Another blast from the past from the The Stranger's music blog Line Out...
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2011
Paris's Black Power Mixtape
posted by KATHY FENNESSY on MON, SEP 19, 2011 at 7:48 AM
SCARFACE/TOMMY BOY
"Paris is my name, I don't sleep. I drop science, and keep the beat."
In light of the documentary Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975, which opens at the Varsity Theatre on 10/14, I've been thinking about Paris's 1989 album, The Devil Made Me Do It.* With lyrics about civil rights, dirty cops, and the beauty of blackness, what is it if not a "Black Power mixtape"? Other hip-hop records have referenced the Black Panthers, but I submit that Devil is definitive.
Around the same time he released his debut, I read Eldridge Cleaver's Soul on Iceand Bobby Seale's Seize the Time: the Story of the Black Panther Party (I also read The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Amiri Baraka's Blues People). Paris's opening salvo served as the perfect soundtrack to their words, and that's to take nothing from Public Enemy, with whom he would go on to collaborate.
*PBS has acquired the film for future broadcast (disclosure: I work at KCTS 9).
In his Nation review of Black Power Mixtape, Stuart Klawans mentions a particular Panther chant, which sent me scrambling for the Paris disc, because I recall that he samples the tune (it appears on "Panther Power"). But there's a difference between hearing the rhyme and, as Klawans writes, watching the Panthers teach "little kids to shout slogans in exchange for a pancake breakfast, and to sing a suicidal little ditty I had all but forgotten, 'Pick Up the Gun'."
It's the world from which P-Dog (born Oscar Jackson, Jr. in 1967) sprang. Like Tupac, son of party member Afeni Shakur, he grew up in the Bay Area in the long shadow of the Panthers (as with Pac, he also had a connection to Oaktown’s Digital Underground, but more as an associate than a collaborator).
If Paris would filter his feelings about the Bush-era though more militant means, he shared Pac's anger, and his debut deserves to stand alongside PE's It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back and NWA's Straight Outta Compton.
As DJ Davey D told SF Weekly, "Public Enemy was Afrocentric, but Paris was the first hip-hopper on the West Coast to do it in an uncompromising way."
But anger isn't enough in and of itself. If it marred his controversial 1992 follow-up, Sleeping with the Enemy (with hard-headed harangues like "Bush Killa" and "Coffee, Donuts & Death"), he gets the balance right on his first record, where his sinuous flow and sinister grooves make the econ major's knowledge hit all the harder (Paris graduated from UC Davis). The tone is nervy and noirish: a letter from the underground written in generations of spilled blood, but it's also, as he declares (in "Break the Grip of Shame"), "A call and a plea for unity."
The former Nation of Islam member still writes, raps, and produces, and worked for a time as a stockbroker to fund his projects and to provide for his family. As he reflected to SF Weekly about his years working for The Man, "I saw what was going on with favoritism in the mutual funds. That's real gangsta shit."
Video Librarian: Dreaming of a Jewish Christmas, Foster Care Film Series - Volume 1, A Great Ride, How We Grow, I Am the Revolution, Life Interrupted - Telling Breast Cancer Stories, Peter, Paul and Mary - At Newport 1963-65, Preventing Acci- dental Drug Overdoses, Rhythm of the Dance, A Thou- sand Girls Like Me, and To Die in the Desert.
I wouldn't have thought I'd ever get the chance to tag a post using Rick Springfield's name, but then this DVD showed up in my mailbox. I was never a Springfield fan, but I wasn't a detractor either. I'm old enough to remember his 1980s heyday, and although I never bought any of his records, I did go through a brief General Hospital phase, which coincided with his first run as Dr. Noah Drake (he would return to the show in 2005). This was back when Demi Moore ("Jackie Templeton") was also part of the cast. If anything, I would've pegged Springfield as the breakout movie star, but he decided to make music his primary focus.
Sylvia Caminer's flattering, yet strangely compelling documentary, An Affair of the Heart, doesn't present a conventional portrait of a celebrity. Instead, it's more like 2012's Still Alive, which caught up with 1970s singer-songwriter Paul Williams. If 63-year-old Springfield, who looks 20 years younger, enjoyed his biggest hits, like "Jessie's Girl" and "Don't Talk to Strangers," in the 1980s, his fans have sustained his career, and Caminer profiles a few of the most ardent.
Mike Nipper first posted this video in 2010. That's Rick on guitar.
After a break of almost a decade, Springfield returned to live performing in the 1990s, and fans travel thousands of miles just to see him. His friends Mark Goodman, Linda Blair, and Corey Feldman speak to his past. To Goodman, Springfield was a "dick" and a "lightweight," who's only gotten better and more humble with age. As with the super-fans who’ve congregated around the Grateful Dead and Phish, his shows have spawned friendships and even romances.
Suburban stay-at-home moms JoAnn and Sue welcome the chance to leave their troubles behind for a regular "Rick fix," as they put it. In their case, that means up to 10 shows a year, including Springfield's annual cruise to the Bahamas (and since Goodman participates in that venture, I think it's fair to take anything he says with a grain of salt). Fourteen-year-old guitar player Dustin has been a fan since he was a toddler, a bond he shares with his single dad, Jeff—who looks a little like Springfield—while Steve proposed to his wife, Jill, on stage at a concert.
Pure '80s Velveeta.
Other fans talk about the comfort they took in Springfield songs while recovering from sexual assault and heart surgery (Laurie says her "pity party" over her cardiac woes lasted for 24 years). There's a darker side, too, since Rick addiction has put a strain on Sue's marriage. Oddly, her cardiologist husband, Mike, started out as a New Jersey thrasher,* and he's never understood his wife's obsession.
If there isn't much here about his personal life, Springfield has written a bestselling memoir, Late, Late at Night, that discusses his battles with infidelity, depression, and other more personal matters (amazingly, he's still married to his wife, Barbara, who appears in the film). Watching Caminer's documentary didn't change my mind about his music, but I found his relationships with his fans genuinely touching.
* Mike Devita was the guitarist for Sacred Denial (1982-1988), which had a brief run on Atlantic Records.
My favorite quote: "We touched his butt last time he was here."
Breaking Glass Pictures releases An Affair of the Heart on July 16, 2013 (Blu-ray release TBA).
Video Librarian: 93Queen, 3100: Run and Become, Birth on the Border, Freedom Fighters, In Exile, Inventing Tomorrow, The Two Faces of a Bamiléké Woman, The Police - Everyone Stares: The Police Inside Out[Blu-ray], and Sinatra in Palm Springs - The Place He Called Home[Blu-ray].
Video Librarian:Milford Graves Full Mantis, The Most Dangerous Year, The Revival - Women and the Word, Time for Ilhan, Shameless - The Complete Ninth Season[four-disc set], Team Khan, Tickled,
and The Gospel According to André.
The Stranger Music Things to Do:The Specials and Alicia Witt (I guess they're using freelancers again, at least for the next few weeks). I'm also quoted in this Filthy Friends blurb.
Video Librarian:62 Days, Break the Silence, Exiled, It’s Criminal - A Tale of Prison
and Privilege, and The Longings of Maya Gordon.
The Stranger: No film assignments until SIFF (5/16 - 6/9).
Video Librarian: G Is for Gun - The Arming
of Teachers in America, Jewel's Catch One, Lovesick, Nothing Without Us - The Women Who Will End AIDS,
The Pushouts, The War in Between, Hot to Trot, Nude Area, The
Party's Just Beginning.
Video Librarian:Band vs Brand, Olancho, and Antonio Lopez 1970: Sex, Fashion & Disco.
Endnote: While doing a Google search, I found my Slog review of the 2012 documentary Elena at the film's website. It could use a wider audience. Image of Grace Jones and Jerry Hall from the IMDb.
Originally posted to The Stranger on Mar 14, 2012 at 12:58pm.
CAROL CHANNING: LARGER THAN LIFE (Dori Berinstein, US, 2012, 87 mins.)
I review a lot of punk documentaries, so my interest in Carol Channing—as opposed to, say, Chad Channing—may seem odd, except this lady's been kicking ass for decades now.
Further, the gap between punk and musical theater isn't as wide as it might seem, especially since Green Day's American Idiot became a Broadway hit (to say nothing of Stew's Public Theater production, Passing Strange, which lives on as a Spike Lee joint).
I've
always been fascinated by Channing's unique voice, which isn't
attractive by conventional standards, yet it's more distinct than that
of Glee and Wicked co-stars Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel, who are likely to be more recognizable to younger viewers.
Channing has a grittier Vaudevillian style, and the older she gets, the more she sounds like Louis Armstrong, which is ironic, since he also recorded "Hello, Dolly!"
DRAMATIC FORCES, LLC
"You're lookin' swell..."
In Gotta Dance, Dori Berinstein profiled
the AARP-age performers of the NETSationals senior dance team. She has a
way with subjects who've been kicking around for awhile, and Channing
turned 90 during the filming of Larger Than Life. Archival footage reinforces her love of white, sequined dresses, and red lipstick.
Like Liza Minnelli, she's rarely changed her look, and there's no need when it continues to serve her so well. Comedy writer Bruce Vilanch describes her as "this creature with huge saucer eyes and gigantic red lips and a massive smile."
Channing grew up in San Francisco,* where she fell in love with performing at an early age. Once she saw Ethel Waters in
concert, she knew she wanted to do the same thing, and established a
life-long friendship with the singer. Not until years later would she
find out that she was part black, and also part Jewish, much like Dolly
Gallagher Levi (Channing's parents were prominent Christian Scientists).
If she made the occasional movie—earning an Oscar nod for Thoroughly Modern Millie—theater
and television became her bread and butter. Berinstein takes in the
totality of her career, but concentrates on Channing's signature role in
1964's Hello, Dolly! (the only high school musical in which I ever participated).
*The film doesn't mention that Channing was born in Seattle.
My favorite Channing screen performance appears in this film (music by Harry Nilsson!).
Composer/lyricist Jerry Herman says the part was intended for Ethel Merman,
who declined, but now he can't imagine anyone else in the role (sorry,
Barbra Streisand). He later wrote "Before the Parade Passes By"
specifically for her, and Dolly ranks
among the longest-running musicals. The indefatigable Channing never
missed a full performance—not even while receiving treatment for ovarian
cancer.
Larger Than Life prioritizes Channing's public life over her personal one, but doesn't stint on her relationship with the late Harry Kullijian, her sweetheart from the 1930s. After high school, he went off to Korea, and she went to Bennington.
They
proceeded to marry other people (she was married for 42 years, Harry
for 65*), but reconnected 70 years later, making the film as much a
profile of her career as her marriage, to which famous friends from Tippi Hedren to Barbara Walters pay tribute (Debbie Reynolds starts to cry when she talks about it).
On
the downside, the jigsaw structure can feel haphazard, as if Berinstein
felt that a purely chronological approach might not be sufficiently
dynamic. She also hints at darker times, but doesn't push as far as she
could, even though Channing seems like a willing participant. Still, a
documentary of this nature lives and dies by the personality of its
subject and Carol Channing has plenty to spare.
*Also unmentioned: Channing was married four times; her son with Alex Carson, Chan Lowe, is a political cartoonist.
Carol Channing: Larger Than Life opens at SIFF Film Center on Fri., March 16. For more information, please call 206-324-9996 or click here.
ON HER SHOULDERS (Alexandria Bombach, US, 2018, 94 minutes)
Alexandria Bombach doesn't build her documentary around a person with a particular job, but rather a person with a particular request. That's how Nadia Murad, the soft-spoken 23-year-old at its center, describes herself to the filmmaker. Through public appearances, she seeks assistance on behalf of the Yazidis (a non-Muslim minority), who suffered genocide at the hands of ISIS in Northern Iraq in 2014.
Nadia's highest profile appearance takes place in 2015 when she speaks in front of the United Nations Security Council. Though Simone Mona-
sebian of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime encourages her to describe herself as an activist, Nadia sees herself as a refugee. Simone doesn't understand why she can't be both, but Nadia doesn't look at the situa-
tion through the same lens. When a Canadian radio host asks about her life before ISIS, she mentions school and farming. When ISIS came to her village, they killed most of the men and all of the older women. They raped younger women, like Nadia, repeatedly. It's difficult to listen to her detail such atrocities, but it must be worse to relive them.
Nadia is a slight fig-
ure with long, dark hair, who once dream-
ed of op-
ening a beauty salon. She has the calm, thoughtful countenance of Charlotte Gainsbourg, circa Jane Eyre. When she smiles, which isn't often, she puts her entire face into it. She's close to Murad Ismael, the 30-year-old executive director of Yazda, who has become a sort of surrogate brother (he also serves as her translator). If she cries on occasion, she spends more time comfort-
ing the Yazidis she meets at protest marches and in refugee camps. It means everything to them that she has become their face to the world.
From Canada, Nadia travels to Greece and then to New York where the UN appoints her Goodwill Ambassador for the Dignity of Survivors of Human Trafficking (human rights attorney and recent Vogue cover star Amal Clooney accompanies her on the trip). As the end credits indicate, Nadia has continued to advocate for the Yazidi people ever since. If she didn't set out to become an activist, she has proven to be a very effective one. As a filmmaker, Bombach (Frame by Frame) treats her with respect, but stops short of full-fledged worship. Nadia is still a human being, albeit one with more passion and poise than most.
If there's a subtext to Bombach's film it's that even well meaning people don't always know how to respond to someone like Nadia. Journalists and political figures come across as concerned in a way that seems more awkward than insincere. They can't decide whether to treat her like a delicate flower or a grizzled warrior, and her polite, if reserved manner throws them off. It's not that she's cold so much as self-contained, and I think that's why she never opens up in this film as much as she could have. It always feels as if she's holding something back, but maybe that's the only way to get from day to day, dredging up terrible memories to discomforted people for the greater good.
Endnote:On Her Shoulders plays the Northwest Film Forum (1515 12th Ave) through Thurs, Jan 10. Check the website for times.
The Village Voice: Pazz & Jop ballot (see next post).
Video Librarian:Bad Reputation, Benevolence, The Breast Archives, Drawn Together, Nimble Fingers, Nowhere to Hide, Qi Gong - Mindfulness
in Motion, Return to Cuba, Sex Weather, and Woman and the Glacier.
Endnote: As of 2019, The Stranger will no longer be soliciting concert previews, known as Music Things to Do, from freelancers. It was a fun gig while it lasted. My last previews ran in the mid-December issue.
Click here for the 2017 edition. Links lead to my concert previews for The Stranger.
Top 10
1. Gwenno - Le Kov (Heavenly-PIAS)
Le Kov marks two stunning solo albums in a row from ex-Pipette Gwenno Saunders. If 2014's Y Dydd Olaf, inspired by Owain Owain's dystopian novel from the 1970s, was the more ambitious release, the follow-up marks an artist firmly in control of her powers. The Welsh Cornish language has rarely sounded lovelier.
Ndegeocello's 2014 paranoid-funk cover of Whodini's "Friends" merely hinted at this brilliant reinvention of 11 pre-millennial R&B and funk classics. The singer and bass player at her sensual, soul-stirring best.
3. Lorelle Meets the Obsolete - De Facto (Registros El Derrumbe)
There'll never be another Broadcast, but on their fifth full-length, this Ensenada-by-way-of-Guadalajara duo (Lorena Quintanilla and Alberto Gonzalez) conjures up a similar sense of magic and mystery. Mixed by Cooper Crain (Bitchin Bajas) and mastered by Mikey Young (Eddy Current Suppression Ring, Total Control): México goes motorik.
From the electro pop of "High Horse" to the rustic psychedelia of "Slow Burn" to the stadium tour with Harry Styles, Musgraves' creative risks rankled purists, but the CMA Award for album of the year confirms that her resemblance to Bobbie Gentry is more than just skin deep.
5. DRINKS - Hippo Lite(Drag City)
It was a good year to be Cate Le Bon--or a fan of the Welsh polymath--as she co-produced Deerhunter and hit her stride with White Fence's Tim Presley on their second, even-better-than-the-first record.
After establishing her acting bonafides in 2016 (Moonlight, Hidden Figures), Monáe emerged in 2018 as a "free-ass motherfucker," an orientation reflected in the Prince-inspired "Make Me Feel" and the Georgia O'Keefe-on-ecstasy "Pink" video with pal Tessa Thompson.
Berlin-based Anika launched her career as a solo artist, so it came as a surprise when she joined forces with two Mexico City musicians to form this transcontinental trio. Their discography to date isn't a repudiation of the stark sound she established with BEAK's Geoff Barrow, but a more textural version marked by unnerving shows in which the cool blonde segues from quasi-catatonic to confrontational.
Lorelle Meets the Obsolete
8. Kelly Lee Owens - Kelly Lee Owens (Smalltown Supersound)
On her enchanting debut, the Welsh producer whispers sweetly over diaphanous clouds of synths and gently pulsating beats. It's Charlotte Gainsbourg by way of Juana Molina through a Giorgio Moroder haze.
Meg Remy, the American-born sonic architect behind this Toronto noise-pop project, takes recognizable elements, including girl-group harmonies and soul samples, and scrambles them into something new and unfamiliar, like Ronnie Spector fronting the Residents. On her riveting new album, she references male-generated works about men, like Hamlet, to interrogate male power and female agency.
10. The Nels Cline 4 - Currents, Constellations(Blue Note)
Cline, a guitarist and composer with free jazz (Charlie Haden, Julius Hemphill) and alt-rock roots (Wilco, Mike Watt, Thurston Moore), brings playful prog-punk energy to his second Blue Note outing.
Note: All comments from my 2018 Pazz & Jop ballot.
2. Kendrick Lamar, SZA - "All the Stars" (Top Dawg-Interscope)
Wakanda forever.
3. Janelle Monáe - "Make Me Feel" (Bad Boy)
It's hard to imagine that "Make Me Feel" would exist without Prince's "Kiss," but Monáe ups the ante with Hereditary-like tongue-clicks as a rhythm track--and words never heard in a Jehovah Witness's Bible.
4. Childish Gambino - "This Is America" (mcDJ Recording-RCA)
Donald Glover's incantatory recitation would work without visuals, but Hiro Murai's video represents America in 2018 as acutely as the newsreel footage in Spike Lee's BlacKkKlansman. Utterly unnerving.
5. Brownout - "Fear of a Black Planet" (Fat Beats)
Public Enemy's production team, the Bomb Squad, spun hiphop gold from funk filaments, so it's only right and natural that these Austin instrumentalists would strip the PE track down to its funky essence.
6. Khruangbin - "Maria También" (Dead Oceans-Night Time Stories)
The very definition of sinuous.
7. Ashley Monroe - "Hands on You" (Warner Bros Nashville)
The year's sexiest song...and even better than anything on Pistol Annies' not-at-all-bad Interstate Gospel. "I wish I'd a pushed you against the wall, locked the door in a bathroom stall..."
8. Angelique Kidjo - "Born Under Punches" (Kravenworks)
"Look at these hands," Kidjo asks commandingly, turning the words of David Byrne's (presumably white) government man inside out. "All I want is to breathe," sighs the Beninese-born singer.
9. The Internet - "La Di Da" (Columbia-Sony Music Entertainment)
The spirit of early-'70s Stevie Wonder infuses this breezy track.
10. Little Dragon - "Lover Chanting" (Ninja Tune)
A summery wisp of a thing. "Do you wanna be my girl, I wanna-wanna-wanna be your ma-a-an." That's about the gist of it.
Also worthy of note:Courtney Barnett - Tell Me How You Really Feel (Mom+Pop), Cruel Diagonals - Disambiguation (Drawing Room), Jacco Gardner - Somnium (Polyvinyl Recording Co), Ross Goldstein - Eighth House (Birdwatcher), Hinds - I Don’t Run (Mom + Pop), In- solito Universo - Folk Experimental de Venezuela (Olindo), The In- ternet - Hive Mind (Columbia), Jo Passed - Their Prime (Sub Pop), Angelique Kidjo - Remain in Light (Kravenworks), The Limiñanas - Shadow People (Because Music), Samara Lubelski - Flickers at the Station (Drawing Room), Dave McMurray - Music Is Life (Blue Note), Melody’s Echo Chamber - Bon Voyage (Far Possum), MGMT - Little Dark Age (Columbia-Sony Music Entertainment), Papa M - A Broke Moon Rises (Drag City), Pusha T - Daytona (GOOD-Def Jam), Shamir - Revelations (Father/Daughter), The Shifters - Have a Cunning Plan (Trouble in Mind), Colin Stetson - Hereditary (Original Motion Pic- ture Soundtrack) (Milan), Sudan Archives - Sink (Stones Throw), Szun Waves - New Hymn to Freedom (Leaf Label), Dean Wareham vs. Cheval Sombre - Dean Wareham vs. Cheval Sombre (Double Feature), and Unknown Mortal Orchestra - Sex & Food (Jagjaguwar).
I write about popular music and film and the relationship between the two. I'm Irish on one side, Italian on the other—British on both. I was born in Connecticut (Far From Heaven), raised in Alaska (Northern Exposure), and I've lived in Seattle, WA (Trouble in Mind) since 1988.
