Cassowary and Fruit Bat

Adam Singer is an L.A.-based animator and video filmmaker who was inspired by the music of Denver songwriter Ian Cooke to create this short masterpiece, Cassowary and Fruit Bat.

This short film opened the Colorado Film Festival a few years back. Adam is a graduate of the Colorado Art Institute who works as a freelancer doing commercial and concert stage animation.

This lovely video is put to Cooke's inspired, whimsical, and romantic tune. Wonderful stuff so far from the mainstream that I feel Cooke, and Singer for his interpretation of this great song, should be rewarded. There should be a wonderful statue, possibly in the heart of City of the Angels, to memorialize this piece that so nicely tributes the angelic work that people can do.

Learn more about Ian Cooke at his website.

Visit Adam Singer's website to see more of his work and learn more about him.

SXSW Breakouts

In this edition, the CCJ takes a look at some of the acts on this year's virtual SXSW Music Festival bill that strike us as particularly appealing. See videos and read more at SXSW 2021 - CCJ Reviews.

Sir Paul Stories

For those "Paul is Dead" conspiracy people out there, who have been living off an expectation of pending disclosure (similar to what UFO people are expecting in their realm), there are two prominent projects soon to appear that seem designed to ensure Paul McCartney's continued reality (whatever it is).

"Lord of the Rings" Producer/Director Peter Jackson will be premiering his re-edited version of the Beatles' "Let It Be" film, using 1969 footage filmed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg. And Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon, who is a professor at Princeton and for years was Poetry Editor at the New Yorker magazine, is working on a book with McCartney. (Muldoon has given way at the New Yorker to Kevin Young, who is the director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.)

Peter Jackson's stated purpose in re-imagining the "Let It Be" sessions is to re-tell the story, which McCartney conspiracy people argue Sir Paul has been doing for years. The Lindsay-Hogg film left viewers with the sense that they had witnessed the melt-down of a band that had risen to fame on the extraordinary chemistry that existed among the Fab Four. That energy was clearly absent from the "Let It Be" film. It was as if refugees from Sgt. Peppers were struggling to figure out how to put a band together.

The Jackson film (“The Beatles: Get Back”) tells us that "Let It Be" got it all wrong, leaving folks with a false impression for the "Let It Be" sessions were a really happy time. The Lindsay-Hogg film was just edited in an unfunny way.

The Muldoon/McCartney project is called “The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present”, which will be McCartney telling his life story through his song lyrics. Paul is Dead people will be paying close attention to McCartney's stories around songs written between 1956 and 1966, as they will feel certain those were written by "biological Paul", "the cute Beatle" whose songwriting ended in 1966 with a car crash.

Leaning toward the likelihood that both of these projects are pure spin, I don't think Sir Paul is planning on ripping off his mask and revealing himself anytime soon. Mike Williams, Tina Foster, and the rest of the sizeable army of PID authors may be broken-hearted, though there may be a deception there that for them will be the gift that keeps on giving.

Apps for Communicating the Wonder that is You

Did you ever look at the options in social media for communicating whatever it is you have to communicate and wonder which are the most effective?

According to Kristen Lucas, talent manager at Bohemia Group, and event producer Tara Gore the ones that work best for filmmakers, actors, musicians, and promotors of same, are Clubhouse, Instagram, Twitter, Stage 32, IMDB, and LinkedIn.

Clubhouse is the new app (audio) of the bunch, gaining popularity during the Covid-19 crisis as an invitation-only platform. You need a friend to invite you to join, and when you join you get to accept two others. That filtering device, mimicked by Twitter with its Twitter Spaces, separates the in-crowd from the hoi polloi. Clubhouse has become popular among celebrities, but a couple open source variations on GitHub may socialize the whole thing. The app has 10 million users after year one.

Instagram, with 140 million users in the U.S., covers the association through pictures aspect of promotions. You post images intended to generate likes and so generate a community of the like-minded.

Twitter works for celebrities around whom there is a curiousity factor, but hard to imagine that it works to promote anything else. I could be wrong, ask Kristen and Tara who sell seminars on the subject.

LinkedIn is that space in which civil engineers mix with musicians in a way that seems to make everyone a job applicant. Some folks use LinkedIn as a commentary platform, but it is word-limited and doesn't strike me as a great tool for any other than maintstream worker bees. Again, Kristen and Tara have apparently found ways to make it work for the creative community.

IMDB is the website where people go for information on cast members in movies, but anyone can add their own page for a fee: $19.99 a month or $149.99 a year for an "individual", probably as opposed to a page launched to provide information about a specific feature. Just guessing.

Lastly, Stage 32 is a site for independent filmmakers, craftspersons, actors, and other, and it has numerous contributors who offer advice through blogs. They also devote a great deal of space to promoting seminars, which is where I got this information.

Pajama Virus Pirates

Steve Ignelzi is a lifer as a musician and a (legitimate) chemist; a smart guy, who loves progressive jazz and silliness, both of which are on display in this video.

This composition is good listening, particularly the bridge part, which Steve correctly describes as "beautiful" in one of the video's more audacious sequences. I have spent time considering the possible inspiration for that song title, a line that turns into a growling chorus at one point in the song. I assume it was fever associated with pandemic isolation? There is a little Les Claypool there in the sparse vocal, which sounds like that time Les got high with Tom Waits (fictional, maybe).

A composer, as well as a talented guitarist and bassist, Steve is a longtime resident of Boulder, Colorado, which if you know anything about Boulder is saying something. It prices most musicians out of the county, but then Steve has that day job doing chemistry. And somehow he also has the energy to play the Colorado front range in various ensemble arrangements.

He also has an incredibly talented wife, Chris, who is a dynamite singer-songwriter, as well as being a corporate paralegal. That has to help. I had misreported that Chris is in the library sciences - not sure where I got that. Her husband set me straight - "Chris once received the ‘Power Behind the Thrown’ award from the Boulder Women's Bar Association…Anyhow, she spends a lot of time crafting corporate documents for attorneys to review and sign off on. Of course, she did all of the great work as a vocalist for Pedestrians, Metro, ULU and did back ups for Syntax (who featured Latonya Hall, now of Steely Dan fame) and more recently a lot of work as singer/songwriter on her Feather album." Proud hubby, cool wife.

That Feather album, by the way, is spectacular. Sometimes you wonder how such talented people manage to avoid broad public attention and appreciation, while some not particularly talented people get it all. (I just saw Lil Naz X on SNL.)

They have a talented drummer son, Tate, well known on Colorado's indy music scene. Perhaps we should feature the whole clan in a future edition. Or perhaps they should do one of those family reality shows. Stick it on Discovery+. - RAR

PIANO CONCERTO NO. 9 (MOZART)

I wish I could find an in-depth piece written by someone who took a little time to dissect this ridiculously brilliant work by Mozart.

I was just listening to it on Sirius XM, performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra, and I grinned and laughed aloud through the whole first part, was held breathless through the Andantino second section, and found the third as majestic and freeing as anything I have ever heard. The whole thing is endlessly inventive, corny in all kinds of ways, thick with personality(s), and often wonderfully funny.

I have no idea what Mozart was thinking when he wrote the piece in 1777, but much of it sounds to me like a royal sendup, particularly the Allegro. That feels to me like a conversation between an impetuous and ornery youth and a scolding authority figure. It is the kind of thing Disney animated so effectively in Fantasia.

I believe the pianist, on the recording I listened to, is a young Russian named Daniil Trifonov, who to my ear has a sense for the sublime so finely tuned that it hurts. He has huge feeling, not in a corny dramatic way, because that wouldn’t be Mozart, but in a humanly emotional way that teases your heart strings with your own sense of anticipation. He is absolutely intoxicating.

I am not a knowledgeable fan of classical music, but I have been playing instruments and writing music for over 50 years, so feel sort of at ease with my own insight, and I can’t imagine achieving what Trifonov has with this Mozart piece.

It isn’t hard to imagine why some people equate Mozart with the voice of God, not that he was omnipotent but rather that he was completely in touch with those magical vibrations that rule the universe and somehow fire the neural impulses. Trifonov’s ability to translate this makes me quiver, and I can’t say that much of music ever does that to me.

Mozart supposedly was commissioned to write the piece for a dancer friend of his, who apparently was also an accomplished pianist. I am trying to imagine him showing up and saying, “Hey, I wrote you a little something” and this girl unfolding the rolled-up sheets of music and beginning to play. It is beyond my comprehension. I can’t believe anyone can play the piano with the uber personality of Trifonov, which must have matched Mozart’s own extreme brio.

This YouTube isn't the best, but if you get a chance, find this recording and listen on good equipment. It is just ridiculous the degree to which it will make you believe in the full wonder and capacity of humans.

Corey Landis Gets Gothic

Have you seen the new Corey Landis video?

Many know Landis from his "Five Hour Energy" commercials, or from the many roles he has played in low-budget thriller flicks on the ScyFy Channel, in independent films, and internet projects . Or some may even recall his brief but effective turn on "That 70s Show" as the young Red Forman.

Those are all significant resume credits in the incredibly competitive L.A. entertainment world, but for my money the Corey Landis that deserves the greatest notice is the one who is the singer/songwriter. He has done spectacular work on four LPs, writing and performing beautiful ballads and witty ditties , but in his latest outing - with this video "Animal", done as a member of Black Angel - Landis takes a sharp right into a role in which he has cast himself against character in terms of his established musical persona.

Respected as a piano man in the Billy Joel tradition, he dives into early MTV mode with "Animal", which has the edge of Billy Idol coupled with the theatricality of The Cure. Is he revealing a side to himself that has always been there? (He has demonstrated a fondness for David Bowie.) Or is this simply a creative force expressing himself in a way different than he has before, just stretching a bit, like good actors do?