Music Tournament: Day One Results, Day Two Match-ups

Posted on February 9, 2013 by g-mo

Beastie Boys get their day in the sun this round- will they survive to get another?

Photo finish! Thanks to all the voters that plugged their opinions, and it’s so nice to see some old recognizable handles back on the site. Without further ado:

High score goes to AC/DC and “It’s A Long Way To The Top (If You Want To Rock And Roll)”- voters could just not get enough of those bagpipes and it showed in the scores. Van Halen’s “Running With The Devil” is eliminated, 123.85-116.8. 

The rest of our match-ups were all close at a point but all winners come out with at least a 2 point lead. “Lust For Life” defeats “Holidays In The Sun,” 115.1-112.9. Amy Winehouse’s “Rehab” defeats “Seven Nation Army,” 119.8-117.3. And last, Peter Gabriel blows an early lead as “Red Rain” falls to Paul Simon’s “Boy In The Bubble,” 115.7-112.1.

Next set of match-ups are fun. From the cradle of rock to the cradle of rap, who gets the nod? Matchups are due Monday, February 11th at 8:00 PM. Playlist is here, whoop whoop:

“Modern Love,” David Bowie, Let’s Dance (1983) vs.
“Message In A Bottle,” The Police, Regatta de Blanc (1979)

“My Cherie Amour,” Stevie Wonder, My Cherie Amour (1969) vs.
“Ole Man Trouble,” Otis Redding, Blue Otis (1965)

“Blue Suede Shoes,” Elvis Presley, Elvis Presley (1956) vs.
“I’m Gonna Love You Too,” Buddy Holly, Buddy Holly (1958)

“Sure Shot,” Beastie Boys, Ill Communication (1994) vs.
“Straight Outta Compton,” NWA, NWA (1988)

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Songs About The Radio vs. Track Ones Battle of 2013: Day One, S1T1 Play-In

Posted on February 6, 2013 by g-mo

This is a radio.

Who knows whether we ever really truly retire from music tournaments. I think it’s more we retire until we think of an interesting way to revitalize. It happened- around the same time a few weeks ago that Nos was wondering what the best songs about the radio might be, I returned to my old High Fidelity mainstay question of the best Side One, Track One. Huge questions.

…and these are all records with a Track One

So we thought and asked on Facebook and built out some lists. In the end, Janos came up with 32 solid nominations on the “radio” question. I couldn’t keep it to 32 on my side, but managed to cut it down to 48 “track one, side one”‘s. So to kick things off, we’ll have to do a few days of same genre play-ins to whittle down the S1T1 side of the bracket. We did have a rule that no artist could have more than one song involved, even across the Radio-T1S1 divide. May we present to you: the list of competitors.

So for newbies, these are the rules- listen to the four match-ups below (in each match-up, the two songs are competing to stay alive.) After each match-up, stop and think, then give each song a score between 0 and 10 based on how you felt about it just then when you listened to it. Post your scores in the comments section of the post. We’ll add up the scores and the loser is eliminated. Eventually one song wins. Playlist is here, and scores on these match-ups due by Friday, February 8th at 8:00 PM.

This is going to be awesome.

-Guillermo

Day One: Side One, Track One Play-In
“Lust For Life,” Iggy Pop, Lust For Life (1977)
“Holidays In The Sun,” Sex Pistols, Never Mind The Bollocks (1977)

“Seven Nation Army,” The White Stripes, Elephant (2003)
“Rehab,” Amy Winehouse, Back In Black (2006)

“Running With The Devil,” Van Halen, Van Halen (1978)
“It’s A Long Way To The Top (If You Wanna Rock N’ Roll),” AC/DC, T.N.T. (1975)

“Boy In The Bubble,” Paul Simon, Graceland (1987)
“Red Rain,” Peter Gabriel, So (1986)

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Movie Review: “Koch” (+)

Posted on February 4, 2013 by Janos Marton
Koch doomed his run for governor by saying things like people living in the suburbs were "wasting their lives" and that he didn't understand why anyone would want to live upstate.

Koch doomed his run for governor by saying things like people living in the suburbs were “wasting their lives” and that he didn’t understand why anyone would want to live upstate.

Janos Marton Movie Review:

“Koch” (+)

February 2, 2013

“Koch” tells the story of Ed Koch’s rise and fall, alternating between scenes from his mayoralty (1977-1989) and interviews taken with Neil Barsky over the last few years. I had always intended to see this movie, but Koch’s passing on Friday filled the Angelika Theater with substantially more buzz and energy, though there were still many empty seats for an opening weekend.

The movie was incredibly fun, and I encourage anyone with an interest in New York City to see it. If you follow local politics, there’s not much new ground being broken, and if you lived through this period, who knows how much you want to relive it.  But for my generation, who were just kids during the period depicted, the scenes from New York City in the 70s and 80s are eye-opening, and Koch has easily enough star power to keep you entertained.

Ed Koch was born in the Bronx and raised in Newark.  Other than a moving anecdote about his first job in the family hat-check business and a brief summary of his 1960s showdown with party boss Carmine de Sapio, the film skips Koch’s early life, World War II service, and days in Congress, and begins with his 1977 run for mayor.  The grisly scenes of New York City during the “Bronx is burning” summer were jarring.  The colorful characters of the period- Mario Cuomo, Meade Esposito, Percy Sutton, Bella Abzug, make present-day politicians seem pretty boring by comparison.

Barsky moves well between original footage, present-day Koch, and a distinguished set of commenters, such as NY Times writer Joyce Purnick, former pol Carl McCall, and Koch’s likable Chief of Staff Diane Coffey.   The film balances praise for Koch’s achievements, like his stewardship of the city’s finances in the late 70s, progressive work on gay rights, and creation of affordable housing in the Bronx, with his flaws, such as his handling of the AIDS crisis and his relationship with the black community.  There were numerous and striking scenes  of racial tension, perhaps the most remarkable taking place with Koch off-screen, when black and white protesters began brawling in the streets following the Yusef Hawkins murder in 1989.  It is startling to think that only 20 years ago racial strife was so vicious between ordinary citizens.

The WWE heel in me was also impressed by Koch’s comfort in the lion’s den.  Activists of all kind just barraged him with boos and shouting at public hearings, and rather than walking out or worse (I can imagine present day police just shutting the whole thing down), he stood there and took it, often barking back.  In even the most hostile conditions he was rarely flanked by more than a handful of aides and security detail.

I have never seen a documentary subject who loved the camera as much as Ed Koch.  His hilarity is what makes a documentary about municipal governance so accessible.  Whether he was engaging in banter with his enemies, telling jokes, or ludicrously elevating himself on pedestals, it was hard not to smile.   His obsession with his legacy and desperation for relevance veers from amusing (“how am I doing?”) to touching (visiting his tombstone while he is alive) to pathetic (taking up neo-conservative causes in his later years).  I was struck by a scene at the end of Andrew Cuomo’s 2010 victory party when one of his most trusted aides remarked that he was excited to go home to his daughter, and that “some things are more important than politics.”  The camera cuts to an unresponsive, tired, 86 year-old Ed Koch, who proceeds to go home alone.

I strongly recommend this movie.  The acting was excellent. And the message was clear: New York City went through an awful lot of turmoil to get to where it is today, and whether Ed Koch was great, terrible, or somewhere in between, he was definitely the mayor.

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HCS (V, i): Reset

Posted on February 2, 2013 by g-mo

Reset

“Should a man wax tears, when his wooden world fails?
In town, leaves were paper, but the hills were a flock of faiths…”
-Derek Walcott

deubs sheli

Sheli and Deubs

We were ghosts in the building over that last week of December. Everyone else was still home from the holidays, and in that huge place with just the three of us— well, it was big and lonely. And with everything that had happened and weighed on me, it gave me a lot of time to think. Here I was back in Mississippi, without a job, without my old room, trying to sort out exactly what it was that was next. I wondered often whether I might leave that state, I wondered whether I wanted my old job if it was available, I wondered whether my heart would stop hurting, I wondered about everything and I couldn’t sleep. I went with Eddie and Deubs in the day to assist with prep work on some new home builds; at night, we got high and watched Season Two of Lost on the projector wall in the main building. I surfed the web looking for apartments in Biloxi, but was secretly unsure how I would pay for such a thing. It was worth it to search regardless, it was worth it to have something to do. I worked on formalizing a report on the Hope VI data, I worked on an action plan for an EPA grant that HON had asked me to assist with sometime in my absence. I smoked cigarettes in the pre-dawn bayou air, sober and restless, thinking about being 23 and so old, remembering being a child at some point before Biloxi and Dartmouth and high school, and sorting out what exactly all of this had added up to.

We didn’t make a thing of New Year’s Eve; Sheli got back to town and the four of us got high and watched DVDs until it was 2007 and we stepped outside to acknowledge it over cigarettes behind the church. The next morning I sat by myself with dark roast New Orleans coffee, staring out at the army tents and trying to figure out whether my life added up to much, and then went inside and read Derek Walcott poems for the next few hours. Continue reading →

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Ed Koch: A New Yorker

Posted on February 1, 2013 by Janos Marton
Mayor Koch was down with the muppets, also making a cameo in my favorite childhood movie, The Muppets Take Manhattan.

Mayor Koch was down with the muppets, also making a cameo in my favorite childhood movie, The Muppets Take Manhattan.

Ed Koch had a love for New York City and a lust for life. He was brutally honest, not afraid to be wrong, and as colorful as a spokesman for New York should be. We should all hope to have the energy in our 40s that he had in his 80s. While we cannot replace him, we should all strive to love the City as much as he did, and work every day to make it a better place.

I was born into the early 1980s, and missed the rancor from progressives over his slow reaction to the AIDS crisis and his combative relationship with the black community.  There is no doubt that I would have joined in that criticism.  But his place in history is secure as the mayor who led this City when it was on the ropes in the late 1970s.  As a Congressman he supported civil rights and opposed the Vietnam War.  As mayor he was way ahead of his time on gay rights, built an enormous amount of affordable housing, and for all of New York’s warts, cheer-leaded relentlessly for it.  He clearly loved his job and his city.  He also loved politics, and thought it mattered.  That’s why he stayed involved in the most minute local political battles deep into his 80s.

I liked that he was real. Political consultant George Arzt recalled his wonder meeting Koch for the first time.
“I got into the car and said I couldn’t believe how a kid who grew up in Williamsburg was now sitting next to the mayor,” Arzt said.
“Oh shut, up,” he said Koch told him. “Everybody comes from somewhere.”

After he left office he began writing movie reviews, which he continued writing until his hospitalization.  They were ludicrous barometers of whether or not I’d want to see the movie (and frequently gave the plots away), but I loved them all the same (as well as the witty commentary from his wingman, Henry Stern).

He was deservedly criticized for his neo-conservative foreign policy, but it bears mentioning that he strongly supported Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, and also called for ending the War in Afghanistan several years ago.

There are good tributes to him here and here.  I did not know him personally, but I met him several times.  He never hesitated to dish out advice.  I wrote him every now and then. We corresponded over the death penalty (disagreed), campaign finance reform (strongly agreed), and the wisdom of City Council member items (still thinking about it).

I love that he wrote his own epitaph, after his last stroke.  Here’s what it said:

 “He was fiercely proud of his Jewish faith. He fiercely defended the City of New York, and he fiercely loved its people. Above all, he loved his country, the United States of America, in whose armed forces he served in World War II.”

“That’s it,” he remarked.  “It takes up the whole stone.”

For people who care about our city, our country, our world, one of the biggest struggles is shaking people out of their apathy.  There’s also the matter of winning- winning elections, passing legislation, raising awareness.   Part of what made Ed Koch so successful is that he really loved New York City and wore it on his heart, and in a democracy, that’s worth something.  We will make progress in this country not just on the strength of good ideas, but by showing this country that we love it.

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Hurricane Camp Stories: Part V (Cover Page)

Posted on January 31, 2013 by g-mo

Part V

December 25th, 2006 — December 22nd, 2007

“These minutes, these hours, these days.”
-Chris Knight

I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels— until everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.
-Elizabeth Bishop

2007

 

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HCS (IV, 8): Rock, Paper, Scissors

Posted on January 26, 2013 by g-mo

“I cannot help you understand. In the realm of the ultimate, each person must figure out things for themselves.”
-Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

I came back to Biloxi in time for the Christmas party. I’d been assigned a Secret Santa in my short day between the road and the flight to Peckham, and accordingly presented a blonde NCCC girl named Cammie the crumpled flowers I’d picked in England. I don’t think she appreciated them, but Bicycle Ben laughed.

I decided to spend four more days in Mississippi, to wait and road trip back north with a number of my friends that were making an organized expedition. I heard from Evelyn now and then, she e-mailing me about the Middle East and myself relaying the loose plans of the coming days. I told Cora and Suzanne all about Evelyn, and hiking in the countryside, about how I hoped it would all work out. Erim, who at this point was herself slinking toward Christmas and mostly hiding out in her trailer, smiled hard at the success of my trip. Love hero, love hero. I shrugged and said we’d see how it all worked out.

I did some work over the next few days on Eddie’s crews, and then did the Pub thing by night. I was careful; a few people knew that Evelyn had taken me back contingent on taking a break, so at first I tried to drink Cokes. I couldn’t help feeling out of place with this plan though, so my solution was to just not drink as much. And then get off of it once I caught up with her over Christmas; there was no way I would continue while I was with her. Continue reading →

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HCS (IV, 7): Across The Pond

Posted on January 25, 2013 by g-mo

I run to the rock, please hide me Lord,
All on that day.
But the rock cried out, I can’t hide you,
The rock cried out, I can’t hide you,
The rock cried out, I ain’t gonna hide you guy,
All on that day.

-Nina Simone, “Sinnerman”

From Yucca Valley, I drove on 62 toward the Parker Dam, through the rusty crossroad of Vidal Junction, and charged forth in my pursuit. If there was a part of me that struggled with giving up on California, that part was swiftly replaced by this newest mission. The weekend was already driving me forward with this newest lesson, I mused as I drank water out of my 7-Up bottle. There was something bigger than being solitary, and it was people. I had miscalculated everything, and needed to get to Evelyn and see her.

Once I had a direction and wasn’t sipping, expedition became prudent. I slid diagonally down the southwestern corner of Arizona and finally met up with my old friend I-10. The roads were long and time passed quickly into night. I remember pumping gas at one point in Eloy. The stars were bright that night, in the blackest strip between the two light-polluted horizons of Phoenix and Tucson— the desert was so black, but it seemed softer than it had the night before. I drove until I was too tired, and then parked Astro at a truck stop and napped for 4 hours.

The next morning I woke set on buying a plane ticket. By now Continue reading →

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HCS (IV, vi): Running On Empty

Posted on January 22, 2013 by g-mo

“In sixty-nine I was twenty-one and I called the road my own,/
I don’t know when that road turned into the road I’m on.”
-Jackson Browne

Salton Sea, 5:30 AM

From Tahoe I did drive to Carson City, but only to drive through it. I kept glancing at the temperature gauge and just settled on the fact that I needed to get someplace warmer if I was going to keep stubbornly sleeping in my car. So I drove south on 395, crossed back into California, and drove and drove and drove. It wasn’t getting any warmer after 200 miles or so, and at a gas station I took a good look at a map before I laughed to myself. I was driving through the Sierra Nevadas. It was late autumn. This was cold country— are these roads even open after November 15th?

I drove until the sun set and found a truck-ish looking gas station 20 miles south of Bishop to sleep. The night was cold and without Ryan to chat and drink with it was suddenly a little lonelier. I bundled up with Helicopter in the far back and we got the best sleep we could. When I woke up it was 4 AM but I was awake so southward.

I thought about who I knew in this corner of the country. What was down here…Bakersfield, Los Angeles, San Diego. Los Angeles, of course— I called Continue reading →

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HCS (IV, v): Astro Versus The Ice

Posted on January 16, 2013 by g-mo

Ryan’s truck wasn’t that bad, but you get the point

We woke late and got to it. Ryan had some errands to run, so I dodged to a chalet-style South Lake Tahoe coffee shop and got to it. The day passed uneventfully, except at 3:00 when it began to snow hard. Thick, fat flakes like an unworldly humid mist. High snow. I continued working on the section for a few more hours. By 5:30 I’d left and called Ryan from a payphone at Tahoe Tom’s gas station— he was up near Tahoe City, red-lining on gas and without any money. Furthermore, he left his sleeping bags and clothes in my van. And here came the blizzard.

We discussed the options, and decided that Ryan should try to drive to South Lake Tahoe so I can get him gas. The Tacoma was much better equipped for the drive on precipitous, icy 89 than Astro. I loved Astro to death, but the stark reality was that Astro was absolutely awful in the snow. After a number of New Hampshire/Vermont winters, I could say with confidence that she was not a vehicle meant to go anywhere cold.

I drove carefully west on 50 to the edge of town where it meets the 89 loop Continue reading →

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