Silverlake Blvd.

Music Complete by New Order

 

It took quite a few listens to find the music of "People on the High Line" as compelling as the title. But ultimately the appropriation of Chic is irresistible. Anwen Crawford in the New Yorker objected, but why? Chic is to dance music what Euclid is to geometry: the axioms are there to be used.

 

But even better is the appropriation of Elly Jackson of La Roux (who also appears on “Tutti Frutti”). Jackson was born five years after New Order’s biggest hit, and her music is completely derivative of that earliest stage of synth pop/techno/disco.

 

In the same vein, the CD concludes with "Superheated", an ending credit song for a hypothetical John Hughes movie—seemingly in collaboration with Pure Prairie League, but actually featuring Brandon Flowers, whose band derives from a New Order video (“Crystal”). The fact that the New Orderlies are unafraid to make a thing out of their seniority is reassuring. I find the presence on the album of Jackson and Flowers much more provocative than Iggy Pop’s intimations of realness (“Stray Dog”).

 

All the music seems to be in dialogue with the past or the present. "Plastic" is a homage to Giorgio Moroder and the late Donna Summer. The kids with bad posture may not get the references, but they’ll be swaying above their devices. "Unlearn This Hatred”, on the other hand, seems directed at the kids (shouting, “Screw you: we invented anthems.”) And they revisit their own back catalog: "Nothing but a Fool" recalls the era of Technique, "The Game" that of Get Ready.

 

Crawford’s review likened New Order’s music to “a wakeful poignancy, like the dawn walk home after the best party of your life.” It’s a lovely thought, however most of New Order’s music strikes me as a phone message from a complete stranger sent by accident from a club. The speaker is saying everything that he has kept bottled up during the period of hopefulness, but now that’s over. He finds the most exact, cutting words. He’s shouting at the wrong person, and the party continues without missing a beat. You feel a bit embarrassed and you feel a bit frightened, but you can't stop listening.

I'm trying to get over this wall

 

Holly Woodlawn died last week.

 

The best moment of Paul Morrissey’s Trash (1970)—a film that consists of a series of confrontations between Joe Dallesandro and friends, with everyone being as filthy and unattractive as possible—is Holly's first line: “You’re starting to look like a bum!”

 

In her sublime autobiography, A Low Life in High Heels, Holly describes being praised by Fellini for her work in Trash, and promptly getting so screwed up that,

 

Later that night as I strayed outside to inhale the crisp night air, I stumbled off the sidewalk and landed face down in the gutter. … before I had the chance to gather my scattered self, I heard the sound of approaching footsteps and a somewhat amused voice: "What are you doing down there?" asked Mario Rivoli, … I peered at him over the curb and replied, “I’m trying to get over this wall!”

 

In 1989 when Holly was the guest on Skip E. Lowe’s public access interview show, Skip asked, “Tell me, why didn’t you ever entertain the boys in Vietnam? They would’ve loved you?” Holly replied, her raspy voice inflected with only a touch of exasperation, “Nobody ever asked me.”

Lulu @ MetLive

 

 

It’s probably bad luck to call a production perfect, but this one had the cast and dramatic intensity that you always hope for but almost never get.

 

The heroine and muse of the performance was Marlis Petersen. She has devoted 18 years of her career to Lulu, and it shows. Not only does she have the right beautiful/tough looks, and not only does she render Berg’s jagged 12-tone melodies with unforced aptness (if not "naturalness"), she inhabits the character beyond any superficial cliches. All the stupid labels ("victim" "vamp" "whore" "fantasy") evaporate as she generates animated heat. As Susan Graham (Countess Geschwitz) said in the intermission feature, Petersen's example fired every member of the cast to excel.

 

I confess it took a while to get used to William Kentridge’s dense, fastidious visuals. At first the animations and projections seemed too much, when there is already too much going on in terms of music and action. But Kentridge understood what was needed better than a lot of operatic professionals. His movies and sets and costumes always framed the music and highlighted the action, so that, in the end, they faded into the background.

 

There were moments when not only the visuals but also the music and singing faded into the background, and all that mattered was the story of Lulu and her men.

 

The synopsis on the page is a cold thing. It reeks of Weimar. It doesn’t seem possible that there’s any life left in it. But make no mistake: this is about ISIS and reckless military interventions and killing people because you’re pissed off. Which is to say, This is about civilization producing monsters.

 

But again and again the music reasserted itself. The unconventional thing about Berg’s music for Lulu isn’t that it’s dissonant, but that it’s so incredibly fast. When, near the end, Jack the Ripper tells Lulu not to bother with the candle—“There’s no need for that, there’s moonlight”—Jack’s vocal line and the orchestra swell to a phrase that’s heart-stopping. But Berg doesn’t spin out a conventional aria; there’s just the phrase and that’s it. It’s an extraordinarily elaborate necklace glimpsed through the window of a passing car: it flashes by and it’s gone.