Antonioni Rocks!

First post of 2011! Let's start with a bang, with one of my favorite film directors of all time, and his dealings with pop music. Michelangelo Antonioni's introspective, often quiet, sometimes impenetrable movies have moved me, challenged me, annoyed me. In 1996, Antonioni decides to finally get out of Italy to make his next movie, and goes to England to capture the spirit of the 60's. Blow Up became a cult movie for everyone nostalgic of that era. He had managed to capture the insouciance, the aesthetics, and the collective aspirations of the youth, which Antonioni likens to a hallucination, a mirage. But a mirage can be real if everyone can see it, and reality is worthless if no one perceives it... A great example of the theme is the scene during the Yarbirds concert:



Public, private and intrinsic value: a lesson in economy and game theory by the Maestro!

After the critical success of Blow Up, Antonioni gets more ambitious, obtains a big budget for a movie to be shot in the US. Again, his goal is to capture the ideals of the youth, this time in America, with their illusions and delusions. Of course he goes way over budget, and his perfectionism annoys the hell out of the producers, the actors and everyone else involved. In particular, he made Jerry Garcia play the theme to the Love Scene tens of times, while giving him very vague indications and reasons why he wasn't quite happy. I don't know if he was finally satisfied with the result or just took pity on Garcia, but the result plays an integral part in the most moving love scene in cinema history, if you ask me (ignore the initial dubbed dialogue, and forgive me that it's cut a bit too short at the end, but that's all I could find) :



(Daria Halprin, who I believe only ever made this one movie, just makes me melt)

There's another great scene in Zabriskie Point with music by Pink Floyd, but it would give away too much of the movie, and I just want you to go rent it now.

I think the excerpt above convinced you that Antonioni would have made a great music video director, and, well, it's not common knowledge that he indeed made one in the 80's! It's a song by Italian pop star Gianna Nannini, which, even though it has dated a bit, still packs an emotional punch in my opinion. Gianna is very cute with that boyish 80's look, the beret and the suspenders, and there's something in the lyrics that makes you want to sing the song out loud (borrowed from David Saul Rosenfeld's fantastic online book on l'Eclisse):

Questo amore è una camera a gas (This love is a gas chamber)
è un palazzo che brucia in città (it’s a building that is burning in the city)
Questo amore è una lama sottile (This love is a thin razor blade)
è una scena al rallentatore (it’s a scene in slow motion)
Questo amore è una (This love is a)
bomba all’hotel (bomb in a hotel)
Questo amore è una (This love is a)
finta sul ring (fake move in the boxing ring)
è una fiamma (it’s a flame that)
che esplode nel cielo (explodes in the sky)

And here's the song:



It may look like any other video from that era, but Antonioni said that, unlike other videos of the time, he used his patented long shots, and that's because he wanted the video to tell a little story. Don't you dare vote "kitsch"! ;)

CSNY: The Solo Efforts

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young was a big supergroup during the 70s. Each musician already had an impressive resume when they got together: David Crosby was freshly fired from the Byrds (he's represented by a donkey on the cover of Notorious Byrd Brothers), Stephen Stills had released three albums with Buffalo Springfield, Graham Nash had had a few hits with the Hollies (remember Bus Stop?), and Neil Young had already been in a few bands and had had success in various forms, including as a member of the already mentioned Buffalo Springfield.

Despite their immediate success with Deja Vu, each member decided to release a solo album (that's what happens when you put together such big egos and overflowing creativity). Today, EasyTV will sample from each solo effort. Whose talent was the most instrumental to CSNY's success?

Stephen Stills probably had the biggest commercial success with his eponymous release, and the big hit, Love the One You're With:



Graham Nash's album, Songs for Beginners, was also very successful. Two singles were released, one that is pretty famous (Chicago), and another one that I only heard very recently (and was the reason for today's post, actually), called Military Madness:



(and that's my contribution to Nov 11!)

There's a very nice tribute to Song for Beginners by members of the Grassroots Records stable (Alela Diane, Mariee Sioux) and some quite prestigious guests (Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, the guy from Fleet Foxes, and fellow former Cat Power mailing-list member Greg Weeks). Check it out!

Next, Neil Young. Obviously he released bazillion solo albums, but the one that came out immediately after CSNY in 1970 was After the Gold Rush. That one charted very high too, and the song Only Love Can Break Your Heart even provided a fantastic dance hit for Saint-Etienne in 1990 (a show on the Madchester era maybe coming soon?). But let's hear the other single, When You Dance I Can Really Love, which is just as good:



For some reason, the song reminds me of Cat Power's Free (here comes a gratuitous opportunity to check out some pretty pictures of Chan Marshall):



I'm not saying the songs are similar, but there's something there... What do you think? Or is it only that they're both rhyming "dance" with "chance"?

Anyway... Last but not least, David Crosby released his fantastic If I Could Only Remember My Name that year. Here's one of many gems: now go light a joint, press play and relax. I'll leave you alone now.

Postcard from Scotland

I think from time to time I'm going to explore a few of those influential music labels you always hear about but don't really know what they were all about. One example is Postcard Records, who were responsible for launching the "careers" of bands such as Orange Juice, Go Betweens and Aztec Camera in the early 80s. Now with the magic of YouTube, we can listen to the singles that were released back then. So here we go.

So yeah, Go Betweens, huh! Well they only released one single with Postcard, called "I Need Two Heads". Now YouTube didn't have this song, but at EasyTV we care about the welfare and happiness of our viewers, and so thanks to good ol' Mr Vegas, it's now uploaded and available just for you! (EDIT: Breaking News! Mr Vegas went as far as creating an original video for the song! See for yourself below.)



It was worth it, no?

When Edwyn Collins had a relatively big hit in the 90s with "Girl Like U" (a relatively lame song, if you ask me), I thought I'd really hate Orange Juice once I finally got the opportunity to hear them. Boy was I wrong. His voice is perfect for the mix of pop and post-punk sound they had going:



Make sure you check out all the other "Dada with Juice" videos that are posted there.

Another band from Scotland that was promoted by Postcard was Josef K, a band I've mentioned here before, so let's just skip them, and go straight to Aztec Camera, and the single that turned out to be the last single released by Postcard, at least according to Wikipedia:



There were bigger and better things in store for Aztec Camera, including their lovely Spanish Horses. Oh what the heck here it is: