W♥M (Archive)

W♥M090: Andy from Mercury Monkey

W♥M090 [download (31min, 22mb)]

Andy from Mercury Monkey stopped by to discuss some random music things with the usual cast of Vu & Sally.

EMI new releases: The Church releases Best of the Radio Songs, Bryan Ferry teams up with a bunch of modern artists with Olympia (featuring Kate Moss on the cover), and Cliff Richard celebrates his 70th birthday with a collection of Jazz standards in Bold as Brass.

Richard Cheese, although "retired" in 2008, is back with a new album for 2010: OK Bartender. I actually didn't mention the new album, because I've only been listen to "old stuff".

Upcoming shows: Peabody, 78 saab, Charlatans, Manic Street Preachers to play Sydney. Clinic, along with Fresh & Onlys, to play 7th Street in Minneapolis on November 12^th.

Recording was untimely cut off abruptly, so we just ended with Clinic. Also, apologies to everyone involved, Friday's recording was a bit of a nightmare because I had to be at three locations that night (apparently last Friday was a popular time for people to leave Minneapolis forever). Plus on top of cutting things close to the vest, I had recently restored my computer so I had to re-install all my software and the default recording option for the skype recorder was 8bit, so the audio sounds BAD. I don't know why the default was so low, but since then, I've installed the best audio recorder called Call Graph and set all recording to the highest audio option. Again, sorry for the poor audio.

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Archive of this show at archive.org. More information on podomatic.com

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Words for the Dying DVD

Words for the Dying DVD (09/30/08)

Words for the Dying MC-845, 1990 microcinema exclusive $US 24.95 $US 50.00 Format: DVD, NTSC, Region 0 (All), European List Prices: £16.99 / 24.95€ License for theatrical exhibition

 

NOTE: I wrote the following three weeks ago, and in retrospect, I was rather harsh. The more I thought about it (and re-watching it recently to get a good frame still for this article), this is really meant for fans that've been waiting for the original documentary to finally be made available as a cleaned up version on DVD. There are a ton of old movies and documentaries that are not available on DVD, so I applaud Provocateur for making this happen.

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We don't normally get 'screener' DVD copies for review (I think the last one I got was for Negativland's DVD), so I was pretty excited to get Words for the Dying DVD.

Being an early adopter of the DVD format (I own over 2,000 DVDs), I do appreciate the higher visual and audio quality that DVD had over VHS. I am starting to get into Bluray (I also have a handful of HD-DVDs), so as far as movie snobbery goes, I'm up there. Keep this in mind when I talk about the poor visual and audio later.

First of all, for introductory purposes, both John Cale and Brian Eno are very accomplished musicians. Cale's history with the Velvet Underground, Eno is regarded by many as the "father of ambient music" and his work with Roxy Music. This DVD release, it seems to me, was for fans' services/demands. Documentary fans might also want to check this out but, to be honest, if you don't like music documentary, you should skip this one.

This documentary, by director Rob Nilsson, is about the recording of John Cale's album, also of the same name. Although the cover art clearly depicts and credits Brian Eno, it would seem whenever he's conscious of the camera's presence, he's either covering his face and/or giving the viewer the finger. He makes it known that he did not want to be part of the documentary (although he does appear with a formal interview at the very end of the album talking about the mix).

According to the DVD box, there are four parts to this documentary, revolving around four Dylan Thomas poems. However, watching it, it felt to me that there were only three parts (Cale in Moscow, in London, and Wales). Moscow and Wales are shot in black and white, which leads me to believe that either it's done for artistic reasons and/or the footage they had (with poor lighting) was unusable in color. Sometimes the poor audio and visual made it hard for me to watch on my high definition television.  Maybe I'm just spoiled but, speaking for myself, I like seeing movies in color.

At the beginning of the documentary I had trouble understanding what was going on. Why were they going to see these various Moscow bands? I eventually concluded that they were talent, but there are random things like playing racquetball that I felt didn't belong in a music-making documentary. Overall, it felt like the journey of recording the album was really epic and squeezing all of that in an hour and a half documentary is quite an achievement.

For their defense, they did have 1987 film equipment (probably VHS recorders) and considering that the original 1990 is long out of print, having it re-released on quality DVD by Provocateur DVD is well worth your time if you are a fan of John Cale or Brian Eno. The DVD price listing is $24.95 but obviously you can find it at a cheaper online price. As a long-time DVD buyer, I can tell you that usually Deep Discount DVDs usually has the best prices ($16.47 includes free shipping).

Links: provocateurdvd.com john-cale.com enoshop.co.uk