Glass Shallot by Adam Baer | Adambaer.com

Billy Joel: "Nowadays, You Can't Be Too Sentimental"

I'm always proud to stand up for Billy Joel. He feels like a relative, a guy from our anti-genre musician family who just chose to live more than us, sometimes in some crazy, silly ways. Sure, I fit the profile: I'm from NY/Long Island, I like the Yankees, I'm Jewish by genetic design, I grew up with a piano in the house.

But more important, I believe Joel's honest, eloquent songwriting will survive the naysayers because of what's under the hood. I can't change dated instrumentation, production, and interpretation (or, for that matter, the comical "Downeaster Alexa"; as "The Stranger" says, "everyone goes south, every now and then"). But strip the songs down, and a good 80% of the time, It's there. Substance. 

(I'm sorry if it seems elitist, and I know that it takes all kinds and that taste is subjective, but I believe that if you can't hear why Joel's songs are for the most part excellent you need to learn more about, or at least rethink, the craft of songwriting. Call him annoying, call him cheesy. It won't change the material.)

Of course, Billy Joel never would have happened without The Beatles, Dylan, and Ray Charles, among others; he's an interpreter, and a sponge. But that's what a performing and composing musician is, and he'll be remembered on more days than his birthday (today, May 9) for outstanding contributions to the American songbook and concert life. (And now there's news that he may tour again.)

Here (above) is an interesting find on the still-free YouTube: outtakes posted from "Songs in the Attic." This will appeal to you, especially if you know and appreciate the Nassau Coliseum live show that made the final version of this album. "Nowadays, You Can't Be Too Sentimental." Or sincere.

+ Hear Billy Joel make fun of himself and talk to Alec Baldwin on WNYC

+ Check out Billy Joel's Columbia Records Photo Archive

 

Beastie Boys' ‘Paul’s Boutique’ Remade by Cheeba, Moneyshot & Food

 

‘Paul’s Boutique’ remade  [music link].

Description: "3 years in the making, 3 DJs working with over 150 tracks to recreate one of the seminal sampling albums of all time, at last Cheeba, Moneyshot and I can reveal ‘Caught In The Middle Of A 3-Way Mix’. Our tribute to the classic Beastie Boys album ‘Paul’s Boutique’ remixed and re-imagined from all the original samples plus a cappellas, period interviews and the Beasties’ own audio commentary from the reissued release. Add to this a custom illustration from Paul’s Boutique super-fan and all-round great guy Jim Mahfood, taking time out from recent art duties on Tank Girl, and you have an alternate version of the album. The mix was over half way finished when we heard the tragic news of Adam Yauch‘s passing this May so this is also our nod to his memory, RIP MCA."

Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Veep) on Her Funniest "Note" [Exclusive, R-rated]

A few years ago, Rolling Stone kindly published a piece of mine about the funniest "studio notes" actors, writers, directors, and comedians have received from Hollywood producers and network execs. It was intended to be an oral history about receiving chortle-worthy criticism, a way to use these "notes" to tell some of comedy's best secret stories, and I hope we accomplished that goal, to some degree. (Note: the headline was not my first choice, but I am a team player, and I had a lot of fun working on the piece and eventual pride seeing it in RS.)

It was a dream assignment: I interviewed a score of hilarious celebs, producers and directors--from Mel Brooks and Garry Shandling to younger talents like David Wain ("Wet Hot American Summer"), Paul Scheer ("The League"), and Nick Stoller ("Forgetting Sarah Marshall" and "The Five Year Engagement").

Everyone cracked me up, and the piece generated serious interest from one of the world's biggest book publishers. So I took some of the quotes from my many funny interviews that Rolling Stone had not picked for inclusion (page-space is limited at magazines), and my agent and I went out with a book proposal about how this could be a hilarious narrative project, especially given my access to so many people in the entertainment industry. Eventually, and ironically, the senior publishing exec didn't think the book would make money (I still disagree), and the project, which could now be a brilliant multimedia thing with video, great for iPads, was tabled.*

Alas, one of the many funny things Rolling Stone could not include--sadly rendering my collection of interview subjects 100% male--was my unforgettable, if short, interview with Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who stars tonight in HBO's new series "Veep." I share this gem with you now. Word, for word, and I have this on tape, this is what one of the funniest actresses in comedy told me, on the record. Addendum: Julia Louis-Dreyfus is a lovely, generous woman, with guts of steel, and I don't doubt she will continue to be a hit with audiences everywhere -- and to reiterate, I would not have posted this if she had not given me the quote on the record.

FUNNIEST STUDIO NOTE: JULIA LOUIS-DREYFUS

"I have only one story that comes to mind, and I leave out names because that's a better idea.

But when I was very young and had just started on “SNL”--I believe I was 20--I did a sketch in which I played John DeLorean's wife...

In that sketch, my hair was blown out straight -- because her hair is straight.

So, we did the show, and the following day, I was called into one of our producers' offices (as a side note, I should say that I have naturally curly hair), and he said to me, “Julia, I got a call from a bunch of NBC executives after last night’s show, and they said that after seeing your hair straight, they all wanna fuck you.”

This was apparently his way of trying to entice me into straightening my hair for the rest of season.

Needless to say: I was young and naïve, but I was so shocked that anyone would say anything like that, I just burst out laughing in a hysterical way. I didn't know what else to do.

Years later, when "Seinfeld" was becoming somewhat of a hit, I ran into the same producer at NBC again.

And he said to me, “Hey, Julia, I see they're letting you do your hair the way you want now."

That's apparently all he took away from my “Seinfeld” contribution.

The irony of it was that not only did I make my hair curly on "Seinfeld," which may have been a huge mistake now that I think about it, but I enhanced the curl and made it HUGE!

I wonder if that hair wasn't some kind of reaction.

I was saying: 'Not only is this hair going to be curly, it's going to be crazy curly. Take that, motherfucker!!'"

--as told to Adam Baer

 

*Tabled in this case means I stopped pursuing it. I'm open to pursuing it again, though, especially with a new class of today's funniest people.

Did Facebook Delete A Writer's Attempt to Use Timeline as a Narrative Tool?

Today I posted "content" in an attempt to use Facebook Timeline in a humorous, narrative way; I was kidding a little, but I thought it could be fun to really use the software to create a comedic, serialized micro-narrative made of short status updates. The post was commented on by a couple of friends, and then removed by someone other than me. I then discussed this in another status update with those same friends. That was then promptly removed by someone other than me. I then reposted the content twice, and now I do not see any of this on my page. If Facebook would like people to care about its IPO -- and that's a foregone conclusion, they do, because billions of dollars are concerned, but let's talk about regular people -- they should not delete writers' attempts to use their tools to create and engage with an audience, in jest or more serious ways. The aforementioned content (copied below) is far from genius and merely average, but I posted it here, which is less "buggy" a virtual "place" and likely watched by fewer programmers who police and react to user content. Perhaps this was all just FB software problems...but if so, who can trust FB with content you do not backup elsewhere. I mean, what if this stuff was actually good?

Here is the attempt at humor I posted, related to the ABC Show Revenge. Do you find it inappropriate?

"When I was 10, a high-school senior in my Monte Cristo-like neighborhood was hired to hang out with and shoot hoops with me before my parents returned home from work. One day, the kind young man suggested I find someone to buy me a tape of Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run.” So, I did, and the next time he appeared, he “borrowed” it, never to return or answer our many calls again. Now, as a rational adult, I plan to use Facebook Timeline, narratively, to track down this man for a final confrontation. Would any of you care to follow this meaningful adventure? I shall call it “My Facebook ‘Revenge’ / Season One: Born to Run.”

I shall move slowly, follow clues, keep my emotions at bay, and friend anyone close to this man and his especially heinous crime, crossing each one off my list one by one. It will be sweet to one day recover this low quality recording, if it still exists, uncompressed and possibly warped. But the ultimate prize will be hearing this man sing under duress the lyrics: “The highway's jammed with broken heroes on a last chance power drive / Everybody's out on the run tonight but there's no place left to hide.”

 

AFTERNOON UPDATE: Facebook was briefly down this morning, and I wouldn't want to think they'd target one person, so it's quite possible that's what happened. Still, the "dangerous"  keywords used in my posts could have triggered a moderator or bot to remove them at different times (people observed their staggered removal individually), and the critique and untraditional use of Timeline the day after FB's IPO announcement is definitely something they might try to quash. 

The important issue remains: Can we trust FB to hold our original life-content as Timeline promises? I'd use a few backups, and make sure you already own the rights to anything you publish anywhere.

Cleveland Show Calling: The Kanye West Table Read

Recently, GQ posted a little one-question Q&A that I conducted with the co-creators of Fox's new "The Cleveland Show," premiering September 27. Below, is a piece about attending a table-read at the show's offices last spring, followed by a longer transcript of our conversation. 

 

Grab a folding chair in the front row; avoid clumsy boom-mic gaffers; sit close to the guest stars; caffeinate. These are but a few actions you will enjoy if you’re one of the animators, production staff, agents, TV execs, writers, and miscellaneous VIPs invited to a table-read for The Cleveland Show, Fox’s "Family Guy" spinoff (premiering September 27) centered around Peter Griffin’s lovable African American neighbor. 

On the day that I drop by, last spring, in the Wilshire Boulevard offices, the scene is business as usual. Nearly. Superagent Ari Emanuel, the brother of the new White House Chief of Staff, is observing (he represents the show’s co-creator, Simpsons writing-staff alum Rich Appel). Actress Taraji P. Henson has a guest spot, fresh off her Oscar nomination for “Benjamin Button.” In the house, wearing a sharp white shirt, as well is spiky haired executive producer and "Family Guy" mastermind Seth MacFarlane, the highest paid and most identifiable comedy writer in the world--see a new slew of Hulu TV ads in which aliens unfurl from his stomach. Then there’s the day's most notable guest-star: Kanye West—quiet and composed, decked out in black, neon-yellow hightops, and his trademark oversized Wayfarers. (Sadly, Arianna Huffington, who plays a talking bear, is absent.)

“The Cleveland Show,” if this is the first you're hearing of it because you don't live and breathe in America, is an attempt to recast the "Family Guy's" gentle deli owner as the patriarch of a new family in Rhode Island, where he lives with his gullible son, Cleveland, Jr., his new wife Roberta, and her ghettoriffic son, Rallo. But did you know America’s most heavily anticipated new African American sitcom’s really the brainchild of Mike Henry, a pale, 44-year-old white guy with easy smile from Richmond, V.A.?  As the source of Cleveland’s laconic whine and the gritty growls of Rallo, Henry seems as if he could just be some soccer dad from the burbs—and it’s a pretty surreal thing to watch, as he vacillates with epic smoothness between urban voice-archetypes as if somewhere inside him is a class clown from the South Side of Chicago. 

From the confines of his office, he says no one’s really ripped into him for doing black-voice—but that's just got to be a testament to how well he pulls it off. “Here Cleveland’s not just the Black Friend, but a much fuller, well-rounded character than he ever was," Henry adds. Appel, a former Harvard-educated lawyer who literally runs the read by announcing the script’s action as fast and naturally as a New York City auctioneer, sharpens the point: “There's a tradition in animated shows, and it’s a virtue that people often aspire to: colorblind casting. You have grown women playing Bart Simpson and Bobby Hill, and Hank Azaria as Apu.  We have Kevin Michael Richardson, who is African American,and while he plays Cleveland, Jr., he also plays one of our most redneck, potentially racist [white] characters.”

An admitted “Family Guy” fan, Kanye is—surprise!—playing a character based on himself: a freestylin’ ladies man who competes for a chick with roley-poley Cleveland Jr. through a rap battle at a Jewish neighbor’s house. Picking up a Menorah, he spits: “This voodoo shit’s got nine candles/Your fat ass got nine loooove handles.” Kanye reads OK, if a little slowly, on the fly, but it's not half as magnetic as hearing him perform his own stuff—or, for that matter, posturing for attention on the VMAs.  Voiced smoothly with spot-on syncopation by actor Kevin Michael Richardson, Cleveland, Jr.'s retort wins: “Your flow is fated ‘n’ dated, deflated ‘n’ constipated. If I had to rate it? Hate it. Translated—you ate it… Hey cheeseball, you been grated. Chewed up, swallowed, defecated…On the DVD this won’t be pixilated.” 

Yep, this thing's written by the Family Guy crew.

And, expectedly, the in-crowd eats it up with cheers and measured guffahs. By the end, everyone’s congratulating each other, posing for snaps, and milling out to the hallway where a giant Cleveland cut-out stands in front of a large table of craft-service goodies. What I can’t forget, however, as Ari Emanuel offers Our Rap Icon a high-five handshake—power connection!—is how Hollywood rarely contrasts with its meta-depictions on shows like “Entourage.” To wit, the way Appel introduced the day’s Rhymin' Guest Star star an hour earlier: “The man who will appear two weeks from Saturday at my son’s Bar Mitzvah, I hope… Kanye West!”

*   *   *

As with any reported piece, there's often at least one Q&A behind it. For the true Cleveland fan, here's a three-way phoner I did with the show's co-creators after attending the Kanye Table Read...

Never Byrne-d Out

In the course of interviewing David Byrne for this short piece about his design work and music in May's Departures Culturewatch section, I realized that Shallot friend Hillman Curtis had done a really cool commercial (embedded above) for Byrne's joint album with Brian Eno "Everything That Happens Will Happen Today." For people who aren't in the know (which could have been me if I had not done this piece, sadly), the album has been freely streamable on the Web for some time. For those who like to hold amazing design in your hands and play with dice, you can still buy a Sagmeister-designed Deluxe (CD) Package that includes an original Hillman Curtis film about the album as well as a full book and other goodies (watch a video that explains the contents here). 

Byrne told me the following about why the duo decided to offer the album in these different forms. "We had both been thinking about the changes the music business has been going through," he said. "There are now many more ways that musicians can get their messages across than before, though the industry typically lags behind. We decided to try some of those out for ourselves by initially selling the record exclusively through our website and allowing people to stream the whole album if they simply wanted to hear what it was like.  It just seemed obvious. I wanted to sing these songs more, so I asked my booking agents to book some tours -- so that kind of gave the project an endpoint -- and the only way to get the music out to people before the tour started was to make it available online.  That said, there are many among us who still love a physical object. A well-designed package can enhance the experience. It used to be that an eye-catching package helped sell a record: it would shout at you like a box of laundry detergent. But I don't think CD package design is meant to do that anymore. Now it's more about adding another layer to the experience. I'd worked with Stefan (Sagmeister) many times before, so he was a natural choice."

Other questions broached in my interview included prompts about the joy of performing.  "At my age and situation, I don't need to tour simply for financial reasons (though I do make money touring)," Byrne said. "Though I would love to believe otherwise, I don't think touring sells many records either. I do it for two reasons: it's immensely pleasurable these days and because I can (immodestly, I can say that I do know how to perform and put on a show). The show we've created -- the band, crew, singers, dancers, choreographers, etc. -- is like nothing I've ever done before, so though half of the show consists of older material, it's been placed in a new context. At some point, performing changed from being a thing that I psychologically had to do into something that was actually pleasurable. Some edge in my demeanor might have been lost with those changes, but songs from that period remain, so the edginess can be dredged back up."

Byrne, as the article points out, also writes the music to the HBO show Big Love (coming back soon), which actually opens with Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys's "God Only Knows," so I was curious as to how he might add music to such a thoroughly branded motion picture experience.  "It's an interesting show and doing a score like this allows one to exercise some musical muscles one doesn't always use," Byrne said. "It's good to stretch oneself sometimes, to get out of a comfort zone, which forces some kind of creative response. Initially I thought I'd try to base much of the music on Mormon hymns -- not use them but write in that style. Having seen the 1st season, I sensed that many of the characters felt that their behavior and decisions were based on deep spiritual beliefs -- as wacky and unusual as some of it might seem to us. I therefore imagined that hymn-type chord progressions and melodies would hint at this spiritual underpinning without saying it out loud. The hope was also that this music would also help one empathize with the characters, even, or maybe especially, with some of the more extreme ones. Music can hint at their motivations and justifications, where their hearts are despite what we see them doing. Well, in the end, that approach only worked a few times: it tended to draw attention to itself and to draw you out of the intimate scale of the drama. That music tended to pull you back to a God's eye view of things -- yes, music can do that. So, in the end I had to use other muscles and write some other material that was subtler, more character driven."

Intriguing, especially for film music buffs (of which there are few, apparently). More au courant, perhaps, was Byrne's answer to my question about how he and Eno both influence(d) each other.  He answered: "The process of using the recording studio as a writing tool was something a few of us learned from Brian. Not that he was the only one to do it, but they way he encouraged us in Talking Heads (and myself) to start from zero and create new tracks was something we were ready for...it was the right idea, the right nudge, at the right moment. It wasn't that strange, really, as it basically was taking the writing process, which usually goes on in one's head, hidden, invisible, or little my little with a guitar in hand and some notepaper in front, and it made it all -- the creative process -- explicit, visible, and most important for potential collaborators, available for others to enter into. How did Talking Heads and myself influence Brian? I think we encouraged him to be a little more funky, more groove oriented."

how to write for harper's magazine

Ask Shallot friend Jon Kiefer.

Oh, My Word: Omaha's "Whatevs" Disaster. News as it Breaks.

The news is slowly creeping out of Nebraska Methodist Hospital. But apparently three ordinarily healthy septuagenarian Omaha librarians are still in critical care after suffering simultaneous cardiac arrests this morning when they were struck by news so grammatically and linguistically abominable that they could not maintain homeostasis. Margaret Dubrovic, 71, head librarian at Omaha's central library system, was reportedly enjoying a routine morning when her latest copy of The New Yorker magazine arrived in the mail. Allegedly, Dubrovic looked forward with great verve to the arrival of her private subscription copy and had been rumored to read half of the entire periodical well before the end of morning on delivery days with friends and co-librarians Betsy O'Neill, 74, and Edith Cooper, 76, both of whom also suffered cardiac arrests. But this morning the group happened upon what junior librarian Thomas DeBouef, 23, could only call "literary blasphemy of the highest proportions." The insidious word "whatevs," a slang term for "whatever" used by the so-called Britney Generation and the blog whatevs.org, apparently found its way into music critic Sasha Frere-Jones's recent review of the latest Coldplay album. And while the estimable writer had likely used the term in the most tongue-in-cheek manner, it even appeared as a one-word sentence--capitalized, of course. "He didn't have to go that far," said DeBouef, whose grandfather Eli, 89, also works in the library as a volunteer and suffered minor whiplash from today's events. "There's no doubt in my mind that the act of literally seeing such a word, if you can call it that, printed in the magazine these ladies have held so dear to their literary hearts for so many years caused their simultaneous tragedies. It's a damn shame." Of course, one Generation X reporter cannot help but wonder, in the words of character Carrie Bradshaw from the HBO show "Sex and the City," what septuagenarian librarians were hoping for from a review of a Coldplay album in the first place. "They weren't as shocked as many of their friends were that The New Yorker had taken to reviewing popular music so substantively over the last few years," added Debouef.  "They rather liked Coldplay, and as the article said, they often played the album 'Parachutes' during their afternoon tea sessions as a means to relax from the stress of their jobs." For now, however, the implicit danger posed by a simple unsubstantiated slang term such as "whatevs" is all an entire community can cling to for some explanation as to why their best librarians are on leave from the city's hottest reading room. More news as it breaks. In the meantime, get better, girls.

funniest press release of the week

These actually get sent to me. Say hello to this week's winner:

"Hi Adam,

I have a great story idea for you: Exotic Beauty Norms!

The standards of beauty vary tremendously from one culture to the next. So how does one know what exactly defines Exotic Beauty? Enticingly different eyes, fascinating faces, sexy, glamorous, mysterious?

Dr. [NAME REDACTED], who recently returned from Dubai, is an A-list surgeon who has traveled around the world and owns over 24 clinics in more than 15 countries. For him to succeed, it’s extremely imperative to understand the different beauty norms for each country that his patients strive to achieve. For example, what one girl in India deems “beautiful”, another in Shanghai may find repulsive.

As a specialist, Dr. [NAME REDACTED] answers to women with a variety of different requests on a daily basis. As such, he’s developed a keen eye for international beauty. We’d love to put you in touch with him to discuss these trends.  For more information about Dr. [NAME REDACTED] or to set up an interview, please contact me directly at: [PHONE NUMBER REDACTED].

Best,

[PR REP NAME REDACTED]"

What I don't think this doctor has realized is that he's far behind the times. Ideas of beauty changing from country to country are so last month. These days it's from street to street. I call it "Micro Community Beauty Norms" (TM). For instance, you're no longer drop-dead-hot on Beverly Hills's Beverly Drive if you're drop-dead-hot on Rodeo, which is just one street over. So, too, for Sunset and Hollywood Blvds. And I hear that pretty soon beauty is going to vary from block to block within micro communities, eventually even perhaps landing in the Eye of the Beholder, an ultra-exotic place with so much Otherness that apparently Indiana Jones has only read about it. But don't worry, PR rep: That's at least a month away. It's hard to forecast these things.

today's beltway mag browse

Finally in the open air for part of a day after too much time spent under imaging machines, I got to actually browse a bookstore for some current magazines. Handing my New Yorker, NatGeo, and other magazines to the clerk, however, I was accosted by a woman who looked like a former NPR colleague--PBS tote bag, stringy hair, big plastic glasses, and all.

"Oh," she said. "I am glad you are holding that upside down."

That? I asked, not knowing what she was talking about but eventually realizing it had something to do with the TNY Obama cover, the supposed uproar about which I know very little, except that it looks like a bold (which I consider good and necessary) portrayal of how certain Americans (probably not this woman) demonize and denigrate the guy.

"Well, um, you know, well, um, hmph," the lady said, implying that perhaps I might agree or disagree with the cover, I couldn't be sure.  (For the record, I support Obama as well as free speech.)

"I am sorry," I replied. "What are you asking me about?"

"Well, um, hmph, OK, but you also have the Nation in there, well, um, well, just, just forget it," she said.

"OK," I replied, smiling a bit.

Then she walked away, flustered, and I gave the clerk some cash. It was nice to be out in our funny world again.

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