THE BLACK KEYS

The Black Keys move beyond blooze with El Camino

by Matt Ashare

The Black Keys outdo themselves on the new El Camino

It was far, far too easy when the Black Keys emerged in 2002 to see the duo as essentially the flip side to the stripped-down blues-inflected rawk the White Stripes had by then already coined and, well, begun making a mint out of. Jack and Meg White came from the terminally recessed Motor City; Keys' guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney spent their teens in the industrial wasteland of Akron, Ohio, a city best know for supplying Detroit auto manufacturers with, ah, tires. It was a parallel too perfect to pass up; as the good folks at GM might have said, "If the steel-belted radial fits, drive it."

       But locked in the bloozy grooves of the Black Keys' first three rapidly released albums — 2002's The Big Come Up, 2003's Thickfreakness, and 2004's Rubber Factory — was an inconvenient truth that had nothing to do with carbon emissions. To keep the automotive metaphor alive for one more line, the gutbucket Black Keys were clearly driving on a different highway to hell than the schticky, if somewhat more colorful, White Stripes. If the Whites were building up to the spectacle of epic Jimmy Page guitar heroics, the Blacks, for all their grounding in the same Mississippi Delta mud that Zeppelin took off from, also had at least one foot firmly planted in the garage where amped-up ’60s psychedelia was fashioned from spare parts left over from the original British Invasion.

The Black Keys, El Camino (Nonesuch)

       Okay, so maybe that's a bit of an oversimplification. But I ain't hating on the White Stripes, so cut me some slack. Besides, along with the blues standard "Leavin' Trunk," the Black Keys actually covered one of my favorite Beatles tunes, "She Said, She Said," on The Big Come Up. Seriously, check it out. And they paid tribute to twisted Seattle garage-punks the Sonics with a wigged-out, fuzztoned version of their take on the Richard Berry classic "Have Love, Will Travel" on Thickfreakness. And. . . well, you get the point, right? I know, I know, they've also made a habit out of doing tunes by the late, great Mississippi bluesman Junior Kimbrough, but I'm pretty sure that just proves my point. As for Jack White: he had to start a whole other band, the Raconteurs, when he got the itch to play popmeister.

       Still not hating on the Stripes. But, while Jack's been playing producerman in Nashville and popping up from time to time on projects like this year's Danger Mouse-helmed faux soundtrack album Rome, Auerbach and Carney have just kept trucking along, artfully adding new sonic twists to their well-worn bag of tricks at every stop along the way. The latest, the new El Camino, was recorded after the duo relocated to Nashville, and, it's the second they've produced in collaboration with a DJ mashup master turned analog audiophile who goes by the name of Danger Mouse.

       It's almost as if, for some perverse purpose, they've embraced the whole White/Black narrative. But that's beside the point because, as ridiculous as it might be to insist that El Camino represents a major artistic breakthrough for the Black Keys — particularly after the multiple Grammy-winning breakthrough of last year's "Brothers" — that's exactly where I'm headed here. Brothers, for all its trippy trappings, found the band self-consciously revisiting their r&b roots on a road trip to Muscle Shoals. With Danger Mouse back on board, El Camino distills the very best of what's bluesy about the Black Keys, and then builds on that with plenty of keyboards by one B. Burton (a/k/a Danger Mouse), thumping basslines, a trio of female background singers, and I swear I hear some vintage E Street Band glockenspiel behind the massed vocals, chainsaw guitar, and the muscular drums of the shuffling first single, "Lonely Boy," and the raw, melodic surge of "Dead and Gone." 

       It's a bit like Auerbach, Carney, and Burton have found their way to Phil Spector's legendary "wall of sound" without sacrificing any of the grit that's defined the Black Keys since their inception. "Gold on the Ceiling" takes a riff that ZZ Top would be proud to call their own, delivers it with a little T-Rex glam swagger, and outfits it with a soulful if somewhat nonsensical chorus ("Gold on the ceiling/I ain't blind/It's just a matter of time/Before you steal it/It's alright/Ain't guarding my high"). Auerbach, who tends to go for cadence over depth when it comes to lyrics, opens "Little Black Submarine" (it's about a girl, not a boat, or maybe just a sly nod in the general direction of the Beatles) accompanying himself with a fingerpicked acoustic figure that carries just a whisper of "Stairway to Heaven," before the track begins its slow build to full-on blooze-rock bliss, replete with hammering Bonham drums and big, burly powerchords. Auerbach may even be channeling Jimmy Page in the outro solo, but he does so with a certain raw subtlety.

       Ultimately, what distinguishes El Camino is the adventurous attitude the Black Keys bring to making what, at essence, is simply really great, unpretentious rock and roll. Nothing more, and nothing less. They're rootsy without being reverent, fun without being flippant, and they achieve a certain heaviness without resorting to hard-rock cliche. That may not seem like much. But there just aren't many bands you can say that about.

GORILLAZ

Damon Albarn delivers an actual singles collection from the virtual Gorillaz 

By Matt Ashare

November 30, 2011

The Burg

Gorillaz, The Singles Collection 2001-2011 (Virgin)

I had every intention of of approaching Gorillaz new ten-year retrospective compilation The Singles Collection 2001-2011 as purely a musical entity — just fifteen tracks from the "virtual" band's three proper studio albums, including two remixes. But then I found myself actually stranded on or in "Plastic Beach," Gorillaz's interactive virtual recording studio complex, which is actually located at the band's website. Okay, so it's essentially a role-playing game, and I'm still stuck trying to identify the various captains (so far I've got Captain Crunch, Captain America, Captain Cook, and a handful of others) on the "Captains Wall" in the study, although I will confess that from time to time I wander over to the fish tank to drop little nuggets of a Spam-like substance to a hungry little bugger swimming around in there just to pick up some points.

       Perhaps I should backtrack a bit. When Gorillaz got off the ground back in 2000, it was billed as a multi-media collaboration between Damon Albarn, the cheeky frontman of ’90s Brit-pop sensation Blur, comic book artist Jamie Hewlett of Tank Girl fame, and SF hip-hop producer Dan "The Automator" Nakamura — an eclectic, brainy bunch, to be sure. To further diversify, Albarn brought Talking Heads/Tom Tom Club bassist Tina Weymouth and drummer Chris Franz, Cibo Matto multi-instrumentalist Miho Hatori, rapper Del tha Funkee Homosapien, and a couple of Nakamura's pals, DJs Deltron 3030 and Kid Koala, along for the first Gorillaz studio adventure, a self-titled 2001 album that merged hip-hop beats, Brit-pop hooks, dubby production, and playful programming into something both unique and accessible to the tune of roughly 7 million units moved worldwide. Yet, in typically puckish fashion, Albarn asked to have Gorrilaz withdrawn for consideration after it was nominated for Britain's prestigious Mercury Prize.

       Meanwhile, Hewlett set about creating characters, storylines, and, in very Tank Girl fashion, an entire dystopic world for Gorillaz. The band's titular frontman, singer/keyboardist/guitarist 2-D, would appear to be an Albarn avatar — a black-eyed, spiky-haired, nihilistic punk with mischief on his mind. And then there's tall, dark, roguishly handsome bassist Murdoc; guitar ace Noodle, a little Japanese grrrl who looks like she was plucked straight out of a futuristic Anime series; and, on drums, a rather large b-boy who goes by the name of Russel. Along with the dozens of futuristic videos Hewlett's produced for his creations — including one for each of the tracks on The Singles Collection — there's a 304-page band biography (Rise of the Ogre), and several DVDs documenting the various "phases" of Gorillaz (there have been three, one for each studio album).

       For all of Hewlett's stylistic flash, it's still an awful lot to get one's mind around, particularly for an entity that doesn't really exist. And yet, you kinda have to admire the lengths to which Albarn and Hewlett have gone in marketing a project that, at its core, is essentially a commentary on how art and music are branded in the digital age. In 2004, they went so far as to create a viral marketing campaign at rejectfalseicons.com based around the line "reject false icons" from the "Rock It" single. But I won't get into that here. . .

       If you're not sure whether you've ever heard a Gorillaz tune, chances are you have: the upbeat dance track "Feel Good Inc.," featuring the members of De La Soul sparring maniacally with a melancholy Albarn, wasn't just one of the better charting singles on Gorillaz's 2005 album Demon Days, it also formed the basis for one of Apple's more successful iPod ad campaigns. (If you're a gamer — video, that is — then there are a couple of other tracks on The Singles Collection that are likely to sound familiar.) And, just last year, Albarn made the Apple connection again when he produced an entire downloadable Gorillaz disc, The Fall, using an iPad and featuring, among others, former Clash guitarist and bassist Mick Jones and Paul Simonon, who'd also been part of a touring version of Gorillaz.

       All the extras — from Jones and Simonon, to rapper Mos Def and r&b singer Bobby Womack (they turn up together on the spacey techno-funk single "Stylo"), to the cast of characters Hewlett has created — have threatened, at times, to overshadow the substance of Albarn's Gorillaz, namely the songs themselves. And, make no mistake, Albarn is the primary musical force behind Hewlett's cartoon caricatures. Indeed, the chronologically arranged Singles Collection essentially traces the evolution of Albarn's clever take on pomo hip-pop, which is often every bit as peculiarly British as was Blur's brand of guitar-based rock. That's especially true on a track like "DARE," a blue-eyed soul number with falsetto vocals that features intermittent declamations by former Happy Mondays mumbler Shaun Ryder, and the more hip-hoppity breakfast treat "Superfast Jellyfish," a techno twister that pairs De La Soul with Welsh singer Gruff Rhys of Super Furry Animals.

       And then there's the relatively straightforwardly reflective "On Melancholy Hill," a melodic mid-tempo number that finds Albarn on hooky terrain that's not much of a leap from where he once stood with Blur. Maybe that's really the point of having a virtual band to hide behind: ultimately, it gives Albarn the freedom to take Gorillaz in whatever direction he choses, even if that means handing the microphone over to a relatively unknown Manchester soul singer named Daley for the yearning "Doncamatic," a disco throwback that's also Gorillaz most recent single.

       As for me, I'm still trying to conquer the "Captains Wall" so that I can move on to the next level of "Plastic Beach."

AU REVIOUR R.E.M.

R.E.M. bow out with a two-CD career retrospective

By Matt Ashare

November 16, 2011

The Burg

R.E.M., Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage 1982-2011 (Warner Bros.)

R.E.M. dropped two bombshells this year. Back in March, the enigmatic big little band who put Athens, Georgia, on the musical map when they emerged three decades ago, released Collapse Into Now, their 15th album in 31 years, and one that may very well stand as one of the best in their long and storied career. Then, in late September, singer Michael Stipe, guitarist Pete Buck, and bassist Mike Mills posted this on the R.E.M. website: "As R.E.M., and as lifelong friends and co-conspirators, we have decided to call it a day as a band. We walk away with a great sense of gratitude, of finality, and of astonishment at all we have accomplished. To anyone who ever felt touched by our music, our deepest thanks for listening."

       I suppose we could have seen — or heard — the break-up coming. Not once, but twice, Stipe barks the line, "It's just like me to overstay my welcome, man," on the defiant "All the Best," the second track and one of the stand-outs on Collapse Into Now. And, the song's undulating chorus, bolstered by some vintage Buck arpeggios, finds Stipe proclaiming, "Let's sing and rhyme/Let's give it one more time/Let's show the kids how to do it/Fine, fine, fine."

       Then again, R.E.M. have seemed on the verge of collapse, or perhaps merely disintegration, a number of times since 1997, when original drummer Bill Berry quit, leaving his three former compatriots to drift through downers like 1998's Up and 2001's amorphous Reveal. But by 2008, with the release of the revved-up and aptly titled Accelerate, R.E.M. appeared to be back on solid ground, playing with purpose and a renewed sense of urgency. That sense of purpose clearly carried over to Collapse Into Now, an album that plays to so many of the band's strengths, from the soaring powerchord rock ("Discoverer"), to mandolin-laced melancholy ("Überlin"), to strum-and-drone ambience ("Blue").

       Not bad for a swan song. And, yet, there's more. As we approach a year that started with Buck guesting on The King Is Dead, the Decemberists' big breakthrough album, we've finally got something along the lines of a definitive R.E.M. retrospective, the career-spanning, two-CD Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage 1982-2011. I say "finally" because, while there have been over half a dozen previous compilations, the band's catalog – and, in a sense, their career itself — had, until now, been split between the five albums and one EP released by the semi-independent label IRS in the ’80s, and everything that came after the band signed to Warner Bros. in 1988, the year the radio-friendly Green came out.

       Part Lies. . . — a 40-track, chronological trip from the beginning to the end that includes three previously unreleased tracks recorded after Collapse Into Now — may not come as a revelation to hardcore R.EM. fans. But, in its own way, it is revealing. R.E.M. have been credited time and time again with laying the groundwork for and even inventing what's come to be known as "indie-rock." But you get a visceral sense of what that really means when you go back and listen to their earliest recordings. The lush rush of "Gardening at Night" (from the band's debut EP Chronic Town) and soft surge of "Radio Free Europe" (from their first album, Murmur) surely inspired imitators. But what made R.E.M. so unique in the early ’80s had as much to do with their stance as with their sound. They didn't just cut against prevailing trends in realm of commercial pop; they also didn't conform to the loud, fast rules of the punk/hardcore underground.

       In that sense — by making music that was both "different" and accessible — they pursued a third path to success on their own terms. That may not seem particularly radical now, with bands like the Arcade Fire and the Decemberists making a go of it in whatever’s left of a “mainstream.” But it was essentially unheard of when R.E.M. began their gradual ascent with odd little songs like the slightly twangy “So. Central Rain” and the yearning “Fall On Me.”

       Even after R.E.M. had established themselves as an arena-ready act with singles like the upbeat “Stand” and the dewy “Everybody Hurts,” they retained their eccentricity, penning the Andy Kaufman ode “Man on the Moon” and turning an odd incident involving Dan Rather into the hook for the chart-topping “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?” The under two-minutes of the quirky “A Month of Saturdays,” one of the three new tracks here, and the Collapse Into Now rocker “Alligator_Aviator_Autopilot_Antimatter” are a timely reminder, in the wake of the break-up, that, if nothing else, R.E.M. never settled for normal. That’s the story Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage 1982-2011 tells. And, it is a compelling one.

TOM WAITS

Tom Waits celebrates his staying power on Bad As Me

By Matt Ashare

Tom Waits, Bad As Me (Anti-)

BAD TO THE BONE: 'I've been here since Eisenhauer"

Tom Waits hasn't quite done it all – he's just done a whole helluva lot since he first emerged as something of an odd duck in the early ’70s. With a penchant for vaudevillian theatrics, an abiding affinity for deep blues and late-night jazz, and a proclivity for rockist experimentation, the prolific Waits has spent most of his career as an acquired taste, a delicacy of sorts. Working on the fringes and behind the scenes, he's seen his songs covered by Bruce Springsteen ("Jersey Girl") and Rod Stewart ("Downtown Train"), to name just two; played supporting roles in films by Robert Altman (Short Cuts) and Francis Ford Coppola (The Outsiders and Bram Stoker's Dracula); and collaborated with avant-garde playwright/director Robert Wilson on two musicals, The Black Rider and Alice. Along the way, he's collected his fair share of accolades, including a Best Original Song Score Oscar nomination for Coppola's One From the Heart, a Best Alternative Album Grammy for 1992's Bone Machine, and an induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame earlier this year. And yet, until now, with the release last week of his 20th proper studio album, Bad As Me, Waits has never debuted in the top ten of the Billboard top 200 sales charts.

      Bad As Me, which hit number six its first week out, is the first collection of new material Waits has recorded since 2004's Real Gone. And it does boast an impressive guest list, including Keith Richards, who plays guitar on four of the disc's 13 tracks; Los Lobos multi-instrumentalist David Hidalgo (four tracks); and Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea (one track). Avant guitarist Marc Ribot, Primus bassist Les Claypool, and Tom's son, drummer Casey Waits, are among the more notable players who round out the cast. But the real difference makers on Bad As Me are the songs themselves, all of which were written and produced by Waits with his wife Kathleen Brennan. It's as if the two made a conscious decision not necessarily to iron all the wrinkles out of Waits' style, but to perhaps smooth over some of the rougher edges in an effort to create a more accessible variation on some familiar plots.

      The disc opens with Richards riffing Exile-style on the chugging blues of “Chicago.” Here, Waits deploys his trademark Howlin’ Wolf baritone growl as he conjures the mix of hope and desperation that led to what’s become known as the “Great Migration,” the early 20^th-century movement of millions of African-Americans from the South to the Midwestern cities like Chicago. It’s a song that could have been written decades ago, yet it resonates with uncanny immediacy in these times of slow economic recovery.

      “Chicago” is hardly a blueprint for Bad As Me. Instead of sticking to one sonic palette or staying on genre, so to speak, Waits tries on a number of the different hats he’s worn over the years. “Talking At the Same Time” is a slow swinging number with tinkling lounge piano, a tasteful horn section, and ethereal vibrato guitar that finds Waits singing in a world-weary falsetto about our troubled times. “A tiny boy sat and he played in the sand,” Waits croons, “He made a sword from a stick and a gun from his hand/We bailed out all the millionaires/They got all the fruit/We got the rind/Everybody’s talking at the same time.”

      Waits goes into mad daddy mode on the disc’s title track, a wigged-out celebration of geek love driven by a trash-can drums and outfitted with surf-style guitar licks and a honking baritone sax. And, over another very Exstylish Richards riff, he barks maniacally about his having his vertebrae rolled “like dice” and his skull being a “home for mice” when he’s “gone.” Aptly enough, the song’s called “Satisfaction.” But, just in case you miss the Stones reference, Waits drives home the point with a wink and a nod: “Now Mr. Jagger and Mr. Richards/I will scratch where I’m itching.”

      On the mellower side, Waits has fun with rhymes like “Ocean wants a sailor/Gun wants a hand/Money wants a spender/And the road wants a man” in “Face the Highway,” a haunted goodbye that drips with stoic defeat. The combination of Augie Meyers’ accordion and Hidalgo’s violin, helps lend the spare, tragic “Pat Me” an air of drunken cabaret. And Richards teams up to sing harmony with Waits on the largely acoustic “Last Leaf,” a countrified homage to aging, if not gracefully, then at least with a certain sense of pride. “They say I’ve got staying power here on the tree,” Waits intones, “I’ve been here since Eisenhower/And I’ve outlived even he.”

      As the album nears its end, Waits gets into character as a casualty of war in the most outwardly dissonant track here, the protest tune “Hell Broke Luce.” Noisy percussion, serrated guitars, and the sound of machine-gun fire punctuate points like “How is it that the only ones responsible for making this mess/Got their sorry asses staples to a desk?” And he closes out the affair on a gorgeously sad note, with yet another of his perfectly pitched odes to the broken souls of the world, the poetically bittersweet ballad “New Year’s Eve.”

      It’s hard at this point to imagine the 61 year-old Waits as anything other than the cult artist he’s always been. But it sure does feel like the cult of Waits is growing. . .
http://www2.the-burg.com/entertainment/2011/nov/09/tom-waits-celebrates-his-staying-power-keith-richa-ar-1446733/ 

THE ANATOMY OF FRANK

Dissecting The Anatomy of Frank

By: MATT ASHARE
Published: November 02, 2011

THE ANATOMY OF FRANK ON FULL DISPLAY

It's a warm Thursday afternoon in mid-October, and Anatomy of Frank frontman Kyle Woolard appears remarkably fresh-faced, bright-eyed, and just plain chipper for a guy who just spent three months criss-crossing the continent on an 80-date solo tour. He pops out of his road-tested minivan wearing multi-colored neon high-tops, cut-offs, and a well worn t-shirt bearing gifts — a large cookie and a copy of the Anatomy of Frank's three-song debut EP, the cryptically titled "relax, there's nothing here but old pictures." Oh, and Woolard, who's bringing the full Anatomy of Frank line-up — guitarist Erik Larsen, keyboardist Jimmy Bulls, bassist George Faulknier, and drummer Chris Garay — to Lynchburg this Friday for a Rivermont Pizza gig, was up well into the a.m. the night before, he informs me, after a celebratory homecoming show in Charlottesville. Let's just say the guy's got a certain energy about him, an infectious kind of enthusiasm that radiates from his pores.

       A small-town Virginia native who turned up at U.Va with pre-med in mind a half-dozen years ago, Woolard eventually gravitated toward astronomy and, poetically enough, was drafted to play guitar in the Charlottesville band Astronomers. But Woolard had musical ideas of his own and last November he played his final Astronomers gig, took a bunch of songs he'd written, and found a band to flesh out Frank's anatomy.

       If "relax" is any indication, Woolard draws on an eclectic palette. "Saturday Morning," the EP's opening track, brings to mind Pavement on a banjo binge, with Woolard laconically delivering slanted enchantments like "If I could bend you with my powers/I'd make you fall asleep for hours." As the track builds toward an exuberant chorus, keyboards, horns, and a whole lot of other voices and instruments join the party until it resembles an art-skewed hootenanny. Track two, "Bill Murray," is a more straightforward number with piano chordings and earnest vocals that seem to be headed in the general direction of Coldplay melodrama until the synths arrive and drive the affair into neo-new wave terrain. And Woolard tops things off with a bittersweet, fingerpicked acoustic rumination on "cities made of solitude" and headlights that "drift like lanterns through kaleidoscopes.”

       Over a pizza lunch at RP, a gregarious Woolard offered insights into the genesis of Frank, his musical vision, and an odd collection of strange instruments he collected on the road. Here's some of what he had to say. . .

Q: Is there a real Frank?

A: Well, I drew this picture of Frank — it's on our website. He has a shag haircut, trimmed mustache, dashing smile, and a v-neck sweater. He made me chuckle, but he also had this universal charm to him. The name is kind of ideal for me because it's ambiguous. People aren't sure what to make of it. But I think once they start listening, they start to get it. I've had people tell me that if we get a record deal they're going to make us change the name. This may sound silly, and it may sound like I'm a sensitive artist, but I won't do that.

Q: Is the ambiguity a reflection of the eclectic nature of the band? If I didn't know better, I'd think the three songs on the EP were by three different bands.

A: That's something I worry about. I really don't have a method, and I never write songs the same way. But I want to stress that we're not trying to sound any particular way. I do think our sound will come together, and I'm at peace with that. We're a young band, and as five people we're going to find a more consistent sound because we're not trying to be a variety act.

Q: But there is a tongue-in-cheek quality to what you do. I mean "Bill Murray" doesn't really have anything to do with the real Bill Murray, right?

A: I was originally writing that for Astronomers, but I couldn't think of a name for it. Then, I was up with a friend one night, and I told him I was going to call it 'Bill Murray Lost My Virginity.' Not like he took it, but he actually lost it, like in Sweden or somewhere. So that's what we called it, except it got shortened to 'Bill Murray.' I guess deep down we're a little sarcastic at times. We're young and cynical. We'll grow out of it eventually.

Q: What is the difference between the Anatomy of Frank when it's just you and when it’s a full band?

A: We’re a band. But it would be hard to ask the guys to quit their jobs just to go on the road with me when I can create something that has the full-band energy by myself and do the grunt work by going to these cities, and laying down a foundation. Then when we go back to these places as a full band, we'll have more people, better guarantees, and I'll be able to offer them more of a living.

Q: So you didn't just grab a guitar and hit the road?

A: No, I didn't want to do an acoustic tour. That can be nice, but it's kind of boring. You have to expect people to sit down and really listen to you. Whereas when you have something that can get loud, it has the ability to overtake people, and whether they want to listen or not they get drawn in. So, I got a keyboard, a sampler, a laptop, acoustic guitar, some drums, toy piano, melodica, a loop station, and delay pedals. I took the band's songs, deconstructed them, and put them back together as an electronic show. I think it would have been cheesy to take all the parts the band usually plays, put them in Garage Band, and just play along with that. My big thing was that I wanted to create all the sounds myself. It let me get inside the songs and see what was possible. And, throughout the tour I collected little instruments like a thumb piano and a toy piano. It's a good way to come up with ideas that you might not think of on your regular instrument.

Q: How did you go from being an astronomy major to an Astronomer to the face of Frank?

A: I wanted to be a doctor, but I figured out that that wasn't going to make me happy. I've always had this feeling that, no matter what I'm doing, I'm wasting my time. . . like I should be doing something else. When I was little, I figured there must be something that would be the biggest purpose I could have in life. And astrophysics interested me a lot. So I switched. I thought it was a way of dealing with the biggest questions in the world. But even that didn't do it. What I've found is that despite astronomy being a big endeavor, the biggest endeavor of all is being happy, because that's all we have. So now I can sit and do music for 16 hours a day and go to bed at night feeling like I've had a great day. That was my college experience. Some people might say that I wasted four years. But those were the four years it took for me to really find what I wanted to do. . . even if it doesn't really require a college degree.

http://www2.the-burg.com/entertainment/2011/nov/02/dissecting-anatomy-frank-ar-1429516/ 

Virginia Film Festival part II

Virginia Film Festival expands without losing its local flavor

By: MATT ASHARE
Published: November 02, 2011

Last year's Virginia Film Festival opened in grand style with a sold-out screening of Darren Aronofsky's masterful, Oscar contender "Black Swan," easily one of the most talked about films of 2010. It also went on to break VFF box-office records by something in the neighborhood of 25 percent. And the 2011 VFF, which runs from November 3 through the 6th at U.Va, appears poised to match, if not surpass that triumph. Festival director Jody Kielbasa, who took over the position three years ago with a mission to, in his words, "screen the latest and best films in any given year," has scored a second opening-night coup with yet another highly anticipated screening: "The Descendents," Oscar-winning screenwriter/director Alexander Payne's first new film since he hit paydirt with critics and the Academy in 2004, with the tragicomic, Cali wine-country drama "Sideways."

       This year's "Centerpiece Screening," a literary tale staring Glenn Close as title character "Albert Nobbs," a role she originated on stage in 1982 in an adaptation of the George Moore short story "The Singular Life of Albert Nobbs," also looks to be a winner. Directed by Rodrigo Garcia, the son of famed Columbian writer/poet Gabriel Garcia Marquez, it features Mia Wasikowska, Janet McTeer, Bonnie Curtis, and Julie Lynn, who will will all join Garcia for the special screening. And, for closing night, Kielbasa scored acclaimed underground director Jill Sprecher's first big attempt at a commercial crossover, "Thin Ice," a grifter thriller with a cast that boasts Greg Kinnear, Billy Crudup, Alan Arkin, and Lea Thompson. 

       Along with raising the VFF's profile by bringing in films that are big draws at most of the larger, better known annual festivals, Kielbasa has also taken special care to keep the focus on the great Commonwealth of Virginia. Five years ago, both Larry Flynt and one of Lynchburg's own, the late Jerry Falwell, showed up in Charlottesville for a tenth anniversary screening of Milos Forman's biopic "The People vs. Larry Fynt." This year, Flynt will be back to discuss First Amendment rights at a 15th anniversary screening of the film. Director Oliver Stone will also be on hand, not just to present his 1991 blockbuster "JFK," but to participate in a discussion of the Kennedy assassination with U.Va professor Larry Sabato, who's writing a book on Kennedy's life and political legacy.

       But the Virginia-centric angle doesn't end there. For over a year, Kielbasa has been forging a relationship with the Library of Congress' National Film Registry, which was created in 1988 to preserve and restore films deemed to be "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” at a facility in Culpeper, VA, just 45-minutes north of Charlottesville. As a result, five of those films will be screened at this year's VFF under the heading "Turner Classic Movies and The Library of Congress Celebrate The National Film Registry." As Kielbasa explains, "Screening classic films is something the Festival has always done. I wanted to retain that element, but do it in a more focused way."

       To that end, Kielbasa not only enlisted the support of TCM, whose weekend host Ben Mankiewicz is traveling from LA to introduce the five films in the series, but he also targeted films that have links to Virginia. "We looked at director Terrence Malick, who has two films in the Registry — 'Days of Heaven' and 'Badlands.' It just made all the sense in the world to screen 'Badlands' because Sissy Spacek and Jack Fisk live outside of Charlottesville. They met during the film, and Jack's been working with Malick for years." Both Spacek, who stared in 'Badlands,' and her husband Fisk, will be present for the VFF screening.  

       On a more grassroots level, Kielbasa has amped up the VFF's commitment to promoting and fostering a burgeoning local filmmaking scene as part of the Festival. This year's program includes everything from David Dillehunt rockumentary about the Charlottesville indie band Astronomers ("We Are Astronomers") and Richard Knox Robinson's "Rothstein's First Assignment," which uncovers some uncomfortable truths about the creation of Shenandoah National Park in 1935, to Saturday screening of shorts and features selected by the Virginia Film Office. And Kielbasa has high praise for "Growing Up Cason," a documentary by Doug Bari about a local family who who weathered the great depression in Charlottesville, sent seven sons off to fight in WWII, and were instrumental in founding the Charlottesville City Market.

THE BROTHERS CASON

       Bari, a writer/director who moved to Charlottesville with his wife Judy in 2003 and subsequently started a business making vanity films about people's lives to support his more artistic endeavors, more or less lucked into the story of the Casons. In 2004, the VFF screened his fictional feature "Cold Readings." Four years later, a short he filmed on Conrad Brooks, one of the last surviving cast members from the Ed Wood cult classic "Plan Nine From Outer Space," made the cut. In the midst of all that, he stumbled upon the stories behind the story of Cason family.

       "My wife and I started this film business," he recalls, "but we had no idea how much it would cost in time and materials to make a film about someone's life. We needed a business model. So, we threw that idea out to some friends, and someone came forward with an idea. He had a family who's niece worked for him, and he thought it would interesting to do a film on them. There were seven brothers from Charlottesville went to fight in World War II, and they all returned. What's so interesting about them is that they've remained close up until this day. . . For over a hundred years they've been having a family reunion every year. I've been to a couple of them and they were more than 100 or even 200 people there."

       It took a little finesse to convince the close-knit Conrad clan to open up their lives to him. But once the camera started rolling, the stories did too. "My first interview was with Ezra, the oldest living brother at the time," Bari recounts. "I asked him to tell me about his life, and he was done in like two or three minutes. So I started packing up the camera to leave, but he stopped me and said there was another thing he wanted to talk about. He ended up talking for about three hours."

       Bari was fortunate enough to have gotten some sage advice several years earlier from one of the great documentarians of the 20th century, Albert Maysles, whose many credits include "Gimme Shelter," "Grey Gardens," and, most recently, "Rufus Wainwright — Milwaukee at Last." As Bari tells it, "Albert had a talk with me. I told him I did non-documentary feature work, and I wanted to know what his advice to a documentary maker would be. He said, 'When I was coming up you had to use film, and that limited you to ten-minute reels. Now, with digital video, you can shoot for hours. My advice is not to ask questions. Just let them speak and you'll be amazed at what comes out of their mouths.' When I told Albert about the Casons, and how they were this big family who all got along really well, he said, 'I wish more people would make movies about families who are functional.'"

       With the Maysles method firmly in mind, Bari simply let the Casons do the talking. And, as his camera rolled, big chunks of local history came pouring out. "They do have a family historian," says Bari. "When she saw some of the raw footage from the film she asked me how I got them to tell me all these stories — stories she had never heard. I told her that I just let them ramble. . ."

       (For more information about the Virginia Film Festival, a complete schedule, and tickets, visit www.virginiafilmfestival.org.)

http://www2.the-burg.com/entertainment/2011/nov/02/virginia-film-festival-expands-without-losing-its--ar-1430139/ 

Virginia Film Festival part I

Exposing the archive

Library of Congress series was Kielbasa’s pet 

By Matt Ashare 

Over a year ago, as the Virginia Film Festival was gearing up for what turned out to be the most successful run in its 24-year history, Jody Kielbasa was already looking ahead to 2011, with an ambitious plan for widening its scope. “One of the things the Festival had been doing in the years before I was brought on as director in 2008 was to screen a lot of classic films,” he said. “I wanted to shift the focus to more contemporary films. Basically, we were aiming to screen the latest and the best films in any given year. But, I also wanted to include classic films, only in a more focused way.”

PICTURE THIS: Restoring the classics in Culpeper

     By almost any standard, Kielbasa succeeded in the first part of his plan. Last year’s Festival opened with a sold out screening of one of 2010’s most talked about films, the Darren Aronofsky psychological thriller Black Swan, which went on to earn Academy Award nominations for Best Picture and Best Director, and won Natalie Portman the Oscar for Best Actress. This year, on November 3, the 2011 VFF kicks off with another highly anticipated film, Oscar-winning screenwriter and director Alexander Payne’s The Descendants, his first since the widely acclaimed 2004 dramedy Sideways. 

But Kielbasa has also come up with a way to implement the other facet of his vision—namely, to create a coherent program of classic films. Under the banner of “Turner Classic Movies and The Library of Congress Celebrate The National Film Registry,” the Festival will feature screenings of Terrence Malick’s Badlands (1973); the 1926 Buster Keaton silent The General; Robert Altman’s oft overlooked McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971); John Huston’s epic 1948 Humphrey Bogart drama The Treasure of the Sierra Madre; and, from 1944, the Oscar-winning National Velvet, starring Elizabeth Taylor as a 12-year-old steeplechase contender.

The title may be a mouthful, but the program’s premise is remarkably, if rather ingeniously, straightforward. The National Film Registry was created by Congress in 1988 as a means of preserving films that are “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” The Library of Congress selects 25 such works each year and stores them at the Packard Campus for Audio-Visual Conservation in Culpeper, just 45 minutes north of town. So Kielbasa was simply tapping into a nearby resource for some of the best films in the world.

“I went on a tour of the facility about a year and a half ago,” he said. “It’s built into the side of a mountain, and it used to be a bank vault where they stored gold bullion during the Cold War. If you can picture that scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark where the ark is stored in that government warehouse, that’s kind of what this place is like. There’s also a preservation room where technicians restore damaged films, sometimes literally working with a scalpel on one frame. It’s a fascinating process, and you can see how it’s done on These Amazing Shadows, a new documentary about the Packard Campus that we’re also screening as part of the Festival.”

Festival director Jody Kielbasa.

Once Kielbasa had established a relationship with the Library of Congress, he approached the folks at Turner Classic Movies to help in the selection process. And TCM weekend host Ben Mankiewicz is coming all the way from Los Angeles to introduce each of the films. “It’s hard for me to turn down an opportunity like this,” Mankiewicz said. “It’s a job that’s hard to mess up. You’d have to be really inept to speak about any of these films and not have people want to see them.”

All five films were chosen with a specific purpose in mind. McCabe & Mrs. Miller is celebrating its 40th anniversary, and The General its 85th. National Velvet fit the bill for the Festival’s “Family Day,” and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre was actually restored in-house at the Packard Campus. But with Badlands Kielbasa pulled off a major coup. The film’s star, Sissy Spacek, and her husband, longtime Malick art director Jack Fisk, live in the Charlottesville area, and both have agreed to be on hand for the screening.

“To the best of my knowledge, this is the only film festival program of its kind,” said Kielbasa, who’d clearly like to see it become a regular feature of the VFF. “I’ll give you a famous Bogart quote: ‘This could be the start of a beautiful relationship.’”

C-ville