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It's 2010 and I'm left wondering about the purpose of the music video.
A friend of mine put the problem into words: "Music videos are too expensive to be commercials. They're just not effective anymore." Nowadays videos are viewed largely in a 3" x 5" screen, surrounded by ads and nonsensical commentary. They're hamstrung by connection speeds and video quality. MTV’s been dead so long it isn't worth eulogizing anymore. Where’s the audience for music videos? What’s their purpose?
In the three years they've been hosting their screening series, Flux has come to be a premiere tastemaker in Los Angeles. Their selections are neither obvious so obscure they’re inaccessible. If anyone had the answer to this music video question, surely it would be them. I attended their screening series at the Hammer Museum on Tuesday, March 23rd with eyes and ears wide open—looking for the answer to my questions.
The screening featured three abrasive films from Massive Attack that were more like short documentaries hell-bent on making some great social argument without regard for the underlying music they were supposed to accompany than music videos. Music video as propaganda for the band with an agenda.
But the screening also featured more traditional fare from bands like Monsters of Folk, where the visuals added color and form to melody, no social commentary needed. Music video as pure visualization.
Then came the last video of the night, “This Too Shall Pass,” by OK Go, the video superstars better known for their videos than their music. Their self-titled debut album shot to the top of the iTunes charts in 2006 thanks to the popularity of their first online video. "This Too Shall Pass" collected 9 million views on YouTube in one week. And, shown outside the confines of the internet and up on the big screen at the Billy Wilder Theatre Tuesday night, the video created that same excitement as their first video, the joy that comes from watching a great concept executed flawlessly.
After the screening, the crowd moved to the Hammer's courtyard for a short acoustic performance from OK Go. A large screen hung behind the trio. I expected the debut of another video. Possibly featuring roller-skates. Or monkeys (roller-skating monkeys? Ooooh…). But the screen stayed blank and the crowd remained indifferent to the music.
OK Go played on while people talked, performing a Pixies cover that went ignored. In between songs, the crowd drank casually or waited for a slice of pizza at the Hammer Café while the band complained about their former record label, Capitol/EMI (days after the release of "This Too," OK Go left EMI Records and have founded their own distribution label, Paracadute.)
In 2010, music videos must serve at the behest of the band. If a band like Massive Attack wants to make videos to promote a social agenda, then that is their greater purpose. If a band like OK Go wants to make videos just to have fun and be creative, than that is their purpose, too. And if those are the kind of videos that OK Go will keep making, then there's no need to worry about the future of OK Go. Or music videos, for that matter.
Originally in Los Angeles Magazine at: http://www.lamag.com/do/blog_post.aspx?id=24493&blogid=2160
One of most treasured memories from my six years in Detroit came on my grandmother's 74th birthday. We piled into my grandfather's Buick and drove down to Hamtramck, once the largest community of Polish inhabitants outside Poland itself, to the Polish Village Cafe.
The Cafe is barely big enough for a small bar and a few picnic tables. Besides the authentic Polish golumpki, the real attraction of the cafe is the music. A tiny three-piece band—drums, trumpet, and piano—squeeze into the corner on weeknights and play old jazz standards so the old and faithful can dance in the narrow aisle. This is where I saw Meg White. She walked down the well-trodden staircase to the basement restaurant; I made her instantly. She was wearing a white leather jacket dyed with a black 1950s pattern and had a very tall, very attractive pre-hipster boyfriend in tow. They sat down and ordered beet soup, otherwise unnoticed. I turned to my grandmother to explain that the tall girl sitting one table over was famous. Worldwide-tour famous. Biggest-garage-rock-band-on-earth famous. My grandmother turned to me and said, "Forest, I want you to meet my friend Meg."
That was 2005. The White Stripes have come a long way since then and a long way from Detroit. Jack White now resides in Nashville, Tennessee. I've heard that Meg spends some of her time in Silver Lake. They've been a band for more than ten years. Jack’s more willing than ever to hang up the red-and-white outfit to play with other bands: First the Raconteurs with Brendan Benson and more recently with The Dead Weather and Alison Moshart. Reportedly, his favorite quote about The White Stripes is about how they are simultaneously the most fake band and most real band in the world.
But that’s always been the case. From the beginning, it's been easy to predict the demise of The White Stripes. Their tenth anniversary tour, for instance, was primed for overreaching; there were shows in each of Canada's 10 provinces and 3 territories, shows booked in towns smaller than the capacity of Madison Square Garden, and free concerts given for early bird fans.
Thank goodness Emmett Malloy was there to document everything in his new tour film Under Great White Northern Lights, which came out on DVD on Tuesday, March 16th. Flux screened the film screened at the Egyptian Theatre on Monday.
Malloy's technique (filming most of the tour in grainy, black-and-white reversal film) deftly handles one of the band’s detractors’ most persistent criticisms: That the Stripes more concerned with image than importance. Malloy's footage grounds their image in realism. That's not to say that Malloy's journey with the band doesn't dip into the surreal—scenes too strange to be fake appear throughout. Witness Jack and Meg, exhausted but smiling after a show, walking through the backstage door at midnight to see that the Yukon sun is still shining. Witness the Stripes' "One Note Show" (a free concert where the duo appear on stage, play a very spirited F-note, and then walk offstage to chants of, "One more note!"). These moments (and there are many others too good to spoil) were Malloy's focus and the reason why White Lights doesn't move like a typical concert film. There are few full-length songs; Malloy only has time for the breakdown of "I'm Slowly Turning Into You" or the guitar solo from "Icky Thump." He would rather point his lens back on the tour itself. And yes, Malloy captures the heat that the pair still pack, ten years later. Meg, when pointedly asked to explain the popularity of the band by a Canadian truck driver, gets to the heart of it: "We make a lot of noise."
In White Lights, the Stripes songs you love are dragged out on stage, drenched in napalm, and set afire. Leading the attack is Jack White, who has kept things authentic with that ethereal scream, those deafening guitar chords, that midwestern (dare I say "Detroit") work ethic. Malloy captures all of it. Every note. My grandmother would be proud.
Originally in Los Angeles Magazine at: http://www.lamag.com/do/blog_post.aspx?id=24290&blogid=2160
To start: I was guilty. And as far as I could tell, the people sitting around me in traffic court—the old man sitting next to me with his snapshot photo evidence, the penitent son with his reproving father, the young thug with a face that had been terribly burned, scarred, and reconstituted—before the Great Seal of California, all of us in the Beverly Hills Traffic Court, sat guilty. I would make a rather biased judge.
The court clerk turned to the bailiff and whispered, "Is she even in chambers yet?" The official clock was nudging past 9:00 AM for a session that should have commenced thirty minutes earlier. "Fridays," the bailiff said and returned to her phone call. While we sat contemplating our pleas, the bailiff was trying to quietly book a reservation at a shooting range.
Five months prior, I was pulled over for the kind of routine traffic stop that you just know is going to be costly. Thirty minutes and a short stint in the backseat of a cop car later, I had a ticket and a court date. My crimes were procedural: I'd lived in California longer than the 30 days required to head down to the DMV and apply for a CA Driver's License. And my registration wasn't up-to-date. These were not crimes inspired to draw out the sympathy of the officer who pulled me over. Actually, I was lucky he didn't impound my car on the spot. All I could do was to hope the cop would grant me one additional favor and sleep through the court date, or that the judge was more lenient than I would be.
But I had a plan designed to warm even the most wary of temperaments. "I'm not here to give you any excuses," I would tell the judge. I would say that she's heard too many sob stories and that I didn't want to waste her time. She would interrupt me to compliment my black two-piece suit and question me about the identity of my tailor. I had it all planned out.
Actually, choosing the suit was about as far as I had gotten in the planning process. For all the hundred or so episodes of Law and Order I've seen over the years, I quickly realized how lost I was when it came to actual court proceedings. The court date I booked months prior turned out to only be an arraignment, one of those familiar words I couldn't actually define.
The judge, a woman who like all female judges of a certain age, resembled Judge Judy, thankfully arrived to clear things up. "Of all the people gathered today in the courtroom, I can bet that I am the only one glad to be here," she said, starting a breathless half-hour lecture on the fundamentals of traffic court. I liked her right away.
The arraignment, I learned, was a preliminary session just for the purpose of taking down pleas—“guilty,” “not guilty,” or “no contest.” Our pleas would be heard and recorded in rapid succession, after which we'd all shuffle next door to the clerk's office to pay the court a fine for our guilt or to post bond in hopes of our innocence.
This was another thing I never fully understood: Regardless of my plea, I'd have to pay the full price of the ticket. If I admitted guilt, I'd pay on the spot. If I wanted a fair trial, I'd still have to pay the full amount in hopes it would be refunded to me if I won my case. It didn't matter that the cop who pulled me over didn't show up in court for the arraignment—he would only be summoned if I pled “not guilty” and went to trial.
The judge continued: Though we were sitting in a courthouse in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the state, court fines are set by the lawmakers in Sacramento. Once a defendant was charged, the judge couldn't do anything to ameliorate the fines. The fines themselves stopped at a maximum of $100, which sounded deceptively reasonable. What made them so much more expensive was the buffet of service charges and penalties added on top of the fine—sometimes seven times the cost of the original fine. The cheapest ticket came in at $20, which topped out at $141 with all of the additional fees. Ouch.
By the end of the judge's lesson, I knew how I would plead. Unlike a speeding ticket, my charge didn't involve a subjective opinion or questionable equipment. I hadn't taken care of the details; a trial wouldn't last long if the cop showed up. The last thing I wanted was to prolong this tortuous process, only to be justly defeated in the end.
I didn't have much more time to consider it. The speech was over; the hearing had begun. All twenty of us were called to the stand at once, lined up—a row of suspects in front of the judge. The first name on her list was leaning against the podium in a gray hooded sweatshirt, an obvious veteran of the court.
His charge was the most serious given in traffic court—driving without insurance—compounded by the hefty fine for skipping a previous trial. He was looking at bail money in upwards of a thousand dollars. He took this news with an air of indifference and requested an extension on his court date and then an extension on his bail payment. The judge, not even taking the time to look at the defendant, said, "You're wasting my time with these shenanigans. You didn't listen to my speech," and before the man could respond, she sent him down to the clerk to pay for his “not guilty” plea.
I didn't have much time to mourn: I was next. The judge was quick: "Forest Casey. Do you have a current driver's license in the state of California?" I dug my wallet out of my suitcoat and fumbled around with the license before handing it to the bailiff, "Here. Yes, I do."
"And do you have a valid car registration from the state of California?" Shit. My registration was back at home. All I had was an incomplete application and the proof of insurance that made it a valid registration, but—"Where are you trying to go with this?" The judge cut me off. I stammered while she clarified: "What are you trying to plead?"
"Umm, guilty. Guilty, your honor." She was filling out some paperwork on her desk and spoke between her notes. "I'm going to drop the first charge, Driving Without a Valid License, but you'll have to pay for the second, Driving With Expired Registration. The fine of the ticket is $50. Total price: $280. Go see the clerk."
I barely had time to register what happened; in under a minute, my arraignment was over. I walked out of the courtroom trying to put the pieces together. Though the service charges for my ticket were piled on like a Thanksgiving plate, I'd been spared the worst of it. I was expecting to pay double what I did.
So, ten minutes later, with my debit card swiped and my signature on a short receipt, I walked out of court guilty, though forgiven. It was 11:00 AM. Time to go find a beer.
Originally in SpliceToday at: http://www.splicetoday.com/writing/i-d-like-to-meet-his-tailor
I’m not shocked anymore when people say that rock ‘n’ roll is dead. I’ve moved on to pinpointing the time of death: Did rock ‘n’ roll die when The Clash licensed "London Calling" for a Jaguar ad? Did it die with the extended, improbable, and increasingly sad life of Johnny Rotten? Did it die with the fall of Kurt Cobain or the rise of Fred Durst?
This past Wednesday, I saw a middle-aged man in leather pants play rock ‘n’ roll at a dinner party at the Finnish Consul General's mansion in Bel Air. Is that the final clarion call? Rock paired with finger foods and white wine? There was a heated pool, but no Rolls Royce floating near the bottom.
Although it’s not well known, the man, Michael Monroe, is Finnish (he was born Michael Fagerholm) and he’s still got that Arctic blonde hair. It’s the kind of hair that separates lead vocalists from bass players, the kind of hair for which hair metal was named. In fact, in the early 1980's, Monroe’s band Hanoi Rocks paved the way for bands like Mötley Crüe and Guns and Roses. Only the death of their drummer, Nicholas Dingley, in 1985 that prevented Hanoi Rocks from joining the superstars of Sunset Strip.
Twenty-five years later, Monroe still has fans in Los Angeles willing to put on their leather jackets and studs and drive to Bel Air for a night of glam metal revival. Their rock ‘n’ roll regalia gave the evening a bit of a mischievous air. Knee-high motorcycle boots circled the grand dining table, stopping briefly for their tattooed-and-pierced owners to nibble on chocolate-covered strawberries and sweet dates wrapped in blue cheese and bacon. Under the eye of Consul General Kirsti Westphalen, dressed smartly in a black pantsuit, the wolves had snuck into the henhouse. And nobody looked more pleased than the leader of the pack, Michael Monroe. After a brief introduction by the Consul General on the grand staircase, Monroe leapt to the front of the stage and did everything in his power to bring rock ‘n’ roll back to life. He kicked high and shouted, did a full split on the stage before whipping his microphone around his neck. Twice, Monroe jumped up to the top of the Consul General's (thankfully empty) mantel and belted out a few lines from on high. The crowd, which had pulled digital cameras out of those leather jacket pockets to capture Monroe's theatrics, went wild.
In the half-dozen new and classic songs I heard in Bel Air, Monroe did something that I haven't seen at a rock concert in what feels like years: He worked for, and earned, an encore. Talking with his manager after the show, I remarked what a young band they were (the Bel Air show was their first live performance). She thought I was making a joke on account of Monroe's age, but in truth they played harder and louder than any buzz band-of-the-week from Brooklyn.
Maybe the current incarnation of rock—indie’s bookish stars and their cool fans—has dealt rock its final fatal blow. Or maybe rock just needs a bit of that old '80s enthusiasm. Michael Monroe wouldn't be a bad teacher. Rock ‘n’ roll is dead, but rock ‘n’ roll is forever.
Originally in Los Angeles Magazine at: http://www.lamag.com/do/blog_post.aspx?id=24178&blogid=2160
At about 4:15 on a Friday afternoon, well before the arrival of any meaningful celebrities, I came to a new conclusion about my profession. The "Working Press Photographers," as we're sometimes charitably called, leaned against a steel barricade at the Independent Spirit Awards in two cluttered rows. Next to me, a woman of some vague European origin who would later shout at the foreign independent filmmakers in German, Spanish and French, turned to me with the same conclusion: "We are fucking freaks," she said.
Behind the barricade, we were a split-level freak show on display for a small list of well-dressed clientele who strolled along a powder blue carpet and gazed at the oddities. There was the Ferrari Guy, who distilled the mid-life crisis down to its essence with his bald head and soul patch. He wore a Corsa red Ferrari jacket and covered his three Nikon cameras with matching red electrical tape. There was Kathy, obese and well-past middle age, with a voice as loud as a carnival barker, who between 3:00 and 4:15 managed to switch her assigned spot four times and break a colleague's stool under her weight. There was an older man, a Jeffrey Tambour look-alike, who told, and re-told, the same joke for four hours—variations on a theme of "I need a whiskey."
The broken stool belonged to this last photog, Jeffrey Tambour, and just before 4:15, he and Kathy began a shouting match through a crowd of a dozen photographers about whether or not, in fact, Kathy had engaged a locking clasp on the now-useless stool. Kathy's position in the debate was that she didn't give a fuck and that the stool was a piece of shit anyways and that Jeffrey Tambour shouldn't have lent it out in the first place.
So, at 4:15, the revelation: We were freaks. Fucking freaks. That much is obvious to anyone who has caught an episode of TMZ. Dressed in a black suit and tie, I realized I had become one of them, another oddity, the Amazingly Well-Dressed Kid. I had gone from part- to full-time. I wanted a whiskey, too.
This was high season among the freaks. The Oscars were two nights away and with them the promise of the pre- and after-parties that made awards season so profitable. The chatter behind my assigned spot circled around the Vanity Fair wrap party—who had gotten in, who didn't. General consensus among those left off the list of 40 photographers allowed inside was that Vanity Fair was too late and too much work and they'd rather be at home, in bed, sleeping. They were jealous. I was, too.
Forty-five minutes remained until the first of the celebrities hit the carpet. The punctual ones were never very lucrative; tabloid magazines were uninterested in celebs with open schedules. To my right, a New York-based paparazzo was cropping the real thing, photos of Halle Berry and her young child playing in a sunlit park. The European woman told me a story about tackling 400 lb. Armenian taxi driver after he snuck into an awards show and tried to steal her camera.
I hoped that all of us were nervous in those long moments of tedium before the moments of terror were to come. Indeed, this was the closest to combat that LA had seen in a decade, and soon there was to be a beach landing with publicists dragging their non-combatant celebrity clients wounded and smiling down 200 yards of trenches to be shot repeatedly by the photogs now waiting crouched behind their barricade. You had to be nervous at a time like that.
At 5:00, the limos unloaded their celebrity cargo. Soon, it was impossible to hear over the yelling of my fellow celebrity journalists.
I saw Laura Dern, Amy Ryan, Ethan Hawke, Vera Farmiga, Ed Helms, Robert Duvall, Andy Garcia, David Spade, Mariah Carey, Matt Dillon, Mo'nique, Maggie Gyllenhaal, John Waters, Helen Mirren, Jeff Bridges, and Colin Firth walk between a steady stream of no-names who we photographed just the same in hopes they someday acquired names of their own.
The whole process is more than just a bit inhumane. We are baseball collectors in search of a mint-condition rookie season card, an object to sell and trade for profit. We were no more photographers than they were our subjects. And the more we shouted instructions, the better we could feel; the more we thought that the freaks were actually on the other side of the barricade.
It was so impersonal that I didn't know what to say afterwards. Could I claim to have "seen" Dave Grohl with the stars of my favorite film of '09, the Canadian metal band Anvil? Tom Ford stood five feet from me, methodically looking down all of our camera barrels one-by-one, giving the same practiced look to every photog. But I couldn't say that he "saw" me (or my suit).
And then, jolting me from my self-pity, a photog a few spots over said, "Oh, my god. That's Roger Ebert." I'd watched the same elderly man, walking down the carpet with his wife in tow, pointing at random photographers as if he recognized them. From 30 yards out, I could see that he was disfigured by some unfortunate combination of cancer and surgery. But it wasn't until the man with the permanent grin stopped and held one thumb way up that it hit me—this was Roger Ebert, a man who inarguably influenced cinema far more than any of the other attendees at the awards ceremony. Even the seasoned pros near me lowered their cameras. Nobody shouted. He maneuvered past us, thumb still up, politely refusing to pose.
Originally in SpliceToday at: http://www.splicetoday.com/pop-culture/part-time-paparazzi-part-2-awards-season
