October/November 2024 Media Log
It's Concept Album Autumn
Daylight Savings Time ended last Sunday. Donald Trump won the 2024 Presidential election last Tuesday. A real one-two punch, if we’re being honest.
But today I’m going to write about things I like, art that I think others will enjoy. I hope this brings some solace to your week.
Music Medley
This fall is apparently the season of concept albums, hailing from Broadway legends, pop songwriters, and hip-hop superstars alike. I will cover them in order of release date.
Sometimes I resent Hamilton’s success. Not because it didn’t deserve it, but because its neoliberal gloss immediately curdled in the Trump years and attracted the attention of a lot of people who have a (somewhat correct) political axe to grind and who know jack shit about musical theatre. Good art is made by imperfect people, disagreeing with a musical’s politics doesn’t rob it of its aesthetic power. But there’s a lot of people out there who insist that enjoying Miranda’s god-given gifts of songcraft means I’m a capitalist cuck, not welcome at the revolution. Oh well. Guess I get to keep his and Eisa Davis’ new concept album about the power of marginalized groups uniting against the real enemy - the police - all to myself.
Warriors is based on the 1979 film The Warriors, which is based on a 1965 book of the same name. The book is about a black adolescent street gang in New York City, and it emphasizes just how violent these kids are, as contrasted with their youth. The film ages them up a bit, turns the protagonist white, and is more of an action-adventure movie than a social commentary. The concept album draws most of its influence from the film - the names of the characters and the gangs, the general plot beats - but adds its own spin. Most notably, the titular Warriors are an all-female gang, and are once again people of color. There is greater emphasis placed on the ever present threat of sexual violence against women, the police as “the baddest gang in the city”, and the possibility that COINTELPRO was calling the shots behind the scenes.1
The music is, of course, fire - my favorites tracks are “If You Can Count”, “Going Down”, “Call Me Mercy”, “Quiet Girls”, “Sick of Runnin’”, and a true masterpiece of empathy I’ll be thinking about a lot in the coming years, “Same Train Home”.
A more unexpected constellation of words, I could not have predicted. But I read a headline that said, “NSYNC’s J.C. Chasez to release a concept album based on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.”
Just in time for spooky season, J.C. Chasez and his co-writer, Jimmy Harry, unveiled a concept album called Playing With Fire, which was based on a play written by Harry’s mom, Barbara Field. Field had been commissioned to adapt Frankenstein, and she struggled with finding a structure for the play that would excite her. Finally, she identified her real interest in the story: “I see two old men sitting on Regency chairs on an ice floe, having the conversation that never appeared in the novel.”2 The script dramatizes this conversation between the elder Frankenstein and Creature, with both of them conjuring up memories of each other’s younger selves - Frankenstein’s memory of the young Creature, and the Creature’s memory of the young Victor.
The concept album roughly follows that same format, and the plan is for Field’s original script to be tweaked to serve as a proper book for the songs - Field passed away in 2021.
The vibe is synth-pop meets Andrew Lloyd Webber. Have a listen to this song, and if you’re intrigued, I’d check the whole thing out:
Chromakopia is the eighth studio album by Tyler the Creator. I’m not well-versed enough in his entire catalogue to rank this, but like most of the Tyler the Creator work I’ve enjoyed, the blend of hip hop, R&B, and jazz pairs well with an emotionally honest and thorny concept album about how your upbringing, and the influence of parents who were and weren’t there, can ripple outwards into your relationship with your sexuality, with having kids, and with your art. I really like “Hey Jane”, “Judge Judy”, and “Take Your Mask Off”, but the undisputed greatest track on the record is “Like Him”, a reflection on Tyler’s struggles with needing and rejecting his absent father.
Fast Film Takes
Clockwatchers is a great 1997 indie, starring Toni Collette, Parker Posey, and Lisa Kudrow. A much more class-conscious Office Space, a much more realistic 9 to 5.
Jennifer’s Body is a 2009 horror comedy masterpiece. The film has been re-examined and re-acclaimed to death, so I’m not gonna repeat the usual talking points. I adore its plumbing of metaphorical high school horrors, a la early seasons Buffy. I like that ultimately, Low Shoulder being Satanists is the least despicable thing about them. I think it’s weirdly prescient about predatory scene musicians, the ripple effects of rape culture, and the flattening of individuals in a small town when someone turns a true crime eye on them.
Burning is a 2018 psychological drama that I thought was pretty good, but it reminded me of the 2005 film Caché, which is an unparalleled picture I will have to write about one day.
Short Story, Huge Impact
Swerve by Brenda Miller was published in Brevity in 2009. I read it for the first time in 2024. It is demonstrably devastating, and while I do love my long-form essays, I aspire to one day craft something as powerful in as few words as this.
An Outstanding Gem in a So-So Product
I’ve mentioned before that I would like to host an alternative film and television award show, where actors who do a great job in a mediocre or bad thing get rewarded. Think Matthew Lillard in Scooby-Doo (2002), or Ewan McGregor in the Star Wars prequels.
I have a slightly unorthodox edition of that today. This is a great soundtrack song in a mediocre TV show. Bad Monkey is an Apple+ tv series adapted from a Carl Hiaasen novel. It’s fine. Set in Florida, the entire soundtrack is covers of Tom Petty songs. It seems like most people did not like these covers, and while I can’t claim that all of them are bangers, Nathaniel Rateliff’s cover of “Don’t Come Around Here No More” is 1) excellently utilized in the show, where one of our main characters is suddenly in danger and another is desperately running to their rescue, and 2) is preferable to the Petty original, whose sitar-psychedelic production kind of dates it.
Co-writer Eisa Davis’ aunt is Angela Davis