In music this week, I review albums that are thirty-seven and forty-two years old, respectively, because they are good albums and you should listen to them. First, David Bowie's The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (Ziggy Stardust if you want to be able to end the sentence before running out of breath): this is a concept album about, well, I'm not really sure. There's a rock star who may be an alien from outer space (though my interpretation is that this is just part of his act) who is trying to spread a message of love and peace while the rock'n'roll lifestyle drags him downward. Also the world has run out of resources or something and will end in five years. But that's not important. The songs are all superbly crafted and flow from one to the next, not just musically but emotionally as well. There is a coherent story here, though Bowie's fragmented, sometimes ludicrous lyrics ("I'm an alligator/ I'm a mama-papa coming for you/ I'm a space invader/ I'll be a rock'n'rolling bitch for you" and "The kids was just crass/ He was the nazz/ With god-given ass" - WHAT.) make it difficult to follow. It's fascinating how Bowie manages to communicate so much while making no sense whatsoever. Texturally, songs are simple driving guitar chords or else simple driving piano chords with very minimalist guitar riffs, accompanied by Bowie's somewhat nasal yet emotionally effective voice. More or less.
The opening song is "Five Years", about the despair gradually settling on the world in the face of not a bang but a whimper; Bowie's repeated cries of "five years!" recalls Roger Water's hoarse shouting on The Wall (yeah, The Wall postdates Ziggy Stardust by seven years, whatever.) "Moonage Daydream" has simultaneously some of the best and worst lyrics on the entire album (the first fragment above is the first stanza of this song, which also includes the awesome lines "Keep your electric eyes on me babe/ Put your ray gun to my throat".) The album generally and this song specifically also win the award for "Best Prominent Use of Strings In A Manner Neither Cheesy Nor Pretentious". There's "It Ain't Easy", which chorus has the force of a gospel choir. "Hang On To Yourself" marks the rising action, the beginning of the final chapter of Ziggy Stardust's meteoric career. "Suffragette City" basically just rocks, and "Rock 'n' Roll Suicide" marks a final redemption for the burned-out rock star. Superb pop album to the point where I will perhaps adopt the "Ziggy" as a unit of pop goodness. (Ziggy Stardust ranks 5 Z, as do Abbey Road and Sgt. Pepper; Björk's Debut rates 4 Z, and Tori Amos' Little Earthquakes as well as U2's Joshua Tree, while their Achtung Baby rates 3 Z along with Coldplay's Viva La Vida and The New Pornographer's Challengers.)
Other album: Cream's Disraeli Gears. While it clocks in at only 33 minutes, it is 33 minutes of alternating very good bluesrock ("Sunshine of Your Love" and "Swlabr") and excellent hazy psychedelia ("Tales of Brave Ulysses" and "We're Going Wrong"). The vocal harmonies are smooth ("creamy" is actually the best term for it), Clapton's guitar is excellent and bluesy, and this is the album that marks the point where blues met rock and had the best one-night stand ever which resulted in the birth of beautiful things like Led Zeppelin. Note that I can't rank it in terms of Ziggys, since it is, broadly, "rock" and not "pop", as somewhat arbitrarily defined by me.
Well, I was looking around the internet the other day, and I noticed that not one person on the internet has an opinion on Watchmen the movie. Naturally, it falls to me to correct this situation. [Spoiler alert] The movie is a lot of fun if you've read the book. Some things are delightful to see on screen (Rorschach's prison stint, Archie, the Comedian, Manhattan's Mars clockpalace), and the opening montage was quite enjoyable. I believe Rorschach, Manhattan and Ozymandias all put in solid acting performances (not everyone did), and I understand why they cut minor characters and removed the exploding squid psybomb - okay, but the way they handled the ending was, frankly, terrible: a) they decided to blow up not just New York BUT ALSO Paris, Beijing, Moscow, Tokyo, etc. - but they don't show any of those other explosions, just computer displays indicating that Paris, Beijing, Moscow, Tokyo, etc. are all blowing up and incidentally have identical buildings in identical places at their respective ground zeroes. (I'm pretty sure that's what I saw, anyway. Could have been wrong.) So we really are only emotionally invested in New York (except not so much even there, since we don't really know any of the minor characters whose deaths lend gravitas and pathos to the scene in the book). It came off as a cheap attempt to up the ante, and was unnecessary. b) Nite Owl is present when Manhattan kills Rorschach. This is completely unnecessary and only serves to have him fall to his knees screaming "NOOOOOOOO", which is bad, and then rush back inside and c) punch an unresisting Ozymandias multiple times. Alright, so this is pretty serious: the nuance of the heroes' reactions to Ozymandias in the book are key: there is so much ambiguity as to who is in the right, if anyone, and that is pretty much excised in the movie: Nite Owl's stance is that he won't reveal the plot, but he thinks Ozymandias is scum. This is a far cry from the book:
"How...how can humans make decisions like this? We're damned if we stay quiet, Earth's damned if we don't. We...okay. Okay, count me in. We say nothing."
Why, exactly, is it necessary to change that? All of which is nothing compared to d) The last scene between Manhattan and Ozymandias is completely removed. You remember that one?
"I did the right thing, didn't I? It all worked out in the end."
"'In the end'? Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends."
Yeah, the one that defined the entire tone of the ending and thus the entire story. They replaced that with Silk Spectre saying, "If Jon were here, he'd say, 'Nothing ever ends.'" Need I explain how awful this is?
Also, some of the soundtrack was kind of jerky. My biggest problem was the abrupt "Sound of Silence" for the Comedian's funeral. Don't get me wrong - I love Simon and Garfunkel, but it felt forced.
Like I said, the movie was fun, primarily, I think, for people who have read the book. It can't compare to the original, is likely to be incomprehensible and boring to those who haven't read the book, and contains some remarkably poor scriptwriting choices, but it's a fun movie. Dark Knight was a better comic book movie, but was also not perfect (there were parts that didn't involve Heath Ledger, for instance). Lord of the Rings had to bear the albatross of its inability to live up to the source material as well, and thus also contains many disappointing moments (Mordor was quite poorly done, for instance; Sauron should never have been a physical eye); I guess the thing to do in these cases is enjoy the movie, have fun discussing utilitarian v. deontological ethics in terms of Rorschach v. Ozymandias, and reread the book. So do that.
Utilitarianism is loathsome, incidentally.
