Monthly Archives: October 2011

Music

A few thoughts on Episode 2 of the Dewarists

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1YxxI08710[/youtube]

I haven’t watched the second episode of The Dewarists yet. But I did listen to the song, entitled ‘Kya Khayaal Hai’, which features Pakistani cousins Zeb and Haniya collaborating with composer Shantanu Moitra and singer/lyricist Swarnand Kirkire. I had heard Z&H’s songs on Coke Studio, and that was it. I find Shantanu Moitra’s film work pleasant pop-floss, his tunes are perfectly serviceable (except when he’s plagiarizing, which he does not, most of the time) and Swanand Kirkire’s work has also been fairly middling, not really songs that I would really pay much attention to or want to listen to over and over.

Everything about the song drips with familiarity. The melody meanders around a 7/4 beat. Moitra and Kirkire had used this in ‘Baawra Mann’, one of their most famous compositions from Hazaaron Khwahishen Aisi, as did Zeb & Haniya in their famous Dari song ‘Paimona Bitte’. I remember the beat from Rahman’s ‘Sona Nahin Na Sahi’ (One Two Ka Four), and parts of this song’s melody are echoed in ‘Kya Khayal’. (Listen to 1:26 of KKH) Also, the choice of Dari lyrics to open this track – was it really necessary? Swanand’s earthy singing detracts from the velvety female voices; frankly, he does not have the vocal chops to carry his end of things. Still, there are quite a few things I like – the stripped-down arrangement works in its favor, the use of claps to punctuate Swanand’s singing, the brilliant harmony by the two ladies in Haniya’s portion of the song. While not as flighty and sonically astounding as the first Dewarists’ song ‘Minds Without Fear’ was, this track is charming. Predictable, but charming.

The song did make me go check out Zeb and Haniya’s 2008 album Chup!, and I have to admit that it is the trumpet-playing of Swedish Jazz virtuoso Hildegunn Øiseth that got my attention, and which is responsible for the smoky feeling on some of the tracks of this feel-good pop album – ‘Kabhi Na Kabhi’, for example. Dang Swedes, I tell you, slowly taking over the world one album at a time.

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Concerts, Music

Concert Diaries – Portishead Live At Shrine Expo

Picture taken by Flickr user corboamnesiac

There’s this thing I’ve noticed about live shows. The music on the sound system before the show is due to begin has nothing in common with the musical sensibility or genre of the band you’ve come to listen to. Sometimes I get the feeling that sound engineers at concerts, much like quiz-masters and bloggers, are very concerned about broadcasting their taste to the audience at large. Like, hey, I know you guys’ve heard this band and shit, but you are going to like this band more, because I said so. At the James Blake concert, the DJ played a bunch of dance music, while the person operating the sound system at the Portishead concert day before yesterday seemed to have a reggae hangover. We stood around for about 55 minutes listening to a playlist that, in the immortal words of B Stinson, went heavy on the  “mm hm chaka mm hm chaka” bassline. Ah, who’s “we”, you ask? I happened to run into old pal Richard and his fiancee at the Shrine. Tuning out the reggaethon going on in the background, we spent much of those minutes catching up – by which I mean we talked nineteen to the dozen about comics, movies and TV shows. Good times.

I had gotten my tickets to the concert just a day ago, thanks to a Craigslist samaritan who wanted to sell her extra ticket for cover price. (Yes, weep with envy, people, CL-trolling does have its virtues) I did not even know there was an opening band, but as soon as the three-member group began to play, I was struck by the Indian/middle-eastern sound, the glissandos, in particular. Echoey, spaced-out guitars that transformed into wall-of-noise level sonic mayhem, wailing vocals-sans-words that reminded me of Peter Gabriel’s Last Temptation of Christ soundtrack. It was because of this overly-familiar air that I did not enjoy the band as much, just seemed a little too predictable for my taste. Turned out their name was Thought Forms, and sure enough, the band does have Indo-credentials – the lead guitarist is a lady named Deej Dhaliwal.

When Portishead finally took the stage, at 9:30 PM, we had been standing around for almost 2 hours. The band launched into ‘Silence’, from their third album, and over the next hour and a half, they systematically managed to reduce me to a gibbering wreck that would have uncomplainingly waited for 2 hours more. Yup, that good.

Beth Gibbons, onstage, was totally into it. She hardly spoke anything between songs, and uttered maybe two or three sentences in course of the show. She wasn’t there for the audience, she hardly acknowledged the applause and the cheering crowd. Everytime there was an instrumental solo, she would face away and sort of tense her body, like she was using the music to recharge her vocal chords. When she sang, she crinkled her eyes shut and shook her head from side to side, in time with the beat. Her voice, oh dear lord, her raw, unprocessed, haunting voice gave me goose-pimples. It was only at the end of the final song ‘We Carry On’, when the rest of the band went apeshit with their musical denouement, that Gibbons unwound visibly, stepping down from the stage and reaching out to fans in the front row.

As a band, Portishead is fucking flawless. Not a single note strayed from the recorded version. Even the scratching was perfect. To me, this was a bit of a disappointment – a live show is meant to be about improvisation and reinterpretation just as much as about fidelity. However, a lot of the experience was enhanced by the video wall at the back, where swirling shapes and abstract patterns merged with a live video feed of the band’s performance. This was not just generic concert shots, this was footage taken from different stationary cameras placed strategically on the stage, spliced together and overlaid with filters. This resulted in strange and somewhat disconcerting visual effects – like a shot of the bass drum pedal dissolving to bassist Jim Barr’s fingers on the frets, overlaid with face-melting shots of Gibbons’ singing. Digital video is the future, people, it seems to have rendered recreational hallucinatory drugs redundant.

The set-list was a ‘best-of’ mix from all the three albums and also included the new single ‘Chase the Tear’. Seemed like the only two songs where the video was replaced by generic concert lights were ‘Glory Box’ and ‘Sour Times’, the most well-known of the band’s discography. My personal high-point was the track ‘Machine Gun’. The song is all staccato beat and aggression, and Gibbons’ voice possesses an ethereal wispiness that counterbalances that aggression, especially with a reedy, multi-tracked wail that percolates in the background. It builds up to an anthemic synth lead solo, which they totally totally nailed live.

A few words about the Shrine Expo center, the venue of the concert. Apparently it’s next to the Shrine auditorium, which was a Grammy and Oscar venue in the 80s and 90s, before the newly designed Nokia and Staples centers took over. Before that, the auditorium was also a temple devoted to a Freemasonry spin-off body called the Shriners, short for The Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine. As I slumped in my seat in the bus back home, gaping at the Wikipedia link, it crossed my mind that there was an Alan Moore story hidden somewhere in the history of that auditorium, waiting to be released. But it was past midnight, and I safely put that thought to rest.

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Life, Myself

1998

Most years in my life are a blur of mundane events, with nothing outstanding to distinguish them from others. But 1998 stands out, for a lot of reasons.

I turned 18 the previous year, and was chomping at the bit, ready to leave Guwahati behind and looking forward to the strange new life that lay ahead after the different engineering entrance examinations. Those would determine my fate, whether I would go West, North, South, or stay behind in Guwahati. South happened, and when I walked through the gates of my college in Warangal, a place that seemed very different from my 18-year-old life so far, sure, I admit I was a little petrified. The fear however was not about leaving my old life behind, it was to do with the rotund, serious-looking, dry-voiced senior who had effectively taken charge of our luggage when we landed at the railway station and herded us towards the auto-rickshaws. And that was the scariest Udatta ever got, before I got to know him better.

But I get ahead of myself.

It was the year I saw my first A-rated movie in a theater. Shekhar Kapur’s Bandit Queen. I told my mother I was going to see it, and found it really strange that she did not complain at all. Even gave me some extra money so I could have dinner outside with my friends once we were done.

1998 was also the first year my friends and I travelled with no adult supervision of any kind. To Nepal, where we spent heady nights in the streets, temples and casinos of Kathmandu, lost our hearts over random beautiful women in the city, and tried to behave more grown-up than we felt. My first taste of beer in a ramshackle hotel on the Indo-Nepal border, just because my friends found Budweiser for the first time – I ran down the hotel corridor looking for a wash-basin to spit up the mouthful I had swallowed, because it tasted so fucking terrible. Checking into a hotel in Thamel slightly out of our budget just because the receptionist was a drop-dead gorgeous girl who smiled at us when we went in. Ordering sizzlers for lunch and dinner, because we could. Then to Delhi, to apply for all the colleges there, because the Joint Entrance Examination results were late and we had to think of the back-up plan. The heady feeling when my father called up the hotel to say that it was fine, I could relax, the results had come in and I had not done too shabbily, followed by the twinge of regret about not having more money so I could go and have a good time. Trash-talking with the street-vendors in Paharganj, cracking Assamese jokes in Connaught Place, being loud, obnoxious dorky and wide-eyed, all at the same time.

Before the year was over, I would have gone to Calicut and Bangalore. I would have my first Kerala Beef Curry, and curse myself at having not tasted beef all these years. I would sing and play the keyboard on stage, in front of an audience, for the first time. I would meet the strangest people. I would make friends over the strangest things, like whistling melodies recognized in a bus. I would make friends who still are.

It was a good year to be in love. The year Titanic released in local theaters in Guwahati, and the year Silk Route released Dooba Dooba. The girl I was in love with was moving away to a different city. For an insane moment or two during college admissions, I had actually contemplated selecting  a college in the same state she was in. Logic prevailed, “love” was put in its place. I wonder how different life would have been had I let the heart decide. I still have her letters, written in a graceful cursive hand and littered with small sketches. She, on the other hand, has a kid.

It was the year I read the first Sandman comic I understood completely, and loved to bits. Issue 50, ‘Ramadan’. That giddy feeling when I first came across it in a library sale in Goa. Yeah, I was in Goa that year too, because classes were due to start a month or so after our admissions were done, and we could either stay on in the campus – and be incessantly by seniors stressed out by final exams, or just get the fuck out of the place and come back a month later. My uncle stayed in Goa, and there we went, my father and I, to spend a few weeks away from real life. I walked through the alleys of Panjim like it was fucking Wonderland; there were others I met, in addition to Gaiman – Indian Ocean, Vangelis, Michael Kamen, Robert E Howard. I didn’t go back to Goa for 12 more years; I’ll probably never go there again.

One last, enduring 1998 memory – me dropping my father off at Madgaon station, where he was taking his train back to Guwahati, my train to Warangal being a few days later. We stood on the platform for a bit, talking about this and that, about how I should tell him immediately if any seniors bothered me, and that I should have fun at my uncle’s but not trouble them too much. It was nearly time to leave, and he patted me on the back, and told me to get a move on – why wait until the last minute, after all? And this is where perception and memory play tricks with each other. My father remembers waiting at the door of the train so he could wave goodbye to me. But I strode away and did not look back even once. Maybe it was to avoid letting him see the tears in my eyes.  Perhaps it was a conscious act on my part, a fear that I would look back and he wouldn’t be there at the door and I wouldn’t like that one bit. Or maybe as a gesture of innocent stubbornness, as a friend put it, that tried to say that I had grown up. It’s a clear, burning memory for both of us – I did not look back. 1998 was the year I learnt not to look back.

It was a good year.

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Television, TV Shows

The (Spoiler-Free) Breaking Bad Post

What if you knew you had six months to live?

A lot of talented storytellers have already done variants of this particular narrative scenario in different mediums. The TV series Breaking Bad is just one of them, and when you first hear about the premise of the show – mild-mannered chemistry teacher Walter White learns he has cancer and takes to cooking and dealing crystal meth with an ex-pupil, a junkie named Jesse Pinkman to provide for his family – you feel tempted to get dismissive about it. Too much been-there-done-that. Didn’t Weeds have a similar setting of a non-criminal taking to crime and making us cheer for the anti-hero? But I got around to watching Breaking Bad sometime last year, thanks to a belated reading of a Patton Oswalt blog post. The post seems to have disappeared, fuck you Myspace, but critical commentary on the post remains online, thank you Internet.

I believe I was well and truly hooked at the point where, as I was balancing my dinner plate on my lap and trying not to spill rice all over my underwear, strange goings-on involving dead drug dealers, hydrofluoric acid and a metal bath-tub were unfolding onscreen. I believe that was it, the mix of gut-wrenching, edge-of-the-seat drama, interspersed with laugh-out-loud moments of gruesome humor, that made me regard Breaking Bad as being something more than Just Another TV Show. I finished the first two seasons in a weekend, and then learnt that there was a third season that had just gotten over, watched that too. When the fourth season started this year, I resolutely refused to see it until the season was over.

Having completed the season finale of the latter just two days ago, I feel … empty. It feels like the year has given me the best it has to offer, and there’s nothing more to look forward to before The Dark Knight Rises releases in 2012. Of course that is just self-inflicted hyperbole that will dissipate in a few days(I hope, whine whine). But it’s a rare artistic offering that produces such an effect in me, this emptiness and this feeling of contentment at the same time, this sense of wonderment at a story that takes its time to unravel and is so fucking satisfying. At no point in the course of this TV series have I had the occasion to roll my eyes, or shake my head at an illogical plot-point. Trust me, there is none. This is ridiculously good writing right there. It has messed with my head, it has shattered every expectation I had, and it’s done a stellar job in balancing violent bursts of action with quiet emotional moments and nerve-wracking tension.

Season 3 ended with a gunshot. Season 4 shows us the repercussions of that shot, beginning with a flashback sequence that is a reminder of the magnitude of what just happened. Episode 1 has one of the most visceral sequences I’ve seen in recent times, a perfectly-pitched set-piece that is aided by its excellent sound design. The season then becomes a carefully-played, slowly-unfolding game of cat-and-mouse between the two major players in the story, with additional complications that are introduced by the choices made by the other inhabitants of this world, most of them from Albuquerque, some from across the Mexican border. Every episode has moments that other lesser works might milk for as much onscreen value as possible. But this show knows just when to pull back, when to let the individual moments speak for themselves.

The moments, oh dear Lord, the moments. The final sequence of Episode 11, the aptly named ‘Crawl Space’. The use of a Spanish song on a car ride that spans a day. The camera angles in some Jesse sequences – from a shovel, from a Roomba vacuum cleaning robot. The terminator moment. Jesse asking for “phenylacetic acid, bitch”. Walt’s attempts at self-defense. Skyler’s plans within plans. Saul Goodman’s wise-cracks. “I am the danger. I am the one that knocks”. “Your wife, your son, your infant child.” “Is that your real name?” I could go on all night, you know. Part of me is tempted to let this post be and go rewatch Season 4 all over again, but I have herculean self-control and I am not afraid to use it.

The most striking aspect of Season 4 was the way it toyed with every one of my emotions towards the major characters. It is hard to empathize with most of the principal characters in Breaking Bad – even the “innocent” have shades to them. This incidentally is a blocker for most people when they begin watching the show, that the characters are unlikeable, or too “ordinary”. It is but natural for any work of fiction to have us take sides; Breaking Bad shows us that in real life, you can take any side. Just as it gives us characters that can make real choices, not just ones that maintain the status-quo (*cough* Dexter *cough*) It gives every character time to shine, and lets you get into his or her skin. Just when you seem to be getting comfortable with your feelings (good or bad), the writers introduce something that dramatically changes the equation. It’s like being bitch-slapped into submission at the hands of an expert Swedish masseur, and it feels great.

Yup, get this straight – there is no status quo in Breaking Bad. The only predictable thing about the show, the only bit of consistency since S1EP01 is that it is still primarily about Walter White and his relationship with Jesse Pinkman. The cancer angle has all but vanished – it would be ridiculous to assume that the show is still operating under the plot mechanic it began with. At some point in the middle of the season, it struck me – perhaps a little too late – that Walter White is the cancer that is eating away at everything around him. It also seemed to me that Walt represents every negative cliche associated with middle age – the feeling of dissatisfaction about having made the wrong choices in life, the idea that one’s lack of assertiveness is mistaken by others as weakness, the continuous sense of proving one’s worth as the head of the family, the need to be the provider, the need to be respected by your wife, your relatives and your children. Then I started thinking about whether the show is an examination of the seven cardinal sins – though I cast that interpretation aside because I could not fit gluttony into my theory. Elsewhere, Patton Oswalt tries to draw a parallel between the characters and comicbook super-villains, which is a bit too hard-core even for me. Like him, however, I was also struck by how similar the series is to Watchmen, in the sense that it is the kind of layered work that reveals themes and patterns with multiple viewings, and the themes are themselves open to scrutiny and interpretation.

I call Breaking Bad the best thing TV has to offer. It is my generation’s Godfather, it is what Deadwood and Sopranos have wrought, the flowering of the ideological seeds laid down by these shows, that television can be used for outstanding sequential narratives.  Many people would agree – the Emmies sure do, because the show, in particular its lead actor Bryan Cranston, has won multiple awards these last three years. Cranston has also directed episodes of the show himself and they are magnificent. Others may try to counter my statement with mentions of Mad Men and Boardwalk Empire. I have not watched either, I probably will, and then we’ll talk, you and I. But I am confident about my assertions about this series, and it will take something really special to make me budge.

Probably the only series that I think might break this stronghold at the moment is the The Wire, recommended to me by none other than The Mage of Northhampton himself, he whose tastes bear serious weightage. I am almost afraid to watch The Wire now. There’s the nagging feeling that it might just be better than BB, and then there’s the other nagging feeling where I am underwhelmed by it, in which case I would have failed The Bearded One. The poster on my wall would glare disapprovingly at me every single day, questioning my lack of taste, my ill-found judgement.

Behold, His Look of Reproach

Oh, the pressure.

If you’re into stories and storytelling techniques, if you want to witness masterful jugglery of multiple plot points and narrative devices, if you’re up for some serious emotional involvement with characters that have a life of their own free of predictability and brimming with free will, and most importantly, if you aren’t averse to traumatic violence, watch Breaking Bad. And while you’re at it, go read the episode guides on AVClub as you finish them one by one. Read the comments even, there’s a surprising lack of trolls on the boards, which either proves that people watching the the show are more rational, or that Breaking Bad is good enough to merit serious discussion sans offensive buffoonery. Go watch, and when you’ve wrapped your mind around that last shot at the end of season 4, take a deep breath, come back here and thank me. There’s one more season to go still, and we can all mourn and celebrate the inevitability of time together.

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Comics, Conventions

Going APE part 2

To recap: I had spent half the day at APE hunting down serendipitously meeting Craig Thompson and had then bought some art off Steve Oliff. Umm, that was it. On to part 2.

So Kate Beaton was due to sign at the Drawn and Quarterly booth. Agenda #1: Find out where the D&Q booth is. Attempting to do that in the hall was a problem because (a) there were no helpful numbers on booths to figure out where you were, at a given moment, and (b) it was hard not to get distracted by the shiny-ness on display. I mean, how can you pass by Stuart Ng books without looking through their collection of artbooks and the out-of-print European comics that they mysteriously manage to keep in stock? How do you control the urge to go spend some time with Richard Starkings and tell him how good the entire Elephantmen run is? (Not to mention the fact that I’ve been reading them on the iPad, and would probably just burst into guilty tears and buy the entire set of 4 hardcovers, which he was selling at the Expo at a sizable discount.) Oh well, I’ve gazed into the abyss, fellas. It’s not pretty. But you just close your eyes, think of beatonna, and scurry to your destination. That’s Kate Beaton’s twitter alias, by the way, and it never fails to make me smirk to myself. I wonder if she selected it for the Japanese reference.

So I find the D&Q table, and sure enough, she’s signing there. Just about three people there clustered around her, so I relax, and ask the guy standing there if he’s in line. “I am”, he says. “And so are they” He gestures behind me. Holy guacamole, there’s an insane line for Kate Beaton! They were cordoning off people three at a time near the table, to keep the crowds moving. The line actually warps around the center of the hall, and there’s an end-of-the-line volunteer waiting to tell people that, yes, that is the end of the line, and no, Kate won’t be signing any sketchbooks – pretty de rigeur for all the artists attending that day. But the line moves ahead merrily, and I take some time to chat with the lady standing behind me, who’s totally getting it on with her dog-eared copy of Bruno Bettelheim’s The Uses of Enchantment (a brilliant analysis of fairytales, a must-read). The guy in front of me is hard-core, carting around – yes, he actually had a cart – a few long-boxes of comics. Of course I get totally judgmental about him – he’s  getting every single Beaton appearance signed, including the APE program guide.

When my turn comes, Kate takes some time to flex her fingers. She asks me what my favorite strip is, and in my head I go “shit, do I mention the Nancy Drew covers? No, that’s too generic. Hmm, I liked the Bronte strips, but hold on, there’s something else I am missing”, while out loud, I say “ba-bah-bu-ba”. And then I take the safe way out and say “All of them”.  Which probably means that I fail her test, and after having slotted me as “clueless generic comic-book fan”, she proceeds to draw Wonder Woman in my book. In the middle of her sketch, I remember that I loved the Javert strips, and tell her so. I don’t think she hears me.

I totally get my program guide signed too, hah!

In the meantime, I meet a few friends, a few art collector buddies. We laugh about the fact that nearly all of us had mailed each other saying we won’t make it to APE this time, and changed plans at the last minute. For a second or two, all of us look funny at each other, each one wondering if the other’s here for some hitherto undisclosed art deal. The moment passes. We do not kill each other.

Craig Thompson is signing again at the CBLDF booth, and I head there, pick up some books from them. I pick up a few others with a 20% discount from a retailer nearby. “Never ignore a discount” is the corollary to my family motto. (Which is “Carpe Omnius”, before you ask, and um, yeah, I am the only practicing member of my family.) This time the line is longer, probably because people are starting to surge in. I think Craig gets a little spooked when he sees me again, but that could just have been my imagination. I tell him about my friend who cried after reading Goodbye Chunky Rice, and we both snicker a bit. Actually no, he sort of understands.

Last signings of the day – Adrian Tomine and Dan Clowes, who are both signing at the Drawn and Quarterly booth at the same time. I do not realize why until I read this, much later. Their line is longer than Beaton’s, obviously. By the time I get to the front, there’s a crowd around Tomine while Clowes is relatively freer. I spend a few minutes getting some books signed and talking to him, after which he takes a restroom break. Completely unrelated, I assure you. He gets back, and I start talking to him again, both of us taking a moment to scoff at mainstream comics together. We totally bonded, man. I introduced myself to Tomine with a request from a friend who, in a fit of high perversion, wanted me to get a drawing of a blonde girl from Tomine. “I will be your bitch forever if you get that for me”, he said, and who am I to refuse an offer like that? Having inked a quick headshot in my copy of Sleepwalk, Tomine does a self-portrait in Scenes From An Impending Marriage, which I totally love.

And with that, I come to an end of my APE adventure. There is some more wandering around the venue, an excellent dinner at a Spanish restaurant afterwards, and a magnificent Thai chilli lemon sorbet after that. 

And this is what I lugged home from the show.

Only 5 of these are mine.

 

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