stage during a performance of “It’s All Right.”

Unlike the Beatles (who are the subject of some gentle ribbing during the film), the Stones don’t seem all too keen on mugging for the camera. Charlie Watts is typically nonplussed and bemused by all the fuss. Jagger behaves like the group’s spokeman, but the gargantuan ego in-the-making is not yet evident. Richards seems glued to his guitar, with a scene of him and Jagger fine-tuning the lyrics of “Sitting on a Fence” providing one of the film’s more priceless moments.

With all the filmed footage of the Rolling Stones that exists, Brian Jones has always remained the group’s most enigmatic figure, while his death in 1969 predated the Stones’ emergence into a stadium-touring juggernaut. In this documentary he’s seen as a rather existential figure, cryptically prescient about his doomed fate. “Let’s face it, the future as a Rolling Stone is very uncertain,” he tells one interviewer with an impish grin that turns dead serious. “My ultimate aim in life was never to be a pop star. I enjoy it, with reservations. But I’m not really satisfied either artistically or personally.”

The film will have its world premiere on Saturday, Sept. 29, at the New York Film Festival and will be available as a box set Nov. 6, including a DVD and Blu-ray of the new version of the film as well as a director’s and producer’s cut. Those interested in the deluxe package are looking at a $99 list price, but the DVD ($19.98) and Blu-ray are available separately. There will also be a digital-only version, with an as-yet-to-be-determined price.

Whatever Stones fans shell out, this filmed chronicle is one for the ages.

Fleetwood Mac, Nina Simone get the tributes they deserve

Fri, 07 Sep 2012 21:39:45 +0000

One of the reasons tribute albums can be such eye-opening experiences is their ability to shed new light on their source’s songcraft and, more specifically, their lyrics. Herbie Hancock & Co. managed to underscore the brilliance of Joni Mitchell’s unorthodox tunings and richly metaphorical writing in “River: The Joni Letters” a few years back, while The Somebodys’ unjustly overlooked paean to the Bee Gees, “50 Trib to the Brothers Gibb” (2009, Palawan), brilliantly rehabilitated a group kicked to the curb by the disco backlash.

For whatever reason, Bethany Cosentino of Best Coast makes plain on “Rhiannon” in the recently released Fleetwood Mac tribute LP, “Just Tell Me That You Want Me” (Hear Music) what Stevie Nicks and company artfully veiled with their pristine production on the group’s blockbuster eponymous 1975 album.

“She is like a cat in the dark/And then she is the darkness.” Never has Nicks’ elusive heroine been placed in such focused relief: part enigma, part femme fatale. It helps that Best Coast’s arrangements are of the utmost low-tech simplicity — not much more than three notes struck on the piano augmented by the rat-tat-tat of a snare drum. It’s a far cry from Best Coast’s usual Phil Specter-influenced wall of sound. In fact, if one took a blindfold test, Lykki Li’s atmosphere-drenched version of Nicks’ “Silver Springs” could be mistaken for Best Coast, while Karen Elson’s “Gold Dust Woman” (also written by Nicks) channels Nicks’ unique, whispy vocals in one the album’s more direct approximations of the Fleetwood Mac sound.

The Nicks covers are truly the standouts in this collection, and point to how much the ethereal singer-songwriter — mostly remembered for her New Age, leather-and-lace pirouettes — brought to the table when she and Lindsey Buckingham joined Fleetwood Mac at the end of 1974.

I won’t pretend to be familiar with all the previous incarnations of the Mac, when they were known primarily as a blues-rock band, but the gems on this collection are numerous: Marianne Faithfull’s characteristically world-weary take on “Angel” (again Nicks), accompanied by the inimitable Marc Ribot and Bill Frisell on guitars; Billy Gibbons & Co.’s grizzled, swampy interpretation of Peter Green’s “Oh Well”; The New Pornographers doing their best imitation of the Steve Miller Band on Christine McVie’s “Think About Me”; and Tame Impala’s dreamy “That’s All for Everyone” (Buckingham).

The connective tissue here is Randall Poster, one of the more sought-after music supervisors in Hollywood, who produced with Gelya Robb.

Equally, if not more compelling, is Meshell Ndegeocello’s masterful dedication to Nina Simone, “Pour Une Ame Souveraine,” which will be released October 9 on Naive Records. Ndegeocello clearly views Simone, who died in 2003, as a long-lost spiritual sister, and the two artists do share a predilection for tackling sticky sociological themes such as race and gender politics in their music, and an ability to effortlessly straddle genres from jazz to blues to R&B to folk.

“Pour Une Ame Souveraine” is filled with songs either associated with or conceived by Simon, from the opening “Please Don’t let Me Be Misunderstood,” originally released on Simone’s 1964 album “Broadway-Blues-Ballads” and here slowed down to a mournful crawl, to “To Be Young, Gifted and Black,” from Simone’s 1970 “Black Gold” album, and here given a high gospel treatment by guest vocalist Cody ChestnuTT.

This rich assemblage manages to be both highly eclectic and of a piece, held together by producers Ndegeocello’s and Chris Bruce's collective vision, bassist Ndegeocello’s impeccable musicianship and a cohesive backing band consisting of Chris Bruce on guitar, Jebin Bruni on keyboards and the phenomenal Deontoni Parks on drums.

Ndegeocello — whose cool, retrained vocals (think Sade with a great band) have always seemed at odds with the muscularity of her arrangements — carries about half the singer duties here, with inspired contributions from Toshi Reagon (a rollicking “House of the Rising Sun”) and Valerie June (a kind of field-hollar take on “Be My Husband” replete with stomps, claps and chants).

Perhaps the one singer who feels out of place here is Sinead O’Connor, who manages to reduce “Don’t Take All Night” to a soggy drone. But this the lone exception to an otherwise masterful collection — certainly one that makes me want to scramble to Amoeba to scour the racks for an artist, Simone, that is, whose activist artistry has somehow escaped my grasp over all these years.

Jarrett's European quartet revisited

Tue, 14 Aug 2012 18:33:24 +0000

For those ardent Keith Jarrett fans out there (and you know who you are) who’ve longed for the jazz pianist to reunite with some of his collaborators from the ’70s other than Gary Peacock and Jack DeJohnette, the time will likely never come — at least based on evidence from the last three decades. Jarrett’s duo recording with Charlie Haden, the bassist for Jarrett’s early trio and subsequent American quartet, on “Jasmine,” released in 2007, stands as the one exception.

True, Jarrett’s Standards Trio with Peacock and DeJohnette is, no pun intended, the gold standard for the format, capable as they are of amazing flights of musicianship. But there are aspects to their chemistry that have become as rote and comfortable as an old pair of shoes, and the creative tension Jarrett enjoyed with such players as Jan Garbarek and the late Dewey Redman on saxophone, and Kenny Wheeler on flugelhorn has become a distant memory.

Enter ECM, Jarrett’s principal label since his groundbreaking solo piano debut in 1971, to save the day. Manfred Eicher’s imprint has dipped into its archives for the first time in its 43-year history to unearth some buried treasure: a 1979 live recording of Jarrett’s Scandinavian quartet, consisting of Garbarek, Palle Danielsson on bass and Jon Christensen on drums. The release, titled “Sleeper,” was released this past Tuesday and it provides a blast of fresh air to the current moribund jazz scene.

Several tracks from the new release exist on two other live 1979 recordings by the group, nicknamed the “Belonging” quartet after the title of its 1974 studio debut: the phenomenal “Nude Ants” and “Personal Mountains.” While its true that Jarrett’s recent solo concerts have provided ample evidence that he’s still at the top of his game, these late ’70s recordings reveal a joy and a group dynamism that has been unmatched since.

The two-disc set ranges from the startling virtuosity of the muscular opening track, “Personal Mountains,” with its intricate, snake-like melody and devil-may-care energy, to the borderline treacly “Innocence,” which might be considered a spiritual kin to “My Song,” the title ballad from the group’s second, and last, studio recording from 1977.

More than most highly distinctive reed players, Garbarek’s sharp, often mournful tone on tenor and soprano saxophones is decidedly an acquired taste. But the interplay he achieves with Jarrett is no less awe-inspiring today than it was more than 30 years ago.

Christensen, for his part, belongs among the Mt. Rushmore of modern jazz drummers — right up there with DeJohnette and the late Tony Williams. His energy is restless and his technique highly intricate, seemingly using every percussive surface within reach. And he achieves a fat tone in his cymbal work like nobody else, as if he’s banging on tin cans.

The whole enterprise — not unlike the recent bootleg “Live in Europe 1967” series featuring Miles Davis’ second great quintet — is a revelation for those who given up on jazz as an art form capable of shock and awe.

Jarrett's European Quartet revisited

Fri, 10 Aug 2012 00:17:57 +0000

Christensen, for his part, belongs among the Mt. Rushmore of modern jazz drummers — right up there with DeJohnette and the late Tony Williams. His energy is restless and his technique highly intricate, seemingly using every percussive surface within reach. And he achieves a fat tone in his symbol work like nobody else, as if he’s banging on tin cans.

Marvelous Marvin

Wed, 08 Aug 2012 18:37:55 +0000

I was fortunate to attend the 2009 Ghent Film Festival where Marvin Hamlisch, who died on Monday at the age of 68, was being honored for career achievment at the World Soundtrack Awards. At a morning panel that I moderated on the morning of the ceremony, Mr. Hamlisch pretty much provided the comic relief that the proceedings needed, given that film composers can often be a rather sober, serious bunch.
In fact, during one moment when Mr. Hamlisch was talking about the popularity of film music, somebody’s cell phone went off among those in attendance, although I can’t remember precisely what the ringtone was. But without missing a beat, Mr. Hamlisch asked “Is that public domain, by the way, or did we make money? The guy who wrote that, right now -- I swear to God -- is sitting in some fantastic place in the south of France. We’re killing ourselves here for $14,000!”

Here then, are some select Hamlisch nuggets from the press conference

On the necessity that composers be versatile:

Marvin Hamlisch: “There are composers that can only do this, but can’t do that. They can only do this kind of picture but they can’t do that. No — composers can do any picture. They can do any style. It’s not our style. We become subservient — if we’re really good -- to what the movie is about.

“If you listen to my second film, ‘Bananas’ (1971), and then you put it up against ‘The Way We Were’ (1973), I doubt you would think that the same composer wrote those two things.”

On the importance of formal training and working with your God-given gifts:

“The only way I like to write is either if you are granted by God a great title of a film like ‘The Way We Were’ and you go, ‘I can write that.’ Or, you see a film and as you’re walking on the streets of New York, or, God willing, Paris, the beauty is you’re thinking about that film and those things and that’s when all the stuff you’ve learned at school starts to play and you start your language. And I think that’s the glory of film music.”

On film composers as a draw for audiences:

“As egotistical as I am, it’s very rare that one zooms to the theater saying, ‘I’ve got to hear this Michel Legrand score.’”

Movie scores as popular entertainment and the lack of written scores:

“I do a lot of conducting of what we call ‘Pops’ orchestras in America and one of the major selling points of a Pops orchestra will be the evening that you call ‘movie music.’ But the biggest problem that we find in doing popular music for orchestra is getting the music... It’s very important that the new composers and new scores find their way to a library.
“There are certain concerts that will always sell out: You say the word ‘Gershwin’ and you will sell out. You say ‘Broadway tunes’ and you will sell out. And you say ‘movie scores’...”

On collaborating with directors:

“There are certain directors who I think give music its due. And there are other directors who basically just think that they’re buying a carpet and if this carpet doesn’t work they’ll just use another carpet. So it’s a very thin line between the people who really respect you and the people who just use you.

Music as dramatic filler:

“You learn very quickly how important music is to a project because try a montage one day and watch it for two and a half minutes without music. It has the qualities of going to the dentist.”

On the use of ‘temp’ tracks:

“Temp tracks can be very insidious. Because what happens is, not only has the director heard it 90 times and they’re used to it, but for a composer, it’s not like you’re really starting off with an empty slate because someone has already shown you the direction they wish to go to — or at least the direction that, of all the CDs they have at their disposal, this is the one they found.

“I’ll never forget on ‘The Way We Were,’ the temp track had things like Michel Legrand, Henry Mancini, Georges Delerue; every scene had one of these great composers. And I said, ‘Excuse me, now just a second here, you couldn’t afford this temp track in real life.’”