music, songwriting, Stephin Merritt, The Magnetic Fields, The Washington Examiner
In music on February 4, 2010 at 02:37
The Magnetic Fields have roughly the cultural and commercial footprint of an arthouse cinema hit. But a few weeks ago, Stephin Merritt — the group’s songwriter and chief creative officer —found himself staring straight into the ruddy, swollen face of his blockbuster competition.
“I was sitting in a bar, listening to thumping disco music, trying to write songs,” says Merritt from his home in Los Angeles, 10 days before the start of his band’s tour, which opens tonight at Lisner Auditorium. (Drinking in a loud bar is his customary songwriting environment, yes.) “Suddenly there was this television show with the sound on — usually it’s off. And the music, even when they were praising it, was so terrible it was like watching a car accident from different angles.”
Confirmed, then: The Magnetic Fields Guy? Not a fan of American Idol.
What is he a fan of? Irving Berlin. Judy Collins. And of swatting down the stubbornly pervasive idea that songs are primarily the product of something more mysterious than talent and work.
“There’s this book called Songwriters on Songwriting. I think the interviewer must have been asking leading questions, because maybe two-thirds of the people in the book say they feel their songs are basically written by God,” he says. “I just literally cannot believe that they really think this. I tend to write songs while I’m tipsy-to-drunk. But I still don’t feel like they’re written by some supernatural entity.”
Abraham Lincoln, DCist, Ford's Theatre, presidential history, theater
In Uncategorized on January 29, 2010 at 21:23
Robert Parsons and Rick Foucheux
What ho, presidential history nerds: My review of Ford’s Theatre’s new production of Norman Corwin’s The Rivalry is up over at DCist.
Corwin is still alive, kicking, lecturing and teaching at the University of Southern California, by the way, at the improbable age of ninety-nine. Among the dozens and dozens of fine radio plays to his credit is one called The Plot to Overthrow Christmas that he wrote (in verse!) more than half a century before FOX News alleged the existence of any such thing. I used a little snippet of it in my audio holiday card the year before last. Sir, my hat is off to you.
frenemies, Itamar Moses, screenwriting, The Washington Examiner, theater, writing
In shameless self-promotion on January 28, 2010 at 23:35
Dan Crane and Karl Miller
We’re supposed to forgive our enemies, drink less, play fair, love but one person at a time, measure ourselves not against others. When our friends succeed, we’re expected to be happy.
That is what is supposed to happen.
Of easy choices and pain-free obedience are boring stories made. Itamar Moses 2008 two-man-play The Four of Us is never dull, and given the picayune-ity of its stakes, that’s much more than the faint compliment it sounds like.
Moses’s deliberately paced narrative dissects a friendship among two boys-to-men over a ten-year period. We meet David and Benjamin in their mid-twenties. One’s a playwright, the other a novelist who, as comes to light during an increasingly fraught after-dinner chat, has just had the nullifying prefix “aspiring” blasted off of his title in spectacular, quit-your-day-job fashion.
David is still struggling, and Benjamin’s sudden promotion to a more rarefied realm of the cultural stratosphere — and his insufferable aloofness about it, believably conjured by actor Dan Crane — is tough for him to take. He worries aloud if his pal has considered that his $2 million payday mightn’t be, “in some way, totally spiritually corrupting.” It really isn’t about the Benjamins for Benjamin, but try telling that to a guy who doesn’t have any.
