Crazy Heart and a country playlist
This past weekend I saw the movie Crazy Heart, about a down-and-out country singer who, despite being an alcoholic and having a penchant for leaving his belt buckles constantly undone, possesses a grizzled warmth that attracts both Maggie Gyllenhaal and the audience. Jeff Bridges is favored to win the Oscar for Best Actor, and “The Weary Kind (Theme from Crazy Heart)” is up for Best Song.
I’m woefully under-informed about classic country, and the much-mocked form (“What kind of music do you like?” “Oh, everything. Except country.”) got a playful ribbing in my home, where my mom would sometimes drawl her imitation of a country song: “I lost my wife, I lost my truck, and then I lost my dog.”
But that mix of hardship and humor is what gives country music its heart, and it turns out that some of my favorite musicians have a country twang. Here, then, is my country playlist:
1. The Dixie Chicks, “White Trash Wedding”
This song has a rapid-fire, bouncing fiddle melody, plus it cracks me up. The chorus:
“You can’t afford no ring
You can’t afford no ring
I shouldn’t be wearing white and you can’t afford no ring”
2. Ryan Adams, “Oh My God, Whatever, Etc.”
Adams puts out too many albums to keep up with, but I loved 2007’s Easy Tiger. A taste of that country sadness:
“If I could I’d fold myself away like a card table
A concertina or a murphy bed, I would
But I wasn’t made that way, so you know instead
I’m open all night and the customers come to stay
And everyone tips but not enough to knock me over
And I’m so tired, I just worked two shifts.”
3. Wilco. Pick a song, any song. I love them so much I forget how alt-country they can be. But a few recommendations: “Outtasite (Outta Mind)” and “Forget the Flowers” from Being There, “Hummingbird” from A Ghost Is Born, and “Jesus, Etc.” from Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.
4. Kathleen Edwards, “In State” (in which she tells a failure of a boyfriend that she “know[s] where the cops hang out” and “maybe 20 years in state will change your mind”) and “Back to Me.” I’ve heard her newish album, Asking for Flowers, is really good, but don’t have it yet.
5. Julie Roberts (this woman really should have picked a stage name), “You Ain’t Down Home” and “No Way Out” (“Fell in love and there’s no way out, sometimes you just gotta laugh about it.”)
6. Rilo Kiley, “I Never”
I’m counting this as country because Jenny Lewis’ solo album was country-ish. I love the opening.
Also, pretty much the only radio-play song this year that I liked (ok, loved) was Taylor Swift’s “You Belong With Me.” So sue me.
Happy listening!
Sing It: An Interview With Nanci Zoppi
If you haven’t heard Nanci Zoppi, you ain’t heard nothing yet. In the last year, the singer-actress has made waves in the Sacramento theater scene through performances with the New Helvetia Theatre Company, B Street Theater and weekly cabaret series Graham-a-Rama. With an elastically expressive face and a jaw that seems to come unhinged as she unleashes high notes, she brings equal parts comedic talent and yearning sadness to her role as Susan, the girlfriend of an aspiring musical theater composer, in Jonathan Larson’s Tick, Tick…Boom! Presented by New Helvetia, the show runs through February 13. Nanci took some time between two shows on Saturday to chat about the musical, her new band and what makes her cry.
How did you get into singing and acting? Tell me about the first performance that you can remember. My dad’s a singer around town, Bobby Zoppi—he had the band Zoppi. So he taught me how to sing when I was two, when I started talking. I hummed before I knew words. And at six my first grade play was The Littlest Christmas Tree and they cast me as the littlest elf and I loved it. From that point on I threw myself into acting, and I went to theater school when I was 19.
Where did you study? I went to this place called Circle in the Square in New York. All my favorite actors like Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Benicio del Toro and Felicity Huffman went there.
You’re currently starring in Tick, Tick…Boom! How would you describe the show? Jonathan Larson really wanted to bring real rock music to the stage. It’s still musical theater, but it does have a different edge to it and even if you don’t like musical theater you’ll still like this. The show resonates with a lot of people, with the question of “what am I going to do with my life?”
Had you been a Larson fan previously? I liked Rent, but I was never diehard. I’m more of a Sondheim person—Sunday in the Park with George is maybe my favorite musical of all time. I had heard Tick, Tick…BOOM! and I didn’t like the music at all. But I couldn’t pass up the chance to work with these people again [after starring in New Helvetia’s production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch last summer], and it’s been a great experience because I love the music now.
What changed? I think when you start to do your groundwork as an actor for your characters, you grow an attachment to them. That automatically makes the songs more personal. Plus [co-stars] Connor [Mickiewicz] and Tristan [Rumery] bring so much to the characters and sound so beautiful doing it. I don’t know if you’ve heard the cast recording of Tick, Tick…BOOM!, but Raúl Esparza is the star. Terrific actor. Has one of the most annoying voices on the planet. So I think that had something to do with it.
There are some clever songs in the show, like “Therapy,” plus one, “Green Green Dress,” that’s all about how hot you are in a green velvet dress. Do you have a favorite? My favorite song in the show I don’t sing. It’s the one Jon [the main character, who has a day job at a restaurant] sings at the end—it goes “I’m going to spend my time this way.” [The song is “Why,” in which Jon reaffirms his decision to devote himself to music and theater.] When he sings it I’m always offstage, and I cry every time at this certain part, when he says “Five o’clock, diner calls, I’m on my way.”
What makes it so affecting? I always knew what I wanted to do, from six years old, maybe younger. And then I hit 24, 25 and everything changed. Like, “I have no idea if I want to do this anymore.”
What made you doubt? Theater school was a lot of it. When you do six days, seven days a week from 8 a.m. until sometimes midnight and you’re trapped with 50 really needy, passionate, sometimes horrible people—I was so tired, I took two years off. I went through that, “do I give up? Is this something I really want to do?” Even if you’re super talented, it doesn’t mean that you’re going to succeed.
But you got back in the game, and people love your performances. On at least three occasions, the arts editors of the Sacramento News and Review have written that they’re “obsessed” with you. What do you think it is about your performance that leads to those strong reactions? If I knew that, I would try to mass produce it. I’m a vocal teacher as well, and the thing I tell all my students is, if I wanted to just hear a pretty voice I would listen to a CD. You have to make it personal so that people want to get out of bed, get dressed, get in the car, spend the gas money, buy a ticket and then at the end, be willing to do it all over. Leading up to high school, everything was really on a gut feeling, and feeling the audience’s energy, and when I went to theater school everything became very technical. I think I finally reached a place where I’ve been able to marry those two concepts.
A lot of people think of musical theater as over-the-top, jazz hands, all that. But do you also sing rock or pop music? When I was growing up I was training in opera and musical theater and contemporary stuff. I grew up listening to the Pixies. My favorite to sing though is folk music. I started a band with Graham Sobelman [the brains behind Graham-a-Rama] called Nanogram. I’d call it piano-based folk, and we’re currently trying to record an EP. The last year has been great because I’ve been able to just work doing theater and singing lessons. This is a new experience for me, and I hope to continue it as long as people want to come see me.
See Nanci perform:
- Tick, Tick…BOOM! Through Feb. 13
- It’s Only Life, a revue of the music of John Bucchino (presented by New Helvetia), March 1 at the Crest
- As “Nanogram” at Graham-a-Rama, March 14
Watch: Nanci at Graham-a-Rama, performing “It Goes Like It Goes,” from the movie Norma Rae
There is no future, there is no past: Rent and Tick, Tick…BOOM!
When I was younger and kept a journal, nearly every entry began: “Wow, it’s been so long since I wrote!” So, um, hi. It’s been so long since I wrote. But now I’m back, and with lots of movies, music, art and books to talk about. Please join me as I try to make my way through the cultural landscape.
Last night I saw the musical Rent, Jonathan Larson’s rock opera, as part of Broadway Sacramento. I’ve long been a fan of the show, which brings a grittiness and chaos to the often cheesy world of musicals.
A quick rundown of the background, in case you’re not familiar with the Larson mythology. He wrote Rent over seven years, and then it was staged in a workshop production at the New York Theatre Workshop. The night before the first public performance in 1996, Larson died of an aortic aneurysm at age 35. The show went on to Broadway, injected the staid stage with sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll, and became an awards-draped global phenomenon.
On this current tour, which closes here in Sacramento on Feb. 7, original Broadway cast members Adam Pascal and Anthony Rapp reprise their roles as musician Roger and filmmaker Mark, respectively. Across town, at the Artisan on Del Paso Blvd., the New Helvetia Theatre Company is re-staging their fall production of Tick, Tick…BOOM!, an earlier Larson musical. The two productions combine to create an exhilarating portrait of late 1980s New York City, and of Larson himself. (I highly recommend the New Helvetia show, starring Tristan Rumery, Nanci Zoppi and Connor Mickiewicz. It runs through Feb. 13. Stay tuned for my interview with Nanci this weekend!)
What’s odd about watching both these shows is that they’ve become a never-never land, a place where Larson and the lost boys that are his leading men never grow up. Larson was obsessed with the passage of time. The semi-autobiographical Tick, Tick…BOOM! anxiously counts down until his 30th birthday, which he sees as the end of his youth. You can’t help but hear lyrics from songs like “30/90” in the context of Larson’s early death:
Stop the clock -Take time out
Time to regroup before you lose the bout
Freeze the frame – Back it up
Time to refocus before they wrap it up
…
Not just another birthday, it’s 30/90
Why can’t you stay 29
Hell, you still feel like you’re 22
Turn thirty 1990
Bang! You’re dead
Even the re-casting of Pascal and Rapp in Rent seems like an attempt to stop the clock. Fourteen years after the premiere they’re both pushing 40. We know they’re older, and are supposed to pretend that they’re youthful bohemians for nostalgia’s sake, and the chance to see great performers. For the most part it works, if you buy into the refrain, from “Another Day” and “No Day But Today,” that “there is no future, there is no past.” We’re trapped with these characters in the eternal present where nobody gets older or has to get real jobs that can actually pay the bills, and it’s joyful and hopeful—an attempt to seize the moment and connect in a disaffected world–but it’s sad, too.
Rent’s most famous song, “Seasons of Love,” begins:
Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes,
Five hundred twenty-five thousand moments so dear
Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
How do you measure, measure a year?
Again Larson tries to wrap his head around the passing of time, re-characterizing it with unusual measurements (30/90, 525,600, cups of coffee, love) that perhaps allow him to get a grip on its slippery, unstoppable nature.
The reprise then asks, “How do you figure a last year on earth?”
This is not to say that Larson somehow knew he would need to make the most of his short life—after all, his musicals are set in the age of AIDS, when for many people in the New York arts world days were numbered. Instead, since I’m wowed by the passion and creativity bursting from his work, I see him as someone who acutely felt the crush of the future because he had so much he wanted to accomplish.
Rent and Tick, Tick…BOOM! are firmly rooted in a place and a time and a moment; it will always be New York City at the end of the millennium, and Larson will always be a struggling young artist. I only wish that he’d lived long enough to experience other times and moments, and write musicals about those, too.
Just call me a critic
You can call me self-involved, too, because I was googling myself, which I do sometimes to make sure nothing weird comes up, and I found that an article in El Pais (a spanish newspaper) from December quotes one of my Pomona newspaper articles from a few years ago. I’d written about the Hollywood trend of remaking very recent foreign films, and this article is about remakes in general.
Here’s the paragaph: Para críticos como Anne Shulock lo malo no es sólo que los grandes estudios dejen de buscar historias sino que “oculten el origen de las que están adaptando”. Como ejemplo cita el caso del director español Alejandro Amenábar y su película Abre los ojos. “Roger Ebert, probablemente el crítico de cine más célebre de los Estados Unidos, no citó ni una sola vez al original español en su pieza sobre Vanilla Sky”, se quejaba Shulock.
Which means (roughly): For critics like Anne Shulock, the problem is not only that the big studios have stopped looking for new stories, but also that “they hide the origin of the movies that they are adapting.” As an example she cites the case of Spanish director Alejandro Amenábar and his movie Abre los ojos. “Roger Ebert, probably the most famous movie critic in the United States, doesn’t mention the original Spanish version even once in his review of Vanilla Sky,” complains Shulock.
Funny.
Cover Story Update
So, I finished my 50 paintings based on book covers (see post below) and the show opened yesterday! The opening reception is Saturday from 6pm-9pm, and you all (i.e. my several readers, none of whom live in Sacramento, but oh well) are invited. 20th Street Art Gallery in Sacramento, on 20th St. between I and J.
In celebration, here are pictures of a few more of my favorites (the sequence number is in parentheses). On the post below and the various links within it you can see others.
Lolita (1)
The Fortress of Solitude (14)
Dangerous Liaisons (21)
The Bell Jar (28)
The Great Gatsby (31)
The Corrections (43)
The Giver (49)
Cover Story
Ok. So clearly I fell off the face of the earth for awhile. But I’ve been busy! With work and painting, which is the reason for this back-from-the-dead post.
Since January 30, I’ve been participating in the 50-50 show for 20th Street Art Gallery. The conceit: 0ver 70 artists each do one painting a day (on a 6″x6″ panel) for 50 days. My original thought–that each painting would take about 2 hours–underestimated my perfectionism, drying time, and all that jazz, and turns out that it’s really time consuming to do a painting every single day. (Friend on a Friday night: “You’re leaving the bar at 9:30?” Me: “Sorry, I have to go paint!”)
But it is also really fun, and as I ever-so-eloquently said to my mom the other day, “I’ve done a shit-ton of paintings!” (41, to be exact.) Each artist has to have a theme, and my paintings are all inspired by the covers of my favorite books.
Other people have written about the show/my paintings, so instead of being repetitive, I’ll send you over to the blog of my lovely co-worker Jon: click here.
And to a local online newspaper: click here.
And to the art gallery’s website about the show: click here.
So, anyone in the Sacramento (or Bay) area, you’re cordially invited to see the show. It will be up from April 8-May 30 (though in May it will just be what hasn’t sold from April), with the opening reception on April 11 from 6-9pm.
p.s. the paintings above are for One Hundred Years of Solitude, Bel Canto, and Killer Cronicas, respectively.
Ping pong madness
Though I haven’t played in more than a year, I love ping pong. (I also have two shirts from my high school days in ping pong club, two other items of clothing with ping pong references, and the nickname of “net whore,” thanks to my lovely sister and my skill at coaxing the ball to catch the net and drop right over.)
So, I would be remiss if I didn’t share this new ad for a limited edition Bruce Lee Nokia phone that has been viral video-ing itself all over the internet. General consensus seems to be that it’s an actor, not really old footage of Bruce Lee, and that it’s all digital and CGI and not really someone playing ping pong with nunchucks blah blah blah. Whatever. It’s awesome, so check it out.
For a laugh
Here is a picture of me with Shaq when I interviewed him at a fundraiser for Kevin Johnson’s St. Hope organization. Shaq was the keynote speaker, and came out in a Afro and lipsyncing to a Jackson 5 song before getting down to business.
Elephants… Teeth Sinking Into Heart
Rachael Yamagata is one of my favorite musicians, if that status can be earned with a single album (2004’s Happenstance ), and I’ve been waiting ages for a follow-up. Now, Elephants… Teeth Sinking Into Heart (a two-disc CD) comes out on October 7!
Here is the video for her first single, “Elephants”. It seems like a bit of an odd choice to kick off the new album–it’s super mellow, and not really infectious. But it is pretty, and I’m jazzed to hear the other 14 tracks.
Knives, Cups, Buttons
In my freshman year sculpture class, we had one assignment that was to build something out of repeated units of a single material. One girl built a snowboard out of plastic knives; I built a violin out of caramel corn and Bazooka bubble gum (okay, I cheated and used two materials).
As a far, far better example of an artist who transforms everyday materials, check out Tara Donovan. She just won a MacArthur award (genius grant–DFW, RIP, won one years ago). She works with media like styrofoam cups, plastic cups, plastic straws, scotch tape, buttons and pencils, and I think the results are stunning.
This is Styrofoam cups.
This is buttons.
I’m dying to see her work in person…
