Mellotron Sounds » Woody Allen

32. Pink Floyd – Wish You Were Here / Animals

Mike — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 20:01:15 +0000

Forgive Me, Father, For I Have Sinned

I have a confession to make: Up until about 2 or 3 months ago, I had never heard Dark Side of the Moon in full.

…I know. I’d heard all of its tracks, somewhere or another, but never in sequence and never as a coherent whole. Never as it was meant to be heard. Now, do you want to know something else? You might want to sit down for this one:

I’ve still never heard The Wall.

But Wait—Hear Me Out

About Dark Side of the Moon, it’s not that I wasn’t interested in hearing it. It was just one of those records I never got around to getting. You hear so much about it nowadays, see posters and shirts branded with its signature glass pyramid scattered throughout college dorms and malls. It’s not that I thought the album wouldn’t be any good—quite the opposite, actually—but this much hype, I’d have to be just a little disappointed from the build-up.

Symbols like this—pink Yankees hats, posters of a line of naked girls with Pink Floyd album covers painted on their backs, almost anything John Lennon—they have a tendency to become more about fashion than passion, a different kind of brand loyalty, familiar pop references that don’t, necessarily, have any real regard today for their source material.

Forget that Dark Side of the Moon is as good as the hype—regardless of how that hype might have morphed or modernized; the real reason I never bought it or The Wall has nothing to do with social reservations. I wasn’t taking a stand. More likely, and simply, I never picked it up because I had gotten to Wish You Were Here and Animals first. And those albums are just too good to move on from.

Shine On, You Legends, You Idols, You Clichés…

Of all the artists and music-makers out there, I have the hardest time writing about the immortals. I’m just not into it. Your Beatles, Pink Floyds, Springsteens—at this point, what can I really say? I can talk about Floyd’s psychedelia, the potent lyrical craftsmanship, the universe they create with sound—but so can, and so has, everybody else. Go to allmusic.com or open a magazine. That review has already been written; why write it again?

So, instead, let’s do this:

When I made that unknowing leap into media “buffdom,” I started with movies. Woody Allen—here was I guy I’d heard a lot about; and from the bits I’d heard, it seemed he had a thing for experimentation. Some of his films were in black & white, some took place in the subconscious, some were slapstick. I wanted to watch them all—all 30+–chronologically. It was the beginnings of a sort of alternative homeschooling, an education that over time seemed so much more urgent and worthwhile than the one I was paying for at the college down the street. This one I actually cared about. It actively challenged me, constantly demonstrating the ability for stark contrasts to coexist in a single form. Edges began to blur. There were patterns to follow and compare, moral and existential ideas battling it out and being tested, measured, explored through emotional narrative. I had seen films before, obviously, but it was different watching them through the lens of Director. Each wasn’t just a thing to watch, it was a piece that was made, with purpose and reason and something to say—something to be taken seriously.

This was art and thought together, creativity with logic, left brain and right interdependent. And this was just one director.

I was hooked.

Once that first piece of the puzzle was put into place, nothing was what it used to be. I didn’t just watch and listen to music and film anymore; I studied it, even when I wasn’t trying to.

Compared to Dark Side of the Moon, records like Animals and Wish You Were Here aren’t particularly “accessible,” but they’re loaded. They’re dense, charged with so much life and sarcasm and feeling that as soon as you think that you’ve stripped them down to their raw elements, something new jumps out that you’ve never caught before–a keyboard line, maybe, or a fresh interpretation, or maybe just a feeling. That’s the perk of albums like these, conceptual pieces with fewer self-contained tracks and more reliance on a singular packed theme. At 17 years old, these weren’t just the only two albums that I thought I needed for a taste of the Pink Floyd experience, they were all I could handle.

And I listened to them everywhere. At work—at my job where I pulled staples from paper, stacking the “prepped” pages into piles to run through machines—I’d put the albums on without headphones. Autumn, a coworker whose sandy, extra-long hair I always secretly had a thing for, sat next to me and we’d talk over the pulse of the stereo. The distortion, the angst, the anger, eventually it all boiled down to David Gilmour and an acoustic guitar, his voice weathered and sad as if exhaustedly reaching the postscript of a letter he’d been laboring over, finally returning to the core sincerity of the shared track and album title.

“We’re just two lost souls,” he sang, “swimming in a fishbowl / year after year.” And Autumn, with her long, long hair and ambiguous stare, cocked her head just slightly to the side, sweeping her eyes past rogue strands of blonde caught in rays of sun from the window, the light breaking through them to burst into patterns on her cheek. She paused, and grinned at me. “…Fishbowl?”

I smirked and lifted my eyebrows, shrugged. “Fishbowl,” I said. And we each laughed, exactly the same as we would have if something were funny.

Listen:

Whatever Works Full Trailer

Mike — Sat, 16 May 2009 17:50:00 +0000

Woody Allen’s follow-up to the 2008 Oscar-winning Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Whatever Works is set to release July 19th. The Larry David-lead film also stars Patricia Clarkson (Six Feet Under, The Station Agent), Evan Rachel Wood (The Wrestler), Ed Begley (Six Feet Under, Arrested Development), Michael McKean and Conleth Hill.

Whatever Works will be Allen’s first film set in New York after his four-year stint in Europe, with Match Point, Scoop, Cassandra’s Dream and Vicky Cristina Barcelona. And if those films were any indication, and if David’s presence in the trailer is a good representation of what to expect, I’d say this is shaping up to be yet another tally in Allen’s recent comeback-esque hot streak.

“These Pretzels Are Making Me Thirsty”

Mike — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 20:01:00 +0000

I guess this is a long time coming. In a way, it only seems natural. Back in the late ’80’s Larry David had two tiny bit-roles in a couple of Woody Allen movies (Radio Days and the “Oedipus Wrecks” segment of New York Stories); then there were the Allen influences in Seinfeld. Not to mention, at this point I think it’s safe to say that David and Allen are the two most famous New York-Jewish-neurotic comedians out there. So is the fact that Larry will be starring in Woody’s latest really any big surprise?

It’s called Whatever Works (premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival the end of this month, elsewhere on June 19), and right now the details for it are pretty slim. It’s marketed as a “romance comedy” but considering that, in one way or another, almost all of Woody’s movies are romance comedies, that doesn’t really mean much. It’s more just a matter of whether it will be a packed comedy, like a The Purple Rose of Cairo, or a fun but airy one, like a Scoop.

I won’t lie: Woody Allen’s among my top favorite directors, and I’ve seen every episode of Curb–but I’m hesitant to get too excited about this release. Something about it just seems weird, imagining Woody’s words coming out of Larry’s mouth, the possibility of Larry David being a romantic lead. But, that may just be me counteracting my enthusiasm so that I don’t get over-excited then feel let down. Becuase after all, Woody’s not exactly Cary Grant, either–but he knows how to make that work for him in his romantic roles. He knows what he’s doing. After making roughly 40 movies-most of which I do like–I’m more than willing to trust him.

Apparantly David’s going to be somewhat involved with the young Evan Rachel Wood (The Wrestler), but even better is the presence of Patricia Clarkson (The Station Agent, Six Feet Under)–who Allen worked with in Vicky Cristina Barcelona, and who really does deserve to be more of a leading force.

What kills me is that Woody Allen’s movies are constantly only in limited release when they come out these days (available just in big cities and art house theaters), being snuffed out by bigger Hollywood flicks like Fast & Furious or Paul Blart: Mall Cop (which is still lingering around since Jan. 16). Woody Allen films used to be an event–now you’re lucky if you can catch one on the big screen. And in the past few years, with stylish and powerful releases like Match Point and Vicky Cristina Barcelona, he’s more than proving he’s still got it. If you see this film on a theater’s marquee, don’t pass it up. It probably won’t be there for long.