What's in YOUR WinAmp?

Listening to: The Books. Sublime.

One more radio comedy series...

One only has to listen to Cabin Pressure, written by John Finnemore and starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Roger Allam, Stephanie Cole, and John himself, to realize what a perfect medium radio is for a sitcom.

Cabin Pressure is the story of small, struggling airline, MJN Air, and their small staff's struggles to stay out of bankruptcy and just get along. It's keenly-observed human behavior, with well-defined characters and jokes that flow naturally from the characters. The four main performances are uniformly excellent. Let's hope Benedict's TV role as Sherlock allows him time to record another series.

Available as a set of Audible downloads, and a must-hear for anyone who like well-written sitcoms.

Found it!

"It" being the radio program that fills the void left when CBC Radio 2 canceled Brave New Waves in 2007...


...it's Late Junction, on BBC Radio 3. Yes, I'm sounding like a shill for BBC Radio lately, but I don't care. Where else am I going to hear a guitar quartet arrangement of Arvo Pärt's Summa?!

Enjoy!

More Who Fun

This time from BBC Radio Wales. It's... The Terry Nation Story, an overview of the career of the man who created the Daleks.

Available until 8:00 p.m. (GMT) Sat, 1 Jan 2011.

Happy Christmas!

There's nothing I like more than discovering a good radio comedy series or a one-off I haven't heard before. Here are six of the best I've heard this year:

1. Two Episodes of Mash. That's both the name of the comedy duo and their very funny one-off sketch show on BBC Radio 2, broadcast as part of a comedy showcase series. Let's hope we hear more from them in 2011.

2. Nebulous. Mark Gatiss (from The League of Gentlemen, Doctor Who, Sherlock, etc. etc. etc.) stars in this hilarious sci-fi radio sitcom. It also guest-stars the wonderful David Warner. If you like Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy or early Red Dwarf, you'll like this. I think it's far funnier than both.

3. Beautiful Dreamers. Six mockumentaries, played straight, and all the funnier for it. Outstanding writing and performances, with my favourites episodes being "The River Europe", and "The Whalemen of Musungenyi".

4. Richard Herring's Objective, in which likable comedian Richard Herring attempts to reclaim things society has deemed unlikeable or unacceptable (i.e. the hoodie, the Hitler moustache). Lots of laughs and social commentary.

5. Rhod Gilbert's Bulging Barrel of Laughs. Especially funny are this Welsh comedian's Rant Club segments. The single-potato rant had me laughing aloud on the transit.

6. Count Arthur Strong's Radio Show. A very old-fashioned radio sitcom starring Steve Delaney as the arrogant, aging, malapropism-spouting stage actor, Count Arthur Strong. He is a fine comedic invention: all bravado and bluster and backpedaling. Delany has invested a lot in developing this character, and he shines here, making the mostly unbearable Count simultaneously acerbic and sympathetic.

Any surprise that these are all BBC Radio productions?

As far as I can tell, Nebulous and the first five seasons of Count Arthur Strong's Radio Show are available on CD. Season six of Count Arthur is running on BBC Radio 4 on Wednesdays as of the date of this posting. Of course, all these programs are "available" if one knows where to look. But support the productions and comedians by buying the CDs where you can, yes? Nebulous lists for C$21 and change on a popular book-seller's site, that's just over a buck an episode.

I heard a couple of poor comedy series this year too, but thought I'd leave the "bah humbug" out of this posting. Happy Christmas!

For Your Listening Pleasure

Said the Gramophone, an excellent music blog, has posted a "top 100 songs of 2010" list, complete with links to download all the songs in two .zip files.

While the tastes of site mangers Sean, Jordan, and Dan doesn't always intersect with mine (one or more of three likes dance tracks), it overlaps often enough that I find about 80% of the music they post of interest. And hey, at least this list was compiled by someone with opinions about what he likes, not by some algorithm or sales figures. This quote from the posting sums up Said the Gramophone's philosophy nicely:

Said the Gramophone is one of the oldest musicblogs. We try to do just two things well: finding good songs, and writing about them. We don't mess about with tour-dates, videos or advertising.

So, check out the site at saidthegramophone.com and Sean's top 100 songs of 2010 here.

Brian Eno interview

Took me a bit to catch on to what's going on here...



Small Craft On a Milk Sea is out now on Warp Records, and it's very, very good.

Chris Morris interviews

These probably won't mean anything until you've had a chance to see the Jihad comedy Four Lions (yes, you read that correctly, and yes, it is funny, very funny in places) but you can hear and see director/co-writer Chris Morris discussing the film on WFMU, on the Film School Rejects site* and on the Motion Captured Podcast.

Best quote from Mr. Morris: "I don't have a pathological personality disorder, so why get involved in Twitter?"
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* Be warned, the audio on the Film School Rejects video is quite poor.

Kevin Eldon

If you like British comedy, you've probably seen Kevin Eldon in supporting roles on many shows such as Brass Eye, Smack the Pony, Look Around You, Jam, I'm Alan Partridge, and in the recent Chris Morris film, Four Lions.

He's a very, very funny man. Here's a link to a series of comedic monologues he did for Resonance FM in London: monologues.

And here is a London Evening Standard piece about him: article.

Currently Listening to...

...The Social Network soundtrack by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. It's a terrific disc of dense music, packed with lots of slippery electronics and surges. It's one the best things Reznor has done. Like all good soundtracks it enhances the film without distracting. Yet this soundtrack is not uninspired background music. On the headphones, devoid of image, it's a terrifically engaging work.

Filmmakers often use songs to put viewers into the emotional headspace of characters or convey specific emotions. It's a cheap shortcut, one I call "soundtrack over substance". Watchmen is a film loaded with examples of this. The director and producers didn't even have the good sense to license much of music which was directly quoted in the comic, or they changed the scenes so much that when they did use music quoted in the comic, it made no sense in the context of the film. The comic shows two characters approaching an Antarctic fortress on hover bikes. Author Alan Moore imaginatively quotes "All Along the Watchtower": "...two riders were approaching/ And the wind began to howl." The film uses the same music, but the characters are walking towards the fortress, so the lyrics now don't mirror the action, and it becomes an "I wonder why they used Jimi Hendrix here?" moment. The use of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" over an overly-long sex scene was just schmaltz.

Doctor Who broke with tradition last season and used a song under a scene wherein Vincent Van Gogh is transplanted temporarily to the 21st century to see a retrospective of his own work. While the perfectly serviceable song by Athlete didn't ruin the scene, I'm not convinced the scene needed such an obvious musical punch, not with Matt Smith, Bill Nighy, Tony Curran, terrific actors all, and the luminous Karen Gillen onscreen.

Some films make great use of songs. Magnolia manages to nicely avoid sentimentality by having the characters lip-sync one of the wonderful Aimee Mann tunes. Basquiat uses period songs evocatively, not literally. Trainspotting busts out "Lust for Life" as an ironic anthem for the "upside" of herion use.

Quentin Tarantino, Oliver Stone, Guy Ritchie, and David Lynch all use songs to complement or contrast action and dialogue. Using "Bang Bang" by Nancy Sinatra to Open Kill Bill Volume 1 was inspired, as was re-purposing "Cat People (Putting Out Fire)" by David Bowie for Inglorious Basterds. Julee Cruise's vocals added more layers of dread and loss to Twin Peaks.

I'm happy David Fincher and the producers commissioned a proper score for The Social Network, and didn't just fill the film with assorted songs from the years covered in the film. With dialogue like Sorkin's why would you let song lyrics speak for the characters?

The Social Network soundtrack is up there with the soundtracks for Mishima: A Life In Four Chapters and The Hours, both by Phillip Glass; and Mike Oldfield's score for The Killing Fields. What are your favourites?

Hellblazer-like programme on BBC Radio 4 UPDATED

Are you a fan of Hellblazer?

Rich Johnson, from BleedingCool.com writes, "Pilgrim is a modern day magical fantasy horror series by Sebastian Baczkiewicz, broadcast by BBC Radio 4. And it gloriously and unashamedly rips off John Constantine, by way of Fables." A fair summation, though the show does have a bit of original charm, too, despite the fact that it's a wee bit over-written in the amusing style of radio drama ("It's the phone!" says someone after the sound effect of a phone).

Series 2 consists of four episodes, running once a week on Tuesdays at 12.15 p.m. (London time), starting August 31. It can be heard live on bbc.co.uk/radio4 and will then be available for another week worldwide on the BBC Radio iPlayer.

Series one can be found as a bittorrent file at RadioArchive.cc. I imagine someone will post Series 2 once it has completed its run.

More on the series and other Constantine-like characters here.

Abbey Lincoln, 1930-2010

This week saw the passing of one of the world's greatest jazz vocalists, Abbey Lincoln. For those of you who have not heard her, do yourself a favour and find yourself a copy of We Insist! Freedom Now Suite. It's as powerful and harrowing as her later works, such as Painted Lady, are sublime.

This quote from Ms. Lincoln encapsulates her time on earth:

"How can you have a career and never say anything? To experience it all and not say a word, you're supposed to stand up and speak your mind in the music. Some people like to hear some reality. I'm not trying to save or fix the world. I'm just singing about my experiences. My songs are observations."

And the world is a richer place because of those observations, left for us to hear.

More from NPR here.

Quick plug

A couple of very funny Toronto actor/comedians I know get together each week to discuss current events in a humourous manner. Now you can eavesdrop on them at The Puffin.

Your antidote to boring music and teeny commercial radio playlists...

http://www.thewire.co.uk/

Easin' the pain...

Just found this online. Down In Black Bottom: Barrelhouse Mamas. Fantastic stuff.

I Love You, SONY... but...

Bought a Walkman MP3 player last evening. Like the Walkman products of old, the venerable cassette Walkmans (Walkmen?), the quality is outstanding. As far as mp3 players go, the sound quality on this little 2G player (the now-discontinued NWZ-B135) is far better than that of any other player I've owned so far (and I've had a few). Better than the iPod Shuffle? Check. Better than the RCA Lyra? Hell, yeah. I bought and returned a Lyra about a year ago because the sound quality was so flat and tinny. Not this little SONY baby, though.

But, SONY, oh SONY, why do you insist (why does anyone even make?) in-ear headphones where the cable to one of the earbuds is shorter? I guess the assumption is that you will put the longer cable around the back of your neck. But I don't wanna! I hate wearing headphones that way! What's wrong with the nice, symmetrical pairs you still make and sell separately? Why package sub-standard headphones (I'm talking design, not sound quality hear) with your players? A bit of creative splicing/soldering is in order.

Overall review: a great little machine for $59.99. Not bad at all when you consider I paid $212.99 in 1987 (or the about 1/4 of my university tution that year, or nearly $400.00 in today's dollars) for a compact cassette Walkman which I must have played for a couple of hours every day for nearly 2-1/2 years. Another nice feature is the rechargeable battery on this new device. I don't even want to contemplate how much I spent on AAs for the cassette Walkman, nor how much mercury I've put into the landfills and the water table.

To make up for my grumpiness...

I've been posting a fair bit about things I don't like. Well, here's a couple of things I do like. A lot. Have a listen.

Resonance FM:
http://resonancefm.com/

WFMU:
http://www.wfmu.org/

Yeah, I figured out how to embed vids...

Tell me this ain't catchy. FANTASTIC video editing job, too.

Wonderwall by way of Songsmith

There are really no words for how wonderfully awful this is. Songsmith is a piece of Microsoft software that allows you to sing into it, then creates the backing music for you. Some brave souls dumped the vocal from Wonderwall into and this is the result. Would have been top-10 in 1983.

Listen. Read.

The first issue of Incognito, the newest comic series by writer Ed Brubaker and the inimitable artist Sean Philips is out now. Here's how Ed describes it:

Incognito is a noir pulp story about a super villain hiding who he really is in a witness protection program, but he tires of trying to live a suppressed ‘ordinary life’... It's like when the film Goodfellas ended. I wanted to see what happens next, when the bad guy can't take his forced normal life anymore.

I've read issue #1. It is on par with anything from the Brubaker-Philips team, and that's high praise indeed, with Sleeper and the ongoing Criminal both being excellent series. How the hell Philips draws so fast and keeps the quality this high is beyond me. (If you're chained to a desk against your will, hooked into a coffee and cocaine IV drip, Sean, I'm sorry, but I'll have to side with the publishers and keep you there cranking the stuff out...)

Hear Ed talk about Incognito and his other projects on the Wordballoon podcast here:

http://media.libsyn.com/media/wordballoon/WBbruincognito.mp3