Month: October 2023
‘Song Of The Avatars’ Resurrects Guitarist Robbie Basho’s Lost Recordings
Basho helped invent the playing style known as American primitive, but his music was nearly forgotten after his death. Then a few years ago, a trove of never-before-heard recordings suddenly surfaced.
By Joel Rose
A few years ago, filmmaker Liam Barker was at work on the film that would become his 2015 documentary Voice of the Eagle: The Enigma of Robbie Basho. Barker’s subject was the late guitarist who (along with figures like John Fahey and Leo Kottke) helped invent the acoustic style known as American primitive, and he kept hearing about a collection of the artist’s personal recordings that had seemingly been lost after his death in 1986. That’s how the director found himself in a ramshackle house in South Carolina, surrounded by stacks of old newspaper and animal excrement.
“When I went there, it was kind of like something out of a horror film,” Barker says. “It was like, you know, unbelievable filth all around.”
But to his amazement, Barker found exactly what he was looking for: box after box of magnetic reel-to-reel tapes, still sealed. “Miraculously, some of these recordings sound like they were recorded yesterday,” he says.
Now, the personal recordings stashed in those boxes are being released for the first time in a five-disc set called Song of the Avatars: The Lost Master Tapes. [ . . . ]
My Sailor, My Love review – woman on the verge in drama of male cruelty
Beautifully nuanced performances underpin an interesting drama that evolves from late-life romance into study of family trauma across generations
By Phuong Le
Shot on the misty Achill island off Ireland’s west coast, Finnish director Klaus Härö’s English-language debut grapples with the rough currents of late-in-life regrets and resentment. Cranky retired sea captain Howard (James Cosmo) – once content with shutting himself off from the outside world – is forced to open his disorderly home, and subsequently his heart, to Annie (Brid Brennan), a housekeeper hired by his overworked daughter Grace (Catherine Walker).
What begins as a lighthearted autumnal romance gradually evolves into a thorny study of familial grievances. Troubled by her own unhappy marriage, Grace grows increasingly bitter about her father’s new relationship. The reasons for her disturbing, self-destructive behaviours spring from a traumatic childhood, the details of which are revealed late in the film – too late, really, to fully flesh out her character.
However, in subverting the archetype of the lovable curmudgeon who can be redeemed by female companionship, My Sailor, My Love traces how male cruelty runs deeper than a mere matter of temperament. This complexity is largely conveyed through the beautifully nuanced performances from the accomplished cast; like the repetitive piano score that sweeps in at every psychologically highly wrought moment, or the prettified cinematography that flattens the windswept beauty of Achill into picture-postcard compositions, the script indulges in contrived and artificial conceits. For example, Howard suffers no fewer than three different health scares in the third act alone, a tactic that feels emotionally manipulative.
Even so, My Sailor, My Love is worth watching for Walker’s excellent portrayal of a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown and the damage accruing from being the perpetual caretaker of the family.
Source: My Sailor, My Love review – woman on the verge in drama of male cruelty
Hands Off Shakespeare
Don’t bar the bard.
In this time of bipartisan acrimony, many on the left and on the right share one point of consensus: Shakespeare is a problem.
Admittedly, this consensus exists at the ends of the spectrum, and chiefly among the professional prudes and scolds who inhabit those extremities. After a season in which most of the hits Shakespeare took were from the education professionals on the cultural left (he was misogynist, racist, bigoted, colonializing, and Eurocentric), he has been taking some from the right (he was smutty, profane, dallied with homosexuality, and is too hard to read). The most recent sally of this kind was a kerfuffle in Florida over the summer when Hillsborough County teachers decided, or were told, to cut the sexy parts from Shakespeare to avoid falling afoul of Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Act. Then the Florida Department of Education jumped in and told teachers they can do full Shakespeare—for now.
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