“Well, how did I get here?”
Ahoy sailor, it’s Bill. Merchant by day, art aficionado by night. When I’m not on deck at C+C, you might find me checking out foreign flicks at AFPL, digging the crates of the nearest record store, or deep diving the annals of Wikipedia. As your occasional Crue-columnist, I’ll share some recommendations for things that I’ve watched, read or listened to that I think more people should know about. If you were in the shop and I missed any chance to chat cinema, discuss discographies, or wax poetic on much to do about nothing, here's my place to make up for it. And if you share a rabid curiosity to read something new, topical, or just plain esoteric, then allow me to offer you a TASTE.
(Creator: John Greenway + Irwin Rosenhouse Copyright: © Smithsonian Folkways)
If there’s one thing truly missing in the world of music today, it’s some good Talking Blues songs. If you know what I’m on about, you might be nodding your head in solemn agreement at the apparent disappearance of this songwriting mode. To those of you who don’t know, but still enjoy rhyming couplets and nonchalant wit and charm with your music then you’re in for a treat. Celebrating its centennial this year, the Talking Blues got their start in Atlanta, Georgia by musical comedian Chris Bouchillon. As soon as free melody married talkative, strict rhythm, a hit was born down south. Folks couldn’t get enough of Bouchillon’s flat, conversational cadence and this fervor would lead many a number of influential American troubadours to pen their own renditions. Johnny Cash, Dave Van Ronk, and Kris Kristofferson are amongst those who’ve given the style a fair shake, but the category would be incomplete without the works of Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan. Fellow Dylanites will need more than a couple of hands to count the number of wry ways he’s spun one. Aside from the well-regarded classics, some of my favorites lately have been “Talkin’ Thunderbird Blues” by Townes Van Zandt and “Talking Seattle Grunge Rock Blues” by Todd Snider; both recordings are stellar live performances that nail the sound and will scratch the itch. I’ll take any good recommendations and all glaring omissions at captainandcrue@gmail.com (“RE: Talking Blues” in the subject line).
(Photography: Bob Adelman/Corbis)
There’s no greater story to me than a short story. Much of my storytelling preferences rely on an all-killer, no filler approach. I love when a writer allows the reader to connect the dots, fill in the blanks, and apply whatever creative degree of emotional significance to what is (and is not) on the page. And if a particular story doesn’t click for you, your time and focus is not held captive for long before you’re able to move on to the next. With that said, of course the work of Raymond Carver would be a favorite of mine. Of course I’d feel the need to spill ink on an author who does more with less. Carver’s writing is deceptively simple. With a self-professed “no-tricks” approach to what he wrote, much of his prose is astonishingly sparse and direct. A stark choice of words or turn of phrase employed become a catalyst for a reader’s mind to fill in what was left unuttered. In works like his minimalist masterpiece “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”, Carver paints the humor and tragedy that dwell in the hearts of ordinary people. These stories are steeped in brazen reality and unvarnished authenticity; America is presented warts and all and the mundanity of adult life exists somewhere between a gutpunch and a confession. There’s a darker, less palatable truth to the everyman lives portrayed and the cosmically insignificant drama they create. He seems to accomplish things in the span of one page that a very many authors would kill substantially more trees to do. A recent reading of “Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?” didn’t attempt to sugarcoat it either: life is about as bad as one makes it.
(Creator: MGM/Photofest Copyright: © MGM)
Here at Captain + Crue, the Noir genre is synonymous with “cool”. It doesn’t matter the age, language, or derivative, the canon and genre archetypes have an evergreen style and detached magnetism to them that are both difficult to forget and hard to ignore. Looking sharp and meeting an ambiguous or unfortunate end never looked nearly as good as it does in the noir flick. With that said, as a fan of the genre and all of its forms and fashions, a recent viewing of Robert Altman’s “The Long Goodbye” was a real treat. Not just for how proficiently and playfully it subverts the kind of film it satirizes, but for the hazy, tropical (by way of Malibu) world it creates and allows its characters to saunter through. Gould’s Philip Marlowe has a lived-in languidity that is so expertly effortless that I couldn’t figure out whether I should laugh at him or aspire towards him. 70’s L.A. and modern Stone Harbor are worlds apart geographically, culturally, and contemporaneously, yet the beach is the great unifier of atmosphere and ambiance. Those fatally familiar with life near the water will find great ease connecting with the film’s visual and audible evocations in these sequences, not to mention its more relaxed pacing throughout. Fishing nets and flipflops sound foreign to these kinds of films, but there’s something admirable and exemplary about those that dare to chart these waters. If you’ve seen enough of your hard-boiled, doomed protagonists hail a nocturnal taxicab or stalk moonlit metro, why not take your noir on a trip to the shore with my newly penned subgenre “Coastal Noir”?
A kindred element of cynical detachment or ill-fated isolation can be found in the warm, Floridian waters of “Night Moves”, where a particularly aquatic Gene Hackman finds himself embroiled in the kind of investigation that you’d want to be last in the water, first back on the boat, and cruising as fast as nautically possible back to dry land. For you Mid-Atlantic readers who find the sights and sounds of SoCal and the Keys still too disparate from our shores, allow some lenience whilst I posit Bob Rafelson’s “The King of Marvin Gardens” in this newly minted, loosely defined genre. As far as locale goes, Marven Gardens doesn’t get closer to home on the big screen and man does it elicit all of the off-season contemplation and desolation you’ll experience on our southern Jerseyan beaches in the off-season. Calling it a noir may be a stretch, but an ill-fated cast mix with femme fatales, shady real estate schemes, and boardwalk mobsters to reach a boiling point that keeps you guessing until the very end. I’m convinced I’m onto something with this whole seaside subgenre, so I look forward to reporting back with more examples worthy of this dingy (not dinghy) designation.