Patrick Runkle .com -- "Cheney Did 9/11"

2008-06-30T20:36:00.005-04:00

Making a good album is harder than it used to be. Donna Summer's "comeback" CD, Crayons, was recently released as part of Summer's much-hyped new major label deal, and I can't imagine something being less appropriate of a career-revitalization vehicle for her. It sounds like no one associated with the project has ever listened to a Donna Summer song before, let alone actually figured out what elements people might like to hear in a new Donna Summer track. By making her run through the paces of a lot of really bland, overproduced tracks in eight or nine different dancey genres, it comes off as a cloying, tuneless mess. I mean, she's singing about iPods on track 2; who wants to hear that? The beauty of Summer's successful, towering Giorgio Moroder disco records is that they had a singular, brilliant production focus. (Even the Stock-Aitken-Waterman stuff arguably can be included in that category with less emphasis on the "brilliant.") But here, I can't overstate the bad choices made by the producers on this album. It can all be summed up in the title track, a would-be reggae stomper on which Ziggy Marley appears, and on which Summer sings with a Jamaican accent. Whoever thought it was acceptable to include that on the album, and as the title track no less, was not thinking very clearly. (For a more charitable review of the album, see the fantastic blog Disco Delivery, with which I must respectfully disagree.)

And Madonna's new CD, Hard Candy, a production blessed with unlimited resources, fares little better. It's easily Madonna's worst album, and I'm including American Life in that calculus. A bunch of warmed over Timbaland beats of the variety that have showed up literally everywhere for the past three years--from Justin Timberlake to Bjork to Duran Duran--can simply not be considered fresh. And there is nothing compelling going on over the beats; what happened to the songs?

2008-05-31T09:25:00.005-04:00

I recently bought Jean Michel Jarre's 30th Anniversary Oxygene: New Master Recording and find that the set, while interesting, is not entirely successful. Oxygene is an iconic 1977 album in the field of 70s progressive Euro instrumentalism, a genre also occupied by Vangelis, Mike Oldfield, and Tangerine Dream, to name a few. Its most famous bit, "Oxygene IV," is a jaunty synth number that, while not instantly familiar in America, has popped up all over the place for the last thirty years, including in GTA IV. For the 30th anniversary, Jarre, who is the son of Lawrence of Arabia composer Maurice Jarre, recreated the entire album: every blip, every wind noise, every synth voice, and every arpeggio sound (almost) exactly like that on the old recording, and were allegedly created with the original instruments. Of course, the new recording is a bit meatier because it was recorded with modern equipment. For true fans, Jarre has also included a DVD that contains a "live" studio performance of Oxygene by Jean Michel and his buddies, as well as a surround mix of the album.

The Oxygene 30th Anniversary project owes more than a little to Mike Oldfield's very similar recreation of his legendary Tubular Bells, which Oldfield did for its 30th anniversary in 2003. I always suspected the Oldfield project was inspired mainly by record company feuding; Oldfield famously hated Richard Branson and Virgin, with whom he signed a bad 13-album deal to get the original Tubular Bells released in 1973, and making an entirely new Tubular Bells master seemingly gave his new record company a way to sell the old album without violating Virgin's license on the sound recording. Similarly, Jarre has switched labels and may have been looking for a way to get sales of his most famous album--and perennial back catalog favorite--into his new deal.

But what's also interesting is the way the two artists tried to recapture the successes of their most famous albums in the 90s before cynically giving up and simply recreating the original albums in their entirety. As I have described before, Oldfield did Tubular Bells 2 and Tubular Bells III in 1992 and 1998, respectively. Jarre, for his part, did Oxygene 7-14 in 1997. In Oldfield's case, the Tubular Bells sequels were attempts to completely rework the original with more modern styles, and revitalized his career after a couple pretty bad would-be pop records at the end of his Virgin deal. For Jarre, Oxygene 7-14 was a return to form after some rather crappy DX7-sounding new age albums. In my opinion, the sequel projects were vastly preferable to the "recreation" projects, because they showcased the artists doing interesting things. Counting these recreations as new albums is a bit dissonant to me, because there's not much fun in sitting around trying to spot the subtle differences between the originals and the re-recordings. For Tubular Bells 2003, Oldfield added some obvious digital junk--especially near the end of Part I--that sucked, but at least it gave the fan something to listen for. Oxygene is even less interesting because it is faithful to the original to a fault.

2008-05-06T21:44:00.003-04:00

Some great graffiti spotted on the Williamsburg Bridge...

2008-04-19T14:32:00.003-04:00

Mike Oldfield's most recent album, Music of the Spheres, was released in March. It's fantastic, and immediately recalls a "classical" version of Tubular Bells, with a little bit more thematic development and a focus on rich melodies. Mostly orchestral, Spheres hits many of the highlights of Oldfield's career, such as a gorgeous Incantations-flavored bit in "Shabda" and some Ommadawn-style classical guitar virtuosity in "Silhouette."

When I heard that Music of the Spheres was to be a "classical" orchestral release, I was ready to be annoyed and bored. Mike's previous experiments with orchestra, a long track on the pleasant-but-inconsequential Voyager and the embarrassing Millennium Bell, were fairly syrupy, dull and underwhelming. But the arrangements on Spheres are uniformly energetic and fresh.

I have to say, it was about time Mike did something good. One of my favorite all-around musicians, his last great achievement was Tubular Bells III, which was ten years ago, and I was really worrying that he'd lost his touch. While I loved the electronica flavor of TB III, I thought Mike's subsequent forays into dance music were pretty pathetic, especially 2002's Tres Lunas and 2005's Light + Shade, parts of which sounded dangerously like background music for The Weather Channel.

In an unrelated tidbit, the biggest news in the film score community recently is the release, after 23 years, of Jerry Goldsmith's thundering score to Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend. The 3000-copy limited edition sold out within two days, a powerful testament to Goldsmith's continued drawing power. The Baby score is an absolutely classic iteration of the Goldsmith formula: take a crappy genre movie, write a complex, percussive, beautiful score that absolutely puts the movie to shame, and have the movie and score go completely unnoticed.

2008-03-30T20:25:00.003-04:00

As promised, I've produced, shot and edited an online minidocumentary, "The King of America." It features my friend John, who just wrote a book about the Rev. Sun Myung Moon and his surprising influence in Washington. The documentary has appeared on Boing Boing and Wonkette, and we had a blast making it. The best version is online at www.thekingofamerica.com, and it's also available in two parts on YouTube. Enjoy!

2008-03-06T20:58:00.002-05:00

My good friend John Gorenfeld's new book, pictured here at the Barnes & Noble in Tribeca, has just been released. Several years in the making, it is the definitive look at the astonishing empire of Rev. Sun Myung Moon and its influence in Washington, and I suggest you pick up your copy at Amazon. John and I spent two weeks in January filming some entertaining promo videos for the book at Moon-related sites in New York and Washington; those videos will be available soon when the promotional effort for the book gets fully underway.

2008-03-04T19:06:00.005-05:00

One of the most amazing stories I have read in a long time is the stunning tale of Love and Consequences, a fake memoir written by a white woman who claimed to have grown up in a black foster family in South Central L.A. The story has many interesting angles, but the one that is most troubling is the idea that you don't even have to put on blackface anymore to have a minstrel show. This woman supposedly snookered the entire New York literary world into believing that she was biracial and had been a gang member. In reality, she grew up in the Valley and, obviously, suffers from some serious problems. The Times posted an excerpt of the book, which is pretty offensive when viewed in light of the fact that it isn't true. Even more amazing is this breathtakingly pompous NPR piece where she talks about growing up in the ghetto.

2008-02-23T19:48:00.002-05:00

I imagine Pennsylvania law students held extraordinary celebrations when this happened. Sadly, the Rule Against Perpetuities is alive and well on the MBE, which is such a terrible, maligned test that the organization responsible for it has a hilarious "myths and facts" section offering a rather limp defense of it.

2008-01-20T10:51:00.000-05:00

So there's a new Star Trek movie coming out. There's a teaser trailer for it that actually impressed me.

Considering that this new movie is a huge-budget re-envisioning of the franchise set before the first episode of the original series, it got me thinking: One of the more interesting underreported battles in the history of Trek is the one in the late 80s and early 90s between Eileen Roddenberry, Gene's first wife, and Majel Roddenberry, his second wife and the executor of his estate, over whether the 1969 divorce settlement between the original Roddenberrys gave Eileen royalties over future Star Trek projects, or just royalities from profits derived from the original 1966-1969 series. The trial court found that Eileen should get royalties from The Next Generation and Deep Space 9, but not from The Animated Series, the movies, or any Trek merchandising. This was because, the court said, The Next Generation and DS9 were "continuations" of the original TV show. The appellate court, in an oft-cited opinion, determined that Eileen Roddenberry was entitled to royalties from the original TV show only, because the divorce settlement did not contemplate the future projects. (These royalties had amounted to, at the time, "only" $13.8 million.) Here's the court opinion, which amusingly dissects the Trek franchise, and also reveals that Shatner has a small piece of royalities in the original show.

So, if I were an enterprising California lawyer, I'd be wondering whether Eileen Roddenberry or her estate would be entitled to a piece of the new movie, considering that it is essentially a remake of the 60s show using the original characters. Under this opinion, the answer is probably no.

2007-12-22T07:33:00.001-05:00

As I make my annual preparations for Life Day, I had a frightening thought: The Star Wars Holiday Special will not enter the public domain until January 1, 2074, assuming that there aren't any more questionably constitutional retroactive copyright extensions. Will it be officially released or re-broadcast before then, and, if not, will anyone in 2074 care about it? I looked up the Copyright Office registrations for the legendary program, and found two funny character copyright registrations, one for "baby wookie," described as having a "ghoulish face with animal's nose and long hair," and one for "grandfather wookie," described as having a "ghoulish face with protruding gums and long hair."

2007-12-21T20:57:00.000-05:00

I spent last weekend in the Iron City of Pittsburgh, PA. Going to a Steelers home game was a pretty amazing ride, even though they lost. I feel like I got my money's worth in terms of Steeler football, however, because it was completely frigid, snowed for most of the game, and I got to experience drunken Steelers fans en masse for four hours. Bonus points go to Jerome Bettis' Grille 36, which we experienced the night before the game.

2007-12-09T10:48:00.000-05:00

Although I wholeheartedly approved of last year's Rocky Balboa, I am decidedly more apprehensive about Rambo, which is dropping during the inauspicious movie month of January. While Rocky Balboa was essentially an update and tribute to the first movie, the plot of Rambo seems to be a tribute to Rambo III instead of First Blood. Still, the street ads pictured above are really exciting, even if Stallone hasn't looked like that since 1985. I don't see how you can have a real Rambo movie without Jerry Goldsmith.

2007-12-01T08:37:00.000-05:00

One of my most recent projects was a calendar of the beautiful covered bridges of Lancaster County. The twist is that the pictures are all new scans of slides that my grandfather took in 1960. (The calendar is a holiday present for him.) It turned out that many of the bridges he photographed were destroyed during the 60s, making his pictures interesting documents of history. For more info on covered bridges, check out the Covered Bridge Society of PA.

2007-11-17T18:25:00.000-05:00

John Gorenfeld and I have revived Ink Syndicate, a humor website that we started in Oakland in 2000, as a general-purpose blog. Some things that appear here will also appear there, but there will be original content there also. First up are a number of postings about our DEN.NET story "Fast Company," which was recently featured on BoingBoing, USA Today's blog, and other sites, and has been getting lots of notice.

On an unrelated topic, the present appears to be a boffo time for Ridley Scott. Film music fans, however, and anyone who remembers a time when American Gangster and Gladiator would have been considered complete artistic failures, know better and can take heart in some new CD releases of the music from Scott's genuine accomplishments. First, and most surprising, is a 2CD set of Jerry Goldsmith's complete score to Alien, released just in time for the holidays. Word on the street for a long time had been that the original masters were lost, and so the (terrible-sounding, incomplete, and prone to CD rot) release from 1988 was going to have to do. But some film music restoration experts found the multi-track masters and, theoretically, gave them a good spit and polish. And they remastered the original album too. Finally on CD will be the original version of Goldsmith's main title, which he always described as a great piece of music. (Editor Terry Rawlings, who unwisely disses Goldsmith on the special edition DVD, explains how they made Jerry replace the main title he wrote with the creepy, quiet string cut in the movie, a piece Goldsmith disdainfully said he wrote "in five minutes.")

Also forthcoming is a remarkable 3CD set that may finally, after 25 years of bitching, satisfy the fans of Vangelis' score to Blade Runner. The first CD is a remaster of the album that Vangelis put together in 1994, featuring some but not all of the original music. (Theoretically this will still have the dialogue snippets on it that annoyed everyone the first time around.) The second CD will have a bunch of other music from the movie, including material that wasn't used. (This will theoretically cover some of those 10-minute cues that showed up on the various bootleg CDs over the years.) And, unbelievably, Big V has composed an entire new CD of music to round out the set, and he got Sir Ridley himself to do some spoken-word segments.

2007-11-08T20:20:00.000-05:00

My friend John Gorenfeld and I have a piece in this month's Radar magazine about the collapse of infamous entertainment dot-com startup DEN.NET.

2007-10-28T12:53:00.000-04:00

From the retro music blog Disco Delivery, which is a fantastic digital museum of obscure late 70s disco records, comes an authoritative report on the astonishing Lafleur! album from 1979. The album is a disco cash-in from Canadian hockey star Guy Lafleur, and I think this amazing description says it all: "Lavishly packaged in a gatefold sleeve, complete with instructional booklet and fold-out poster of a shirtless Lafleur, much of the album consists of Guy's own personal hockey tips set to a disco beat with Lafleur speaking over the bass-thumping grooves, backed with a chorus of cooing, catchy female vocalists, adding encouragement and emphasis on Lafleur's key points."

2007-10-22T19:25:00.001-04:00

My most recent obsession has been with MonstersHD, an amazing cable channel newly added to the Cablevision HD lineup in New York. MonstersHD, originally part of the Dolan empire's crazy Voom lineup, is a simple concept; it shows completely uncut and commercial-free horror movies, mostly from the 70s and 80s, all day long in remastered hi-def. Some nights, I feel like I was somehow unconsciously in charge of programming for the station... Tomorrow evening, for instance, features the astonishing one-two-three punch of C.H.U.D., C.H.U.D. II: Bud the Chud, and Xtro II. One evening recently, I just happened to flip by Bloodstone: Subspecies II, an extremely obscure, creepy Full Moon movie that is probably not as good as I thought it was when I was 14. During a particularly compelling "zombie" day last weekend, large amounts of programming time were devoted to the mind-boggling 1988 horror-comedy misfire Dead Heat (pictured above), with Joe Piscopo and Treat Williams. Some of these movies have been barely available on home video, let alone in full HD.

2007-10-15T18:34:00.000-04:00

From a hipster recycling heap in Bushwick, a sad picture of where indie music goes to die. The RIAA should be happy another dangerous CD-r is off the streets.

2007-10-02T22:21:00.001-04:00

From the archives, here's a very special message from Leonard Nimoy. (Click the image above for the larger, readable version.)

This is the back of the LP sleeve from the very rare In Search Of... soundtrack, released in 1977. For those of you who don't remember, and I imagine there are many of you, In Search Of... was a fantastic psuedo-science TV documentary program from the mid-70s where Nimoy would introduce segments wildly speculating on the Loch Ness monster, the Abominable Snowman, the disappearance of Amelia Earhart, the treasure of Oak Island, the Crystal Skulls of South America, and many others. Here's the opening sequence from a typically hilarious episode, including the legendary main titles, on YouTube. And as a special treat, here's a small musical sample from the long-lost LP.

2007-09-28T08:50:00.001-04:00

My friend John Gorenfeld and I have an article in the upcoming issue of pop-culture scandal mag Radar. The article, which has been a long time coming, charts the amazing late-90s tale of the Digital Entertainment Network, a Web 1.0 startup funded with $40 million in venture capital from like the likes of Dell and Microsoft. The company was to create "the last network," which it would do by making a bunch of bad TV shows that people with dial-up connections couldn't watch. Needless to say, the idea didn't exactly take off; more interestingly, the company itself imploded in an extraordinary fashion, with the founders fleeing to Europe as a child-molestation investigation proceeded against them in the United States. Although that story has been reported before, John and I found out exactly what has happened to DEN's founders since they were arrested by Spanish police in 2002, and we were amazed. More details in the next issue of Radar. In the meantime, check out the pilot episode of Chad's World, DEN's most extraordinary offering.

2007-09-09T18:57:00.000-04:00

The new episode of Star Trek: New Voyages is absolutely sensational. Led by the enigmatic James Cawley, who also plays Kirk, the web-based fan series is set directly after the original show, with a maniacal attention to detail and Trek history. While this could be a prescription for fanboy injokes, New Voyages instead uses its authenticity to find the true emotional core of the beloved original. "World Enough and Time" finds George Takei reprising his role as Sulu, and it's not as much of a gimmick as it could be; the story makes a lot of sense in an original series sort of way. Check out the streaming version from the site.

2007-08-23T00:14:00.001-04:00

Here's a beast not often seen outside of captivity: my new MSN Direct Smart Watch, a Microsoft technology launched in 2004 that didn't exactly catch on. The devices--mine is the Swatch version--are available now for pretty cheap on eBay. The network that Microsoft created for powering "smart" devices is called DirectBand, and it's a low-level FM radio signal that transmits digital information to the watches and GPS devices that use the technology. It's an interesting idea in a Microsoft Surface sort of way, but there are some problems: The transmissions are one-way only; you can get basic news stories, weather reports and stuff like that but you can't send anything. Also, Microsoft wants you to pay a yearly fee for subscriptions to these services. And you can get the same info from your cell phone. Oh, and all the watches are cartoonishly oversized...

2007-08-09T11:20:00.000-04:00

I send a lot of CDs and DVDs through the U.S. Postal Service, and it is obvious now that the recent postal rate hike was a clever move to markedly raise rates without most consumers noticing. Although junk mailers and other mail-based business protested the increase, most people sort of shrugged because we didn't realize that the increase in rates was tied to a change in definition of what a "parcel" is. In the past, you could send a padded envelope with a CD in it at first-class letter rate. Now, the same package apparently has to be shipped as a parcel. This could be because the postal service can't figure out how to automate things like Netflix mailers. I sent a 1.6 oz. CD package today and it was $1.30. Before the change, this same package would have cost 63 cents; the new rate represents a 106% increase. My guess is that these new "parcels" represent a large percentage of what people actually put in the mail; when was the last time you sent a bunch of letters to someone?

2007-08-05T01:33:00.000-04:00

Here's a random story about the music industry: In the summer of 2002, my band Ganymede did a cover of the Soft Cell song "Chips on My Shoulder" on spec for an "electroclash" Soft Cell covers compilation being put out by a popular indie label. They liked the song and accepted it for release. They paid us $100. We signed the song over to them. Since then, they have put the song out on at least four different CDs with major distribution, including on something called "This Is Electroclash" that just recently popped up on iTunes. Whether the song actually has any fans or traction within the electronic music scene is still an open question. My pre-law school mind didn't realize at the time we were submitting the song that we would make $100 for it in 2002, but the label could potentially make a lot more off of it in perpetuity by releasing it over and over again and then putting it on iTunes forever. It seemed to me that an electro cover of a Soft Cell song was a limited-use item that would appear only on the CD that the label solicited for, even though the contract did contemplate that the label would own the master outright. And because it's a cover song, we're not entitled to songwriting royalties either from radio play or the additional releases.

I tell this story not to say that we were ripped off, but rather to highlight the serious challenges of trying to get anywhere in the industry. The music on all those electronica compilations has to come from somewhere; I guess I'm happy that some of it came from me, but it's sad because the whole thing is not necessarily a springboard to greater opportunities, as most people would think. It seems instead to be a kind of anonymous experience in which we don't even know where our music is going and we're not getting any sort of residual benefits. What's also interesting is that the song has shown up on CDs from several different labels, all of which I assume are allied with the label we sold the song to, but it's impossible even for me to know whether it's being legitimately licensed.

But our experiences with that label were much better than those with Moonshine Music on their compilation "Electro Nouveau." Moonshine bought three tracks from me in 2002, including "Neon Rain" by Ganymede, and gave us a contract that promised a (small) ongoing royalty as well as mechanical royalty payments for the songwriting. They paid us the $200 per track advance, put the CD out, allegedly moved 10,000 copies of it, and then promptly disappeared without ever paying us another cent. Then, they went out of business or morphed into some other anonymous dance music label.

2007-07-19T17:41:00.000-04:00

The Teach For America adventure continues...

I was minding my own business recently when I received a bizarre letter officially revoking my status as a TFA alumnus. Apparently, the organization decided that former corps members who had completed one year of teaching instead of two should become personae non gratae and lose access to the luscious TFA alumni network. This was because devoting any resources to us "quitters" has somehow recently become unfair to corps members who did, in their words, "fulfill their commitments." The letter is a fabulously nonsensical bit of non-profit tripe, even going so far as to express a fervent wish that we still remain a part of the Teach for America "community." My friends who, like me, ran away from the program after one year also received the letter.

My response mostly speaks for itself. As a bit of context, I should note that Teach For America corps members are employed only by the school districts in which they teach, which reduces TFA's actual role to that of (inadequate) training and (unwise) placement.

Also, I will add that as the do-gooding daughter of billionaire Home Depot founder and Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank sits around deciding whether I can have access to free TFA email, an astounding 58 percent of high-school students in St. John Parish--where I taught and where TFA continues to send upper-class white kids to practice its particular brand of educational colonialism--do not have "basic" mastery of English skills.

(To aid people in finding this post, I will point out that this month's search terms include "teach for america nightmare," "teach for america terrible" and "truth about teach for america.")