This Gaudy Gilded Stage

This past weekend, I was watching the Vh1 countdown for a few minutes. I think I saw the top four or five videos of the week. One of them was by a new artist, Paolo Nutini. Here’s the video:

I really liked the song’s tender sadness, and Nutini’s voice reminds me a bit of Ray LaMontagne, another musician that I really like. There are times when I’m really in the mood for male folk music, and Nutini certainly showed the promise of fitting into that groove for me.

I then did a little more research on him. He is a twenty-year-old Scotsman, who released his first major studio album last year. He’s now catching on here in the States. Next, I went to YouTube to see some of his other videos. The first one I came across was his song “New Shoes:”

This one kind of reminded me of early Sheryl Crow — something like “All I Wanna Do.”

By this point I liked his music well enough to purchase it. While I like the two songs above, I’m currently in love with two other tracks: “Rewind” and “Jenny Don’t Be Hasty.” Here’s clips of them:

I’m playing both of these over and over. I’m not sure whether Nutini could be lumped in with the other crop of British singers currently trying to conquer the Billboard charts, Mika, Lilly Allen, and Amy Winehouse, but it does make me wonder if we’re starting to experience a new British invasion. I like all four of them, even though they’re all quite different. Even though I’m quite aware of the fact that I’m not a twenty-year-old heterosexual Scotmans, something about “Jenny Don’t Be Hasty” thrills me — it’s now my feel good song that I can’t get out of my head!

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In preparation for our upcoming trip to London, I thought I would check out Mika‘s debut album. I’ve been reading a lot about him lately (and seeing an interview with him on Logo), partly because his album just came out and partly because he refused to identify his sexual orientation, which is a little weird since his music is more than a little campy. He also has a track on the album, “Mr. Brown,” about a married man who has an affair with another man.

Mika is a 24-year-old London-based singer-songwriter who was born in Lebanon. His family fled the war-torn Beirut and moved to Paris before settling in London. One might hypothesize that his reticence to come out might be because of his Middle Eastern heritage. More likely, it’s a business decision — until he’s established as a major pop star (if he ever establishes himself as such) he can’t afford to be labeled a “gay artist.” While we all like to think America is less and less homophobic, I think it’s nevertheless true that it’s difficult for an artist to move beyond the gay label once it’s attached.

Here’s a sample of his music, “Grace Kelly,” which illustrates nicely his campy style:

After seeing what Youtube and his own webpage had to offer, I decided I liked his album, Life in Cartoon Motion, enough to download it. Now that I’ve listened to it, I have to admit that I really like it. It helps that he’s totally cute, but even apart from that I like his work. He’s a more enjoyable version of Elton John, whose music I’ve rarely liked (the musical Billy Elliott being the main exception). I like the camp, the several dance tracks, and his overall aesthetic. It’s a fun pop album with a queer sensibility, regardless of Mika’s own closetedness (gay, straight, or bi).

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While PJ and I were on our driving trip last week, we listened to “The Operas of Mozart” Part III, a CD course from The Teaching Company. This “course,” taught by Robert Greenberg, analyzed Mozart’s The Magic Flute. We had seen the OU School of Music’s partial production of The Magic Flute last year, so we were interested in learning what the opera is really about.

Since the School of Music’s production was abbreviated and presented only select scenes with a narrator filling in the blanks between, it was really difficult to get a handle on what was actually happening in this opera. Greenberg emphasizes the opera’s connections to eighteenth-century freemasonry. He also places the work in its historical context and within Mozart’s biography. And finally, he includes excerpts from a production of the opera, translating the German into English (for those of us whose German is a little rusty!).

As an eighteenth centuryist, I was really interested by the course’s discussion of freemasonry, a subject that I hadn’t ever paid any attention to previously. Many of the most prominent men of the period were freemasons, including Alexander Pope, David Garrick, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, William Hogarth, and Laurence Sterne. I’ll have to do more reading about masons and the Enlightenment when I get a chance.

Once we got back, I started cruising YouTube to see what clips of productions it had. I found several that I’d like to share. My favorite so far is of the Queen of the Night’s aria from Act Two, in which she commands her daughter to murder Sarastro, the Priest of the Sun. Here’s the clip:

I love this clip, which is from the 2003 Royal Opera production. As this clip shows, the sets, the costumes, even the staging are wonderful. I love it so much that I immediately ordered the DVD of the production and am waiting on pins and needles for it to arrive. Diana Damrau plays the Queen. She captures the Queen’s evil magnificence so well, but there are many other divas who have played the part to great acclaim:

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This week I’m teaching poems by Thomas Gray, William Cowper, and Oliver Goldsmith in my honors class. The goal is to gesture toward Romanticism. I love all three writers and their works, so it’s a good note to end our class on. (Here’s a cool site on Gray.)

But one side effect of teaching Gray’s “Sonnet on the Death of Mr. Richard West” and “Elegy in a Country Churchyard” is that it puts you in the mood for music that expresses the loss of loved ones.

As I’ve been reading and teaching Gray this week, the artist who keeps coming to mind is Patty Griffin, not that all her music is sad or anything like that, but quite a bit of it is mournful or about loss. I recently downloaded her album Impossible Dream from Napster. I really like “Love Throw a Line,” “Rowing Song,” and “Useless Desires.”

While Impossible Dream is good, I think 1000 Kisses is a more satisfying album. “Making Pies” alone is a masterpiece. “Be Careful” and “Mil Besos” are also among my favorites. The song that’s been coming to my mind this week is “Rain.” Here’s the video:

I love this video. I don’t usually like animated videos, but I think the animation works really well in this one: it captures the tone of the song without becoming too maudlin.

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PJ and I went to a Bright Eyes concert on Sunday in Columbus. We’ve been listening to their music for the past several weeks. We’d read various stories and reviews of their work (and about Conor Oberst in particular) for some time. I think PJ really got into them when he saw this video of theirs:

Anyone who’s seen Shortbus will recognize some of the people in the video. (John Cameron Mitchell directed both, of course.) It’s a great long song (PJ and I sing it to each other all the time, metaphorically speaking), and a perfect video. He had me watch it one day, and I immediately shared his love for it and for Bright Eyes (PJ has always had great taste in music).

So, on Sunday we drove to Columbus, ate dinner at our favorite restaurant, Haiku, and then drove over to the Wexner Center for the concert. There were two opening acts. The first was Oakley Hall. I’d never heard of them before, but I thought they were fine. Here’s a little taste of their music:

They were followed by Gillian Welch, who we love. We heard them — Gillian Welch and David Rawlings — before at the Stuart’s Opera House in Nelsonville. Here’s a sample of their music, one of their best songs, “Time (The Revelator)”:

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Since watching Julián Hernández’s Broken Sky, I’ve been slightly obsessed with the aria that plays during my favorite scene, which I described in an earlier post. Since everything worth seeing or hearing is on Youtube, I’ve been watching clips of various divas performing this aria, “Song to the Moon” from Dvorak’s Rusalka.

My favorite version of this is Rita Streich‘s performance:

Other sopranos’ clips on Youtube include Gabriela Beňačková, LuciaPopp, and Renee Fleming. They’re all good too, but there’s something special about the clip of Rita Streich. Maybe it’s that she seems to have less polish or something.

I was first introduced to classical music through my dad. He loves Dvorak and Mahler, which probably led me to love Brahms and Tchaikovsky instead (is there a gayer form of teenage rebellion!?). But I guess I’m now coming around to appreciate Dvorak, and maybe I’ll start browsing around in his other works as well.

Perhaps oddly, music and literature were the first ways in which my dad and I could connect when I was a teenager. Since he’s my adoptive father, we had some difficulties getting along for quite some time. I think it got easier once I became a teenager and came to like some of the things he liked. He first exposed me to Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony, Pathetique, which became my favorite piece of music as a teenager and young adult. It’s very dramatic and emotional, just right for a gay teen growing up in a religiously conservative family in southeast Texas. (I listen to it now and can only just tolerate its over the top emotionalism.) He also introduced me to great books, including Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and especially Kakfa. (I still don’t know what he was thinking getting me to read The Castle!)

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I should admit up front that I often have rather cheesy tastes when it comes to music. I also tend to like very mainstream music. I will forever believe, for example, that Tina Turner is a goddess. So, I’m a little hesitant to make public what songs I most liked in 2006. But I’ve started this little series, so I guess I might as well finish it!

The songs I most liked from 2006 are (in no particular order after the first one):

“The River Is Wild” by The Killers (the “big sound,” for lack of a better phrase, of The Killers at their best)

Crazy” by Gnarls Barkley (I first heard this song when GB performed on the MTV Movie awards in Star Wars costumes — what more could you want in a group!? Plus, it’s got such a great, smooth base line)

“Save Me from Myself” by Christina Aguilera (I like this track’s quite sincerity — not a lot of the vocal tricks CA can indulge in. And I like its sentiment. It sums up how I feel about PJ in some ways, though I understand that I’m not, in fact, a woman!)

“On the Radio” by Regina Specktor (I have no idea what this song means, but it seems true and I love it anyway. This is how it works …)

“Love You I Do” from the Dreamgirls soundtrack (A simple love song that’s catchy and has Jennifer Hudson — I love her, I do)

“When You Were Young” by The Killers (I love the video for this song. The song is also really good, and the pounding guitars and strings near the ending crescendo is great)

“Everybody Knows” by The Dixie Chicks (I think this song best sums up the DC’s experiences in the past few years while remaining universal, more or less, and, as I told PJ the other day, I’ve yet to hear a song entitled “Everybody Knows” that I didn’t like!)

“When Doves Cry” by The Be Good Tanyas (great, great cover of Prince’s iconic song — they really “make it their own,” to quote from American Idol)

My favorite album from the year was The Killers‘ Sam’s Town. I like Brandon Flowers in his scruffy western wear. Plus he’s a talented singer/musician/writer. It’s a top notch pop album, in my opinion.

Just for the record: my favorite album of all time — indeed the only album that I think it completely, 100% perfect is Tracy Chapman‘s debut album, Tracy Chapman. I’ve been listening to it for almost 20 years now and I still think it’s perfect — great to hear, socially aware, and politically radical. I love it. I remember the day I bought it (on cassette tape, lol!). When I heard Sharon Olds read a couple of years ago, the first thing I thought was, “I didn’t know poetry could do that.” When I first listened to Tracy Chapman on my walkman while sitting on my parent’s front porch, I had much the same reaction: “I didn’t know music could do that.” It sums up — or maybe it shaped — my worldview. I just wish the world would have changed more in the past twenty years than it has.

I’ve just started listening to two new albums: Norah Jones‘ Not Too Late and Lucinda Williams‘ West — maybe I’ll post about them when I get back from Chicago.

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So far, my blog has mostly been about my thoughts on academia, movies, or travel. Today I want to go in a different direction and post about my new found love for (obsession with) Nina Simone.

“Nina Simone” is one of those names that has been on the edges of my consciousness for as long as I can remember, but I’ve only consciously been exposed to her music infrequently. My first memory of being aware of her is watching the final scene of Before Sunset, the sequel to Before Sunrise, both of which are among my favorite movies. More recently, our friends Mark and CJ gave us a copy of one of Simone’s CDs, and we caught part of a concert film of hers on Trio (or Ovation — one of those cable channels we don’t often watch).

None of these slight exposures to Simone’s music did much for me. But for some unexplained reason, I was looking for the CD Mark and CJ gave us and couldn’t find it. I don’t know what sparked the interest, but I wanted to sit down and really listen to her music. (I think it might have been seeing a little bit of the concert film again, but I’m not sure. But it might also be my deep, instinctual love of Black women: Tina Turner, Jill Scott, India Arie, Mary J. Blige, Suzan-Lori Parks, Jocelyn, Erika Badu ….)

So, PJ and I ended up buying a couple of CD anthologies of her music. I uploaded the one entitled Anthology, a 2-disk set, and have been listening to it almost non-stop for the past few days. In sum, I now think Nina Simone is the greatest vocal artist I’ve ever heard. Her ability to interpret a song, to “make it her own,” to borrow the insidious phrase that the judges on American Idol constantly use, is truly unparalleled.

I did a google search on “Nina Simone” and one of the things that came up was a series of clips from her live performances on YouTube. (As a corollary statement, I also think YouTube may be the most valuable entertainment outlet since the advent of the internet.) One of her songs that I’m most obsessed with right now is “I Love You Porgy.” Here’s a YouTube clip of Simone singing it live in 1962:

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