U2 Charity Rocks

Good piece about U2, the Red campaign and so on..

Once More, With Feeling.

Hi everybody.

Some people were having major problems with the songs I uploaded before, and it turns out that my comrades running the webspace moved everything over to a new server and they were thus Not Working.

It's fixed now, or should be, so here are the links again.

Kevin Quain and the Mad Bastards - Mister Valentine's Dead

Kevin Quain and the Mad Bastards - The Bells of Hell.

- Kevin.

Bibliography on CECIL

A list of books and articles that might be useful for research projects are up on CECIL now. I'll continue to update it during the semester. Many of the titles have been requested for transfer to Short Loan. They should be available over the next week. Please post links or other resources up on the blog if you find anything that might be useful for other students on the course. I can also order titles for the library. I'm really trying to boost the library's collection in this area of study.

Thanks to all of you who have been blogging so far. Many interesting topics : wish I could reply to all of you but for the most part I'll let you guys conduct the conversation and let the blog inform what I say in lecture. It's hella busy at the moment at the start of the semester anyway. Come and see me though about your possible research topics. I'm very open to all sorts of directions and approaches. You've just got to have something that you wanna argue in your papers. If you can't make it Thursdays 1-3 we can try and make another appointment.

Tomorrow, it's a bit of 40s jazz and 50s rock and roll and then into the liveness debate: a bit of electric Dylan, Milli with your Vanilli etc. We'll be 'disintegratin' the musical' with Wattstax. See you in class.

thanks
Nabeel

Wattstax

Viewing Wattstax really got me thinking about how important music can be to different groups of people. To African-Americans in the 1960s and '70s, music was essential, a way to get through the racism and realities of everyday life. The performers at Wattstax were more than celebrities. They were an inspiration, the embodiment of hope and the desperate dream that life would get better. Their music wasn't made just to entertain, but to uplift. When Isaac Hayes (the main attraction) comes onstage at the end of the film, he sings directly to the audience about things that they can relate to. Specifically, being poor and black in America in a time when you could fight and die in a pointless war, but couldn't collect unemployment.
This also got me thinking about the current state of popular music. Where are all the social commentators? Where are the musicians who use their voice to say that things are wrong here and we know that and we understand that something must be done about it? There must be someone out there; I refuse to believe that everyone is making songs like "Fergalicious" and "Don't Cha."
I think Wattstax was an amazing event. It was a Woodstock for a group of people who had been silent for far too long. Unfortunately that silence is what led to the Watts riots in 1965. Could something similar now, to us, if we have no voice to express our displeasure with the current state of the world?

Throwing the Question Open.

I only really became interested in music relatively recently, and as such I have little handle on what it is that I like. What I thought I'd do this week was put up two songs by a Canadian bar-band that I like as a point of discussion, and also to see if I can throw the doors wide to being told what kind of music this is. At the moment, I have to get people to listen to their music (as I am now) since I can't describe their work. It's not because they're transcendant or emphemeral or "No, you can only experience their glory through listening," just that I lack the tools to do so.

In any case, here they are. I'd recommend not downloading them at university because you're paying for the bandwidth. The files will stay up for a week or so and then I'll pull them down, so if you're interested get into them now.

Kevin Quain and the Mad Bastards - Mister Valentine's Dead

Kevin Quain and the Mad Bastards - The Bells of Hell.

Email contact means that I have written permission to share these in this context. How cool is that?

- Kevin.

Music as Emotional Cues - Needed or not Needed That is the Question.

I was slightly surprised to read that someone had said that musical emotional cues were making audiences lazy - and I'm not sure if I agree with this or not.

Have you ever seen "habla con ella" (talk to her) directed by Pedro Almodovar? It was strange and slightly disturbing as I found myself sort of sympathising with a man who raped a woman in a coma. One of the reasons I did this is because of the emotional cues set up by the music, the "awww feel sorry for me music, a huge injustice has just happened to me music, I raped a woman and now they are sending me to jail, music" - HUH!?
I was even more confused when I handed back the DVD to the AV library desk and the guy asked, "Did you cry?" I was kinda like, what was I supposed to cry about? That a rapist got put in jail and is never going to see the woman that he loves (the one that he raped) again? He got what he deserved didn't he? DIDN'T HE!?

I guess what I was doing, was being lazy and following the cues of the music to tell me how I was supposed to feel about the character. It didn't help that he was the protagonist and all round, nice guy, apart from the rape incident. It was weird because I didn't want to feel sorry for this guy because it goes against everything i have learnt. Raping women is wrong. I felt like i was betraying society by feeling sorry for this guy... Anyway, I guess this kind of shows how much directors can manipulate audiences through music, and I think, Almodovar takes a certain amount of pride in the way he messes with audiences heads. I don't think the musical cues made the audience lazy, however, more like set them up to be disturbed and confused and basically doubt their whole sense of morals and whether they're good people or not...

Thriller -- micheal jackson

Michael Jackson's Thriller is a fourteen-minute music video released in December 1983 to support Michael Jackson's single "Thriller". In my opinion, it is the best and most popular music video of all time. The reason why I wanna talk about this MTV is that it was less of a conventional video and more of a mini-film.
In the history of music industry, most MTVs have been produced just to help propagandize the original songs and the albums; and in most people's thoughts, music video is just the appendant of the song; however, "Thriller" was not produced in that purpose. The music was even re-edited to match the video, this shows the importance of this video and also comes to the question: do music videos just serve the songs or they got some interactivities?
"Thriller" remains the greatest of the pop music promos to have a plot, great visuals, and a tip-top song to wrap the film around. Michael Jackson was at the top of the tree at this time (and not so altered in his plastic surgery regime for it to matter :) ). Here he is in good form - the song is terrific, he leads the zombies in dance like no other. My favorite part is where the zombies stagger in on the couple and the girl turns to see that Michael has turned into one of them. Then, they do a little dance. The scariest thing about "Thriller" may be the fact that it is consistently more fun and enjoyable than a lot of movies that are made. After twenty years it remains the premier music video.




There's some other versions of "thriller", post here, just for fun!








--LIJIA ZHANG (ATHENA)

thoughts on musicals, old and new

I found the clips from musicals in last weeks lecture particularly interesting as it was only recently that I attended a screening of 'Dream Girls'. I asked myself: why is it that I find the musicals of the 50s so enjoyable and yet I detested the modern musical 'Dream Girls'? They both belong to the same genre that has rather specific genre conventions, and yet my response differed so extremely. I think perhaps we are more comfortable to enjoy the hammy elements and camp aesthetics of the old musicals because it fits into our romanticised impression the 1950s. We enjoy 'Singin' in the Rain', 'An American in Paris', 'South Pacific' as a product of the time and accept the films as they are. A modern musical doesn't have the 'retro' advantage. I critiqued 'Dream Girls' as a contemporary film and compared it to the many other films I had seen around in the weeks leading up to the Oscars. Perhaps it was in this context, when I was viewing other films like 'History Boys', 'The Queen', 'The Departed', 'The Last King of Scotland', that caused me to particularly dislike the film 'Dream Girls'. Perhaps we expect more from our films today, more social awareness, more complexity, more power to initiate change, and in this context of expectation there is no longer room for the hammy musical re-make. We can enjoy the musicals of the 1950s because we don't hang today's expectation of 'what is good film making' around their necks. In viewing 'Dream Girls' however, I couldn't help but wonder what film could have been made, what story missed out on being told. Still, I suppose you've got to have the shade to have the light.

Hi all

Just some thoughts from last weeks lecture.

The clip seen in lecture two, "A Personal Journey: American Cinema ptI", dealt with the musical genre up until the 1950's. Post-war muscials strike me as having lost that certain something that made previous productions so popular and well-loved (even today). Musicals such as Bandwagon and An American in Paris have a raw, edgy feel not present in earlier musicals. The documentary mentioned above comments on the film noir influences on the film Bandwagon, and this is evident in the ballet which is dark and unsettling in its subject matter, its dance style and music choice. Considering film noir and its impetus and implications, it can be said that the post war era and its social complications seeped into even the most beloved of all genresdenying audiences that associated utopia. Earlier musicals, even during the depression era, have a glow about them, an aura of "can do" spirit and a reaching to fulfill the American dream. Post-war productions in this genre, however, are in many ways, a depiction of a society that has lost faith in this dream, that is driven by a consumer culture and the hardships of a nation trying to (re)build, as it were. Even the stars are fading, with both Fred AStaire and Gene Kelly failing in both age and enthusiasm, and increasingly paired with younger women. Somehow, these later films can never live up to the beloved musicals of an earlier generation. However, they still have something to offer in terms of providing an interesting analysis of post war society and its trends.

Moving on to the clip that dealt with the score for Psycho, i thought it was interesting that Hitchcock wanted silence during the shower scene. At first my reaction was similar to that of commentator's, the score in the shower scene adds an idescribable something to the panic and plot pointing that it invokes. However, with more thought, I wondered if in fact silence would have made the scene that much more disconcerting, for without sound cues, we (the audience) are at a loss at what to feel. Sound points to emotional responses that are appropriate for certain scenes (whether we understand this consciously or sub-consciously). Without sound as our guide, we are left to our own emotions which arguably would intensify our shock and panic responses in a scene like that in psycho.

Just a thought
Kate van Niekerk

Christian Marclay, Video Quartet, Excerpt #1

This artist took his favourite bits of music in film and composed a new piece of audiovisual music from it.

ReMeMbEr HiGh FiDeLiTy?

Within the reading for this week (Buhler, Kassabian, Neumeyer and Stilwell) was a point in the debate where diegetic and nondiegetic sound within film was touched upon and the ‘pro’s and con’s’ involved in separating that sound into distinctive camps. While traditionally the categories have been strongly defined with orchestral soundtracks being separate from the sounds within the characters environment, this has been challenged over recent years. Examples of Magnolia and Moulin Rouge are given within the reading and their success in playing with this boundary. Yet, for me it is High Fidelity which epitomizes the idea, being a film in which music plays such a prominent role in the narrative, the setting, the soundtrack and the characters lives and personalities. In the opening scene where the camera’s focus is on a stereo, the nondiegetic soundtrack accompanying the shot is then twisted through clever sound mixing into becoming the diegetic music played through the headphones worn by the main character. This scene is like a reflection, illustrating that what we as viewers are listening to is likewise being critiqued by the character we are watching, who again is visually watching us. This concept of music being not only the soundtrack accompanying what we as viewers are watching but also the soundtrack of the characters lives, their experiences and emotions, is repeated at other points throughout the film where this diegetic/nondiegetic boundary is casually yet effectively crossed. Music is such a big part of our individual lives, many of us being able to think of a particular piece of music which in a sense feels like the soundtrack to our own life. As some of the writers of this reading argue, the boundary between what characters can and cannot hear is not set in concrete and need not be so, as it is a technique that may be used or broken despite its long history born within films of the silent era.

Grime Videos

Wow, someones already posting grime videos!

I'm thinking about making them the subject of my research assignment actually, although I'm not such in what capacity...

Simon, the videos you posted really show how things have changed for Roll Deep... I think the changes grime videos have gone through show not just a change in budgets but at the same time a change in the goals of the music...most of the earlier grime videos I have seen have focused on reflecting the musics lyrical content and highlighting the urban lifestyles of the MC's... just straight street videos basically, but you can see stuff beginning to change. I think that "Shake a Leg," video you posted really shows Roll Deep trying to broaden the aesthetic possibilities of their music to try and get more people interested in what they are doing.

Another video that does this is the new lethal b video, it really looks like he's attempting to break away from the traditional constraints of grime subject matter and his video certainly succeeds in creating a strong albeit ambiguous visual aesthetic...



In saying that the video does seem to be strongly modeled on the American rap video... mostly just a projection of the rappers ego/image but I suppose that's what MCing returns to again and again no matter what the genre. And with no other available model other than rap of how grime can become more popular yet at the same time maintain its 'credibility' I would certainly like to see some crews or MCs break this mold, maybe ruff sqwad when/if they get that kind of budget.

It is interesting seeing grime as a new genre attempting to assert it's identity through music videos. It would also be interesting to see what an instrumental grime video would look like, I've found electronic music in general seems to have a big problem with asserting itself in video form, far too often falling back on crap animation.

Grime's cousin Dubstep also faces this problems if it is too spread. Although I think dubstep is less concerned about mainstream popularity. As instrumental music it certainly provides an interesting space for experimentation.

I produce dubstep and have made a video for one of my tracks, it's called "Laser Gun Dub." PLUPLUGPLUGPLUG.



oh and more grime video links would be cool...

- Linus Norman

Indian silent film & live music AK 07

I'm having some trouble embedding YouTube vids due to account transfers etc. so in the meantime here's a bit of Prapancha Pash with Nitin Sawhney's soundtrack.

Official blurb in exoticism overdrive below:

Nitin Sawhney is firmly established as a world-class producer, songwriter, DJ and orchestral composer. He has become a latter-day renaissance man in the worlds of music, dance, theatre and film. Sawhney has scored over twenty-five films, most recently working with director, Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding, Vanity Fair), on her forthcoming feature for Fox Searchlight, The Namesake.

Continuing with the exploration of his South Asian roots, Sawhney has written a stunning soundtrack to the beautiful 1929 classic A Throw of Dice (Prapancha Pash), the third silent film in a trilogy by German, Franz Osten, considered by many as one the finest and most accomplished directors of all time.

A Throw of Dice, a tale from the Mahabarata, is the love story of Ranjit and the nefarious Sohan, two kings with a passion for gambling - and the same woman, Sunita. The film has not been on general release for over 70 years and has recently been completely restored by the British Film Institute.

The presentation of A Throw of Dice offers Auckland an opportunity to experience the combination of exotic and rare filmography with contemporary and evocative music in the magical setting of the iconic Civic Theatre.

The music is performed by Nitin Sawhney himself, his six exceptionally talented musicians and the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra.

The World Premiere of Sawhney's score was commissioned and presented by the Barbican, London on 21 April 2006 and was performed by the London Symphony Orchestra and
Nitin Sawhney's band.

"Sawhney's music - generated live on stage behind a screen - is gloriously varied and affecting, ranging throughswooning melismas on Indian sarod, to Asian dub and classical string trio." The Independent, UK

Event Details
Date:	Friday, 16 March 2007 - Saturday, 17 March 2007
Time:	7.30pm
Venue:	The Civic, THE EDGE®
Venue Address:	Cnr Queen St & Wellesley St
Location:	Auckland CBD, Auckland City, Auckland
Website:	www.aucklandfestival.co.nz

Isaac Julien in town

Isaac Julien is a queer black British filmmaker who has made several films that deal with black popular music and more important issues in the US, UK, Jamaica and other parts of the Black Atlantic: Looking For Langston, Young Soul Rebels, The Darker Side of Black, Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask, Baadasssss. He is in Auckland as part of AK 07 to open his installation piece True North at the AUT Gallery. He'll be talking today (Friday) and tomorrow (Saturday) at AUT. It's free. The exhibition runs from 9 March - 21 April 2007. More information/blurb below:


FRIDAY 9 MARCH

3pm
Isaac Julien speaks about his work True North
Gallery One
St Paul St
Free

SATURDAY 10 MARCH

11am
Isaac Julien & Nikos Papastergiadis in conversation
London based artist Isaac Julien discusses his practice and triennial installations True North and Paradise Lost with Nikos Papastergiadis, Associate Professor and Reader in the School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne.
AUT lecture theatre WE230
Free

Isaac Julien - True North

Isaac Julien's three-screen synchronised film installation, True North, 2004, is a meditation on the treacherous and complex journeys beckoned by the sublime and contested space of the North Pole. Julien's camera is at times continuous across the three screens, and alternately, sliced into a triptych, suggesting the multiple ways in which 'land' is perceived and, literally, apprehended. At one moment, the camera literally seems as though it is falling through the cavernous cracks in the ice, the sequences changing abruptly. At another, the shifting planes of the three screens meet in absolute harmony. Then one plane will slide behind another, or a screen is 'turned off' as it were, fading to black and allowing for iconic moments and singular images. The very real treachery of the ice is played out in these metaphorical slippages, suggesting both the elusive nature of 'true north' and the highly fraught notion of truth itself.

Julien has, for a number of years, been a forerunner in the use of parallel montage. Works such as Paradise Omeros (2002), Baltimore (2003), and Fantôme Créole (2005) explore issues of black identity across multiple screens. This principle of montage - the repetition, mirroring, doubling and interchanging of individual shots - emphasises at a technical level Julien's idea that memory is non-linear. In relation to True North, he says, "the idea of 're-memorizing' is different from the official discourses of History with a capital 'H'. A lower-case investigation into the historical material is at work in True North. Memory is not chronological." Historical memory is juxtaposed with contemporary imagery, and is thus revealed to be increasingly unreliable. The promise of existential uncertainty in the face of the snow-covered, icy and sublime landscape, (a clear reference to the tradition of 19th century sublime landscape painting, for example the works of Caspar David Friedrich) is continually undermined by the non-linear format of the work.

Shot in Iceland and Sweden, the film responds to the story of Matthew Henson, an African American, who took part in Robert Peary's expedition to the North Pole in 1909, and who was the first person to reach the geographic North Pole, True North, (as opposed to the magnetic North Pole). The minimal voiceover in Julien's film, which has the intimacy of a whisper, replays the tension between these two men which escalated to the point at which Henson, motivated by fear, had to remove the ammunition from his rifle at night and bury it in the snow. The men had a mutual dependence, however, with a respective double and constantly changing index.

The 'conquest', mapping and surveying of the world is a white undertaking - it is, in other words, colonisation. By casting the role of 'explorer' in the guise of a black woman, Julien contradicts the ideology of colonialism, which is assumed to be both white and male. At the same time he opposes the ideology of 'terra nullus' by making it obvious that the utmost north is inhabited, and that 'conquest' is therefore also always a form of theft. For example, Inuit men and women at work in the landscape are juxtaposed with a Christian church interior, hinting at the disputed histories of this location.

In True North, representation itself is revealed to be both an aesthetic and political challenge. The blazing beauty of white ice and the sonic thunder of the falling water is visualised as a paradoxical space. As the imagery shuttles between telescopic and panoramic journeys, the female subject of the film is simultaneously 'at home' in her icy environment, and at other times engulfed by it. In True North, Julien creates a new kind of topography in which black identity is not aligned to the nation state. Working to disrupt historical assumptions of colonisation and the aesthetic rules of the moving image itself, Julien invokes a fluctuating and experiential interpretation of the voyage.

Leonhard Emmerling and Victoria Lynn

Click here to visit Isaac Julien's Website

Sound + Image = Disturbing Results.

Here are two YouTube videos I've encountered over the last while that I thought might be relevant, or at least in some way interesting.

The first one is a good example of how changing the relationship between images and visuals can drastically change the emotional tenor of the result.

Here we have a montage of Star Trek images to the tune of Closer, by Nine Inch Nails. Be warned, the clip isn't work safe.



Secondly, we have a more comedic piece about the broader music environment. I thought it's a well-done piece of stand-up, and made me laugh.

lecture 2

at today's lecture, nabeel mentioned about "minstrelsy", where ethic groups imitated each others' characteristics and images to entertain audience. we watched al jolson, a jewish pinted his face black while performing, and it made me think of michael jackson.

as a black, who turned white, and the rest of the world enjoyed the criticism and loved the jacko moments. crowned king of the pop, jackson hit the top in 1982 with the album thriller, as "the first black artist to find stardom on mtv". however, his image went down hill over time, his changeable face structures and skin colour went along side with his crazy actions and child-molester accusations. seems like his private life drew more attentions and made home more popular than his career now days.

With the drama, popularity, and legacy, the black and white Michael Jackson remained an icon. Can minstrelsy be applied to this case? Maybe yes, and there might be more to it.

The Shining

Some of you may have watched the sunday horror on tv2 last weekend, it was Stanley Kubrick's 'The Shining' (1980). It had been a good 10 years or so since I last saw it so decided to watch it again and enjoyed it even more this time around. Anyway while browsing Shining-related stuff online in order to read some explanations of the ending I came across a spoof trailer on youtube which re-edits the film in order to make it look like a disney family movie:



I thought it made a great example of how essential music is to an audiences perception of a film, and how we automatically associate certain music with particular genres of film which can then shape how we interpret the images. I think if you knew nothing about the Shining this trailer would be completely believable as a family film even though essentially all they have done is change the music and narration.

For comparitive purposes here is the actual trailer, which interestingly uses no dialogue or narration at all but relies solely on the music and images to give the audience an idea of what kind of film it is:



Another shining-related point in relation to 'popular music' is the influence of the film on an old favorite music video of mine, Massive Attack's 'Karmacoma' (from around 1994 I think):



If you haven't seen the film it may not be so apparent just from watching the trailer but the long tracking shots in the hallway and interior style of the hotel rooms are very reminiscent of The Shining's setting, while other elements such as the twin girls, and the typing of 'karmacoma' over and over again in the closeup shot on the typewriter are the more obvious references to the film.

underground to mainstream in three easy clips

seeing as ive made a couple of comments so far and criticized OKgo a little and academic music a little more i thought i would put up some music i am really into. Then you can have a rip into it if its not your cup of tea.

ive got three clips here that show how music changes the more money you add and then of course the more people you have to get to like it so you get your money back.

the first is, i'm guessing about 2002, because dizzee rascal is still in roll deep. its a continuous shot on a handy cam so its about as far away from mtv strobe light television as you can get. no sound mastering at all. Grime can be kinda hard on the ears people new to it so if you fully dislike the first video skip to about 6mins40 and just watch a real young dizzee.



The second is an actual music video played on digital music television in the uk. i don't fully understand how it works but i think theres a directory of a whole lot music and you choose the video you want to watch through your sky decoder. It would have definitely been funded by the artist and is lowww budget video but amazing music. the first guy is called mercston and the guy in the skeleton jumper is called ghetto




The third video is what made it to NZ. this was played on c4, juice and alt quite a bit. its the same guys in the first clip a few years down the track with a label behind them. they were heavily criticized by the scene for releasing a commercial sounding album. I disagree, the track i chose specifically deals with the mainstream/underground dilemma check the skit at the start. by the way the white dude isnt a record company addition hes a well respected mc from the scene




anyway make your own minds up. ive got heaps links of links to more musical fire if anyones interested or would be keen to hear what you think changes as funds go up.

Just To Start Us Off...

Wow this blog seems to be so far a two horse race. And since neither are being graded on it, also fairly pointless. So I thought I would open things up with a quick note about a question I have been asking myself recently, music for films or films for music?

It seems when watching some of the newer films, the prominance of the music seemingly overtakes the film itslef. It could be argued that the music is a character in the film and moves the plot along, changes plot and even creates most of the emotion. Personally though, I like films that use music to complement the film, not control it.

Take Almost Famous as my example. While I love this film, it's salute to the music of director Cameron Crowe's childhood is as important as the film itself. While it is a film about music, when watching it last night I actually just did for the use of the music. There is a great piece that was edited together to go with Stairway To Heaven, then they couldn't afford the rights to it, so the DVD tells you when to press play, it's a great thing to look at if you haven't.

So it's just a small post with a question I don't have an answer to, but would like your opinion... Happy Blogging!

And in what might become a regular feature...

And here begins week two.

Around fifty people have successfully signed up for the blog, so anyone reading this who hasn't recieved an invitation should send me an email and I'll get right on it.

Since the paper is about popular music on screen, I thought that talking about some music might be an interesting place to start even if it is in absence of the screen element.

I only really became interested in music relatively recently, and as such I have little handle on what it is that I like. What I thought I'd do was put up an instrumental piece (assuming a cat can count as an instrument) as a talking point, since it is imaginatively strange, and see what people think.

Vladiswar Nadishana - Cats Love Song

This might happen again if people were interested, and I guess people should feel free to share their own weird music as something to talk about - with the caveat that Music We Wouldn't Otherwise Hear is probably the order of the day, so a focus on things that don't get airplay in New Zealand or haven't been pimped to death in Sounds.

The MP3 will stay up for a week, so have a listen if you're interested. I advise not downloading it at university due to paying for all that bandwidth.

- Kevin.