In recent years the music biopic has made a noticeable re-appearance both commercially and critically. The re-examination of iconic characters from popular culture is an issue that has constantly attracted filmmakers, from Oliver Stone’s analysis of the impact of Jim Morrison on the American psyche in The Doors (1991) to Gus Van Sant’s thinly disguised narrative on Kurt Cobain’s untimely demise in Last Days (2005).
Perhaps the best-known recent biopics are two films which in many respects are also the most conventional. Taylor Hackford’s Ray (2004) tells the story of blind soul singer Ray Charles and his rise from dirt-poor poverty in the southern states of America to become one of the most successful black recording artists of his era. The Oscar-winning central role by Jamie Foxx was an uncanny replication of Charles’s own singing and performance style and the film covered Charles’s key elements of his life; the early death of a sibling, drugs, marital problems and infidelity. But although the film generally presented a open and frank re-examination of Ray Charles, set against the background of the Civil Rights movement, Hackford took no real chances with the form or style of the film, presenting audiences with a straightforward linear film with a clear character arc and an uplifting resolution where an older Ray Charles receives an award by the state governor of Georgia for his song ‘Georgia on My Mind’.
Walk the Line (2005) is the story of the country singer Johnny Cash and feels even more sanitised than Ray with which it also shares much more common ground. Cash (Joaquin Phoenix) again rises from a rural South steeped in the poverty of the Great Depression, he too loses a sibling for which he feels responsible, and this haunts him for much of the film. Walk the Line also explores his battles with drug addiction and with the country music establishment, but at the centre of the film is a love story which proves to be redemptive for the main protagonist. The film ends with his triumphant concerts at San Quentin jail, his issues with drugs seem solved and his marriage to love of his life June Carter (Reece Witherspoon) completes the conventional sense of resolution. The film doesn’t really go beyond that; his subsequent addiction problems in the 1970s, the strong religious background which influenced a great deal of his work, being held hostage in Jamaica, and his mid-1990s career revival which continued up until his death in 2003 would have all greatly contributed to a more rounded and complete picture of this complex man. Yet Mangold centred the narrative on the romance, which is arguably the best way to tell the Cash story as it does become more accessible to a mainstream audience. The film itself could actually warrant a sequel; and perhaps therein lays the problem of the biopic. How can a filmmaker capture the real essence and multi-faceted dimension of talented individuals and (in Charles and Cash’s cases) true legends in two hours, and do so in an interesting and engaging way?
Two more recent additions to the biopic have, however, taken a much more distinctive approach to the re-telling of rock stars’ lives, and in many ways have attempted to stretch and re-define the genre. Both released in the autumn of 2007, the British film Control favours an austere, socio-realist, linear approach, while Todd Haynes I’m Not There is much more obviously unconventional with its multilayered, multi-character narrative.
http://www.englishandmedia.co.uk/mm/subscribers/downloads/archive_mm/_mmagpast/mm25_biopic.html
Alexander Whitcomb explores the diversity and hybridity of a remarkable band which defies categorisation and national boundaries.
I was recently introduced to a band that has actually become my favourite band of all time. The introduction was one of the most off-hand comments I could recall. A friend of mine simply stated, ‘Oh, listen to this, it’s pretty good.’ This off-hand comment let me into a world of music I hadn’t previously discovered – and I wasn’t ready to go back. The song he showed me was ‘Hello’ by the band The Cat Empire. I was immediately blown away by the song’s diverse style, unlike any other I knew. The Cat Empire is one of those bands that some people will not like, but in others it will trigger intense adoration.
The band was first formed in late 1999. It consisted of three members playing enthusiastically in jazz clubs, bars and festivals. But over the years it grew and grew and now consists of six core members. There were three horn players and there have been over forty guest musicians and dancers in the band. The Cat Empire has an incredibly eclectic style which rubs off in their music and draws in a huge range of different styles from all over the world including Indie, Ska, Rock, Reggae, Jazz, Hip-Hop, Latin, Funk, Cuban and Alternative (with a smattering of rap thrown on the side). This combination of several different foreign cultures comes together brilliantly and is part of their growing popularity around the world.
Having listened to this track (‘Hello’) I insisted on listening to more, and was captivated by the brilliant sound I heard. It isn’t just the fact they have developed their own style of music drawing from all of those different styles, it is the vibrancy with which they play, and the energy they put into the performance. They have developed the songs so you can hear that, as well as just recording the songs, they are actually having great fun recording them. This gives their music an edge above other bands, with the enjoyment rubbing off on the listener.
As soon as I had finished listening to the two tunes my friend showed me I hurried to the stores and ravaged the shelves to find this masterpiece. However, due to their lesser popularity in England, the album I was looking for (named Two Shoes) had limited supply. Luckily I located it and before long I was back at home, CD player on and listening eagerly. Track one (named ‘How To Explain’) opens with a trumpet solo, which, I will admit, is not too much to my taste, as it follows a Latin jazz sort of style. However, only seconds later the song explodes into a fast-paced piece, with the enchanting voice of Felix Riebl ringing through my speakers. With the song turning out how it was, I learned to appreciate the trumpet more, and now when I listen to the trumpet at the beginning of ‘How To Explain’, I enjoy it as much as I do the rest of the song.
There are several different editions of Two Shoes, each of which has the songs in a different order and, occasionally, the songs on the album differ. The track ‘The Chariot’ mixes a speedy reggae verse with an emphasised brass-section which kicks in lively during the chorus. It sounds clashy, I know, but the mix is seamless. They go perfectly together. Over the top is Riebl singing about how the band fights its own war, the punchline being ‘Our weapons were our instruments’.
‘Two Shoes’, the song with the same name as the album is a fantastic example of what The Cat Empire is capable of. It is slower than most of the other songs on the album, which some may see as a bad thing; however I think it is nice to have a bit of variety from songs such as ‘Sly’ and ‘The Car Song’, which involve shouted choruses (in a good way), call-and-response verses and are altogether more lively. Both styles are executed with brilliance and neither is better than the other. Also, of course, their endless enthusiasm makes the sound they produce seem like the future of any feel-good Ska music.
Also on the album is the song ‘Sol y Sombra’ which starts off with a simple piano piece before throwing in the drums and some Spanish singing. The song consists of just seven repeated lines, but this doesn’t take much away from its feel. It’s all sung in Spanish and has a strong Cuban accent to it. ‘Sol y Sombra’ means ‘Sun and Shade’. It is a very different song to the others on the album, and brings in its own style, but you can still definitely see that Cat Empire twinkle in its eye. The song is very jazzy in the middle with a jazz drum riff and bass, with a nice little piano solo over the top to finish it off, which I have to say, is impressive.
It has been suggested that The Cat Empire is a ‘Free Jazz’ band. However, I disagree. In fact they take very conventional elements of Latin Jazz – and Ska, and Hip-Hop, and Rap, and Rock – and weave them together into something, in my opinion, very new and unique. So I would suggest that, while they might be Free Rock/Free Pop, Free Jazz they are not.
The Cat Empire is a band that some people just won’t get. I had a friend listen to them and say, ‘They’re good, but they’re not that great are they?’ I can see what he means, but it’s rare to find a band that puts so much soul into each and every song. The Cat Empire is growing fast and its popularity increases every day. Personally I find it amazing that a band so brilliant has taken so long to climb to the top. They are a band who can cheer me up whenever I listen to them. I enjoy them endlessly. I recommend this band to anyone, and I mean it. I normally like Rock and Rave bands, yet this band is still my favourite of all.
Ten minutes of listening will take you on a ‘World Tour’ embracing Melbourne Australia (their home town, and often referenced), Cuba (the source of many of their musicians), Jamaica (the source of their spiritual inspiration – Bob Marley), England (Madness influences are often attributed to them) and others. For anyone who wants to feel good, or anyone who likes any of the genres listed that this band belongs to – and even anyone that usually doesn’t – I say, try them out. You might find it rewarding. This is one Feline Kingdom that I wouldn’t mind belonging to.
Gender bending
Much of Marilyn Manson’s work is about creating shock, surprise and sometimes revulsion. He has created a persona who regularly subverts expectations and questions accepted values. One way he has done this is in the way he represents gender and sexuality.
In conventional terms, gender is seen as simple, static and as a clearly defined binary opposition. Masculinity is a set of qualities associated with males and femininity a set of qualities associated with females. Any straying away from these conventionally fixed ideas is often related to issues of sexuality; men who are more feminine or women who are masculine are often assumed to be homosexual. Manson creates images which undermine this simple fixed way of thinking about gender when, in the video for ‘Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)’, he dons a tutu and jackboots and presents himself as a somewhat dishevelled bride. The front cover of Mechanical Animals takes this one stage further: he denies himself any gender at all wearing an androgynous body suit – an image repeated in the video for ‘Beautiful People’, where all external indicators of gender have been homogenised. By mixing and matching gender iconography Manson moves beyond gender-based stereotypes and expectations. He dispels ideas of the fixed nature of gender and avoids its limitations, showing gender to be fluid and flexible, similar to post-feminist ideas put forward by Butler.
http://www.englishandmedia.co.uk/mm/subscribers/downloads/archive_mm/_mmagpast/mm25_manson.html
Stephen Hill is Head of Media at The Burgate School and Sixth Form. He has just completed a PhD on the music press: a topic that he now loves to hate. Though Q was his first love, Smash Hits is now a guilty pleasure. But not any old Smash Hits you understand…
I hate the music press. I will do anything to avoid reading a music magazine. Instruction manuals, legal small print, even the side of cereal packet have greater appeal than half an hour flicking through the pages of Q or Mojo. However, it wasn’t always so. As a teenager in an age before internet and digital television, the music press was about the most exciting thing in my life, second only to the music it covered. A portal to a less provincial existence, reading the music press fuelled fantasies of a more urban realism: a nocturnal existence of night clubs, street-culture and the underground music scene. As in Brave New World the spark I saw was, of course, my own and the Nineties turned out be a fairly facile kind of utopia: the counterculture sensibility in the music scene of previous eras didn’t really translate into Post-Thatcher Britain, enraptured by the corporate sounds of U2 and the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. However, six years researching the music press has killed that intimate bond. Once it would have been my dream job to write for the music press. Now it would be my worst nightmare.
In a sense my research has been revenge: revenge upon a music press that duped me into believing the mythologies of rock, only to debunk those legends in a corporatised version of popular music culture in the Nineties. Asking me to name my favourite music magazine is therefore never going to get a straightforward answer. Indeed, I have always found those sorts of question impertinent. It’s like asking someone what sort of music they like: the question is never value neutral, but loaded with implicit judgements of taste and discernment. Exactly the kind of prejudice rehearsed in the music press! However, If you’d asked me at the age of fifteen I would have probably said Q. And, indeed, if I were to identify the magazine that has had the most influence on me, then the EMAP title would certainly win.
Assimilating the sophisticated written style of Q gave me the edge in English essays and framed my own understanding of popular music history. The retrospective sensibility of Q suited my own dissident mindset: I never bought into the zeitgeist spirit of NME or Melody Maker anyway. I knew only too well from my parents that rock and roll predated their first meeting in the Summer of Love. The halcyon days of Q, however, were soon marred by the end-of-the-century anxiety of the late Nineties, as the project of retrospection accelerated: the publication of endless lists and the death of the bankable cover star both detracted from Q’s original template of balanced consumer journalism. What makes a good music magazine is, however, very subjective. There is a difference between personal preference and reasoned judgement.
The talisman by which I would judge a music magazine today is the extent to which it has shaped the cultural vanguard: the cutting edge of what the music press means in any era. Melody Maker in the Thirties, NME in the Fifties, Rolling Stone in the Sixties etc: at one time or another most of the well-known titles can claim that crown. In this sense Kerrang! could be said to be the most significant music magazine of the Noughties. As a specialist magazine, the successful development of the title as a niche market, multiplatform brand is a textbook example of the importance of identifying defined communities of consumers to media institutions in the post-digital age. Though the magazine is successful as a TV and radio station and its website enjoys a high volume of traffic, it is the traditional values of the magazine that ground its success: posters for the bedroom wall and interviews from a subcultural music scene. That said, I find the magazine quite bland and formulaic; but then I’m not in its target audience!
The streamlining of the music press is of course a function of the digital revolution. From the iPod to YouTube media audiences are consuming ever more specialist media diets. Bandstand media brands have found it increasingly difficult to compete with the internet and download technology: testimony to this fragmentation of the market is the closure in 2006 of the magazine Smash Hits followed by the BBC television show Top of the Pops. It’s possible that in the future there may again be interest in a magazine, programme or website which provides a digest of these increasingly eclectic sub-cultural groups. And I think that such a magazine could learn a great deal from the early Smash Hits.
http://www.englishandmedia.co.uk/mm/subscribers/downloads/archive_mm/_mmagpast/mm25_smashhits.html
The term postmodern has been gratuitously splattered about more times than Rocky’s face but ask someone to give you a definition and you may be met with a chilly stare and gritted teeth. Richard Smith has found the perfect example to tell you everything you need to know about postmodernism – The Mighty Boosh.
It seems that we media folk love to bathe in postmodern paradise with its intertextual delights and its playful self-referencing (we’ll move on to those momentarily) but we rarely have any examples that go beyond a Tarantino production or Craven’s over-analysed Scream (1996). What we forget is that the perfect playground for postmodern television is within the realms of the situation comedy: this is where the imagination can run riot without the massive financial loss from a possible failure.
Postmodernism defies easy definition; dictionaries do not do it justice but it generally comprises of a set of core ideas and key concepts that work collaboratively to shape it. The more of these ideas and concepts it embellishes, the more of a postmodern text it becomes. Enter The Mighty Boosh (BBC, 2004): two zoo keepers, one owner, one shaman and a gorilla. The BBC3-born surrealist sitcom gives Spaced (C4, 1999) a run for its postmodern money with plots revolving around trips to monkey hell, a granny of death and kangaroo boxing to name but a few. In an attempt to define the Boosh’s playful postmodern form, let’s consider some of the factors involved.
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