Friday Random Ten

Sometimes there's just not much to say about a morning's listening. Out of 20,205 songs in the iPod now:


1. "Get Away" - Georgie Fame - Those Classic Golden Years 07

Pleasant pop. Very good vocal that gets really great at the end


2. "Bob" - The Micronotz - Smash

Obscure, lo-fi, barely competent punk. Attitude and catchiness saves it from mediocrity. If they were actually better, it probably would just sound like a Stooges ripoff.


3. "Peg" - Steely Dan - Showbiz Kids: The Steely Dan Story

Ah, aka "I Know I Love You Better." I wound up diving headfirst into the world of Steely Dan after slighting them in a post many months ago and being called on it by Tom X. Chao. I found this 2-CD comp very cheap on Amazon, and decided to give it a try, and wound up liking a great deal of it . . . not quite all, some of it's still just a bit too clean in a way that doesn't interest me (I don't mind clean production - I'll listen to anything produced by Roy Thomas Baker with pleasure - but some of SD's stuff just grates).

I discovered there was a lot of Steely Dan that I liked and didn't know was Steely Dan, but had heard often on car radios while growing up in the 70s. Like this song.


4. "After Midnight" - Tutu Jones - Staying Power

Yet more solid blues playing that I picked up somewhere and don't know anything about. Maybe it's Berit's, she came into the relationship with more blues on CD than I actually. Nice instrumental, nothing special, in the iPod because there's no good reason for it not to be.


5. "...Und Dann Kam Jimmy Jones" - Hans Blum - Rock 'n' Roll Party 1957-1962 in Deutsch

The Coasters' "Along Came Jones" in German. Yeah. They try kind of hard to swing it like the US version, but it winds up with some kind of vague Oom-pah band feel anyway. The "ah-ah" sound from the original comes off more like a death rattled "ack-ack!" here. Amusing, if nothing else, and it is something else, I just don't know what.


6. "Shimmer" - Throwing Muses - University

From Berit's collection, one of her fave bands. I like them, but it's definitely something from her high school days (90s) rather than mine (80s). Ah, New England alternative college-radio rock! I do like it - some of it, like this - but the sound got old fast.


7. "Baby What You Want Me To Do" - Jimmy Reed - Living The Blues: Blues Masters

Haven't heard this before, I think. I know the song from Elvis and band breaking into it repeatedly in the great sitdown jam in the '68 special. E's version is great and rockin, this is great and loping, sultry.


8. "Who Do You Think We're Coming For?" - Andy Prieboy - Sins of Our Father

From one of my very favorite albums, now unfortunately out of print (I lost my original copy a few years ago and wound up paying $15 for a used replacement from Australia via Amazon). Prieboy was the second lead singer/main songwriter for Wall of Voodoo after Stan Ridgway. His songs are a strange combo of rock-n-roll, pop, and musical theatre influences (with a bit of jazz). He seems to have moved on to writing rock musicals now and hasn't released an album in years that I know of, unfortunately.

This is in more of the musical theatre mode, a dream combining the French Revolution with the Music Industry, imagining hipster execs who fly of to Austin for SXSW and decorate their offices in Elvis kitsch dragged through the streets and hung from lampposts as crowds sing "Ce Ira" (which the liner notes helpfully describe as the "Louie Louie" of the French Revolution). Unfair and very satisfying.


9. "Hands of Love" - Wall of Voodoo - Call of the West

Hey, and now some Ridgway-era WOV. One of my favorite bands that got known for their one-hit-wonder single, but had a much deeper catalog.

In the "Mexican Radio" range, not quite as good or catchy, but I like just about everything of theirs. I miss bands that could sound like this.


10. "Postman's Fancy" - The Ugly Ducklings - Too Much, Too Soon

Ooh. This is kind of lame. Where did I get this? Late 60s flower-child stuff, and not well done. "Won't you stop and listen, people?/This is what they say..." Oh, give me a break.


Okay, I'm off to EST for a reading, and will be there all day, so probably no cat blogging today. Maybe later. I have to figure how to get the pictures off the camera I borrowed (thanks Robert!) onto this computer, which doesn't want to find them on the camera card or via USB. I'll have to find the correct driver online or load them into Berit's computer, burn a CD and move them here that way.

DOCTORS JANE AND ALEXANDER

Tonight's reading, for those interested:


Doctors Jane and Alexander

Using found, fabricated, and occasionally finagled text, Edward Einhorn explores the life of his grandfather -- Dr. Alexander Wiener, the co-discoverer of the Rh factor in blood -- through interviews with his mother, Jane Einhorn, a PhD psychologist who recently retired due to a debilitating stroke. In the course of these interviews, his grandfather's ambitions and achievements are contrasted with his mother's, and ultimately with his own.


Written and Directed by Edward Einhorn


performed by Peter Bean, Talaura Harms, Ian W. Hill, Tanya Khordoc, Alyssa Simon, Scott Simpson, Maxwell Zener


Part of the First Light Festival (plays about science).


Friday, April 6, 2007 at 7.00 pm
Ensemble Studio Theater, 549 West 52 Street (near 11th Avenue)
Tickets are $10.00


The listing, with ticket info, is here at the Ensemble Studio Theater site.

Q&A - Rosencrantz and Guildenstern

Email questions and thoughts come to me from the cast of Ian W. Hill's Hamlet.

Edward Einhorn (Guildenstern) asked me something yesterday morning:


Quick question: what's the concept behind making R&G Jewish? Not that I mind particularly, but what made you think to portray them as Jewish?


Response from me, also cc'ed to Daniel McKleinfeld (Rosencrantz) to bring him in on this issue of interest to him as well:


Not so quick answer:

The concept was sort of reverse engineered, as with making Horatio black -- I was interested in the actor for the role first, then realized that people would wind up taking it as a "statement," and realized that I had to be in control of the statement, so I should actually make one. I saw you and Daniel in the parts, realized this would be "taken" a certain way, and had to take the idea throughout the script to be in control of how it might be taken.

Since this is a WASPy-world, country club/yacht club HAMLET, I was interested in different classes and how they interrelate -- somewhat as I saw in my own wealthy hometown . . . [personal information about myself, Greenwich, Connecticut, and being both “on the inside” and an “outsider” at the same time, redacted].

In this production we see classes from Royalty down to Commoner, with many stages in between, and see all of them react to the death of a king and the fumbling attempts to keep the country together when he's gone. Hamlet's friends play different roles in this. Horatio is given a certain leave as Hamlet's "black friend from school," as he is well-educated, well-spoken, etc., but because of his color and background, he will only ever be able to rise to a certain level in this world. As a result, he is not perceived as (nor is he, or wants to be, I think) a social climber to be watched out for. He is treated somewhat openly.

R&G come, I believe, from several generations of getting-wealthier-and-wealthier merchants -- shopkeepers who have expanded and expanded into a wholesale-retail-mailorder empire -- possibly wealthier and "more powerful" than the Lords and even Royalty (powerful as in "if we don't get something we want, we may not help you out with the money and supplies for this war here"). I think R&G were the first generation born into their family as already fabulously, disgustingly wealthy, and have grown up around the Court, and their friend Hamlet, and want more than just "being rich," they want respect, and a position within the Court the same as anyone else with not only their money, but their talents and abilities. There has NEVER been any overt anti-semitism at work at them, but there has been a definite "you are not one of us" attitude that they're trying to get through.

I honestly think well of R&G (as I do NOT of Hamlet himself), and think they're simply trying to kill two birds with one stone: They ACTUALLY DO want to help their old friend out here, AND if they can use this to get in better with the Royal Family and The Court, what's the harm in that? Frankly, they probably think that they're "playing" Claudius and Gertrude by giving help to them that they would have done gladly for Hamlet's sake anyway.

They don't get, horribly, fatally, that they are dealing with a fanatic who sees these two goals of theirs as incompatible: If they're helping out Claudius and Gertrude, as far as Hamlet is concerned, they are his enemies. End of story. And as Hamlet pushes them away, they resent him more, and more turn to Claudius, which Hamlet sees and gets meaner and nastier to them, which send them . . . well, you see.

So, that's what came out of simply looking at/listening to you and Daniel years ago and thinking I'd like to see you in these parts someday.

IWH


Thoughts from Daniel in response:


Ian:

Thanks for the note! That's pretty much what I had been thinking---that Ros and Guild have fielded a lot of questions about money management (on the assumption that they'd just *know* what to do with money), but have never encountered straight-up vulgar anti-Semitism in the court (which is why Hamlet's display of it is so unpleasant). They sorta seem like the two faces of assimilation---Guild is obsequious and eager to be in his place (an aspiring dentist, I'd think), while Ros has a somewhat ironic attitude towards the court, his life, and himself. He plans to fuck around for a few years after college, and then go into investments, smirking ironically even as he becomes part of the system.

I'd been thinking of playing the first meeting with Hamlet---"my most dear lord!"---for irony, with a heavy helping of rich-kid sarcasm From the instant he walks in , they're doing routines, like kids reciting Firesign Theater records, and there's not a word that doesn't come out with raised eyebrows and a lilting inflection. By the later scenes, he's become more direct as he starts to realize that something's really wrong---by the post-Mousetrap scene, it seems like he's started to worry that Hamlet's genuinely going mad. Now he thinks it's his turn to step
up---he's always been smarter than these courtly dipshits, and by the time it comes to dealing with the body, he's convinced that he's the only one who can straighten this mess out. If anything, he's a little impatient with having to rely on Claudius---who he's always considered a half-wit----to solve the problem, even though he knows that's Claudius' job.

Does that sound about right to you?
D


A final comment from me:


Yup, sounds about right to me, thanks!

There's also a notable difference between R & G as their arc goes on -- Guil begins to try to play too much on R&G's past friendship in ways that are improper in dealing with Royalty. Maybe once they could, as friends, but I think Ros senses a bit before Guil not to push the friendship thing too much. As important as the anti-semitic flip Hamlet gives to them about "trade" is the fact that he pulls out the royal "we" with them in the previous line - he may have never done that before, and he almost never does it elsewhere in the script. He only does it when he wants to MAKE A POINT about being a fucking Prince.

I have CONSTANTLY used, in auditioning people for this show, and talking to others about it, your line as reported to me by Berit regarding all the auditioners who wanted the title role in your HENRY V, "Kings don't SLOUCH!"

That phrase has become central to dealing with the royalty here. Gertrude NEVER slouches, and is a Queen through and through (even with Claudius, being his Queen comes before being his Wife). Claudius only slouches in private with Gertrude -- he somewhat got out of the whole "Royalty" bag that he disliked by going into the military, but knows when and how to turn it on as a King. Hamlet slouches a bit, and more and more as he is seen as "mad" (part of what is taken for "madness" is simply "not behaving like a Prince ought to"), and he affects a more intellectual, artsy demeanor, but he has been raised since birth to be a King someday, and will turn it on when he "needs" to.

Ros sees Hamlet's back straightening before Guil does, and pulls back.

IWH