Malcolm McLaren was a bastard. There, I’ve said it. Yet he was one of the greatest impresarios of the 20th Century. The Sex Pistols as a concept were very much his creation, a “swindle” in his words that combined the nascent punk rock of his former charges The New York Dolls and bands like The Ramones with situationist sloganeering, social shock and awe, the bondage and fetish gear purveyed in the boutique operated by he and his then wife Vivienne Westwood, and a grand dose of P.T. Barnum-style showmanship.

This in turn launched the UK punk revolution, which confined to the media market of The British isles and coinciding with the Queen’s jubilee, had a cultural impact that seemed far greater than the New York scene that had inspired it.

The Pistols tumultous 18-months in the spotlight begat bands like The Clash, The Jam, Buzzcocks, Joy Division, The Slits, Siouxie and The Banshees and trailed a legion of followers who would form a subsequent generation of  bands like Shane McGowan and The Pogues and Stephen Morrissey who formed The Smiths.

McLaren engineered the sacking of the Pistols talented bass player Glen Matlock, replacing him with the barely talented but colorfully doomed Sid Vicious, alongside the man he re-named Johnny Rotten upon anointing him lead singer. When Rotten started to have ideas beyond being a McLaren puppet he too quit at the end of a grueling American tour, and the band recorded tracks with Great Train robber Ronnie Biggs.

In the subsequent psuedo-documentary/propaganda film The Great Rock and Roll Swindle McLaren played up all this activity as part of an elaborate scam that included signing to three seperate record labels in arow and pocketing the advance.

Post Pistols McLaren put together Adam and The Ants, this time fusing African tribal drumming to primal rock to less ground shaking effect, though it did pefigure the fascination with African music that would take hold in the 1980s. He then swapped lead singer Adam Ant (who went on to a fairly successful career sans McLaren) for 14 year-old Annabella Lwin to form Bow Wow Wow which added a not so subtle under-aged sex element to songs like “Louis Quatorze” and hitched their wagon to the home-taping boom at the time with songs like “C30-C60-C90 Go.” The teenybopper sex symbol thing prefigured later starts like Britney Spears and home taping at the dawn of the 80s was a controversial bugaboo to the record industry – the illegal downloading of it’s time.

Bow Wow Wow would break free as well, leaving non-musician McLaren to start up projects under his own name. This included the fantastic singles “Buffalo Gals” and “Double Dutch” which were explorations of the burgeoning hip hop scene, especially DJ scratching. As tempting as it might be to cry cultural imperialism the quality of the tracks which prefigure the sound mash-ups of producer/DJs like Prince Paul and Fatboy Slim is undeniable. However unlike punk, his influence on the overall development of hip-hop was slight.

His next move was even more audacious – mixing hip-hop with opera on the Fans album and “Madame Butterfly” single. Surprisingly it worked, though again the impact was minimal compared to past successes.

As McLaren transitioned into a talking head and cultural commentator, so to did his originally ideas reverberate into the mainstream. Anytime you see the “typical” punk mode of dressing or variations thereupon  (safety pins, rubber, fishnets, boots, torn clothes) McLaren and Westwood’s original vision survives.

McLaren died yesterday of Leukemia.

Trailer for The Great Rock and Roll Swindle:

“Somehow or another I remain permanently cool…”

“Buffalo Gals”

“Madame Butterfly”

Film and TV actor Robert Culp died today in Los Angeles at the age of 79. For a baby boomers he will always be best known for his role opposite Bill Cosby as a spy in I Spy, a show that broke down televisions race barriers. But to Generation Xies like myself it was his role as cynical FBI agent Bill Maxwell on The Greatest American Hero that made him an indelible part of our childhood. Then there were the film roles – Paul Mazursky’s brilliant first film Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice in which Culp played Natalie Wood’s husband – a man getting in touch with the swinging sixties sexual liberation in spite of his contradictory instincts, or as the venal mayor of New York in the silly Tim Hutton graffiti drama Turk 182, and in countless other parts large and small. He wasn’t an actor who disappeared into his roles, but the mannerisms that conveyed easy mastery in I Spy somehow were made to signal vulnerably swaggering libertinism in Bob & Carol, ill-at-ease conservatism in Hero, and waspy tweediness in his recurring role on Everybody Loves Raymond.

Most of all for me though, Culp reminds me of a childhood growing up in Reagen era America. Seeing this actor who had played and lived so many groundbreaking roles in the sixties play Bill Maxwell, a fascinating amalgam of conservative law & order types, must have induced vertigo in those who remembered. All I saw as a 10 year-old was a close cousin to folks like Garry Trudeau’s Uncle Duke character from Doonesbury, former semi-counterculture types who had surfed the conservative wave into strange places. I read a lot of Doonesbury as a kid, and probably 70% of it was way over my head, but I did learn a lot.

Culp invested Maxwell with enough sensitivity and awkwardness to make him likable, but also enough abrasiveness to function as a parody of Reagen-era figures like Caspar Weinburger or good old Don Rumsfield, a guy who could have been played by Culp in a biopic. Yet there was something ineffably cool in his swagger and his fast talk.

“What’s the scenario?” he would say before encountering a hostile situation, a phrase borrowed later by hip-hoppers Tribe Called Quest. I loved these lovable rogues as a kid, these cynics who had seen it all, the friends of my father who had lived life and scoffed at the idea that there was anything left to learn. I was a premature 40-year old curmudgeon in a 10 year-old’s body and Bill Maxwell was my hero.

The rest of Greatest American Hero (not including Joey Scarbury’s cheese classic theme) could all be cut out as far as I was concerned. William Katt, who played the teacher in an alien superhero suit? Meh. I shared Maxwell’s contempt for his inability to control it’s powers. The only thing I found interesting about that character was when they changed his name from Ralph Hinckley to Ralph Handley because John Hinckley shot Ronald Reagen halfway through the show’s brief run in a bid to impress Jodie Foster.

As an adult I watched Culp’s terrific performance in Bob & Carol and it reminded me of my parents and the crazy ways they tested the boundaries of marriage in the late 60s and 70s. In their case the seams burst – inevitably really given that it’s hard to fathom their ever having been married now.  In Culp’s character, from his modish outfits which echoed my father’s own au courant threads in the era to the easy appeal he had to women, there was the hint of the familiar for me. So too was his initial  jealousy as his wife, played by Natalie Wood decides to take him at his word and try some experimenting of her own – as is the hilarious scene in which he forces himself to go with the flow of the philosophy of openness he has embraced.

In a strange way the reality of the reactions that these fictional characters went through helped me to understand how bewildering, exciting, and disappointing the sexual revolution was for my parent’s generation. One of the other touches in Bob & Carol that rang true was that all of the characters are in their 30s, as my parents were then – not the teens and twenty-somethings who were rolling around in the mud at Woodstock. These were adults on the cusp of a rapidly changing world.

I Spy and Culp’s role on and off screen also reminds me of my parents, specifically their strong belief in Civil Rights. It may be hard to fathom now in the Obama era but a show prominently featuring a black man and his white partner in espionage was in danger of not being carried by southern affiliates in 1965. When the network had second thoughts about casting Cosby because of his skin color Culp made it clear that he would walk too. When Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968, Culp and Cosby traveled to Memphis to support the striking sanitation workers there.

The two actors would remain lifelong friends, with Cosby saying this about Culp tonight:

“The first born in every family is always dreaming of the older brother or sister he or she doesn’t have, to protect, to be the buffer, provide the wisdom, shoulder the blows and make things right,” he said. “Bob was the answer to my dreams.”

Culp talks about Cos and I Spy:

One of the best scenes from Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice:

Prime I Spy – both Cosby and Culp were multiple Emmy noms with Cos winning for their blend of action and comedy:

Culp guests on a rival spy spoof as a waiter:

It’s fair to say that although he enjoyed a number 1 single at the height of the 1960s Alex Chilton’s influence has far, far exceeded his record sales. While he may not be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame his genius, his songs, and his career have inspired multiple generations of bands and several important genres ranging from the blue-eyed soul of Hall & Oates, the power pop of Cheap Trick, 80s alternative and indie rock like The Replacements and R.E.M., and lo-fi experimentalists like Pavement, Guided by Voices, and No Age.

I remember listening to a cassette of his band Big Star’s second album, Radio City in high school and wondering what kind of world could let music so perfect go undiscovered by so many. But I’m skipping ahead.

Like some alternate universe Bowie, Alex Chilton had distinctly different phases of music. Unlike Bowie there was never any hint of premeditation – Chilton seemingly couldn’t help himself and would go so far as to renounce his previous work. It started in Memphis with the Brill Building blue-eyed soul of the Box Tops. Chilton was just 16 when “The Letter” ascended the charts but his voice was at it’s huskiest. He chafed at the restriction of having songs written by others for the band to play and he to sing but he stuck with them through lesser hits like the wonderful “Cry Like a Baby” and some better than average singles and albums.

By 1970 the band had broken up and Chilton bummed around the Memphis scene before hooking up with fellow songwriter Chris Bell, drummer Jody Stephens and bassist Andy Hummel who were all members of a band called Icewater. They called the new band Big Star, in homage to a chain of southern supermarkets. Big Star’s first record, #1 Record was released on soul label Stax’s Ardent imprint and was a sales disaster. Yet the glorious songs inside were anything but. Inspired now by the shimmering songcraft of mid 60s Beatles and Kinks but with an undertow of wonder, nostalgia and heartbreak that was all their own, like all Bog Star albums it’s an essential for any serious rock fan. It was also completely out of touch with where the music world was in 1972.

Bell split from Big Star and would die in a car crash in 1978 (the posthumously released I Am The Kosmos Cosmos (thanks for catching the title mis-spelling Aaron) includes his only released solo single alongside never before released tracks.) Big Star went their separate ways initially but regrouped for 1974′s Radio City which found the band with a lean, tough sound and tighter more dynamic playing and Chilton’s best set of songs yet – some consider this his masterpiece. It’s a mind blowingly good record. Like it’s predecessor it was a complete flop commercially, in part due to Stax’s money woes.

Chilton was becoming increasingly frustrated – if his brilliantly arranged and executed songs couldn’t find an audience, why bother with the niceties at all? Recording for a third album commenced in 1975 but the sessions were chaotic to say the least. Where Radio City found tension in pushing and pulling the songs and adding different coloration here and there these new sessions featured songs that seemed scotch-taped together, on the brink of despair or even madness. Weary, resigned, resentful, defiant and yet with an undeniable tunefulness at it’s core – the sessions sat unreleased for years. In 1978 they appeared in Europe under the title Third and also Sister Lovers with slightly different track listings. Once heard (they’ve since been issued in their entirety) they are unforgettable and every bit as satisfying as the first two records if not more so. A whole chunk of indie rock starts right here.

In the meantime Chilton had hit the bottle hard and finally began to launch a solo career that was even more shambolic than Sister Lovers had been with surly, sometimes atonally barbed guitar playing and casually tossed off production and arrangements. While this could be hit or miss at times it also resulted in the amazing “Bangkok”, some great covers, and the fantastic 1980 album Like Flies on Sherbert.

He also began producing for groups like The Cramps and The Replacements (their new major label rejected the results) who returned the favor with their tribute song “Alex Chilton” in 1987, one of their most beloved tunes. In a nice twist it was produced by Memphis legend Jim Dickinson (who also recently died) – the producer of Big Star’s Sister Lovers sessions.

By the 80s Chilton was playing blistering guitar in Tav Falco’s Panther Burns, a Memphis band that added punk grit to rockabilly and blues and had also returned to making solo records. Now however he was reincarnated as a gritty soul man, pumping out greasy R & B with sweaty abandon. While the covers-heavy content may have disappointed some fans, albums like High Priest were extremely enjoyable.

The 90s brought long overdue accolades and elder statesman status along with a series of Big Star reunions that seemed a bit grudging on Chilton’s part, as he was clearly lukewarm on the idea of living in his own past. Yet his heart attack came on the eve of a Big Star performance scheduled this weekend at SXSW. Viewers likely didn’t know it but the theme song to That 70′s Show was a rerecorded version of Big Star’s “Out in The Street” by Cheap Trick – making it a bigger hit in the 90s than it had ever been initially.

Alex Chilton was a true American great. There was a time when meeting a fellow Big Star or Alex Chilton fan was to meet a kindred spirit. R.I.P.

Here are just a few of his career’s many high points:

The Box Tops – “The Letter”

The Box Tops – “Cry Like a Baby”

The Box Tops on Mike Douglas do “Turn on a Dream” and “Soul Deep”

Big Star – “Thirteen”

Big Star – “Ballad of El Goodo”

Big Star – “September Gurls”

Big Star – “O My Soul”

Big Star – “Kanga Roo”

Big Star – “Kizza Me”

Alex Chilton covering the Seeds on “Can’t Seem to Make You Mine”

Alex Chilton – “Bangkok”

Chilton on 120 Minutes circa 1985

Alex Chilton – “No Sex”

The Replacements – “Alex Chilton”

John Hughes

If you didn’t sprout boobs or grow body hair in the 1980s the death of John Hughes likely leans little to you. Let’s be blunt, he was neither a great director or writer and to my critical faculties won’t allow me to rate any of his films at the top of the 80s teen flick heap on artistic merit (you have to get past Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Say Anything and Heathers to get to that summit).

Yet when I was 13 all anyone could talk about at school was a movie called 16 Candles. Had you seen it? How many times? Wasn’t it hilarious? Wasn’t Molly Ringwald hot? At his best Hughes was able to uncannily write with the worldview of an adolescent, with all the pitfalls and positives that come with it.

It’s hard not to be struck by the essential shallowness at the core of a film like The Breakfast Club which purports to eschew stereotypes and yet forces it’s characters to pair up and change in ways that make little sense outside a ninth grader’s diary (Ally Sheedy’s character in particular has an arc that defies logic.)  In Hughes’ world adults were clueless, teens were deeply profound, and every heartbreak lasted forever.

Hughes also caught the rhythms of teen speech, the awkwardness of their interactions, the easily bruised feelings and nurtured crushes.

He did direct or write several early films that were aimed at a wider audience, beginning as a part of National Lampoon’s set of stock writers with the awful Class Reunion, and very funny Vacation, which introduced the world to one of Hughes stock players Anthony Michael Hall. He also would follow-up a string of teen flicks with the charming Planes, Train, and Automobiles but She’s Having a Baby would prove to be an ominous flop.

As the 80s became the 90s Hughes stopped directing and started regressing. If his hits began with the mid-life crisis of Vacation and segued into the teendom of films like Pretty in Pink, his focus worked steadily backwards to pre-adolesence (the Home Alone films) before settling for the infantilized dreck of Baby’s Day Out. Don’t get me started on the Beethoven films.

Hughes had a great eye for talent, launching John Cusack, the aforementioned Hall and Ringwald, Eric Stoltz, James Spader, Jon Cryer, Andrew McCarthy, Robert Downey Jr. and others. He also had an ear, bringing several British post-punk and new wave bands such as Simple Minds (with the classic “(Don’t You) Forget About Me” and Orchestral Manouvers in the Dark their first taste of American stardom through his soundtracks and even titling Pretty in Pink after one of Psychedelic Furs’ best songs (sadly re-made in an inferior version for that particular film).

Hughes’ dialogue also had a way of lodging in the brain. To this day I say the phrase “Hot hot very hot” because of 16 Candles. Hughes died unexpectedly today of a heart attack.

From the glorious Ferris Bueller’s Day Off:

The 16 Candles trailer:

It’s hard to write anything called an “appreciation” for Allen Klein, as he was more a creature to be feared, reckoned with, and noted for historical significance than appreciated. Klein, who died of complications from Alzheimer’s over the July 4th weekend, is one of the great characters (some might say villains) of music history. He was a guy who, in the guise of the defender of the artist, stood up to the record companies to deliver “full accounting” and unheard of sums of money to the artists he managed like The Rolling Stones, The Animals, and Sam Cooke.

On the other hand, each one of those artists found their recorded material had become the property of a little record company called ABKCO – Allen B. Klein Company.

The Stones were one of the few groups who learned the painful lesson of losing their 60s masterpieces well, starting their own label after 1971 and ensuring that they would own all of their post-Klein masters, as well as suing the man himself and settling for an undisclosed sum in the mid-80s. Keith Richard’s would later famously describe the loss of their early catalog as “the price of an education.”

Klein also holds the dubious distinction of being a contributing factor to the breakup of The Beatles. As the greatest band of the 60s began to unravel after the death of their original manager Brain Epstein, Paul McCartney turned to his then-girlfriend Linda Eastman. Her brother John was a prominent entertainment attorney and Paul pressured the other Beatles to allow him to clean up their increasingly tangled business affairs. Not one to be dictated to, John Lennon retorted by bringing in Klein, who had been angling for an entree to the biggest group in the world. George Harrison would end up siding with Lennon and the rift between the rival factions proved to be fatal.

In the end Klein would end up managing Lennon and Harrison for several years post-breakup, and eventually went on the film production as well as acquiring the entire catalog of Phil Spector‘s defunct Philles label in the 1980s.

As a special tribute, here are two clips from the George Harrison produced Beatles satire The Rutles featuring John Belushi as the Allen Klein stand-in Ron Decline. Also note the current junior Senator from Minnesota in a cameo.

Malden with Micheal Douglas on Streets of San Francisco

The fact that a younger generation has no idea who Karl Malden was brought home today by the many blank stares from co-workers and at least one name pronunciation that suggested the attemptee thought Malden was a star of the German cinema. What Malden was, was an Oscar and Emmy winning actor whose blunt face and bulbous nose fronted a series of grit-filled humane performances on stage and screen.

I knew him best as the guy who’d pop in at the of newsbreaks on TV to scare you at the consequences of traveling without American Express – “Don’t leave home without it” was his tagline. As I got older I saw him in such classic films as Patton, playing Gen. Omar Bradley as the level-headed counterweight to George C. Scott in the title role, or his Oscar-winning turn in Streetcar Named Desire, or paired again with Brando as the neighborhood priest in On The Waterfront.

In the 70s Malden starred with young Michael Douglas in the cop drama The Streets of San Francisco, a big hit that made him a household name despite his indifference to the television medium. Later, Malden would become  President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences and was a driving force behind the controversial Oscar handed out to Elia Kazan, who directed him in Waterfront and Tin Roof, not to mention the winkingly overheated Baby Doll.

Malden, who was born Mladen George Sekulovich, was 97.

Jackson and surrogate "family" Brooke Shields and Emmanuel Lewis at the height of his fame

Michael Jackson was the last music superstar, transcending for a time the limits of age, race, orientation, and geography while selling 50 million copies of a single album. He had a knack for peaking, having achieved first stardom with his brothers in the Jackson 5 at Motown Records just as their brand of soul was about to be eclipsed by funk and then disco. His first solo record, 1979′s Off The Wall, was one of the best album’s of the disco era, which would soon be ushered out to pasture by the MTV driven stars of new wave and hair metal.

Jackson was an icon with an increasingly disturbing dark side, a star who aged from childhood into adolescence in public and then seemed to get stuck there. His interests, obsessions, scandals and charities all seemed to revolve around childhood – perhaps as a consequence of his having been so thoroughly terrorized and then commidified by his own father.

Then there’s the music – sometimes bombastic or bathetic but just as often transcendent and ass-shaking. The aforementioned Off The Wall and the mega-selling Thriller are the obvious classics, alongside any decent greatest-hits collection of the Jackson 5. Then there were his dance moves, the moonwalk being the dance to copy during my middle school years.

His videos set new standards and broke the color barrier at MTV, but his attention to presentation would begin to take a thornier turn beyond simply inspiring the outfits of Moammar Quaddafi. His music and self-styled crowning as the “King of Pop” became more and more grandiose – a child’s protective, projective fantasy of power, of “Healing the World”.

His progressive plastic surgeries and skin lightening and a voice that seemed only to grow higher and more whispery as he aged were at odds with the tougher image he tried to project on Bad and Dangerous – albums that began to show diminishing artistic returns as producer Quincy Jones began to be edged out in favor of Teddy Riley and succeeding flavors-of-the-month.

His progressive facial disfigurement began to seem like a rebuke to his country, to the very idea of stardom, adulthood, and his race. This scene from Three Kings shows and Iraqi who finds the ills of a sick culture in the face of it’s pop icon:

His retreat to a ranch called Neverland and cavorting with children famous and otherwise also sat uneasily with his much-publicised marriage to Lisa Marie Presley – an attempt to associate himself with an entertainment icon as ill-advised and audacious as his takeover of The Beatles publishing rights – a move which would sever his friendship with Paul McCartney.

Jackson was at work on a comeback when he died – beginning with 50 sold out dates in London.

I’d love to show you some videos but the idiots at Sony seem to think that people won’t be interested in buying their music if they can hear it or see it first. Must be why they are doing so well at this whole music biz thing. Take a cue from Micheal Jackson – he sold 50 million copies on the back of free radio and television exposure at a time when the industry was bleating like stuck pigs about how home-taping would ruin them. Bet you wish you could be a record exec back then.

Jackson tears it up with his brothers in 1983:

Solo doing “Billie Jean”

With former buddy Paul McCartney and the late Linda McCartney in “Say Say Say”:

The Captain Eo Disneyland attraction directed by Francis Ford Coppola:

The best-selling poster of the 70s

Farrah Fawcett didn’t have to speak or move at all to be a sex symbol. There she was on my brother’s wall, as she was on literally millions of American walls in the 1970s beaming from her iconic poster – the best selling poster of the decade. Yes, there was also Charlie’s Angels, the silly femme cop she she starred on for one season with Kate Jackson and Jaclyn Smith before ankling for greener pastures.

She left in part because of the poster-like way she was treated as an actress and many in Hollywood thought the joke was on her, reinforced by appearances in crappy movies like the execrable Saturn 5 with Kirk Douglas and breezy lightweight fare like Cannonball Run.

She spent the 80s proving critics wrong, first on stage in Extremities as a rape victim and then on TV in The Burning Bed, a true story about an abused wife’s revenge in the days before Lifetime made such stories commonplace. Fawcett won an Emmy and set the gold standard for other actors who wanted to revive their careers by being taken seriously.

She worked steadily afterwards, most notably in Robert Duvall‘s The Apostle but would become more associated with her nude body paintings for Playboy and a strange appearance on David Letterman‘s show.

She was also well known for her rocky relationships – initially with Husband Lee Majors, the star of The Six Million Dollar Man and The Fall Guy – the Major’s sung theme song of which slyly made reference to how he’d “been seen with Farrah.” By then the song’s lament that the other guy get’s the girl rang all-too true as his buddy Ryan O’Neal stole her heart.

Though they never married their on and off relationship lasted throughout the rest of her life, and included kids who had their own troubles to sort out.

When Fawcett’s cancer was diagnosed as returned and metastasizing, the hospital who treated her leaked the information to the press, leading to a successful lawsuit that reinforced the sanctity of patient records.

Fawcett decided to document her experience, inviting cameras to document the last several months of her life in an NBC special called Farrah’s Story, that pushed the bounds of reality television, perhaps not for the better. Cancer survivors did appreciate her candor though, but she received criticism from some quarters for not talking about the HPV vaccine.

Here’s Fawcett on Charlie’s Angels along with Ron Burgundy:

Sky Saxon

Today  a worldwide icon, an American sex symbol, and a music pioneer all died – any one of whom would have garnered a post. However the least noticed – Sky Saxon – is the one who probably had the most effect on my life. Here’s my take on today’s news in order of the decade that each star – Sky Saxon, Farrah Fawcett, and Michael Jackson, had the biggest impact.

Sky Saxon

Sky Saxon (nee Richard Marsh) was the lead singer of 1960s garage rockers the Seeds, part of a wave of hard-edged American rock bands that would lay the groundwork for bands like The Stooges, the New York Dolls and The Dictators later in that decade and into the early 70s who in turn led to the great explosion of punk and alternative rock in the 80s and 90s.

I first discovered The Seeds on what was then New York’s classic rock station, WNEW, which would pepper it’s playlist with “Pushin’ Too Hard” and other great songs by less known bands in the mid 80s before radio became the walking corporatized zombie corpse it is now.

By teh time I got to college I had enough sense to pick up a copy of Lenny Kaye‘s compilation of 60s garage and psychedelia Nuggets (since re-issued as an essential box set) which featured several great Seeds songs inclusing the phenomenal ballad “Can’t Seem to Make You Mine”.

You can hear Saxon’s sneer as he sings, and the Seeds drug-hazed vision was laced with an anger that was the antithesis of the peace and love vibe of so many of their contemporaries. Though they later got sidetracked into unpromising art-rock songs like the above, “Mr. Farmer” and  “Up In Her Room” are pretty great. Saxon faded from the music seen by the eraly 70s, retreating to Hawaii and touring occaisionally. That’s what brought him to Austinand his last gig at Antone’s, after which he was hospitalized on Monday.

Here’s the staggeringly, heartbreakingly great “Can’t Seem to Make You Mine”:

“Mr. Farmer”

Their biggest hit, “Pushin’ Too Hard”, introduced by Kasey Kasem:

adolescence

Pixar's Up

The image of a squarefaced old man dragging his hovering house behind him through a dreamscape  jungle feels pulled straight out of the deepest Fruedian recesses of the unconscious. Pixar’s latest triumph, Up , is packed with such images, along with the considerable voice talent Ed Asner as the old guy, Carl Fredrickson.

One of the great things about Pixar’s best films is the sense that they are oxymorons – big-budget, auteur flicks with wide-ranging appeal. From the first moments of Up, which mimic a pre-World War II newsreel, the sense that pure imagination is at work predominates. Imagine a meeting at most major studios where the word “newsreel” is used in reference to an animated big-budget tentpole.”Kids don’t know what that is!” “We need to start with a bang!”

Up does start with a bang all right, but it’s an emotional one – a 15 minute long sequence that plays almost as a riposte to Synechedeche N.Y.’s sprawling discourse on how art can represent a human life. Up director Pete Doctor encapsulates the entire history of Carl Fredrickson and his wife Ellie, packing it with emotional resonance, all without saying one word. There was barely a dry eye in the house.

This prelude is so powerful that it threatens to unbalance the rest of the film, but it also gives an emotional weight and meaning to the house, the mailbox, a soda pop cap, that otherwise might seem forced or contrived.  This in turn leads to Fredrickson attaching the hundreds of balloons to his house that allow him to fly off, with a roly-poly kid stowaway aboard.

This sets up a secondary psychological struggle as Frederickson has to struggle with his hero worship of a long-lost explorer while also coming to grips with his life as a widower. Oh, and there are talking dogs and a magnificently plumed bird named “Kevin.”

Don’t get the wrong idea though – this isn’t heavy going. The movie is as bouyant as it’s title, helped in no small measure by it’s snappy pacing and witty screenplay.