Snobbin: Beautiful Trash in the Pop Culture Gutter

I had never seen a Yasujiro Ozu film, including his oft-mentioned classic, Tokyo Story (1953), when I watched this movie a couple of years ago. I started with Good Morning  (1959) because I figured a comedy would be a good place to start and felt the premise of Tokyo Story to be somewhat daunting. It made me excited to see more examples of his famous "pillow shots," where Ozu cuts away from the narrative to focus on a landscape, an empty room, or a household item, and build his world. This interest in Ozu's framing was only a starting point because now I plan on watching his entire filmography for narrative as well as cinematography and everything else that makes his mise-en-scene and ideas so enjoyable. I will write about fifteen of them for the blog and rank them.  One of his later comedies,  Good Morning  examines how two young boys challenge their parents' rules because they want them to buy a television to watch Sumo matches. As with most of Ozu's ouevre, t...

Sight and Sound 2021 #93. Senegalese magic realism meets the French New Wave in the guise of a lover's journey.

I watched another film from the 2022 Sight and Sound Critics' poll: # 52, Chantal Akerman's 1976 documentary, where she reads letters from her mother in Belgium over footage of her new home, New York City. The distance between them feels more palpable with each letter.

Joan Baez's interpretation of "Don't Think Twice, It''s All Right" is my favorite because her vocals add soulful clarity to Bob Dylan's thorny narrative. Track This  is a recurring feature of Snobbin' that turns the music appreciation dial up and rips it off of your stereo. It introduces a new track, allows readers to rediscover an underappreciated one, and serves as a forum to discuss a song that falls into the ear candy category and should be listened to unabashedly for years to come.

It's that time of year when I start listening to records from my Wintry mix that skirts the borders of autumn and winter. While Illinois is an amazing record, Avalanche has "Springfield, or Bobby Got a Shadfly Caught in his Hair" and three more interesting versions of "Chicago." These Sufjan Stevens records grow on me more each year. There's history and depth in these grooves.

This jaunty folk song parodies how different Americans act on this important day, particularly along party lines that never seem to change. Showing how frustrated those who vote are with those who do not, the song, prime Foremen tradition, makes fun of various sides of the political spectrum. Even though the song is always pertinent because voter turnout tends to be low, this year many of the lyrics feel particularly relevant, including "I kicked the pamphlets off the porch" and "felt distinctly disenfranchised."  Perhaps these are always perennial concerns, yet most of the characters that are asked what they did on election day tend to have done very little, so when one says that they voted, it seems surprising. That he is a "distant cousin" is telling as those closest to the speaker are too busy thinking briefly about politics before doing something odd like tossing out their Bee Gee records. These actions demonstrate the disregard that many have for vot...

Jets to Brazil always makes me think of fall, changing seasons, and remembrance. I started listening to them at a pivotal moment when I was figuring out my identity and becoming an adult. I had long been a fan of Jawbreaker, and when Black Schwarzenbach started JTB, I went to one of their first national tours in 1998 for Orange Rhyming Dictionary in Milwaukee. They played with Fugazi, Compound Red, and the band I saw play most Milwaukee shows at that time, Promise Ring. It was an amazing show for the most part, and I met Blake before the show. For many Jawbreaker fans, Jets to Brazil took some getting used to, mainly because they toned down the former band's punk tendencies for more indie rock and pop influences. While 1995's  Dear You , Jawbreaker's final record, was moving in this direction, JTB added keyboards and sometimes resembled 1980s bands like The Psychedelic Furs or 1990s indie bands like Wilco more than the punk stylings of many of the Jawbreaker releases, Howev...

Place matters in the grand scheme  as we plan the rest of our short lives in between careers, births, and death, tracing the lines of worry and doubt on faces that age like earthen masks,  cracking and morphing into new forms  that recall our parents and their familiar tragedies and strategies in months that begin with archaic, internalized letters, fomenting lethargy and resilience like the graying maples and elms, the wintry oaks, the desolate brown topped spruce,  as those seasons change and loss becomes static reality in this Upper Peninsula, this region of utmost cold, where the snow falls and blankets the silent masses, ergo, a laugh, a sound, an eruption of jubilant life in resistance to the colors that drain, clamorously calling out for meaning.  Ha! Relentless ones! You are stuck here! Lift up your choices and dig in!

One of my favorite Robert Johnson tracks despite its divergence from the blues idiom with an unfamiliar, more commercial vocal and guitar style. Vamping an interesting danceable tune, Johnson hawks for a street vendor and humorously sells his craft and her wares with enough double entendres for everyone. He recorded it in 1936 at Gunther Hall in San Antonio, and the music is catchier than many of his songs, providing valuable insight into the different types of songs he would sing in performance. Instead of the usual topics of souls and hard. troubled luck, Johnson invites us to have fun and buy some of his girl's tamales or just loosen up: "I got a girl, says she long and tall / she sleeps in the kitchen with her feets in the hall / Hot tamales, and they're red hot / yes she got 'em for sale" to an infectious rhythm. I wish Johnson had recorded more songs like this.  Track This  is a recurring feature of Snobbin' that turns the music appreciation dial up and ...

A journey through the history of film, narrative, and genre through connections between Lynch's filmography and Victor Fleming's The Wizard of Oz (1939) . Sometimes academic and historical (Amy Nicholson, Karyn Kusama, and many of the six chapters) and other times humorous and self-referential (John Waters), the documentary has something for film fans, Lynch obsessives, and everyone in between.

I am going to start a new series on Yasujiro Ozu's films in the upcoming weeks where I rank and write capsule reviews for fifteen of his films. I have started watching a representative portion of his filmography, ranging from the silent comedies to his later works that deal with family, marriage, and society in the post war years, including the Noriko trilogy ( Late Spring , Early Summer , and Tokyo Story ) and all the movies he made with the incomparable Setsuko Hara. So far this project has been fun, and I cannot wait to share the results. Prepare for a discussion surrounding culture, dialogue, and the ever-present tatami shots. 

I just watched all of the Coen Brothers movies on which they collaborated. Almost all of their films are good, and rating them was harder than I expected. I hope to eventually get around to their newer projects and those they scripted. A few of the later films could move up with additional viewings. 18. The Ladykillers  17. Intolerable Cruelty  16. Burn After Reading  15. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs  14. The Man Who Wasn't There 13. The Hudsucker Proxy 12. A Serious Man 11. Hail, Caesar! 10. Inside Llewyn Davis 9. O Brother, Where Art Thou? 8. True Grit 7. No Country for Old Men 6. Raising Arizona 5. Barton Fink 4. Blood Simple 3. The Big Lebowski 2. Fargo 1. Miller's Crossing

Greg Renoff's compelling biography takes readers on a comprehensive trip through Van Halen's early years as a backyard party band that performed under names like Trojan Rubber Co. and Mammoth. It also covers their initial club gigs through their first stadium tours with luminaries like Black Sabbath.   A good read for Van Halen fans and music biography fans alike, Renoff's narrative covers the tough life of a young band on the rise. I'm not a big hard rock fan and do not care much about their later music, so this one was perfect for me, but there is something for most music fans here. I found the section on David Lee Roth worming his way into the band particularly compelling. Since Eddie and Alex did not like his glam style or singing, he started his band to compete in the party scene, the aptly named Red Ball Jets, which focused more on pure entertainment. Once he convinced the Van Halen brothers to let him join, his marketing chops were integral in helping them become...

Jeff Tweedy's newest book contains short and sometimes pithy discussions of songs that influenced his life and music. He intersperses them with memories and events that augment his thinking. Generally fun, often astute, occasionally maddening, but always entertaining, the book often goes in unexpected directions. Tweedy finds new life within the grooves and the stories that surround his musical discoveries. The most eye-opening moments  to me happen when Tweedy finds something in each song that might relate to any of us. However, I also loved his discussions of early SST punk and lesser-known songs, and he often changed my mind or gave me new perspectives to ponder. He might also influence your approach to some popular tunes that he covers. 

While "This Year" generally gets the most accolades of the songs on The Mountain Goat's arguably most signifcant song cycle, The Sunset Tree , due to its catchy chorus and relatable message, my favorite track on the album is undoubtedly "Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod," although its nearly impossible to pick a song from this stellar set of doubtful, autobiographical uncertainties. The album fits into what I consider John Darnielle's greatest period, the albums that added more instrumentation starting with Tallahassee and stretching to Heretic Pride . Of course, there are also cases to be made for Darnielle's earlier boom box tape recordings. After that, I drifted away from their catalog and am hoping to revisit the later albums more extensively.  I could probably write about most of Darnielle's songs, but "Tetrapod" connects more closely to my life than many of the others because of its relationship to music, growth, and fear. The pain o...

Starting with Steve Shelley's basic drum fills before the brightly ringing guitars begin,  matching the drum beats, "Schizophrenia" from Sonic Youth's 1987 album Sister . builds in an orderly fashion that feels loose over Thurston Moore's vocals, slightly recalling the track "Bull in the Heather" from 1994's Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star.  Chiming guitars answer the drums and bass throughout the song's nearly five-minute running time. Sonic Youth became the masters of this droning guitar dialectic with their different guitar tunings (in this case, F#F#GGAA for Thurston and DDDAA for Lee Renaldo) that they used to build a style and sound that was nearly unique in the early 1980s but meshed well with similar guitar interplay by contemporary indie bands like Dinosaur Jr. and Built to Spill.  After the first vocal part, the song becomes more schizophrenic with squealing, harmonic guitar interplay and minimal cymbals. This continues through ...

Jonathan Goes Country is undoubtedly my favorite Jonathan Richman record as I return to it much more than the others, despite such classics as I, Jonathan and Back in Your Life,  having many amazing tracks. Of course, The Modern Lovers records are also filled with incendiary classics. Something about Jonathan Goes Country resonates more with me than most on a song-by-song album level. Almost all the tracks have a place in showing that Richman can make country records with the best of them. The album's composition adds to its cohesion: five covers that honor the country canon while adding Richman's inimitable spin and seven originals that fit right in. He reworks three ("The Neighbors," "You're the One for Me," and "Corner Store") from his earlier albums, although you would never know he didn't write them for the album.  The record has few lows and many highs, cohesively fitting Richman's sound and style into the country idiom while reta...

 X songs are always up to the challenge of combining various genres in surprising ways. Ostensibly a pop song, "Burning House of Love" channels much of what makes X great at creating songs in different genres that still sound like no one but X. Another love/breakup song that is building on the difficulties of Exene and John Doe's relationship with a propulsive hook and great guitar work from Billy Zoom. The band is road tested, and Doe's vocals transport the listener to the scene, while Exene's backups almost bring a gospel feel to the track. Gospel, rock and roll, and punk combine for the usual stew of excellence with meaningful lyrics.  Track This  is a recurring feature of Snobbin' that turns the music appreciation dial up and rips it off your stereo. It introduces a new track, allows readers to rediscover an underappreciated track, or just serves as a forum to discuss a track that falls into the ear candy category and should be listened to unabashedly for ...