Kickstarter, Veronica Mars, and The Future

So as I sit here typing, this is happening:

 

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/559914737/the-veronica-mars-movie-project

 

At the moment, they’ve raised 1.3 million dollars out of 2 million dollars needed.  (Note: I started writing this yesterday.  It’s actually around 2.6 million dollars now, which means it’s fully funded and THERE WILL BE MORE VERONICA MARS I AM SO HAPPY.)

 

If you didn’t click the link, then maybe you don’t know that I’m talking about Veronica Mars.

 

Look.  There aren’t many things I’ll support.  When my internet friend who happens to be one of my favorite authors, Brendan Halpin, did a Kickstarter to fund his next book, I kicked in.

 

I will kick in for him.  I know his book is going to be worth it.  I am dying to read it.

 

And this… this is Veronica Mars. This is something that I finally really gave up on, because the whole cast of Veronica Mars wanted to come back, and when the show was cancelled it went out on a cliffhanger, and the fans sent a ton of Mars Bars to Warner Brothers demanding that it get another season.

 

This is one of those things that Could Change Everything, as the saying goes.

 

But let me back up.

 

How devoted to Veronica Mars was I?  When WB and UPN became CW, I swore that if they cancelled Veronica Mars I would never watch their channel again.

 

(This ended up being a filthy lie.  I blame Supernatural.  And The Vampire Diaries.  And almost 90210.  I’ll get back to that.)

 

Let’s back up further.

 

I kind of hate jumping on shows at the start.  This has a lot to do with Firefly, because I was there from day one, and no one else was, and then the next thing I knew the show was gone and nothing was resolved.

 

Eventually, of course, I got Serenity, but it wasn’t quite the same.  After all, it meant compressing several seasons of TV into two hours.  It would be like making The Lord of the Rings into a 1 hour and 45 minute film.  You can do it, but it would never be the same animal.

 

So when I heard a few good things about Veronica Mars (Buffy minus Vampires plus Nancy Drew!) I didn’t bother to check into it.

 

But then, as some shows do (The Wire, Spartacus Buffy) the hype kept growing.  The people watching it went from viewers to LOVERS, people who couldn’t wait for the next hour, who talked about minute details, who quoted the show at each other.

 

And of course, the first season has a big mystery, and there was no way to catch up.

 

And I thought it might be cancelled anyway… but then it wasn’t.

 

No.  It got a second season.  And a season-one box set.  Which was released by boneheads after the second season started. 

 

This was before Hulu.  Before iTunes and Amazon and the CW sticking everything they have online and monetizing it was a thing.  If you missed something, it was just gone, mostly.

 

I mean, really.  I was recording episodes of the show using a VCR.  That’s where we were at.

 

But record them I did.  And I bought the box set.  And my wife and I took it with us when we went on a little pre-child second-ish type honeymoon, and when we were hanging out in the room and otherwise unoccupied, we TORE through the set, and it was SO much fun.

 

We finished the first season in a week.  Then we started watching the tapes and loaning out the set.

 

The first season ends with a mystery: Who is at the door?  We’d loan people the show, and they’d call us when they finished the episode and ask us WHO WAS AT THE DOOR because they had to know NOW.

 

We had to loan out the videotapes.  And eventually we caught up and it was hard because now we had to wait a week, or many weeks, to find out what was happening next.

 

And man… that season two ending.  When everything you know turns out to be wrong.  Blew my mind.  Blew it.

 

People rag on season three, but that wasn’t the fault of those making it.  The people with the money (CW) said they wanted shorter mysteries, and a bit of a reboot, just to let new people on board.

 

Then they took away some of their episodes.

 

Then they cancelled the show.  On a cliffhanger.

 

If the show was on today, with the numbers it was cancelled with, it would be higher rated than any two shows on the CW combined.

 

But that was then.  And for the record, I liked season three.  It wasn’t as good as the previous two season, but it was a lot better than much of what was on the air at the time.

 

There was talk of the comic.  I started seeking out Rob Thomas’ young adult novels as a sort of Mars methadone.  I did not send Mars bars, because why bother?

 

No.  I sat, and I waited.  I bought the rest of the box set, and loaned them to people, and tried to comfort them when they got to the last episode and went, “That’s it?”

 

Because, yeah, that was it. 

 

But now it’s not going to be anymore.

 

There has been talk, some of it angry, that it is not the fans’ job to put money directly into the pockets of someone like Time Warner.  That we will pay for this thing, and then a major corporation will ultimately reap the benefits.

 

I can see that side of it.

 

But I also recognize that it’s short-sighted.

 

The fact is, Time Warner claims (and perhaps it’s a lie) that it did “studies” that indicated making a Veronica Mars movie/TV show/whatever was always going to be a financial error.  For better or worse, they are in the business of making money, not losing it on really great projects.

 

Without fan money, this was never going to happen.  It just wasn’t.  And everyone was going to age, and soon this idea was going to be less and less appealing, and then… well, then the reasons to make the movie would vanish.

 

Will Warner Brother make a profit on this, in the end?  Probably.  But the fans are getting something, too.  They’re getting the movie they want.  Some of them are getting DVDs, or character names, or cameos, or videos from actors and/or actresses they’ve long enjoyed.

 

If you want to argue that Time Warner wins, because they get to make more money, well okay.

 

But really, we all win, because: MORE VERONICA MARS.

 

What really excites me about this is that it truly has the chance to change everything.  If Veronica Mars can raise 2 million dollars in a single day…

 

What if fans decided to pay for Doctor Horrible 2?

 

What if fans decided to back a few lost Joss Whedon scripts? 

 

Could there be enough fans and money to make another Firefly movie?

 

What about Phantasm V?  What about Bubba Nosferatu? 

 

What about another George Romero Dead movie?

 

Could we finally see a conclusion to Gilmore Girls that gives us the last four lines the creator swears she already knows?

 

Could Community get six seasons and a movie?

 

Could Pushing Daisies finally get a conclusion?

 

Movies, TV shows, books, music.  Does it matter if some corporation gets the back end if we, the audience, get what we want?

 

I really have no idea.  But in the meantime, MORE VERONICA MARS.

Michael Penn: Palms & Runes, Tarot & Tea: A Michael Penn Collection

So I guess it’s time to wrap this up with Palms & Runes, Tarot & Tea: A Michael Penn Collection.

 

That’s the title of Penn’s “last” record, released in 2007, which makes it six years old now.

 

The “Best of” collection can be a lot of things.  Sometimes a singer leaves one label and still owes them a record, so they put out a collection.  Sometimes a group has so many hits that the label just wants them all under one roof, which probably isn’t quite as important in an iTunes world.

 

Sometimes a musician vanishes off the face of the planet and their label just keeps tossing out whatever it’s got in a desperate attempt to make some money on their investment.

 

Of course, the really bothersome collections are the ones missing major songs.  Peter Gabriel put out 16 Golden Greats and left In Your Eyes, arguably his most-loved song, off the CD.

 

And on the other side of the equation, you have groups that put out odd little collections of also-ran songs.  Lost demos.  B sides for various singles.  Soundtrack songs.

 

And of course, most Best-of collections also have a new song or two, just to catch the eye of the fans and collectors.  Guys like me.

 

And yet…

 

Palms’ booklet contains a little essay with quotes from Michael himself, talking about how he tried to make the record into a unique listening experience.  There are no new songs on the collection (more on this in a second), though it does have a couple of instrumental tracks, one which comes from a score he wrote.

 

There’s a demo for Me Around which removes the crunch-filled guitars and instead gives us an acoustic and Michael’s voice, and while I miss the guitar solo at the center of the song, I actually like this stripped-down version a bit better than the original.

 

But… here’s where it gets weird.  Really weird.

 

Because like I said, there aren’t any new songs here, to lure dudes like myself into the fray.  No, instead, he decided to rerecord some of his songs and release them a second time.

 

And it’s utterly pointless.

 

The arrangements are, I suppose, slightly different.  Michael thinks at least one of them is an improvement.

 

I disagree.

 

Back in college I once read a magazine article about a place that bought songs.  They said if you had a great song, you could do a piano/voice demo and the song would sell.  A great song is a great song.  But if you had a just-okay song, you had to polish it until it was near-complete.  You had to show what the song COULD be.

 

Michael tackles none of his could-bes. He takes on Bunker Hill, which had a great arrangement.  He redoes Long Way Down, which was perfect in its original incarnation.  And he takes another stab at Cupid’s Got a Brand New Gun, which is a great song with a fine arrangement, and he doesn’t make it any better.

 

And that’s all she wrote.

 

There’s only one song from his previous record on this collection, which is Walter Reed.  The rest of his work is fairly well represented.  I do wonder why his work from Boogie Nights isn’t here at all, though I would guess it was a rights issue.

 

But really, the thing that ain’t here is what you usually look for on the Best of – the new songs.

 

That, to me, is what says that Michael Penn has really washed his hands of the rock business.

 

He’s a different guy now than when he started releasing records.  Back then, he was young and had great songs and not as many attachments.  Today he’s married and a parent.

 

And I’m a different guy too.

 

I think that’s what really saddens me when I listen to Palms.  He said he wanted to make a cohesive statement, but there’s nothing cohesive for me to hear.  His brilliant earlier stuff is stacked up against his later, not-as-great work.  The songs I can sing in my sleep are side-by-side with the songs that mean almost nothing to me.

 

My childhood is mixed with my adulthood.

 

In so many ways, Michael is like that old friend you have that slowly slips out of your life.  He meant so much, and then he meant less.

 

But when you think back on old times, there’s magic there.

 

I’m not sure what’s to become of Michael.  The TV show Girls just got a third season renewal, which means he has work for another year.  It’s been seven years since his last new record, and outside of movies and TV music he’s written exactly two songs that I know of.

 

If there was ever a fire in his belly to write songs, it appears to be missing now.

 

And I guess that’s okay.

 

It saddens me that there might never be another Michael Penn album, but it prevents me from having to buy it.  I mentioned Prince a couple of reviews ago, and how I picked up his latest work and felt a certain disappointment that it was and is so forgettable.

 

If Michael never releases anything else, I don’t have to judge it.  I don’t have to compare it to the still-perfect March.  I don’t have to feel guilt over the fact that I don’t like it.

 

And perhaps most importantly to me, I don’t have to feel a building excitement that the new record might be great, and then feel disappointed.

 

But like I do with most old friends, I just kinda hope that Michael is happy, making his music, hanging with his family, and knowing that he’s written a handful of great songs.

 

It’s more than a lot of us manage in life.

Michael Penn: Mr. Hollywood Jr., 1947

While trying to think about a way to frame my second-to-last essay on Michael Penn, I found myself thinking over and over about another musician: Bill Withers.

 

Bill is best known for the song Lean on Me, but if you run over to YouTube and type in his name, I suspect you’ll find one or two other songs you recognize.  He was never a massive seller but – at least if Wikipedia is accurate – he never sold more than Gold on any of his records, and then only three times.

 

And more importantly for this re-review, when he was done, he was done.  He dropped out of the music business in 1985, and never looked back.  Since then, someone did a documentary about him, and he pops up from time to time contributing songs to other people’s records, but he’s not putting a band together and hitting the festival circuit.  He’s not pulling a David Bowie and making a stealth album.

 

He said what he had to say, and now he’s done.

 

From what I understand, Bill could afford to do this.  His songs are on the radio, he still sells some records, and he’s being covered and sampled on a pretty regular basis. 

 

I think there’s a certain honor in realizing that you’ve said all that you have to say, throwing down the microphone and calling it a career.  Hundreds or thousands of terrible band reunions, tours and records might never have come into existence if people didn’t need the money.

 

Heck, go to Wikipedia and look up five or ten of your favorite eighties bands.  You thought they were broken up, and yet, if you poke a few of them you’ll find they’ve put out new records and hit the road.  Not because they felt the churn of art in their bellies, but because they’re out of money and don’t feel like getting a job as a busboy.

 

I suppose this sounds like I’m setting up Mr. Hollywood Jr., 1947, as a failure.  It was Penn’s last real record, and it came out in 2005, five whole years after MP4 stumbled into the light and then vanished from the charts.  Or rather, never even touched the charts.

 

He took the lead of his wife, Aimee Mann, and put the album out on his own, though it was reissued two years later by Legacy recordings with some live tracks and an extra song.  It still didn’t chart, and mostly just irritated me that a better version of something that I owned existed.

 

And yet, I never bit and bought again.  Which probably says something.

 

What saddens me most about Hollywood (I refuse to type out that title again) is that it starts so well.  Walter Reed, the opening track, gets literally everything right.  It has every single great quality a song can have: it’s memorable, it’s sing-able, it sounds so perfect that it seems to have not been written, but rather plucked from the air in one giant whole.  The arrangement is gorgeous and perfect, not too much, not too little.

 

It’s a great song.

 

It’s also the only song that made it onto Michael’s Best Of CD.  The rest of it, on the other hand?

 

Well, there are three odd little instrumental/noise tracks that don’t add up to much.  Michael’s had that kind of thing on his other records, but the tracks were at least somewhat memorable, or sort of darkly beautiful.  Here, they’re kind of trifling.

 

Keep in mind, we’re talking about three out of twelve listed songs on the album.  Literally  one quarter of the record.

 

The next three songs on the album are good when I’m listening, but sitting at my desk typing now, I couldn’t sing them for you.  I can sing the odd little tune Mary Lynn, which sits in the center of the album, but that has an odd reel/dirge sound to it, which strangely feels more “contemporary” in a world with Mumford and Sons banjo-ing it up.

 

So the center is odd, with Mary Lynn and the sound/instrumental sections, and then we’re back into songs and they are, once again, not bad.

 

But there aren’t really any classics there, and the album closes out with a voice/guitar song called Millionaire.  Which isn’t listed as being part of the record, and seems to be there to pad the whole thing out, as it’s super-short.

 

The thing that gets to me, even as I look back to this record almost eight years later, is that it comes so close to sounding like Michel Is Back.  In a way, Walter Reed is to blame.  It’s probably Penn’s most perfect song since Free-for-All Came and went.  In fact, if I could go back and drop it on March, I would.

 

Have I mentioned I love Walter Reed?  Because man, I love that song.

 

Ultimately, it isn’t a bad little record, it’s just one that only had one great song to offer. 

 

Interestingly, this was the last time Michael got into a studio and made an actual album.  And yet, out in the world, he eventually tossed out a YouTube video, with a live performance of a song he’s never released. 

 

More recently, he started writing the music for the TV show Girls, and had a song bounce onto their soundtrack.

 

And of course, he’s scoring multiple movies now, one or two a year. 

 

I don’t think Michael ever made enough money to just walk away from the music business.  Scoring pays, but most of the movies he scores are small, and the amount he probably brings in from them are minimal.

 

If I had to guess, I’d say that he really was just tired of trying to be a rock star.  Scoring films gives you a backdrop to work from, and instead of reaching into yourself and pulling something new out, you can instead try to put up some pretty curtains in an already built room.

 

Plus, you know, you get to buy food.

 

I’ll talk a little bit about scoring next time.  But right now, I just want to go listen to Walter Reed again, and sigh, and think about the fact that I might have heard the last great Michael Penn song.

American Idol: The List

A while back, I wrote a blog post about how to win your American Idol office pool.  Ultimately, however, what I’ve learned is that I do a semi-decent job figuring out who is going to be cut in the early rounds, and then, at least over the last two years, one of my middle-of-the-pack people eventually ends up winning.  (Thought the top of my list is otherwise fairly accurate.)

 

Of course, the last two years went to White Guys With Guitars, as has been so frequently noted everywhere that covers Idol.  In fact, the last FIVE winners were WGWG.

 

I put forth a theory a couple of weeks ago that perhaps they were trying to kill Idol by putting through the bizarre over the truly talented.  Elsewhere, I’ve read that it was more likely that the judges were deliberately cutting all the WGWG this year, just to give the girls a shot at winning.

 

Oddly, Billboard recently released an article that showed the top 100 Idol-created hits from the last eleven years.  And that kind of tipped Idol’s hand.  They have a lot more male winners than female winners.  But the females (particularly Carrie Underwood and Kelly Clarkson) have had more and bigger hit singles.

 

I’m guessing between the two women, they’ve probably sold more records than all the rest of the Idols combined.

 

So maybe they just realize that female winners can do more for them in the long run. 

 

I was pretty impressed with myself this year, actually.  I correctly called eight of the top ten, with a hand wave at the last two because I knew in my heart that they were, essentially, cannon fodder.

 

When it comes down to it, there are four really great female singers.  And two great males, with one approaching near-greatness.

 

So here are my thoughts, in the order I think they’ll get dropped:

 

Paul Jolley:

 

I fear that Paul will probably be my Hollie this year – the one who just clings and clings even as he continues to give weak performances.  The fact that I think he looks like Wil Wheaton probably doesn’t help my perception of him.

 

If there was a genuine surprise for me this week, it’s that he got through, especially after the judges had to debate keeping him around in the first place.  That said, he’s also the sole “cute-boy-white-male” among the guys, and everyone seems to think that carries some weight.

 

Still, none of his performances have really done anything for me, and if they didn’t need a top five guys, and could have dropped him for a girl… I bet they would have.

 

Or maybe everyone just really wants a male Taylor Swift, which is what he said he wanted to be. 

 

Janelle Arthur

 

It’s probably not fair to her that I think of Janelle as “the other country girl.”  Frankly, Kree is a better singer by a country (sorry) mile. 

 

She seems sweet, so there’s that.  But mostly she’s boring and on-key.  No shame there, but she was the other, “Well, someone had to round out the top five…”

 

Lazaro Arbos

 

Man, I hate to say it, but Lazaro isn’t gonna stick around long.  The fact is, he’s a good but not great singer who sometimes misses notes and chooses wrong keys for his voice.

 

Above this line, everyone hits all the notes.  Perfection must be attained.  And so it goes.

 

Angie Miller

 

I’ve come to think of Angie as “the girl at the piano,” and I suspect that, like Colton before her, she will eventually make the mistake of trying to come out from behind it.

 

Even this week, even as she sang her victory song, she was out there singing, looking awkward, and generally giving a good vocal instead of a great one.

 

I don’t think that’s enough. 

 

Burnell Taylor:

 

This one hurts to admit, because I really dig Burnell and I think he could have an amazing career in musical theater.  The man can plant himself on the floor and flat-out CONNECT to a song emotionally.  And then he can take that song and pump it into your veins. 

 

But is he capable of more?  That remains to be seen.  But I think that’s his wheelhouse, and when they start throwing challenges at people he’s going to fumble sooner or later.  So it is here that I lay him.

 

Curtis Finch Junior

 

Curtis is Joshua and Jacob again.  Joshua got to the top three, and Jacob crashed, I think, because he got a little big for his britches. 

 

Curtis’ biggest problem is that for all the power in his voice, he’s a bit robotic, and I suspect that his bag of vocal tricks is just about exhausted now. 

 

Still, great tricks, and unlike Jacob, this man never misses a note.

 

Candice Glover:

 

Okay, this year I freely admit that you could probably take my top four and shake ‘em up and get a different set of answers, but as I type this, I think I’m going to put Candice here.

 

Man, she’s a really great performer, and I don’t know that I can add anything to that.  What will finally get her, I suspect is that Amber and herself share the same wheelhouse, and Amber makes it look easy while Candice makes it look hard.

 

Amber Holcomb

 

Okay, I kind of want her to win because it’s clear she’s been groomed as the new Whitney Houston and I want to see her and Mariah duet on Believe. 

 

But we did this last year with Jessica Sanchez, who was a great singer with no life experience who could perform anything but not quite connect to it.

 

Of course, Jessica got dropped last year and had to be saved.  So maybe Amber will get the axe surprisingly early.  And I haven’t heard anything about a judge’s save this year.

 

Still, this lady makes every note look so, so, so simple, even when what she’s doing is kind of impossible for humans to do.

 

Devin Velez

 

Dude can sing.  Dude can connect.  Dude has one of those voices that can go anywhere and do anything, and he sounded just as great last night being funky as he did singing a Perry Como(?!) ballad.  In Spanish.

 

If a guy is going to take the contest this year, I can’t really see it being anyone but Devin. 

 

Kree Harrison:

 

Kree has one of those voices that just makes you shiver, and she has a range that probably rivals that of Mariah, the woman judging her.

 

She’s also hilarious, willing to kid with the judges, and went out of her way to talk about how good the band his.

 

The lady has music in her, and she knows exactly how to get it out of her.

 

My only fear for her is that she could pull a Pia.  Pia, however, never, ever moved, and we’ve at least seen Kree walk.  The question becomes whether or not she can also look good during terrible group numbers, and tackle the uptempo stuff that ultimately killed Pia in the competition.

 

The best news she could get is Janelle getting dropped early on.  Janelle’s votes would move to Kree and keep her afloat for a very long time.  All the way to number one?

 

It’s in American’s hands now.

 

Animated Movies That Deserve Your Time

I’ve probably tried to write this post a dozen times now, but it always devolved and I didn’t like it.

 

Mostly this was because I spent so much time trying to justify some of my reasoning, and trying to get these movies into little groupings (animated sequels, unseen gems, and so on) that the list got overlong and unweidy.

 

So here, instead is a list of animated flicks that never quite got enough love, regardless of the audience size they eventually garnered.

 

Mulan 2:

 

Mulan is a great movie, and I’d even be wiling to argue that it was the last true classic Disney animation put out.  It’s a classic film that, I think, stands on its own as a great film instead of great cartoon.

 

But Mulan 2 was, of course, a direct-to-video cash-in, which, ech, right?

 

The first time I watched it, I think I would have agreed with you, but I’ve softened on that somewhat, and I think it’s worth a look now.

 

In thumbnail, if the first movie was about honor and family, this one is about the difficulties that come with falling in love and, more importantly, staying in love.  It actually tells kids that loves takes work, and that it’s okay to love across social strata, which is a pretty heady message for direct-to-video Disney.

 

Like a lot of the flicks I want to talk about, I think the movie benefits from multiple viewings, which allows you to the themes and songs to sink in more deeply.  There are other DTV sequels that are decent time-wasters, but this is probably the best of them.

 

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs:

 

I thought I was just about alone in my love of this movie, until I saw recently that a part 2 is coming out soon.  That pleases me, as it tells me it has some traction, but I still think it is under-loved.

 

Why check it out?  To be honest, it’s a writer’s movie with an eye towards flipping clichés.  The pretty girl gets even more pretty when she puts her glasses on.  All the little jokes that start the movie become super-important at the end of the movie (the first time I saw it, it was actually breathtaking for me).  And more than anything, it’s got a wonderful undercurrent about how kids and their parents don’t always see the world the same way, but love each other all the same.

 

Shrek Forever After:

 

Let me get something out of the way: I love Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio, who among other things wrote the original Shrek, Aladdin, and the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.

 

However, much the way that the graphic novel Alan Moore’s Watchmen opened up the comic book world to the cynical hero, Ted and Terry virtually created the “pop culture reference as joke” problem that wormed its way painfully into so many animated features.

 

Shrek kept this mostly to a minimum, but the number of Disney jokes slipped into the film became a touchstone for a lot of the Dreamworks Animation canon of “it’s funny because I get the reference,” and it’s only the last few years that Dreamworks has finally pushed off from that.

 

Shrek 2 and 3 leaned on that button hard, and Shrek 4?  It mostly tries to go another way.

 

Did it lean far enough?  Eh, it could have leaned a little farther.  But the movie takes a riff on It’s a Wonderful Life and shows Shrek that while family life has its ups and downs, it’s still the greatest of all possible things.

 

Plus it’s funny and seems to be working overtime to avert expectations.  To my mind, movies always get extra credit for making an effort.

 

Hoodwinked/Hoodwinked, Too!

 

Hoodwinked is a straight-up great movie.  People knock the animation, but look: the movie would be maybe 1% better if they’d spent 150 million dollars on it instead of 40 million.  Let it go.

 

The script is funny and clever, the characters are well-defined and nicely performed, and I’ve never met anyone who didn’t see this movie and laugh heartily at the goat sequence in the middle, which seems out of nowhere but is an amazing part of the tapestry if you pay attention.

 

And that’s the trick, really.  Most movies, even classics, get a little less great the more closely you examine them.  Hoodwinked actually improves.

 

Hoodwinked Too is the opposite, however.  I saw it in the theater, so happy it was finally out, and then came away disappointed that it wasn’t as slippery and smart as the original.

 

But really, the major issue is that it’s a different kind of movie.  The first was carefully and delicately designed.  This one, on the other hand, is a blunt slap to the face.  There are a lot more jokes packed into this one, and only about one in three land.

 

But that’s the trick, really.  Read between the lines of the so-so jokes, and that third joke in the middle is often wonderful and unexpected, whether it comes from a subtle line-reading or carefully constructed gag.  

 

You have to seek out the magic really, but like those 3D pictures, once you’ve seen it, you can’t un-see it.

 

The Emperor’s New Groove:

 

I’m not sure if this one needs defending, since it sprouted a sequel and a followup TV show.  But I think people avoid it because it’s a non-musical straight-up comedy.

 

Really, though?  It’s as if the people running Warner Brothers animation in the days of early Bugs Bunny cartoons somehow got their hands on a Disney flick.

 

This flick needs no apologies – it just needs to be seen.

 

Battle for Terra

 

In which a bunch of peace-loving aliens are attacked by alien invaders: namely, us.

 

Mostly I dig this one because there are real stakes. The humans are on their last legs, and if they don’t get onto the planet, it’s the final gasp of the human race.

 

This one got buried by Monsters Vs Aliens, which had a larger budget and bigger stars.  But in the end, Battle for Terra is easily the more profound of the two movies – like an animated Avatar with higher stakes.

 

Chicken Little:

 

There’s not much love for Disney’s first kick into 3D animation, but man, what a fun ride.  I suspect it didn’t do as well as everyone hoped, and that’s too bad.  I suspect it isn’t more well-liked because it takes a pretty surprising, seemingly-out-of-nowhere turn in the middle, and some people weren’t into that.

 

In fact, I remember hitting the midpoint and going, “What, what?”

 

But much like many of the rest of these movies, on the second showing, when you’re watching for it, there’s so much love and work in every joke, surprise, and background.  

Michael Penn: MP4: Days Since A Lost Time Accident

Michael Penn’s fourth album actually came out pretty quickly, all things considered.  It was out in early 2000, which meant it took less than three years to write and record.

 

I’m not sure what sped up the process. 

 

Michael Penn is listed as the producer of most of the album, outside of the song Lucky One, which leads me to believe that this should be the most Michael-Penn-iest album of them all.  All the hooks and jangling and pop of the first two albums should be on display here.

 

And yet…

 

Things had changed for me again by the time MP4 hit shelves.  I had been married for about half of a year, had graduated from college and gotten my first “real” job. 

 

This was the first album I was really afraid to revisit, not because I thought it was bad, but because I had almost no memory of it.  And while bad is bad, unmemorable is sometimes worse, as it indicates that there’s nothing to latch onto and no reason to care.  Bad can be amusing.  Forgettable just leaves you wondering why you bother.

 

As I’ve said before, Penn’s first two albums are branded on me now.  I can pick them up and sing large chunks of them.  Even Resigned I remembered pretty well, though there were and are some holes.

 

Far, far too much of MP4 was a total mystery to me when it put it in the CD player for the first time in several years.

 

There’s a question there, and that question is: What changed?  Was it Michael?  Was it me?

 

I suspect a combination of both.

 

Out of school and married, my music listening time often wasn’t my own.  I could listen in my car, but my drive to work was less than ten minutes long each way.  And I didn’t do a lot of in-house music listening, because now it wasn’t just me in the house, it was me and my wife, and she didn’t always dig the same stuff I did.

 

Her reaction to Michael Penn was generally one of “tolerance.”

 

I don’t always expect greatness from an album, but what I do expect that I’ll get at least one great song.  It’s like getting through the bread of a sandwich and hitting that first real gush of jelly.  Everything up to then was okay, but the fruity sweetness makes it just that much better.

 

But I never really found that gushy sweetness I was looking for.

 

MP4 starts off with a boom and a crash and a strum and a hyperactive, zippy piano part.  The rhythm is trippy and awkward, and it reminds me a bit of the drum part in Fleetwood Mac’s Go Your Own Way, where you can never quite find the beat.

 

It’s produced within an inch of its life.  This isn’t the worst thing, but if I understand what’s going on, the reason the song sounds that way is because it was supposed to be some kind of hit single.  Only it didn’t really sound like a hit single.

 

Granted, neither did No Myth, but… well, No Myth was kind of a boot-stomping acoustic love song.  It was surprising and different, yes, but it was also very singable. 

 

Lucky One, on the other hand?  Coming back to it all these years ago, I love all the fiddly bits, the sudden shifts, and even the sudden odd slowdown at the end where it goes into a minor key and turns into a totally different song.

 

But it wasn’t a single. It wasn’t a return.  It wasn’t a big hit record.  It didn’t chart at all, from what I can tell.

 

And there were no other singles after that.

 

As I sat listening to MP4 for the first time in years, I was reminded of the last time I went to the beach with my kid.  We dug a hole and sat in it as the waves lapped warm water against us.  It was pleasant, but over time our hole started to vanish and we had to dig it again to get the same experience.

 

As I sit here typing this now, and glancing at the song list for MP4, my head feels like that pit of sand.

 

What I’m trying to explain is, the hole erased itself even as I sat there, and even as I sat listening to the songs on MP4, my brain was already forgetting the previous tune.  As I listened, I thought, “This is nice.  I kind of remember it now.”

 

But 36 hours later, even looking at song titles, I can barely extract mental snippets of some of the songs.

 

Obviously, I recall Lucky One, and the album closer Bucket Brigade has a nice piano riff that slips into a melody that is at least memorable enough for me to recall it now.

 

But most of the rest of the songs come to me in five or ten second snippets of chorus, if they come at all.  The lyrical content is largely an empty canvas on my grey matter.  The song Trampoline has a fun chorus, but what is the song about, and how does the verse go?

 

I can’t recall.

 

There are relationships you get into with musical artists that become confusing over time.  I have a deep abiding love of Prince, but a few years ago I realized I was buying his new records not because I desperately needed to hear them, but because I thought there must be something great buried in them that I wasn’t hearing.

 

Eventually, I realized that I simply didn’t care all that much what he put out.  There were good songs on his releases, but no great ones.

 

Am I comparing MP4 to Prince’s later-period output?  I am, but MP4 looks better by comparison.  I may not remember a lot of MP4, but I do remember some of it.  Whereas I just pulled up the song list for the last Prince album I bought, and over 80 minutes of music is largely a blank hole in my head.

 

Over the next decade, Michael produced only one album of new material, and mostly turned to film and TV music composition.  One could argue that if he’s busy, he might have time for both, but I wonder if perhaps his interest has waned. 

 

It’s difficult to be a working musician, much less a rock star, and I wonder if Michael never really wanted to be one.  His wife Aimee Mann is all over Facebook, posting and saying wonderful things about her fans and her shows.

 

Michael, on the other hand, I never see.  His web site is just about bare.  I only found out he had a song on the Girls TV show soundtrack because I went looking for him on Amazon and stumbled across it.

 

His last real album release was in 2005, with a reissue in 2007 and a “collection” album released in 2007 as well.

 

Which is to say, in the last 12 years he’s released one new album.  While Aimee has released five.

 

Maybe he just wants to fade into the background.  Maybe soundtracks scratch his writing itch.

 

Or maybe he figured he gave the rock star thing a shot, and he doesn’t want the tours and the running around and the various trappings that go with being at least semi-famous.

 

I dunno.  I’ll take another swipe on this train of thought when I re-check out his last couple of releases.

Michael Penn: Resigned

I’ve been struggling over the last week as I tried to determine the best way to approach talking about Resigned.

 

Much of that has to do with the way I remembered (or didn’t really remember…) what kind of album it was.  My recall was that it was good, but much less fiddly and straightforward.  My memory of it was that it was more of a “regular” record, without the odd little details and twists that made Penn’s first two albums so great.

 

What I found is that it was more fiddly than I remembered.  Listening to the song Try, the album’s opener, you’ve got a tricky little acoustic guitar chord progression, some kind of keyboard string sound, and some skittery drums and then suddenly it’s into what Michael does best: a solid melody over solid acoustic guitar strumming and plucking.

 

Then the chorus comes, with its electric guitar crunch, and more keyboard (organ, I think?) and this great bridge and yeeeeeeeeeeessssssssssss…

 

It’s a great song.  The only problem is, the rest of the tracks don’t get to quite that level of awesome. 

 

But let’s back up. 

 

Resigned came out in June of 1997.  It was a summer release, just before my birthday.  I was working second shift, which meant I started work at two, and I didn’t have a car of my own.  My mom had her vehicle all morning, and so just before work I hit the music store and picked up Resigned.

 

At the time, neither of my parent’s cars had CD players in them.  So I sat in my car, in the parking lot of my temp job, and read through the liner notes.  I wouldn’t be home until after 10 PM.  I wasn’t going to get to listen to this thing I’d waited five years for until the next day.

 

It was a weird time.

 

A lot had happened since the last time Michael had put out a CD.  I had gone through my first major breakup, and I was still learning how to date again.  The chunks of Free-for-All that had been all bitterness and anger had more meaning for me now that I’d gone through a major breakup, though my level of vitriol never quite reached Penn-ian levels.

 

Beyond that, I was discovering just how lonely your own hometown could be.  So many of the people I knew had moved away for school or jobs, and most of them didn’t come back for the summer.  Even if they were around, I was frequently taking temp jobs at odd hours to raise money for college.

 

By the time I got home, I would stay up too late reading or playing around on the computer, go to bed in the wee hours of the morning, and sleep much of the day away until it was time to work again.

 

I put Resigned into the player when I got home, but didn’t listen to it until the next day.  Something about being polite to the people sleeping in the house.

 

Try blew me away, I remember.  Me Around, the next song, was also quite good. 

 

And then we were at Like Egypt Was.  It was obtuse, but lyrically clever, and it was… I don’t even know.  Rocky.  Chord-wise, it felt sideways and off-kilter to me, like it was trying to be exotic.  It wasn’t terrible, but it was probably the first Penn song I could think of that didn’t make me want to pick up a guitar and learn to play.

 

This was followed by Out of My Hands, which is a gorgeous song with the strangest arrangement.  It’s this odd little repetitive bass riff, which distracts from the prettiness of the song.  And it is pretty, maybe one of the top three prettiest Penn ever created.

 

But that bass… I dunno man, I just dunno.  I thought it was a strange choice, and even when I sing along with the song, I try to unhear it.

 

There are two more great songs after that, Small Black Box (which might be about a dead relationship, and might be about a plane crash) and I Can Tell, which eases you into itself like it was a warm bath, and then envelopes you in layers and layers and layers of instruments and melodic lines.

 

But the rest is just good, edging towards very good.

 

It was hard not to be disappointed at the time.  A five year wait barely netted me forty minutes of new material, and while I was deeply in love with March and mostly in love with Free-for-All, Resigned was merely a like for me.

 

It grew on me as I listened to it more and more, but I was also able to skip parts of it, something that hadn’t happened to me on a Penn record in the past.  And with only eleven songs from beginning to end, it seemed odd to me that he averaged only two new songs per year.

 

There was a copy of the CD at the college radio station at my school, and I spent much of the first semester trying to turn Out of My Hands into a hit.  And yet, every time I called it in, the reaction at the other end of the line was not, “Cool,” but, “Who?”

 

Listening to it again today, I think I get what he was going for.  He sets aside the acoustic for much of the record, relying on the crunchy electric guitar that was often the staple of his producer, Brendan O’Brian, who also produced albums by Pearl Jam and Matthew Sweet.

 

But that might just be the issue with the recording in general.  It doesn’t feel like Michael.  It feels like a rock record of that one particular era.  It’s not that it aged poorly, but you can feel that it has aged.  It’s a record stuck in a little window of time, with the sounds that were big then, and with Michael slid over it like a slipcover on a white couch.

 

March and Free-for-All feel like they weren’t from any particular era, like they were dropped from the sky and created away from what the rest of the world was creating.  This feels like it was Michael’s version of a rock record, and that makes it a bit of a lesser thing.

 

In the end, I liked this less than what came before.  But what came after gave me a new appreciation for all the good contained on Resigned.