Best Album Ever?

This article appears in the March 23 issue of the Washington Square News:

Most rock 'n' roll fans know that 1980 should have been a very bad year for Aussie hard-rock act AC/DC. Shortly after the band had finally reached international acclaim with 1979's "Highway to Hell," lead screamer Bon Scott died suddenly in true rock-star fashion (he choked on his own vomit in the back seat of his car). And that could have been the end of it.

They weren't finished yet, though - within the next five months, the band found a new singer, wrote 10 new songs and released its seventh studio album.

Now that's a pretty good story. But it wouldn't be worth a damn if the resulting album was not "Back in Black" - an unstoppable aural assault, with so much strut and swagger to spare that it could be called the most explosive rock 'n' roll eulogy ever recorded. No lame power ballads, no existential meditations on death - and certainly no rehab. Just all killer, no filler, lean and mean rock 'n' roll, propelled by Angus Young's instantly recognizable guitar riffs.

The album is an example of perfection in simplicity. Each track is tightly wound and ready to blow, but producer (and future Mr. Shania Twain) Robert "Mutt" Lange maintains clarity amid chaos. Every track has become a lesson in air-guitar greatness, and a model for kick-ass karaoke.

Songs like the hauntingly heavy opening track "Hell's Bells" and the rolling thunder of "Givin' the Dog a Bone" confirm that "Back in Black" deserves to be the soundtrack to every bar brawl, or at least your next late-night freeway drive. New singer Brian Johnson proved he was more than capable of filling Scott's hard-drinking, hard-living, womanizing shoes on songs like "You Shook Me All Night Long," "What Do You Do for Money Honey," and other highlights such as the title track and - hell, everything here is classic.

For those about to rock, we salute you.

Album Review

This article appears in the March 29 issue of the Washington Square News:

Yours Truly, Angry Mob
The Kaiser Chiefs
Key Tracks: "Ruby," "The Angry Mob," "Thank You Very Much"

Their high-energy 2005 debut album, "Employment," launched the Kaiser Chiefs into international stardom. This week, the UK rock band tries to match that success with their highly-anticipated follow-up, "Yours Truly, Angry Mob."

The Chiefs almost succeed. "Employment’s" best songs are arguably the first two: "Everyday I Love You Less and Less" and "I Predict A Riot." "Yours Truly" also starts off with a bang, but unlike Employment, it blows its load early, as the opening tracks – the repetitious but infectiously catchy "Ruby" and the "fuck modern society" invective "The Angry Mob" – build a momentum the rest of the album can’t sustain.

The Kaiser Chiefs combine Blur’s polished pop sensibility with the songwriting and vocal styling of the Kinks’ Ray Davies and the echoing guitar of the Smiths. The peaks just don’t reach as high on the Chiefs’ sophomore effort, and therefore the album’s few missteps become even more pronounced, as is the case with the plodding "Try Your Best" or the piano ballad "Boxing Champ."

Unfortunately, most of the songs here are mired in self-conscious cynicism. "The Angry Mob" begins as a bar brawl but then becomes a simplistic anti-establishment rant. The rock star in "Thank You Very Much" is bored with groupies. "Highroyds" reveals that drunken youth isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. And "Everything Is Average Nowadays" is, well, self-explanatory.

But singer Ricky Wilson’s sometimes subversive (and more often trite) lyrics are saved by poppy, guitar driven tunes and insanely catchy hooks. Don’t look to the Chiefs for insightful social commentary – just have fun basking in their Britpop exuberance.

But somebody likes me...

Apparently, New York Post movie critic Lou Lumenick starts every morning with a cup of coffee and a Google search of his own name. Here's what he wrote in his blog today:

Daniel Lehman of NYU's student newspaper, Washington Square News asked Chris Rock what he thought of my savage pan of Rock's "I Think I Love My Wife.'' You might think he would have quipped, "If you want a real film critic, get A.O. Scott,'' (who loved it), but Rock is surprisingly philosophical about the bad reviews and the film's lack of box office success. "It's like my stand-up," Rock said. "Some jokes you love, some jokes you're like, 'F--- him.' I wanted that type of movie experience. I want people arguing when it's over. There's things in it that didn't test well, that I just kept in because I thought it was a better movie.''

Everybody Hates Chris Rock's New Movie

This article appears in the March 28 issue of NYU's Washington Square News:

Comedian Chris Rock expected some criticism for his new movie, "I Think I Love My Wife," in which he plays a black family man living in white suburban Westchester and working in an even whiter Manhattan investment banking firm. Many critics say he's gone soft, and fans worry that he's lost his edge.

But Rock is OK with that.

"I hope I get softer over the years," Rock said. "I was never angry. I was only edgy compared to other things. I was always just me. I was only edgy because you watched Paul Reiser before me. But he's not edgy, he's just Paul. And I'm not edgy, I'm just Chris."

What the comedian might not have expected was his latest film's mixed reviews and poor opening weekend upon its release last Friday. It tanked, earning only $5.7 million in a week where the Sandra Bullock time warp thriller "Premonition" was the biggest new release (that movie finished third behind "300" and "Wild Hogs," with about $18 million in ticket sales).

"It's like my stand-up," Rock said. "Some jokes you love, some jokes you're like, 'Fuck him.' I wanted that type of movie experience. I want people arguing when it's over. There's things in it that didn't test well, that I just kept in because I thought it was a better movie."

The movie's rating at RottenTomatoes.com is holding at a pathetic 18 percent, with reviews as cruel as they are cliché: Lou Lumenick of the New York Post writes that the film is nothing more than "an exercise in misogynistic tedium," while down at the Miami Herald, Connie Ogle considers the film "as entertaining as reading someone else's divorce settlement."

Rock knows that past films, such as "Down to Earth" and "Head of State," have met with even harsher reviews, but their box office receipts likely soothed the sticks and stones thrown at them.

"Going into this movie I absolutely was not thinking of a box office number," he said. "I was just thinking about, 'OK, how do I fit in? How do I make the movie that is perfect for me?' The last couple of years, you might watch something like 'Bad Santa,' or 'Borat.' Those are just guys that made movies that really fit their persona. It's like, this suit fits. I need a tailor-made Chris Rock movie."

Rock co-wrote (with frequent collaborator Louis C.K.), directed and stars in "I Think I Love My Wife," co-starring Gina Torres as his devoted wife and Kerry Washington as the bold bombshell who draws him into adulterous temptation, blowing his formerly routine life out of the water.

"I like playing a grown-up," Rock said of his role. "I think most comedians play guys that won't grow up. And I think my comedy comes from being a grown-up."

"I Think I Love My Wife" is based on the 1972 French film "Chloe in the Afternoon," directed by Eric Rohmer, about a happily married Parisian man who fantasizes about other women but never considers infidelity until an old acquaintance drops by and tries to seduce him.

If a witty, elegant, but very French character study seems like odd source material for a Chris Rock comedy, he isn't exactly surprised.

"It's weird," Rock admits. "I know it sounds like a joke. But I loved ['Chloe,'] and I got Louis a copy and he loved it, and we both thought that we could get a lot of comedy in here. We thought it was like a house with no furniture; there's a lot of jokes that could go in here."

The result is a story that probes the fuzzy line between fantasy and infidelity, telling the humor-filled truth about the pratfalls of married life. And while some jokes fall flat, other moments manage a biting insightfulness more characteristic of Rock's best stand-up comedy or television projects than his prior films.

"Is [the movie] autobiographical? No," Rock said. "I definitely relate to the character. I've been married 10 years; I have two kids; I live in the suburbs; I commute into the city - all that stuff. It stops there, pretty much."

The real-life parallels between Rock and his fictional character are too apparent to ignore. TMZ.com reported in November that Rock was filing for divorce after nearly 10 years of marriage to wife Malaak Compton. But he has since refuted the claims, and said now that, "It's nothing. It's all rumor. We know Britney cut her hair. But it's a rumor that she's crazy, right?"

A Talk with Sabrina Weill

Longtime women’s and magazine editor Sabrina Weill may have left the magazine business, but she still wants to be part of the club. Speaking to a packed room of NYU Journalism students, Weill stresses the importance of networking in a business that can be based more on who you know than you ever knew, and offers advice for making it in magazines.

“There’s an inside and an outside,” Weill says, “and it’s better to be on the inside. Using your connections will not get you a job – but it will put your resume at the top of the pile.”

Weill is the former editor-in-chief of Seventeen, senior editor at Redbook and a founding editor of CosmoGIRL!, as well as published author of The Seventeen Guide to Sex and Your Body and last year’s The Real Truth About Teens and Sex. She recently jumped ship from the magazine masthead to start her own company, Weill Media. But this auburn-haired, 30-something CEO with Lisa Loeb glasses admits that she misses her monthlies, and she still likens each new website her company launches with publishing a brand-new magazine.

This is a little late, but...

I have had limited internet access lately, and I felt that this story was still worth putting up (since it's not like anyone reads this anyway and I haven't posted in so long as it is):

Thanksgiving is fast approaching – which means that Christmas music will be taking over radio stations for the next month and colorful decorations have lined the streets since Halloween. ‘Tis the season to shop. But before you go to Tower Records’ Going-Out-of-Business sale to get your annual fix of Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole or A Charlie Brown Christmas, consider walking across East 4th street to the other music store on the block.

Other Music, a small record store located on East 4th and Lafayette streets, offers alternatives to the typical holiday tunes (as well as any other genre, from Turkish psychedelia to Japanese surf rock) while catering to the music aficionados that flock there. Although you might find a copy of Mariah Carey’s perennial best-seller Merry Christmas hidden on the shelves, the biggest release this season will likely be indie-music king Sufjan Stevens’ Songs for Christmas.

“People who shop here aren’t really into the typical Christmas albums,” says Other Music store clerk Duane Harriott. “Mostly they’re looking for quirky stuff. It’s more fun than it is sacred.”

As a result, Harriott says, Other Music’s most popular Christmas collections are predictably offbeat. James Brown’s Funky Christmas makes a resurgence every year. Rudy Ray Moore, a.k.a. “Dolemite,” released This Ain’t No White Christmas in 1986, and his notoriously dirty version of “Night Before Christmas” has kept it in stock for the past two decades. Harriott’s personal favorite, though, is A Reggae Christmas, featuring holiday classics as interpreted by 60s and 70s reggae stars like Desmond Dekker, The Kingstonians and Studio Three.

But Other Music counts on its customers to look beyond the Top 40, or even the changing seasons, for their particular musical tastes. As Tower Records shuts its doors and other music chains struggle to survive, Harriott does not expect a surge in crossover Christmas purchases. “The people who shop here know us,” he says. “They already know that we’re here.”

A Talk With Dan Barry

“When I hang out with my college buddies, what do my friends want to do?” New York Times columnist Dan Barry asks a room full of New York University journalism students. “They want to hear what I did, not talk about their jobs at General Electric or Ernst & Young.”

Barry, 48, is a former ditch-digger turned columnist who graduated NYU with a master’s degree in journalism. He has been writing for the Times since 1995, and his “About New York” column has appeared in each Wednesday and Saturday’s paper since 2003. In his column, Barry tends to focus on the stories that capture a moment in the city, seemingly small moments that often serve as microcosms to explain New York as a whole. And even though he has written about the tragedies of September 11 and Hurricane Katrina, you only see tears in his eyes when he talks about the actress who serves wine and cheese dressed as the Statue of Liberty, at the Marriott in Queens; or when he tells the story of a man who saved a stranger’s life, pulling him out of the water to safety in Coney Island and hugging surrounding New Yorkers after the danger had passed. Barry remembers every intimate detail so well that you believe the tale could be his own.

“The only thing worse than a story poorly told,” Barry says, “is a story untold. If you get inside the skin of a person, you can open up the world.”

Look around Barry’s office, and you will see assorted framed certificates on the walls – among them a George Polk Award, a Pulitzer Prize, an American Society of Newspaper Editors Award for deadline reporting. But one day Barry opened his mail to find a 5th place certificate for “Dan Berry,” with a $150 check enclosed, from the Bowling Writers of America for a feature story that he did not even know had been submitted to any contest. The certificate and the check were promptly framed and added to the wall.

“I like to write about funny moments,” Barry says. “I’ve written so much about tragedy and loss that I look forward to those stories.”

Untitled

It has gradually come to my attention that "New York Notebook," aside from already being taken by more prolific bloggers than myself, is a lame and cliche title for a blog - especially a blog like this, which is not essentially a notebook, and may or may not be limited to New York-themed topics. Therefore, this blog will remain untitled for the time being. Or the indefinite future. Or permanently. Whatever.

Not Just Another Girl With a Guitar: Deidre Muro Makes Music Her Business

This article was recently published in the November 10-12 issue of New York University's Washington Square News:

I woke up early this morning,
Didn’t know who I was,
Your heavy head still on my pillow.
You exhale, stale with alcohol.

If someone had told me that this is how
Love would all go down,
(‘Cause it’s going down)
Then they may have saved me from your touch.
-Deidre Muro, “Red Afternoon” Standing onstage with her guitar and sipping a rum and coke, a faint smile spreads across Deidre Muro’s face as the spotlight fades. Halfway through her set at the East Village’s Sidewalk Café, the last notes of her brooding reflections on lost love seem to hang in the air for a moment before rising applause takes over the candlelit room.

“One of the coolest things about playing music in front of a crowd is the ability to shut up a room,” Muro said over coffee and a bagel at Café Pick Me Up a few days before the show. “When I play ‘Red Afternoon,’ sometimes it’s scary how quiet the room gets. Suddenly everyone is on the same page with me.”

Muro, a 21-year-old NYU senior, is a petite girl with short brown hair, a disarming smile and a big voice that belies her small stature. She channels the singing voice of Ella Fitzgerald, the songwriting of Jeff Buckley, and the soul of Muddy Waters – all with the help of her long-time backing band, which includes her brother Derek Muro on guitar, Zach Abramson on bass and piano, Mike Christy on drums and Drew Olsen on the cello. But Muro said not to confuse her with those Michelle Branch/Ani DiFranco “girl with a guitar” types spreading their white noise all over the radio.

“I hate the term ‘singer-songwriter’,” she said, “even though I suppose that’s what I am and I’m not trying to hide that. But it’s become a genre, and as a genre it’s so stuck in whiny, lame-ass acoustic shit. I like to think I’m more varied than that. I mean most people will say they say like all types of music, but I’m seriously into so much different stuff that it’s even confusing to me, and more than what I might want to play musically, I have to figure out what’s right for my voice. So I realized I’m not very suited to rock, but jazz works for me.”

Muro was raised in Smithtown, Long Island, by a mother who is a church organist and choir director, and a father who is a long-time writer and teacher on the subject of synthesizers and electronic music. As a result, Muro grew up with a love of music, attending her mother’s choir practices as a baby, and later joining the choir herself at the age of seven. She also watched every movie musical she could find – including her favorites by Rogers & Hammerstein – and sang those same tunes for hours while her father accompanied on piano.

In high school, she and her brother Derek began writing “silly little pop/rock songs” together, which eventually led to the formation of their alt-rock band, The Token. Derek, two years Deidre’s senior, graduated high school shortly after the band was formed. He attended Manhattan School of Music where he met current drummer Christy, and would return occasionally for shows at local dive bars and Battles of the Bands.

“I was so nervous at those first shows,” she said. “I don’t really get tense like that anymore, but I remember feeling very nervous. But once we got started, I was like, ‘This is fucking awesome. I want to do this all the time!’”

The Token played throughout Muro’s high school career, but broke up the summer after her senior year. She took a break from performing until her sophomore year at the Steinhardt School of Education – where she is majoring in music business – to focus on her studies and what she now recognizes as a “bad relationship.” Once she started writing a few new songs on her own, however, Muro decided that she wanted to record her first album.

“I don’t just spit out songs,” she said. “I have to wait for them to come. Sometimes months will pass and I won’t write a single song. Other times they come out all at once. But I can’t force myself to sit down and write.”

Muro released Red Afternoon in December of 2004. The album, produced and engineered by her brother, is a collection of songs recorded over three years, dating back to her days at Smithtown High School and up to her sophomore fall semester.

But she is constantly changing her sound. She tests out new material at New York venues like the Bitter End and Crash Mansion, and incorporates new instruments such as the melodica (“It looks like I’m playing a duck with a keyboard on its back.”), while also keeping a few of her old tunes on reserve.

“I don’t want to get up and whine about my life in front of people anymore,” Muro said. “It got to the point where there were songs I was uncomfortable playing. And when you can’t even feel comfortable playing your own songs, that’s a shitty situation.”

To remedy that, Muro took another break from playing for almost a year while she focused on writing new music. Since then, she has come up with some of her strongest material to date, departing from her alt-rock beginnings in favor of jazz and blues.

“My new songs are not really about me,” Muro revealed. “They’re more abstract I guess. It’s easier for me to perform, because I basically feel like I’m acting a part. With the older songs I was too involved; I couldn’t remove myself enough from them to just have fun and perform.”
Muro debuts several of her new songs – which are set to be released as a six-song EP sometime within the next month – during her show at Sidewalk. With lyrics like “There’s blood on her hands/ No weapons to blame/ She killed another man/ You know it’s always been/ A dangerous game” (from “Blood on Her Hands”), you trust that Muro is writing bluesy fiction rather than her memoirs, at least for now; with perpetual change, who knows?

“More than wanting to do it,” Muro says of her musical motivation, “I feel like I have an obligation, like I have to do it. And that’s not from outside pressure, and it’s not just because it’s in my blood, but I just feel like music is what I’m supposed to do."

Deidre Muro’s debut album Red Afternoon is available for download at iTunes or CDBaby.com, or by mail at www.deidremuro.com. Listen to sample clips online at www.myspace.com/deidremuro.

Radio, Radio

“Some stories are so aural that the sound is more important than the narration,” journalist John Kalish explains about his long career in radio. Now in his 50s, balding but with a full gray beard and wearing suspenders over a long-sleeve T-shirt, Kalish has worked as a freelance radio reporter for nearly three decades. In that time, he has covered such diverse subjects as the homeless, Brookyln’s Orthodox Jewish culture, the deaf community, and the arts, among others – and each of his stories has been uniquely suited to the radio format.

Take his piece about “Industrial Musicals,” for example. The story of a long-forgotten (if ever even publicly known) series of musicals commissioned by corporations in the middle of the twentieth century could have been described colorfully in the pages of a newspaper. But hearing these unique American artifacts for yourself elicits first mockery, then appreciation and admiration, for songs about life insurance and car parts and home appliances, in a way that could never be understood without the full aural experience.

Kalish has been able to maintain a career as a full-time freelance reporter, simply by paying attention to the world around him and the often-overlooked details of everyday life. He takes very few assignments and prefers to work on the stories that he finds himself. “I’ve developed a way to walk around in the world with my eyes and ears open and my antennae up,” Kalish says.