jürgen fauth’s muckworld

Tim Borman (from Belgium) created a mashup that combines last.fm recommendations with an automated YouTube feed for your very own personal MTV. Here’s my channel. [via]

And if that’s no good, watch Trey playing Last Tube: “If I could surf in milk, this is what it would sound like.”

When I first visited Berlin (West) as a wide-eyed teenager, one of the highlights of the trip was running into Einstürzende Neubauten singer Blixa Bargeld in the back room of a shady Kreuzberg bar. Blixa, Alexander Hacke, and the rest of the Neubauten are still making beautiful noise, and watching their 2004 video Palast der Republik, I was happy to get reacquainted with Haus der Lüge, a catchy tune I’ve been singing on all the elevators in town.

Gott hat sich erschossen / ein Dachgeschoss wird ausgebaut!

For a few days each spring and fall, while the increasingly volatile meteorological pendulum swings from frozen sewer to sweltering garbage heap, New York City enjoys perfect weather. September 11, 2001 was such a day, and so is today — 60 degrees, not a cloud in the sky, and an unheard-of ratio of smiles to thrown elbows at the corner of Broadway & Steinway.

So why I am I still inside, blogging? To share a few linkworthy items, along with my ever-evolving muxtape and another lousy short film: whiplash and Mozart, together at last. If you’d like to join us for the season’s first open-air Jever, drop by the Astoria Beergarden later. I’ll be the guy pointing a camera at you.

Also of note:

• I heart Foggy.
• Jammys Lineup: Page will be there to accept Phish’s lifetime achievement award, but can Trey get out of rehab long enough for a reunion? At the official site, you can vote on the awards.
• Sturges Rules: “A chase is better than a chat.”
• Twitter to the Rescue
• Barackula! The most excited I’ve gotten about the elections yet.
• J.K. Rowling tries to make a book disappear. More.

Fewer movies than usual because I’m working on several top secret plans for world domination, we’re still catching up with The Wire, and my obsession with Daniel Plainview shows no signs of abating. (Check out the new entries in the contest.) The notable exception was Etgar Keret’s Jellyfish, a sweet film that plays like minor-key Israeli version of Magnolia. I also tried to talk Marcy into watching Southland Tales, hoping that Richard Kelly’s sophomore disaster might improve upon second viewing. The answer was a resounding no — we didn’t make it past the 15-minute mark.

It’s been a good week for concerts, though. I never blogged about the March 19 benefit for Scotty Hard, a cause that brought all the champions of the downtown groove scene to the Highline Ballroom. My personal highlight was an outrageous and all-too-brief set by elusive dub god Bill Laswell, accompanied by Bernie Worrell. This weekend, Ratdog was back at the Beacon — unlike the Rolling Stones, they’re a band that actually belongs there. I missed Thursday’s sit-ins by Jimmy Herring, Warren Haynes, and Steve Molitz, but witnessed Friday’s ups (Tomorrow Never Knows! Hard Rain!) and downs (ridiculous sound problems during The Weight), as well as Saturday’s just-about perfect four hours of rock’n roll heaven. And now you’ll have to excuse me while I retire to my favorite secure undisclosed location.

The Wire. Season 3. ****
There Will Be Blood. Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007. *****
Jellyfish/Meduzot. Etgar Keret and Shira Geffen, 2007. ***
Southland Tales. Richard Kelly, 2007. *

Ratdog
4/4/08 Beacon Theatre, New York NY
I: Jam > Playin’ in the Band > Tomorrow Never Knows > Tennessee Jed, Sitting in Limbo > West L.A. Fadeaway, Even So > October Queen > The Deep End > Big Railroad Blues
II: K.C. Moan, A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall, The Weight, Eyes of the World, The River Song > Stuff > Dear Prudence > China Cat Sunflower > I Know You Rider
E: Casey Jones

4/5/08 Beacon Theatre, New York NY
I: Jam > Help on the Way > Slipknot! > Maggie’s Farm, Row Jimmy, Dark Star > Weather Report Suite > Let It Grow
II: You Win Again, City Girls, Victim or the Crime, Lazy River Road > Jack Straw > Dark Star > Stuff, Days Between > Two Djinn > Slipknot! > Franklin’s Tower
E: One More Saturday Night

Like everybody else on the Internet, I made a muxtape. At the moment, it has a springtime feel to it, with a movie soundtrack subtheme. But the black arts of the mix tape are governed by arcane rules, and the order and selection of songs might change at any moment. (That’s what the feed is for.) Link your own tape in the comments if you’re so inclined.

From The Last Waltz to Shine a Light, most concert movies leave me wishing for a more democratic, inclusive view — even if they’re not directed by Martin Scorsese. Instead of focusing on faces and fingers, I find myself longing for wide shots, audience shots, the view of the stage and crowd as a whole. The usual approach implies that the camera is somehow superior to the regular flesh-and-blood attendee because it has VIP access to the close-ups. But the concert isn’t just in the guitarist’s fingers, and in my experience, the best bands know how to make the music fit the space and all the people in it. At the very best shows, it doesn’t matter where your seats are, or if you’re standing half a mile away.

More than any other band I’ve seen, Phish completely owned any place they found themselves in, from sweaty pubs to summer sheds, hockey rinks, Indian reservations, abandoned military bases, Madison Square Garden, and the top of air traffic control towers. There’s ample proof of this in a motherlode of videos I stumbled upon last night.

Among the stash of 300+ handheld clips (think Awesome! I Fuckin’ Shot That!) uploaded by YouTube user silverchair97, I want to draw your attention to a few choice tunes that emphasize the spectacular lighting design by Chris Kuroda, famous for improvising along with the band on the light board and sometimes referred to by fans as CK5 — the fifth member of Phish. (Once upon a time in downtown Prague, Kuroda paid Marcy a compliment — but that’s a story for another post.)

Who needs closeups of Mick Jagger’s cracked face (or Bono in 3D) when you can feast your eyes on Kuroda’s work, which manages to meld the sound, the crowd, and the stage into an oozing vessel of rock’n roll that can be appreciated from any angle?

Also Sprach Zarathustra (as always, a cover of the Deodato disco version from the Being There soundtrack rather than the Richard Strauss original Kubrick used in 2001):

The Velvet Underground’s Rock’n Roll in two parts:

The alien mothership has landed in this infamous jam out of Twist, from the Island Tour:

.. and a few more after the jump…

Read the rest of this entry »

From 1989 to 2001, the Wetlands Preserve flourished just off of New York’s Houston Street. Founded by a Deadhead, the club attracted rising bands in the burgeoning “jam bands” scene, along with ska and hip-hop acts, while maintaining an activism center that held “eco-saloons” and launched inventive street theater protests. Dean Budnick’s Wetlands Preserved, produced by second and final owner Peter Shapiro, is a heartfelt tribute to a joyous anomaly in New York’s nightlife scene that eventually surrendered to Tribeca’s increasing gentrification in the days following September 11.

Continue reading my review of Wetlands Preserved, opening March 14, on About.com.

Wetlands Preserved: The Story of an Activist Nightclub. Dean Budnick, 2006. ***

And here’s a video to go along with it: Ann Marie Calhoun and her brother Joe cover Phish’s “Stash” [via Andy Gadiel]:

“Music is a virus,” company HR guy Simon is informed by his girlfriend early on in Nicolas Kotz’s Heartbeat Detector, based on the novel by Francois Emmanuel. In case we missed the point, one of Simon’s superiors later reminds him, “music doesn’t tolerate hierarchy.” Their warnings are entirely astute: music — in a number of incarnations from techno to fado to violin quartets — is the catalyst of Simon’s slow disintegration.

Continue reading my review of Heartbeat Detector, starring Mathieu Amalric, on About.com. Heartbeat Detector opens on March 14.

La Question humaine. Nicolas Klotz, 2007. ***