Category: Talented People Suck

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Beatles’ Worst Moment?

Overall, I wouldn’t rate this as their worst track.  I don’t much like the song, but it goes well enough until that cheesy organ break comes along.  That break might be their worst moment.  I went back to All The Songs to refresh myself on just what they were thinking.  Turns out George played a fast-vibrato guitar part that John liked but George Martin rejected as too edgy.  So Paul recorded an organ solo worthy of a déclassé 60’s supper club.  Was he being funny on purpose?  Were they just ready to be done with it so thought, “fuck it, it’s filler anyway,  leave it there and let’s move on?”  

Of course everyone, no matter how great, steps in it every now and then.  Beethoven wrote Wellington’s Victory, an embarrassing piece of garbage celebrating, as the name suggests, Napoleon’s defeat. He’d once been a fan of Napoleon, dedicating his explosively innovative 3rd symphony to him.  He later removed the dedication in disgust after Napoleon crowned himself emperor, and subsequently wanted to rub Napoleon’s nose in it after Waterloo.  Defensive and touchy about the work, Beethoven probably knew it was trash. It seems to me that such music (i.e. written for overtly political or moralistic  purposes) is usually garbage.  John Lennon’s preachy songs  come to mind.  But I’d love to hear what pops into your bastardly heads in the Great Artist/Shitty Work category.

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Multitalented Bastard

This live Schoolhouse Rock cuts out after a minute or so, sorry.

Jack Sheldon provided that perfect railcar voice (suck it, Boxcar Willie), and opened for Lenny Bruce, and played trumpet for jazz artists of the 1950’s and eventually Merv Griffin.

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Don’t Ask Me What I Want It For

I know it’s probably verging on blasphemy for some when I say I’m really digging Giles Martin’s new stereo mix of Revolver. Thinking very seriously of grabbing it on vinyl.

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What, Me Worry?

Gone but not forgotten!

This video is only concerned with the artists who contributed to Mad in it’s first two decades – even if some of them carried on for longer. I’ve got nothing against those who came later but I’m selfishly only dealing with the ones who inspired and influenced me as I grew up. They taught me more than 4 years of college ever did. Apparently in the early Kurtzman comic years Mad was printed in colour, although all the examples I found were black and white only, and according to a particularly grumpy viewer Dave Berg didn’t die until 2002. Mea culpa.

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Down in the Sand

Alan Splet, who worked with David Lynch, remains my sound design hero. And we all acknowledge Ben Burtt. But these Doooooon guys (Mark Mangini and Theo Green) put on a show. I realized from the first minute watching it that the sound was going to be fantastic, and a new article provides some insight:

By way of explaining it to me, Mangini ground his work boot into the soft patch of sand that he had dusted with Rice Krispies. The sand produced a subtle, beguiling crunch, and Villeneuve broke out into a big smile. Though he’d heard it plenty of times in postproduction, he had no idea what the sound designers had concocted to capture that sound.

“I wanted Theo and Mark to have the proper time to investigate and explore and make mistakes,” Villeneuve said. “It’s something I got really traumatized by with my early movies, where you spend years working on a screenplay, then months shooting and editing it, and then right at the end, the sound guy comes and you barely have enough time.”

By hiring his sound designers early and setting them loose, Villeneuve could even take some of their discoveries and weave them into Hans Zimmer’s score, producing a holistic aural experience where the percussive music composition and pervasive sound design can sometimes be mistaken for one another.

And much like a band, the sounds of “Dune” benefited from some intriguing vocalists. To create the Voice, a persuasive way of speaking that allows Paul and his mother (Rebecca Ferguson) to draw on the power of their female ancestors — a witchy order called the Bene Gesserit — Villeneuve and his sound team cast three older women with smoky, commanding voices, then layered their line readings over those of Chalamet and Ferguson.

– Kyle Buchanan, NYT

One of the older women with a smoky voice? Marianne Faithfull.