We're really blessed this election cycle to have not one but TWO completely inept Republican candidates to mock.
First up, Mittens Romney. Let's see how many embarrassing inanities he can utter over the course of a single, brief ABC News article:
On Saturday, Romney met a former Marine along the route who said that "being informed military" he was "really concerned" about the troops overseas and he wants a change. Romney disagreed with him, saying, "I'm a little more encouraged than you are," and encouraged him to "take a close look."
Yes, please, Former Marine. Take a closer look at Iraq and you'll see that everything over there's tip-top.
Four civilians were killed when a roadside bomb struck their bus in the centre of the northern city of Mosul, police Brigadier General Abdel Karim al-Juburi said.
Another six people, including a woman and her daughter, were wounded in the morning attack in the city's Raas al-Jadha area, he said.
Two people were killed in a roadside bomb attack in Baghdad, while a street vendor walking on a road in the city of Baquba was shot dead by unknown gunmen, security officials said.
Hey, that's super...
US military officials are putting huge pressure on interrogators who question Iraqi insurgents to find incriminating evidence pointing to Iran, it was claimed last night.
....
Brose, 30, who extracts information from detainees in Iraq, said: 'They push a lot for us to establish a link with Iran. They have pre-categories for us to go through, and by the sheer volume of categories there's clearly a lot more for Iran than there is for other stuff. Of all the recent requests I've had, I'd say 60 to 70 per cent are about Iran.
'It feels a lot like, if you get something and Iran's not involved, it's a let down.' He added: 'I've had people say to me, "They're really pushing the Iran thing. It's like, shit, you know." '
Promising!
So, I think we can all agree with the Mittster. Things in Iraq are getting so much better all the time.
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
Sherri Shepherd Continues Sapping My Will to Live
Sherri Shepherd is the newest host on "The View" and one of the most insane idiots on television. And I'm including animated characters here. She gives Jabberjaw a run for his money. (Jabberjaw, you young'uns won't recall, was an animated shark who talked like Curly from "The Three Stooges" but nonetheless frequently uttered Rodney Dangerfield's catchphrase, "I don't get no respect." Ripping off two comedians at once was considered a divine outpouring of imaginative brilliance at '70s Hanna-Barbera.)
Anyway, you may remember Shepherd's previous CBI appearance, in which she claimed to have no opinion on the pressing, urgent matter of the shape of the planet. Barbra Walters asked if the Earth was flat, Shepherd answered, and I quote, "I don't know. I never thought about it." Now, "Yes" is the incorrect answer to Walters' question.
"Is the world flat?"
"Yes."
Wrong. Cut and dry.
Shepherd somehow manages to go beyond the wrong answer, to come up with something even more incorrect. At least the person who thinks the world is flat has considered the nature of the world around them for a fleeting moment. Shepherd obviously has nothing going on whatsoever upstairs, to the point that she has never paused and actually had a thought about the universe and her place therein. Now that's pow'rful stupid.
I'm not sure if it's theoretically possible to top that abysmal episode for sheer dumbassery. But Shepard seems determined to try. Here she is destroying what miniscule shards remained of my faith in humanity, mangling a Christmas carol in a slavish act of devotion to her sponsors, the woefully misguided suckers at Dodge Caravan.
Anyway, you may remember Shepherd's previous CBI appearance, in which she claimed to have no opinion on the pressing, urgent matter of the shape of the planet. Barbra Walters asked if the Earth was flat, Shepherd answered, and I quote, "I don't know. I never thought about it." Now, "Yes" is the incorrect answer to Walters' question.
"Is the world flat?"
"Yes."
Wrong. Cut and dry.
Shepherd somehow manages to go beyond the wrong answer, to come up with something even more incorrect. At least the person who thinks the world is flat has considered the nature of the world around them for a fleeting moment. Shepherd obviously has nothing going on whatsoever upstairs, to the point that she has never paused and actually had a thought about the universe and her place therein. Now that's pow'rful stupid.
I'm not sure if it's theoretically possible to top that abysmal episode for sheer dumbassery. But Shepard seems determined to try. Here she is destroying what miniscule shards remained of my faith in humanity, mangling a Christmas carol in a slavish act of devotion to her sponsors, the woefully misguided suckers at Dodge Caravan.
Monday, November 05, 2007
No Country For Old Men
Yes! Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes! Fuck yes! Awesome! Fucking finally! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!
I'm pleased to report to you that, for the first time since 2001's terrific The Man Who Wasn't There, the Coen Brothers have actually directed a real movie again. (Don't even try to remember the two...items...they released in the interim. They're not worth it.) No Country for Old Men is a total return to form for the Coens. Literally. It takes them back to the form of their 1984 debut, Blood Simple - occasionally gruesome, darkly funny thriller.
Joel and Ethan demonstrate the same kind of impeccable timing and mastery of form here that's on display in classics like Blood Simple, Fargo and Miller's Crossing, but also a grim intensity that's pretty much entirely new to their filmography. No Country's expertly shot like their other films (by frequent collaborator Roger Deakins), it's often hilarious with a tremendous ear for quirkly dialect and slang like their other films, but it's also brutal and intense. Relentless, even.
What I found most refreshing about the film, and what makes it a total departure from their previous, lackluster outings, is that they no longer feel desperate to please. No Country is a difficult movie, a harsh movie, and it doesn't always make perfect sense. For about 2 hours, it's a shocking, violent chase movie, and then everything changes.
I sense that many will find the conclusion frustrating. But it's a rare thing to see filmmakers take a movie where it needs to go rather than where the audience might want it to go. The set-up is so crackerjack here, you'd have to be crazy not to want some direct, explosive and unambiguous conclusion. But the Coens (working from a novel by Cormac McCarthy) give you something even more satisfying. A mystery. A curiosity. As Sheriff Ed Tom Bell might say, signs and wonders.
The action begins in a series of stark, nearly silent desert sequences. A Texas hunter, Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), stumbles across the remnants of a drug deal gone sour. The truckload of product and the dead Mexicans don't interest him much. But the briefcase containing $2 million strikes him as a bit more useful.
Before he can even discuss his newfound wealth with his wife Carla Jean (Kelly MacDonald), Llewelyn becomes the target of some very very bad men. There's the remaining drug dealers who want their money back, of course, as well as shifty gun-for-hire Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson, as good as he's been in a movie in years). As if that wasn't enough, Llewelyn's also being sought by seen-it-all Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (a note-perfect Tommy Lee Jones), who doesn't seem terribly concerned about the massacre in his district but nonetheless wonders why Moss' truck was found near the scene.
Llewelyn's a resourceful guy, so he's not too afraid of these initial threats. His main worry comes in the form of unstoppable lunatic Anton Chigurh, who lurches around West Texas carrying a cumbersome air gun and isn't afraid to use it on the forehead of some innocent passer-by. Chigurh is played by Javier Bardem in one of the most idiosyncratic, peculiar and ingenious performances in any Coen Brothers film, EVER. And these are guys known for their idiosyncratic, peculiar characters.
Bardem's got the look of Chigurh down, the stilted manner of speaking, the body language, the whole deal, but what really sells this psychopath are the little tics and details. This guy is a complete monster - not just a willing murderer, but a man who feels totally justified in killing. It's unclear whether he's on a kill-crazy rampage to access the money or whether the money just provides his latest excuse for going on a kill-crazy rampage. Bardem makes him uncontrollably crazy but also recognizably human. He's vulnerable and invincible at the same time.
So well established is Chigurh's menace and Moss' sympathetic goodness, the plotting essentially takes care of itself for two hours. The Coens set up one slickly-designed, perfectly realized set piece after another. With 50 years of professional filmmaking experience between the two of them, these guys have developed finely honed instincts for playing around with an audience, and they get the most out of every jolt in McCarthy's breathlessly savage story. There's almost too many suspenseful sequences; I felt exhausted when it was all over.
(I don't want to blow anything, but there's one dazzling moment that just demands some attention. Moss, sitting in a darkened room with shotgun at the ready, hears Chigurh creeping up from outside, and sees his the shadows of his feet flash by under the door jamb. We think, "at any second, the door's going to come bursting open and there's going to be a crazy shootout." Instead, the Coens take this opportunity to raise the stakes and increase the tension, not letting you off the hook. People in the audience were split into three reactions - some yelped, others laughed and still others applauded. I did all three.)
The final act, as I said, shifts gears in some ways. A scene that doesn't feel entirely pivotal fades to black (the first time this has been used as a transition), and suddenly we're looking at things from a different perspective, taking all that has come before and combing through it for meaning. The story concludes, but in a most un-thriller-like fashion, leaving strands of narrative unresolved and far more questions than answers. (Just as Bell is nearing retirement from the Sheriff's Department, the Coens' film almost seems to enter retirement from toying with your emotions. "That's all the excitement I can handle. I'm going to let you all take it from here."
Though it's certainly ambiguous, No Country morphs into what feels like a contemplation of the meaning of Death. Specifically, the moment immediately before death, heavy with the knowledge of its impending arrival. (The storyline allows for a great many such moments throughout its 120-some minutes, although it could be argued that we spend every moment of our adult lives sick with the knowledge that soon we will day.)
The film opens with a Tommy Lee Jones monologue in which he makes plain his understanding that his job may eventually cause his demise. Moss, before making the first of several bold decisions that will place his life in danger, asks his wife to tell his mother he loves her, in case he doesn't return. (She reminds him his mother's already dead. ) Chigurh, the vicious murderer, may be the only one who isn't really at peace with the notion of his own mortality. Implicit in his constant drive to live and press on and pursue is the innate fear of ever having to stop. Perhaps his killing, the idea of the chase itself, not to mentio his fondness for watching others die, stems from a desire to conquer the one thing he can't overrun.
I'm pleased to report to you that, for the first time since 2001's terrific The Man Who Wasn't There, the Coen Brothers have actually directed a real movie again. (Don't even try to remember the two...items...they released in the interim. They're not worth it.) No Country for Old Men is a total return to form for the Coens. Literally. It takes them back to the form of their 1984 debut, Blood Simple - occasionally gruesome, darkly funny thriller.
Joel and Ethan demonstrate the same kind of impeccable timing and mastery of form here that's on display in classics like Blood Simple, Fargo and Miller's Crossing, but also a grim intensity that's pretty much entirely new to their filmography. No Country's expertly shot like their other films (by frequent collaborator Roger Deakins), it's often hilarious with a tremendous ear for quirkly dialect and slang like their other films, but it's also brutal and intense. Relentless, even.
What I found most refreshing about the film, and what makes it a total departure from their previous, lackluster outings, is that they no longer feel desperate to please. No Country is a difficult movie, a harsh movie, and it doesn't always make perfect sense. For about 2 hours, it's a shocking, violent chase movie, and then everything changes.
I sense that many will find the conclusion frustrating. But it's a rare thing to see filmmakers take a movie where it needs to go rather than where the audience might want it to go. The set-up is so crackerjack here, you'd have to be crazy not to want some direct, explosive and unambiguous conclusion. But the Coens (working from a novel by Cormac McCarthy) give you something even more satisfying. A mystery. A curiosity. As Sheriff Ed Tom Bell might say, signs and wonders.
The action begins in a series of stark, nearly silent desert sequences. A Texas hunter, Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), stumbles across the remnants of a drug deal gone sour. The truckload of product and the dead Mexicans don't interest him much. But the briefcase containing $2 million strikes him as a bit more useful.
Before he can even discuss his newfound wealth with his wife Carla Jean (Kelly MacDonald), Llewelyn becomes the target of some very very bad men. There's the remaining drug dealers who want their money back, of course, as well as shifty gun-for-hire Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson, as good as he's been in a movie in years). As if that wasn't enough, Llewelyn's also being sought by seen-it-all Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (a note-perfect Tommy Lee Jones), who doesn't seem terribly concerned about the massacre in his district but nonetheless wonders why Moss' truck was found near the scene.
Llewelyn's a resourceful guy, so he's not too afraid of these initial threats. His main worry comes in the form of unstoppable lunatic Anton Chigurh, who lurches around West Texas carrying a cumbersome air gun and isn't afraid to use it on the forehead of some innocent passer-by. Chigurh is played by Javier Bardem in one of the most idiosyncratic, peculiar and ingenious performances in any Coen Brothers film, EVER. And these are guys known for their idiosyncratic, peculiar characters.
Bardem's got the look of Chigurh down, the stilted manner of speaking, the body language, the whole deal, but what really sells this psychopath are the little tics and details. This guy is a complete monster - not just a willing murderer, but a man who feels totally justified in killing. It's unclear whether he's on a kill-crazy rampage to access the money or whether the money just provides his latest excuse for going on a kill-crazy rampage. Bardem makes him uncontrollably crazy but also recognizably human. He's vulnerable and invincible at the same time.
So well established is Chigurh's menace and Moss' sympathetic goodness, the plotting essentially takes care of itself for two hours. The Coens set up one slickly-designed, perfectly realized set piece after another. With 50 years of professional filmmaking experience between the two of them, these guys have developed finely honed instincts for playing around with an audience, and they get the most out of every jolt in McCarthy's breathlessly savage story. There's almost too many suspenseful sequences; I felt exhausted when it was all over.
(I don't want to blow anything, but there's one dazzling moment that just demands some attention. Moss, sitting in a darkened room with shotgun at the ready, hears Chigurh creeping up from outside, and sees his the shadows of his feet flash by under the door jamb. We think, "at any second, the door's going to come bursting open and there's going to be a crazy shootout." Instead, the Coens take this opportunity to raise the stakes and increase the tension, not letting you off the hook. People in the audience were split into three reactions - some yelped, others laughed and still others applauded. I did all three.)
The final act, as I said, shifts gears in some ways. A scene that doesn't feel entirely pivotal fades to black (the first time this has been used as a transition), and suddenly we're looking at things from a different perspective, taking all that has come before and combing through it for meaning. The story concludes, but in a most un-thriller-like fashion, leaving strands of narrative unresolved and far more questions than answers. (Just as Bell is nearing retirement from the Sheriff's Department, the Coens' film almost seems to enter retirement from toying with your emotions. "That's all the excitement I can handle. I'm going to let you all take it from here."
Though it's certainly ambiguous, No Country morphs into what feels like a contemplation of the meaning of Death. Specifically, the moment immediately before death, heavy with the knowledge of its impending arrival. (The storyline allows for a great many such moments throughout its 120-some minutes, although it could be argued that we spend every moment of our adult lives sick with the knowledge that soon we will day.)
The film opens with a Tommy Lee Jones monologue in which he makes plain his understanding that his job may eventually cause his demise. Moss, before making the first of several bold decisions that will place his life in danger, asks his wife to tell his mother he loves her, in case he doesn't return. (She reminds him his mother's already dead. ) Chigurh, the vicious murderer, may be the only one who isn't really at peace with the notion of his own mortality. Implicit in his constant drive to live and press on and pursue is the innate fear of ever having to stop. Perhaps his killing, the idea of the chase itself, not to mentio his fondness for watching others die, stems from a desire to conquer the one thing he can't overrun.
Should You Wash Your Hands After Going #1?
Oliver Willis says yes. Before going any further, I'd like to state for the record that, regardless of the argument I'm about to advance, I actually do wash my hands after I urinate. It's just force of habit at this point.
There's just a few things I'd like to point out.
(1) There is no reason my penis should be any more dirty than any other part of my body, and it certainly ought to be cleaner than my hands, provided I haven't been using it recently. My hands touch all kinds of dirty things all day - far far worse than my genitals - from pocket change to shoes to the floor to the exterior of my car. So why is it mandatory that I wash my hands every time I touch my penis? The thing's not radioactive.
(2) If you're getting pee on your hand when you go #1, you're doing it wrong.
In the course of making his point - that it's icky not to wash after you piss - Oliver links to this USA Today column. But they don't really make his case for him very well:
...the experts still recommend washing, for two reasons.
Reason one: You may pick up more germs than you think, from doors, flush handles and other surfaces, and from your own body. "Your gastrointestinal tract is close by," Daly says. "It all fits together, and you can't see where the microorganisms are."
Okay, see, but...that's just stupid. My gastrointestinal tract is close to my penis? I mean, speaking globally, yes, it is closer than, say, New York and The Hague. But the small of my back is also relatively close to my gastrointestinal tract, and I don't run to the washroom every time I reach back there to scratch an itch.
Let's add an addendum to the end of observation #2 above. If you're getting doody on your hand when you go #1, you're seriously doing it wrong. Like, holy shit, are you doing it wrong! Wow! If you ever find poo on your hand, for any reason, wash that fucker immediately, without hesitation.
Reason two: The restroom, stocked with sinks, soap and water, is a convenient place to wash off bacteria and viruses your hands accumulate elsewhere during the day. Studies do show groups of people who wash their hands regularly get fewer gastrointestinal and respiratory illnesses.
But this has nothing to do with washing after you go #1. This is just stating, quite obviously, that it's a decent idea to wash your hands a few times a day. Because live is messy and germs are everywhere. I can get behind that message. And I'm not even saying you shouldn't wash your hands whenever you exit a bathroom. (The "germs on the door handle" argument is fairly compelling.) But let's not go nuts here. There's far more gross things that people do each day than rush out of the bathroom after a nice tinkle without washing.
There's just a few things I'd like to point out.
(1) There is no reason my penis should be any more dirty than any other part of my body, and it certainly ought to be cleaner than my hands, provided I haven't been using it recently. My hands touch all kinds of dirty things all day - far far worse than my genitals - from pocket change to shoes to the floor to the exterior of my car. So why is it mandatory that I wash my hands every time I touch my penis? The thing's not radioactive.
(2) If you're getting pee on your hand when you go #1, you're doing it wrong.
In the course of making his point - that it's icky not to wash after you piss - Oliver links to this USA Today column. But they don't really make his case for him very well:
...the experts still recommend washing, for two reasons.
Reason one: You may pick up more germs than you think, from doors, flush handles and other surfaces, and from your own body. "Your gastrointestinal tract is close by," Daly says. "It all fits together, and you can't see where the microorganisms are."
Okay, see, but...that's just stupid. My gastrointestinal tract is close to my penis? I mean, speaking globally, yes, it is closer than, say, New York and The Hague. But the small of my back is also relatively close to my gastrointestinal tract, and I don't run to the washroom every time I reach back there to scratch an itch.
Let's add an addendum to the end of observation #2 above. If you're getting doody on your hand when you go #1, you're seriously doing it wrong. Like, holy shit, are you doing it wrong! Wow! If you ever find poo on your hand, for any reason, wash that fucker immediately, without hesitation.
Reason two: The restroom, stocked with sinks, soap and water, is a convenient place to wash off bacteria and viruses your hands accumulate elsewhere during the day. Studies do show groups of people who wash their hands regularly get fewer gastrointestinal and respiratory illnesses.
But this has nothing to do with washing after you go #1. This is just stating, quite obviously, that it's a decent idea to wash your hands a few times a day. Because live is messy and germs are everywhere. I can get behind that message. And I'm not even saying you shouldn't wash your hands whenever you exit a bathroom. (The "germs on the door handle" argument is fairly compelling.) But let's not go nuts here. There's far more gross things that people do each day than rush out of the bathroom after a nice tinkle without washing.
Sunday, November 04, 2007
A Considerable Weekend
Did lots of stuff I had no chance to blog about this weekend. So here we go, in brief form:
American Gangster
Okay, so I watched this last week...um...illegally. But I didn't get a chance to review it. It's a pretty good flick, with some solid performances and a great soundtrack full of '70s soul. (I knew Jay-Z's latest album is a tie-in with the movie, but none of those songs actually appear in the film. It's weird from a marketing standpoint, but the decision not to go with anachronistic hip-hop in the background was a smart one.) I think the only thing that kept me from loving the movie was its familiarity.
There have been a lot of other movies about real-life drug dealers from this era, and all the stories are fairly similar. Resourceful criminal finds a way to obtain cheap narcotics from a foreign supplier, quickly rises to the top of his profession and eventually falls from grace, with the very ambition and aggressiveness that initially won him a fortune bringing about his downfall. There's nothing American Gangster really brings to that formula, and its one kind of unique element - the switching of perspectives between kingpin Frank Lucas (Washington) and the policeman chasing him (Russell Crowe) - kind of bogs the film down rather than adding anything new to the mix. It also could stand to be a bit more entertaining; the movie starts slow, and never really finds its rhythm, exactly.
Neil Young at the Nokia Theater
Caught Neil's show on Friday night with my brother and father. His wife Pegi opened with kind of a bland collection of throwback country songs. Granted, this isn't really my genre to begin with, but the set was, I hate to say it, kind of boring.
Neil then came on stage alone and played about a 45 minute acoustic set that was pretty stellar. The highlight? "A Man Needs a Maid." I never really imagined he'd pull that one out, and the performance kind of blew me away. There was this obnoxious hillbilly couple sitting directly behind me (they must have driven in from somewhere in Central California, because they had that drawl you just don't get from Los Angelinos) talking through the entire show (and always with ridiculously folksy, stupid comments), and even they shut up during "Man Needs a Maid." Although immediately afterwards, they had to comment. "I think he's got two keyboards on that stage. Sounded like two keyboards." "What was he talking about in that song? Gettin' a maid? That's hee-larious." Ugh.
Then, Neil returned for a 90 minute electric set, which includes about a half-hour's worth of jamming on "No Hidden Path," one of the songs off his new record, Chrome Dreams II. It may have gone on a bit too long, and my brother absolutely loathed this portion of the performance, but I enjoyed seeing the band get deep into spaced-out jam mode. I used to see a lot more jammy kind of bands (including, yes, Phish), and I guess I'm just not bothered it the way others seem to be. For me, the music isn't more or less boring because there's no vocals and it lacks traditional structure. If it sounds good, I'm fine with it. Not trying to put down people who don't see it that way, and there are certainly jams I've seen that have gone on way too long. (Built to Spill once played a version of "Randy Describes Eternity" that was so long, I had time to forget what song they were even playing, then remember, then forget again.)
Here's the full setlist:
From Hank To Hendrix / Ambulance Blues / Sad Movies / A Man Needs A Maid / No One Seems To Know / Harvest / Love In Mind / After The Gold Rush / Mellow My Mind / Love Art Blues / Love Is A Rose / Heart Of Gold // The Loner / Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere / Dirty Old Man / Spirit Road / Bad Fog Of Loneliness / Winterlong / Oh, Lonesome Me / The Believer / No Hidden Path // Cinnamon Girl / Cortez The Killer /Tonight's The Night
I mean, "After the Gold Rush"? "Everybody Knows This is Nowhere"? "Cortez the Killer"? No complaints here...
Here's playlist from some of the best Neil songs I could find on Seeqpod:
American Gangster
Okay, so I watched this last week...um...illegally. But I didn't get a chance to review it. It's a pretty good flick, with some solid performances and a great soundtrack full of '70s soul. (I knew Jay-Z's latest album is a tie-in with the movie, but none of those songs actually appear in the film. It's weird from a marketing standpoint, but the decision not to go with anachronistic hip-hop in the background was a smart one.) I think the only thing that kept me from loving the movie was its familiarity.
There have been a lot of other movies about real-life drug dealers from this era, and all the stories are fairly similar. Resourceful criminal finds a way to obtain cheap narcotics from a foreign supplier, quickly rises to the top of his profession and eventually falls from grace, with the very ambition and aggressiveness that initially won him a fortune bringing about his downfall. There's nothing American Gangster really brings to that formula, and its one kind of unique element - the switching of perspectives between kingpin Frank Lucas (Washington) and the policeman chasing him (Russell Crowe) - kind of bogs the film down rather than adding anything new to the mix. It also could stand to be a bit more entertaining; the movie starts slow, and never really finds its rhythm, exactly.
Neil Young at the Nokia Theater
Caught Neil's show on Friday night with my brother and father. His wife Pegi opened with kind of a bland collection of throwback country songs. Granted, this isn't really my genre to begin with, but the set was, I hate to say it, kind of boring.
Neil then came on stage alone and played about a 45 minute acoustic set that was pretty stellar. The highlight? "A Man Needs a Maid." I never really imagined he'd pull that one out, and the performance kind of blew me away. There was this obnoxious hillbilly couple sitting directly behind me (they must have driven in from somewhere in Central California, because they had that drawl you just don't get from Los Angelinos) talking through the entire show (and always with ridiculously folksy, stupid comments), and even they shut up during "Man Needs a Maid." Although immediately afterwards, they had to comment. "I think he's got two keyboards on that stage. Sounded like two keyboards." "What was he talking about in that song? Gettin' a maid? That's hee-larious." Ugh.
Then, Neil returned for a 90 minute electric set, which includes about a half-hour's worth of jamming on "No Hidden Path," one of the songs off his new record, Chrome Dreams II. It may have gone on a bit too long, and my brother absolutely loathed this portion of the performance, but I enjoyed seeing the band get deep into spaced-out jam mode. I used to see a lot more jammy kind of bands (including, yes, Phish), and I guess I'm just not bothered it the way others seem to be. For me, the music isn't more or less boring because there's no vocals and it lacks traditional structure. If it sounds good, I'm fine with it. Not trying to put down people who don't see it that way, and there are certainly jams I've seen that have gone on way too long. (Built to Spill once played a version of "Randy Describes Eternity" that was so long, I had time to forget what song they were even playing, then remember, then forget again.)
Here's the full setlist:
From Hank To Hendrix / Ambulance Blues / Sad Movies / A Man Needs A Maid / No One Seems To Know / Harvest / Love In Mind / After The Gold Rush / Mellow My Mind / Love Art Blues / Love Is A Rose / Heart Of Gold // The Loner / Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere / Dirty Old Man / Spirit Road / Bad Fog Of Loneliness / Winterlong / Oh, Lonesome Me / The Believer / No Hidden Path // Cinnamon Girl / Cortez The Killer /Tonight's The Night
I mean, "After the Gold Rush"? "Everybody Knows This is Nowhere"? "Cortez the Killer"? No complaints here...
Here's playlist from some of the best Neil songs I could find on Seeqpod: