Nothing to say: this is pure pop confectionery.
This is the archive of bits about Music
Two clips of the same song from different movies: the first is from Air Hostess(1959) starring Grace Chang. The second is Tsai Ming Liang’s 2000 film The Hole. If you haven’t seen Tsai Ming Liang’s movies, I highly recommend them.
I grew up listening to the blues. My mom in particular was a serious fan, and Koko Taylor was a favorite in our house. As a kid I had a difficult time imagining the context for this music. Unlike rock and pop, which are culturally ubiquitous, the extent of the varied histories and idioms of the blues haven’t been assimilated as readily. Naturally I had seen pictures of BB King and Buddy guy, but until we moved to Chicago when I was 9 there was no image to accompany Koko Taylor.
Ever since I started to put the pieces together, I had a hard time matching up differences between so many fans of the blues and the performers themselves. How could Eric Clapton see how cool Muddy Waters was and decide that bell bottoms would work for him? Maybe he’d never seen a film. My parents and their friends certainly had nothing in common with this. Little Walter and Koko Taylor are immeasurably cool in this clip, whereas my parents were not.
For some reason, I’ve always been interested in the middle Hanson brother, Taylor. I’m waiting for him to pull a Scott Walker and go from this:
…to this:
Jean Claude Vannier was the producer of Serge Gainsbourg’s classic concept album Histoire de Melody Nelson . As much as I love M. Gainsbourg’s record, its dwarfed by Vannier’s own L’enfant Assassin des Mouches. It is a masterpiece—a singular, ambitious mixture of chorale music, funk, chansons, klezmer, acid jazz, and prog rock (ok, so this guy’s got my number, right?).
This video uses part of the album as a score to a fashion show by the also great Yves Saint Laurent.
