Dusty Wright's Culture Catch - Smart Pop Culture, Video & Audio podcasts, Written Reviews in the Arts & Entertainment

Acquiescing

Dusty Wright — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 21:21:51 +0000

Acquiescing Dusty Wright September 18, 2026 - 17:21

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I was definitely—no maybes—moved by the new must-see documentary, Oasis: Don’t Look Back In Anger, which chronicles their jubilant world reunion stadium tour in 2025. Several times, I was nearly moved to tears. It not only focuses on the Gallaghers—brothers, guitarist/songwriter Noel Gallagher and charismatic, mercurial lead singer Liam Gallagher, who had not spoken to each other in years—but is most often seen through the lens of fans from all over the globe. It is in those quiet, heartfelt moments, often accompanied by a classical music score, where fans wax poetic, even those who were not born when the band formed in Manchester, England, back in the early ‘90s. Perhaps it was their difficult upbringing that connects with so many people, how they escaped to become one of the biggest bands on the planet. And, of course, it is their music, which speaks to the masses. Every one of their fans’ cameos shares their emotional bond with what Oasis’ music means to them. Men and women from all over the world telling their stories of love and devotion.

There are poignant moments between fathers and sons, lovers and friends, old and young alike, hugging it out, soaked to bone in sweat and tears, having lost themselves to the spirit of the moment in the church of rock ‘n’ roll. Even Liam admits he’s stunned by their legacy and what their music means to so many people, even though the brothers infamously called it quits in Paris in 2009. For years, prior to the band breaking up, the siblings quarreled off stage and on. In fact, it turned me off them, and while I admired their music, they did not connect with me as they did with their fans. Boy, was I wrong.

Written and created by Englishman Steven Knight, a man I trust in this space given his impressive CV (Peaky Blinders, the new James Bond film) in television and film, he and his team have released one of my favorite music docs of this decade. While I missed the Oasis tour, I definitely plan to catch their next one in 2027, which was just announced via their website. They will tour Ireland, the UK, mainland Europe, and the United States. (I entered a lottery to buy 4 tickets. Fingers crossed.)

I saw them live only once decades ago. My new UK pal and ace photographer Tony Woolliscroft pleaded with me to see them. (Check out his excellent new photo book on the Red Hot Chili Peppers.) I was a tad lukewarm given my love of the more cerebral stylings of Blur, Pulp, Suede, and The Verve. Oasis were a bit too laddish. But I ultimately acquiesced, and they did nothing but disappoint. It was in March 1996 at the Paramount Theater at Madison Square Garden. My then girlfriend (future wife) Bobbie and I were in attendance. Richard Ashcroft, lead singer of The Verve, opened as a solo acoustic act. I so wanted to see his band, but he was still quite entertaining. Oasis were playing in New York in support of their excellent 2nd album, (What’s The Story) Morning Glory?. We left early because the Gallaghers were clearly fighting on stage, which made for a horrible show. Too bad, because a year and a half earlier, I missed their rousing, inspired U.S. debut at the small “jamband” club Wetlands, hot on the heels of their Capitol Records debut, Definitely Maybe.

In the UK, they were an instant success, ushering in the new rock genre Britpop to dizzying heights. In August 1996, they played two sold-out shows at Knebworth Park in London, in front of 250,000 people! But they never reached the dizzying heights of their UK and European success in America. They’d open for U2 in 1997 on their stadium and arena tour, but they were far less successful Stateside. Still odd, considering that Noel Gallagher is one of the most successful songwriters in British rock music history with nine UK number-one singles and twelve UK number-one albums (eight with Oasis and four with his post-Oasis band, High Flying Birds). He became the first artist in UK chart history to reach number one with ten consecutive studio albums.

Given all this history, I decided not to read any reviews and to see their new film with an open mind.

For most of the film, the audience is a fly on the wall throughout the rehearsals and stadium shows. It opens with the start of rehearsals on a massive soundstage in Wimbledon, London. The directors fixed, remotely monitored cameras so as not to disrupt the process, as Noel and his bandmates—original guitarist Paul “Bonehead” Arthurs, guitarist Gem Archer (Heavy Stereo, Beady Eye, High Flying Birds), bassist Andy Bell (Ride, Beady Eye), and American drummer Joey Waronker (Beck, R.E.M., Roger Waters)—work on arrangements before their mercurial lead singer arrives. The tension palpable. Would Liam even show up? Yes. When he finally did, his scowling, intense swagger loomed over the band and the tech people like a lead zeppelin. But when he opened his mouth to sing… well, everyone knew the magic had returned—his powerful vocals cutting through the wall of Oasis’ powerful music. And, in that moment, so did the audience. We know that they are capable of delivering. But will they implode, like in times past?

When the band finally took the stage for their very first show on July 4th at Principality Stadium in Cardiff, Wales, Ian grabbed his brother Noel’s arm to raise it in victory and hold it as they strode to the front of the stage, the crowd roaring in anticipation of the experience that would soon unfold. There’s much to love about this documentary. And much to revel in. It definitely moved my wife and me.

In these days of AI, economic challenges, endless wars, and political divisiveness, it is the purity of real music played by real musicians and their communion with fans that triumphs in arena-sized “churches.” It’s also about brothers reunited to forgive past transgressions, real or imagined; about contrition, the joy of sharing their music with the world, and how everyone in attendance feels it.

Even if you missed Oasis’ landmark tour, don’t fret. What Don’t Look Back In Angerdelivers is the sense that their music’s pathos continues to provide a positive, cleansing escape from life’s grim realities. Bloody hell, go see it now!

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Rare Japanese Ghost Stories

Gary Lucas — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 18:26:06 +0000

Rare Japanese Ghost Stories Gary Lucas September 17, 2026 - 14:26

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Film Review

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animation

My wife Caroline and our friends, screenwriter David Hellman and his lady, artist-weaver extraordinaire Hiroko Takeda, went together Friday night to Film Forum NYC to view this incredible 1965 Japanese masterpiece Kwaidan, a rare compendium of Japanese ghost stories and folktales originally all written down in English at the century’s beginning by Greek/Irish expat and Japanophile Lafcadio Hearn…years later painstakingly realized by master director Misaki Kobayashi…and now in a breathtakingly beautiful new restoration.

I'd seen the film in the summer of '68 at Andover Summer School, and way back then thought it the most stunning cinematic objet d'art I'd ever seen. I actually bought one of the earliest DVD releases of the film at the dawn of the digital era. Kwaidan (Ghost Stories) has only improved over time, and I would rank it among my Top 10 Favorite Films.

Each painterly frame, each immaculately composed sequence, has the quality of a profound fever-dream of feudal Japan. It's right up there with Kaneto Shindo's nightmarish Onibaba, whose release in theaters in Japan predates it by a year on the Asian horror/fantasy continuum.

But Onibaba is filmed in the starkest, eeriest high-contrast black and white, with a thunderous percussive score by Hikaru Hiyashi — and Kwaidan (actually pronounced Kaidan in Japanese, go figure) is limned in the lushest, most florid oil colors you’ve ever seen (it’s also shot in Tohoscope, the Japanese version of Cinemascope), with a quasi-electronic score by the great Toru Takemitsu, whose music I adored as a boy, especially Vocalism AI (Love):

In Kwaidan, Takemitsu’s score is heavy on traditional Japanese instruments, especially the twangy stutter of the biwa (the 4-stringed Japanese lute), which figures prominently in what, for me, is the best of this quartet of ghost stories, the third and lengthiest one, known as Hoichi the Earless.

Here the action moves to the turbulent ocean as we witness the epic retelling in speech and song by the blind servant Hoichi of an epic sea battle between feuding warrior clans, lingering on the restless ghosts of the losing side (many of whom drowned themselves rather than be taken prisoner), who centuries later still stalk the shore. Listen to an excerpt here:

This marvelous film totally hypnotized the packed Film Forum crowd of cineastes and tourists Friday night, and is running for another week or so. Please do yourself a favor and try to catch it. It unspools at a languid 3-hour running time, broken up by heart-stopping passages of horror and suspense — and, thankfully, has a 10-minute intermission where you can catch your breath.

Most of Kwaidan is studio-bound with invisible practical effects ("that's the way uh huh uh huh I like it," fuck CGI) — even in scenes of wintry desolation in a dark forest besieged by a blizzard, as featured in the second folktale on display, The Woman In the Snow.

This episode begins with an old huntsman and his handsome young protege trying to make their way through howling winds, shaking, shivering trees, in-your-face swirls and blasts of thick, powdery snow, and various celestial bodies, including the moon looming over the tableaux, painted flats of sepulchral red skies boasting shapes as haints, which seem to wink and gaze down cruelly like some kind of malevolent gods at the struggling mortals trudging through the wilderness below — it's enough to give you frostbite.

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Appy Family

Chet Kozlowski — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 21:35:15 +0000

Appy Family Chet Kozlowski September 16, 2026 - 17:35

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Film Review

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satire

A black SUV, windows heavily tinted, drives up to an affluent country estate. A reception line of people stands outside. The car doors open, and young teenagers file out, all blindfolded. What is this, exactly? The last stop on the Lolita Express?

No, the visitors have arrived at this undisclosed location (hence the blindfolds) because they’ve won a contest. They’re here to meet The Perfect Family, as represented on their social media account our_bright_life. They’ve watched Mom, Dad, and Daughter over the years as they play out their life in public.

The visitors sit around an outdoor table. The family is, in their eyes, a paragon of perfection. “We are just incredibly free,” 16-year-old daughter Luca explains, “and do so many beautiful things and such cool trips. And the best thing is we’re paid for being ourselves.” The visitors pepper the family with questions: “Do you believe in cosmetic surgery?” “What do you weigh actually?” A boy tells Luca, “You look different online. Just over-the-top insanely pretty,” implying that in person she isn’t.

The opening of the new film Babystar deftly balances curiosity and WTF. There’s trouble in paradise, of course: Luca has become bothered with the whole influencer thing. Mom counters, “You’re a brand; you just need to use it.”

No less than Odysseus, Luca wants a home. She has grown up under the scrutiny of her parents’ cameras and has reached the age where remarks like that matter. Her parents are healthy, attractive people, well-meaning in their way, who have figured out how to monetize their lifestyle. Dad’s phone is always out, recording everyday events, and immediately posting them. The family’s every move is calculated for clicks.

And then Mom tells Luca that she’s having another baby, who will become part of their cast. Luca rebels.

As Luca, Maja Bons presents as pretty, pliant, and brooding. Mom (Bea Brooks) and Dad (Liliom Lewald) project a benign concern for their daughter. When she acts out in a restaurant, they leave and eat the meal in the cab of their car, vigorously chewing despite the irreverence.

Director Joscha Bongard has taken on a similar topic before in the 2022 film Verified Couple. He has a fine visual sense, icily elegant, framing the lushness of this fantasy life against Luca’s private times, which are shot simply, befitting her ennui. He’s young, a member of the Digital Generation, as attracted to the vlogger life as he is disparaging.

Babystar is well-made but irresolute. Luca’s life is underpopulated, and her frowns and glances are open to the viewer’s interpretation. She could use a sidekick, someone to complain to. Her motorcycling pal Julie (Joy Ewulu) is an entree to an adventurous life, but their meetings are made up of few words and many pauses.

It’s hard to know exactly what Luca wants. Is she after freedom? Independence? Why then imperiously use her celebrity to try to fashion a new family? Luca’s final act is symbolic but head-scratching.

Babystar is billed as social media satire. But satire works best when it’s pointed and warns us of excesses. Babystar is too taken with the bright, shiny images on our phones. In contrast to the vitality of those with her family, Luca’s scenes are long, almost lethargic takes. Maybe it’s only a document of our times, and not a cautionary tale at all. “I’m addicted to validation,” Luca admits at one point. Maybe Babystar is, too.

__________________________

Babystar. Directed by Joscha Bongard. 2026. German with English subtitles. Runtime 98 minutes.

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Just Keep Walkin'

Gary Lucas — Sat, 12 Sep 2026 20:36:00 +0000

Just Keep Walkin' Gary Lucas September 12, 2026 - 16:36

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9/11

Photo by Anton Corbijn 1990

On 9/11, I was in Paris, ostensibly to promote my latest album The Edge of Heaven: Gary Lucas Plays Mid-Century Pop on the French government-backed Label Bleu.

The album had been released that very same day as Bob Dylan's Love and Theft, and I had spent the morning doing interviews in the lounge of my then-favorite Parisian base of operations, the Terrass Hotel (now a hideously carved-up and disfigured budget hotel).

Coming back to the hotel from a hearty lunch around 3 pm, the phone at the front desk rang-- and the call was for me, from my friend Lou, a street gamine who worked for ex-pat American erotic photographer Roy Stuart.

"Garee, go turn on CNN!" she yelped. "Ze World Trade Center just fell down!!"

I took the lift up to my room and switched on the television — and sure enough, the second plane had just hit the other Tower, and the entire hideous story was playing out in real time.

I frantically called Caroline long-distance from my room to check that she was alright... and thank God I got through to her.

She was out on Hudson Street a block from where we live in the West Village with pretty much the entire neighborhood watching the smoke and debris from downtown rising and scattering over the city. But she was okay. Scared and bewildered, but okay.

That was the last I spoke to her on the phone for two weeks, as all international calls were shortly to be blocked both to and from the US. We stayed in touch through email for the rest of my time in Europe, which, due to circumstances beyond my control, extended for another couple of weeks.

The remainder of that afternoon was a haze of various French friends coming up to the room to sit shiva for NYC and bear witness, glued to the television as the grim proceedings on CNN unfolded. This included several female members of the cast of Les Dix Commandements, a music theater comedy that had played Les Palais des Sports Paris and then toured all over France. A big hit, the cast included Yael Naim (who became a huge international pop star, recall "I'm a New Soul"), Anne Warin, and Anath Benais, all of whom I knew from several years earlier when they were living together in NYC.

The next few days were like a hideous dream I could not wake from.

I did a few more interviews with the French music press and then traveled to Belgium and Holland to fulfill a few solo dates I had on my calendar. At this point, pretty much every European I met was in total sympathy and solidarity with the US. This outlook was to change radically in the next few months as the Empire prepared to strike back.

Two more weeks passed as I rode the trains to my solo shows in Belgium and Holland...and I played these concerts pretty much on autopilot. I couldn't really focus on the job at hand at that particular moment.

Finally, the US allowed international flights into the country once more, and I took a flight back from Amsterdam to New York at the end of September.

I will never forget being overwhelmed by the haze of particulates that hung like a shroud over the city as I walked down the gangway steps from the plane into the late afternoon of NYC. And the fetid stench of burnt plastic, toxic chemicals, and God knows what else; I shudder to think.

For weeks I expected a follow-up attack on the city. And when a plane exploded upon taking off from JFK a month later, I was sure it was a terrorist's bomb behind it.

But I just kept booking myself around the world. That's all I knew how to do, frankly.

A few months later, in November 2001, I was back on tour with Peter Stampfel in Belgium, Holland, and the UK. Followed by solo shows in Spain and Portugal to finish out the year.

I just kept keepin' on keepin' on...

-----------------------------

THE DEATH OF IRONY

September 11th

we are told

signalled

the death of

irony

A Jew

without

irony

nothing

but a

religious

fundamentalist

This short poem was commissioned by The Forward shortly after the Twin Towers fell, in a special section devoted to responses by Jewish artists such as David Mamet and Israel Horovitz

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Italy’s Oscar Submission, Asks, “What Shall We Do with Daddy?”

Brandon Judell — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 14:01:14 +0000

Italy’s Oscar Submission, Asks, “What Shall We Do with Daddy?” Brandon Judell September 1, 2026 - 10:01

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drama

It was Christmas, possibly in 1977, when my working-class brother-in-law, John, after drinking a previously unopened bottle of Kahlua, which I had unwisely gifted him, turned over the dinner table heaped with holiday goodies in front of his five children. He then took a rifle and chased my sister down a steep road with a rifle in hand. I called the police, and the family was broken up forever.

John was a “nice man”: selfish, funny, often sober, a major fuck-up now and then, and slightly charismatic in that stereotypical Italian Moonstruck way.

Once, years earlier, while my sister was in the hospital giving birth, I had been staying at their house to babysit. John, after being out all night, shuffled on in, but not from the maternity ward. Before the door had shut, he started bragging that he had just spent the night with two prostitutes. I was perhaps 12 or so.

I never told my sister. How do you tell a sister post-labor or otherwise that?

Decades later, after she discovered some of his infidelities, she phoned. “Did you know?” she asked. I could only answer with silence.

Poor Sister! She only married to escape a violent father who, on a hazy Bronx night, left a belt mark under her left eye. Reason: a bottle of shoe polish had spilled in his den. (Actually, my fault.)

Yes, men can at times be flawed, rather hostile creatures as Richard Gadd depicts so well in HBO’s Half Man. But isn’t it worse when they are someone you are supposed to be able to love in real life? Half Man I could put on pause? Diane had no remote control for her life. Cancer instead pressed her "off" button.

If you can relate, you might find yourself nodding when in director/co-writer Francesco Constabile’s prize-winning Familia, Fulvio (Enrico Borrello), a local fascist leader, in his one humane moment, notes: “These fucking dads, they can’t help but ruin your lives.”

Fulvio’s addressing a young man, Luigi Celeste (Francesco Gheghi), a character based on the real Luigi’s memoir, It Won’t Be Like This Forever (Non sarà sempre così) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DB4DDZCG?lv=shuf&channelId=500&plpRedirect=mhFallback. The Amazon synopsis of the book begins: “There are many roads to hell, but very few leading out of it.”

Well, who knows at the time that life is undermining you that this trauma you’re not coping well with is not forever? Who could have ever guessed Luigi’s serial anguish would one day find its way between hardcovers and then into neighborhood cinemas? Certainly not Luigi.

With a slight bow to neo-realism, showcasing a mamma role Anna Magnani would have killed, Constabile has fashioned out of oft-examined tropes an affecting film that rises above others exploring the same through finessed direction, superb casting, Giuseppe Maio’s subconscious cinematography, and Valerio Vigiliar’s angst-producing score.

Familia begins in an ill-lit hallway. Muffled voices are heard. One might be a mother’s scream. Another a father’s jealous rant. Listening are two scared boys, brothers, frozen in place, eyes agape. Marital rape is not yet part of their vocabulary.

Alessandro (Stefano Valentini): Stay here.

Luigi (Francesco de Lucia): I want to go.

Alessandro: When there are noises, we have to wait.

Gently cupping his brother’s face, Alessandro coaxes: “Breathe.”

Jump. It’s the early 2000s. Mother (the wildly emotionally transparent Barbara Ronchi) is a smoker and a cleaning woman. Dad (Francesco De Leva), a one-time bank robber, is being released from prison. Mother changes the locks on the door. Dad sidesteps her, showing up unannounced where the boys are playing soccer. Luigi runs and hugs him. Alessandro stands back in fear. Dad slaps him, then smilingly orders: “Give me a hug!”

The three go to the fair. They ride the roller coaster. Dad teaches Alessandro how to shoot a gun. A teddy bear is won. Through wily manipulation, the family is united until Luigi writes a Father’s Day essay for class, a seemingly loving one that includes the wish that his dad would stop hitting his mom. The boy’s teacher is concerned. The social services and the police will shortly arrive, and the family is torn even further apart than before.

Jump. The boys have grown up. Alessandro works. Luigi, now with a girlfriend, has joined a fascist group where the shirtless skinheads pogo riotously to a pounding beat while screaming: “I despise what you are! . . . You’re prey for my thirst. . . Duce! Duce! Duce!” Give them a knife or a stick, put them on a street, and you better watch out.”

So has Luigi become his father or is he just the same scared little bambino who’s now shaving?

And can Mother ever escape the threatening mistake she made in her youth that continues to stalk her?

It’s hard to escape.

I remember when my dad ran down the hall of our apartment holding the back two legs of a chair, ready to smack it down on my head. I grabbed to other two legs and pushed back. Dad fell. I ran out shoeless, flying down five flights of stairs into the street forever.

Familia makes you remember, inciting forgotten incidents you might rather forget. Damn that past that rises up again.

In Patrimony: A True Story, Philip Roth writes of his father: “To be alive, to him, is to be made of memory—to him if a man's not made of memory, he's made of nothing.”

At the end of Familia, amidst the end credits, what has become of Luigi is revealed, a strong argument that there are layers and layers of hope in our lives, and all might not be dashed.

Familia is now available for purchase and rental on Amazon Prime and Google Play.

(If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, please know that help is available. You can contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline 24/7 by calling 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) or texting "START" to 88788.)

(Wikipedia shares a rather anemic list of 32 American films with instances of domestic violence.)

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What the Neighbors Saw

Chet Kozlowski — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 17:22:45 +0000

What the Neighbors Saw Chet Kozlowski August 31, 2026 - 13:22

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horror

Bit by bit, layer by layer, the new suspense/horror film Burning examines the same set of facts from different points of view. None are those of the principals: Husband Marat has brought his mother, Farida, to his modest house to care for his wife, Asel. The couple recently lost a son, and Asel is pregnant again— at least according to some accounts. That’s the film’s conceit. The events are viewed through the gossip of the neighbors in their ramshackle, tin-roofed town. Everybody meets at the local bodega, and everybody has their own version.

One version has Mom as a witch, given to incantations and casting spells. Her care for Asel is vindictive, and she has the young mother crawling across the floor and vomiting maggots before the men in white come to take her away. Another neighbor contradicts: it’s actually Asel who is malevolent, possessed by a jinn, an evil spirit. In this case, the men are not mental health goons but Muslim mullahs recruited to exorcise the demon out of the young wife. Yet another account frames a different villain. It’s all hearsay, of course, which rolls out a Rashomon tapestry with hints of Rear Window that appears to be the point of Burning (the title refers to the ritual incineration of the first child’s clothing and toys).

It’s all very intricate, and for the most part well-executed. I’d never seen a film from the Central Asian country of Kyrgyzstan and was impressed by its confidence and quality. Director Radik Eshimov has a number of Kyrgyz feature films on his resumé. He and his crew have absorbed the technology and aesthetics of Western filmmaking, and his cultural cues are few, notably certain etiquettes and the mullah business. As a result, the film could take place anywhere at any time. You don’t have to go far to find nosy neighbors.

The actors too are entertainment-world class. Aisant Edigeeva (Asel) and Omurbek Izrailov (Marat) have the most to do, but it’s Kalicha Seydalieva’s (Mom Farida) performance that is the most varied. Her seasoned range of emotions holds the distinct parts together. Her cartoony-ness in the first segment, with her as an evil conjurer, gives way to more subtle acting that makes her Burning’s emotional barometer.

The first segment is the most effective: it’s complex and visually striking. Cinematographer Kerim Kasymaliev packs the frame with dense colors and ominous patterns: the suffocating wallpaper matches the adornments of the clothes and the bars of the absent infant’s playpen. The special effects are properly repulsive. Throughout, Bakyt Kemelev’s score has a buzzing, ominous quality, yet another Western trope. Writers Aizada Amangeldy and Dastan Madalbekov construct a complex maze of business based on rumors that ultimately purports to get at the truth.

Which is Burning’s biggest flaw. It’s a “tale” that I’m sure plays well at fantasy conventions, etc., but sidesteps a deeper truth. It’s a Western trope as well that a film can present multiple versions of an incident in 90 minutes and wrap it up with one that’s definitive. Burning doesn’t tease the intellect (like, say, Rashomon) or even invite the audience to solve the mystery itself, since it withholds vital facts. Its stakes are too low, and its conclusions too pat, to say anything interesting about the hive mind, which appears to be its ultimate theme. Hive mind is a Western blight, and overtold tales normalize it. One could look to small films from tiny countries outside the Hollywood sphere — like Burning — to challenge it or shed new cultural light on it.

_______________________________________

Burning. Directed by Radik Eshimov. 2024. In Kyrgyz with English subtitles. Available exclusively on Indiepix Unlimited. Runtime 101 minutes.

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The Song Does Not Remain The Same

Gary Lucas — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 22:49:51 +0000

The Song Does Not Remain The Same Gary Lucas August 10, 2026 - 18:49

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Captain Beefheart

The Beefheart Vantage! (Turn Image 90º To The Right for Normal View)

Sometimes all it takes is hearing a random sound out of context… a whiff of a subtle scent wafting your way…or coming upon a strange but naggingly familiar scene or tableau to trigger images buried deep in the past in your subconscious mind, memories you might have resigned as being lost to the ages if you ever recalled them at all. It's the old Proust and his madeleine effect. Here, an involuntary mnemonic device which comes to you out of nowhere and brings you up short and sharpish into the twilight world of phantoms and dreams…before the scene evanesces, and you are plunged back into what James Joyce referred to in Ulysses as the "shattering daylight of no thought."

The other day while walking in the West Village I came upon just such a recondite scene that brought to the surface of my cranial soup an entire chain of lost memories regarding my life in the West Village circa 50 years ago…which led to a vivid memory of a song lost to the ages involving me and my dear friend and collaborator Captain Beefheart (Don Van Vliet).

I had just turned the corner of Bleecker Street and Seventh Avenue on a stroll to Faicco's Italian Specialties, when...

Horrors!! Shrouded in construction netting, 285 Bleecker St., a 19^th-century cast-iron tenement near the corner of 7th Avenue now being renovated for the first time in 50 years, to the best of my knowledge. A 19th-century walk-up tenement building and the first place we lived in the West Village circa June '77. On the ground floor: the legendary Village butcher shop Ottomanelli's, with dead rabbits and other wild game hanging on hooks in the window and all sorts of offal on display (yecch). Right across the street, the legendary Matt Umanov Guitars. Down the block, Italian pastry joint Rocco's (best cannolis in NYC). A great location!

During the super-hot, sweaty Summer of Sam, we lived 4 flights up in a railroad flat, a middle-aged dominatrix operating her by-appointment-only trade next door (lots of spanking and barked commands could be heard emanating through her door at random times of the day, on the order of "Bend over, I'm gonna stick my big toe in your ass!"). Then there was the young couple who screamed at the top of their lungs for hours at each other until eventually having loud make-up sex in which the female would bawl her brains out between bouts of balling. At night I would sit in a comfortable chair gazing out the huge window at the Brechtian Street Scene below. Lots of foreign tourists always, the endless passing parade slowly funneling down to the real Human Zoo around McDougal in the central village on Bleecker east of 6th Ave.

At around 9 pm nearly every night until mid-summer, the French mime Philippe Petit, several months away from walking the World Trade Center, rolled up in full whiteface make-up and tattered frock coat on a unicycle directly under my window, quickly gathering a big crowd of rubberneckers as he strung a taut rope hitched from a fire hydrant to a lamppost at a 45-degree angle, and pranced up and down the rope from bottom to the top while juggling bowling pins, somehow managing to stay upright. I had a front row seat every night and a water pipe! Folks showered him with tips, and then he would cycle off to who knows where, coming back there night after night for at least most of mid-June into early July. One night he looked up rapidly, spotted me sitting in my 4th floor window perch (he was aware of everything going on around him), and gave me a quick wave.

And then came the BIG BLACKOUT of July 13-14th. The power went off all over the city around 9:30 pm, but somehow the phones kept working. The New York Times had recently run an article about what they dubbed "The Feral People," the homeless living for years in the sub-basements of Grand Central Station many levels under the tracks, who rarely came up for daylight, and then usually only to forage for food (a very lurid article that made them sound kind of like the race of troglodytes lurking in the London Metro in the 1972 UK horror film Death Line, entitled Raw Meat in the US. When the lights went off, my pal and horror film actor Bill Moseley called me and insisted we get flashlights and somehow make our way to Grand Central, go down into the basements, and explore the catacombs, so to speak. A notion I was unable to sign on to...

Years later, after I'd moved out to more salubrious lodgings in the farther West Village, a one-bedroom with a fantastic view of the Hudson out one window and the Empire State Building out the other, I became passionately involved in Captain Beefheart's music and overall care and feeding. We, the members of his Magic Band, were required to go out and purchase miniature Sony cassette recorders to capture on the fly any of Don's imperious pronouncements or oracular observations, some of which might make it into subsequent lyrics or titles of paintings or poems. Don LOVED the sound of words, and frequently deployed some good ones—"giggy ghee," "expoobident," "frowsy," "insultuous"…

One night in 1981 during a period when I was between wives, Don rang me at 3 am, rousting me from a very deep sleep. He insisted I fetch my tape recorder, as he wanted to run down a new composition over the phone. I sleepily got up to retrieve it, and coming back to the phone, I jammed my mini-recorder into the phone's earpiece to catch the full flavor of his new composition.

"You ready?"

Don started to whistle tunelessly—"pssss shoooooeeeee wheessh sheeee whee woowie whooooo"—producing nary a melody or a rhythm or an actual musical tone, the fundamental necessary skeletal building blocks of music per se that might give one something to hang on to and base a song on. His whistling, which on a good day could charm the birds out of the sky, had here devolved into a mere pushing of random air through pursed lips with no apparent compositional design overarching—Aleatory? Yes. The basis for a new song? Well…

"Didja get that?" he asked breathlessly when he'd finished. Yeah, I got it, Don.

"Gooood! Now learn that on guitar!"

Oh yeah.

He went on: "It's a new song of mine called" (wait for it)—"MELODY ARMS." Good title. Poetic—romantic even. Wish I'd heard anything halfway resembling a melody in there though…but still.

Go on…

Don waxed enthusiastic:

"It's a song about a hotel, or a boardinghouse, called 'THE MELODY ARMS.'"

Wha???

The old rascal had set me up and just pulled the rug out from under me.

"Each room in the building has a different character or characters living inside. Every verse describes a different room and tells a story about the lives of the folks living there." Sounded a bit like Nico's song "Chelsea Girls" (co-written with the Velvet Underground's Lou Reed and Sterling Morrison), in which Nico devotes a verse each to Warhol Factory denizens like Brigid Polk, Pope Ondine, and Ingrid Superstar who were then all living at the Chelsea Hotel. But I doubt Don had heard that, or maybe it was inspired by the cheesy "Tenement Symphony" as sung by Tony Martin in the Marx Brothers' late clinker The Big Store.

But I kept shtum.

Immediately I flashed on an image of 285 Bleecker Street in 1977…and the characters who dwelled within its chipped plastered walls (especially the dominatrix). That crummy little building could have been "THE MELODY ARMS." I started getting into the idea.

THIS SONG COULD WORK!

Next day though, "Melody Arms" had become the One That Got Away; yet another potential masterpiece lost way back in the queue inside the hyperactive compartmentalized psyche of Don Van Vliet, who was off in the ether and otherwise occupied—busy painting, sketching, whistling, singing and humming myriad new songs composed right on the spot—and growling at any Magic Band member that wandered too close into earshot.

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No Distance Too Great

Robert Cochrane — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 11:04:29 +0000

No Distance Too Great Robert Cochrane August 7, 2026 - 07:04

Topics

Music Review

Tags

singer songwriter

JOHN HOWARD: Overnight Bags (Think Like A Key)

From that foreign place known as the past, English singer-songwriter John Howard has magically conjured up an album of quiet nostalgia, but surprisingly little resentment or regret. A beautiful exercise of the kind an artist can afford when no longer pandering to the expectations of those dreaded men in suits. Expansive, eloquent and evocative, it presents a gentle sequence of cascading postcards. Images and lines that will caress and gently haunt the souls of those fortunate enough to experience its understatement and artistry.

"Chelsea in the morning

Everybody looking good

And glad to greet the day

Mama Cass is playing Sergeant Pepper

Through her open window

Singing harmonies with Rita Meter Maid

They'll never take away

The Crazy Chelsea Daze"

And so, the stories begin with "Chelsea Daze," a piece heady with sixties verve in a McCartney-flavoured Music Hall setting that references scenarios now marooned in the amber of the decade's pop mythology. A consequence of nods and winks and "say no more."

The theme of better days and that passing of the years is evoked in "Songs Of Old Times," which delivers a maudlin and poetic eloquence based on characters who once frequented an old pub, and would occasionally burst forth with an impromptu song. Were Billy Joel English, the lady in question could have been his creation, or from the achingly empathetic pen of the late Shel Silverstein.

"I was once a beauty

My hair was golden as the midday sun

I lay with those who needed comfort

And with a kiss as they slept, I was gone"

There's a dreamlike ambiance, a lullaby with a darkly lyrical edge that is almost psalm-like, to "In The Pursuit Of Love." The song sways, swirls, and almost hypnotizes with its mildly dervish-like chant, with darkness at its heart.

"Love scars and it wounds

It teases and grooms me

It sails me on seas

Then leaves and maroons me"

"Abbey Road, April 1974" is Howard's autobiographical paean to a dream realized, his sublime recollection of a long-wished-for moment, the recording of his songs in that legendary place. Possessed of an up-tempo cheekiness, it sounds reminiscent of The Zombies with a sly glance of acknowledgment to the Fab Four.

"This is the day of your life

The day you arrived into light

This is the day of your life

The day you surmised to make things right"

"A Painter's Gift (In Brushed Imaginings)" has chamber-baroque shadings. Wistful and haunting, but belied by an undertow of classicism. Those piano lessons were not wasted on young Master Howard. A certain refinement and prophetic nuance inhabits the lyric.

"When tales we told through a painter's gift

The headlands swept elsewhere

What memories joined the flood

The shores lifeblood

A watercolor wash

Of a child's imaginings

In brushed imaginings"

Dusty Springfield could have effortlessly bathed in the pop froth of "Look At Life" with the assistance of a full orchestral setting in sass, swing and sixties gusto. It is a cavalcade of evocations. A casual masterpiece, it doesn't overstay its welcome.

"Watching in a cafe

All the conversations going on

Some of them seem angry

Others holding hands in love's sweet bond

None of them I'll ever know

And wonder as they go

What futures they have planned or simply long for"

Overnight Bags by John Howard

A sunny, breezy deceptiveness of tone sweetens the sorrow touched upon in "What God Is This." That dreadful loss of a briefly youthful sense of permanence, cut even shorter by the scythe of AIDS. A carefree generation eclipsed and bowed. The title casually confronts the lack of divinity in God's followers who saw the disease as a rightful plague—the lack of grace and compassion from those supposed to exemplify those attributes.

"Tomorrow was never a place we looked for

Just lived for the moment

The urge to explore

Till the waters swept

The bodies from the shore"

There's a conversational take reminiscent of early Gilbert O'Sullivan, with a waltz-like motif and a host of polaroid-captured moments in "A Room At The Top," suggestions and themes, like questions or prayers.

"In the old attic window

I saw someone laughing

Or was it a reflection of a bird in full song"

"My Father's Prayer" has the irony of seeming like a show tune at the end of a theatrical event, and in a way it is since it reflects upon Howard's gentle and genial father, a fellow musician, and his disappearance within Alzheimer's. A piece of emotional scope and wide musical range, it is as complex as its subject matter.

"All of the people who healed

And then fractured me

Have all just abandoned me

Like a drunk in a bar

In the early hours of the morning

I look at the sky

Waiting for shooting stars waving goodbye"

We all have friends we wonder about, people who disappear but linger in the mind as a source of inner smiles. "Josie, Do You Remember?" stitches together a delightful series of diligent vignettes. Worldly wise without being world weary, a perfect reconsidering of the lost strands of an important soul, a letter of distance and longing dressed as a song.

"Josie, I've been wondering

If you're still out there and laughing

At the way your life is raveling

In the hurricane you made"

"Overnight Bags" is the closer and the title piece. A moody gem based on an actor's life on the road, it applies to anyone who performs and then moves on. Pure Howard in scope and pathos, a weaving and a wavering of eloquent reflections, it seems a kitchen sink melodrama in black and white worthy of the dulcet tones of Scott Walker, were he still here.

"We'll go down many roads

Past lives we'll never know

That brush against us

With the promise of possibilities"

If this collection of songs were to receive the acknowledgment it merits, justly and fairly, the album would be lauded, feted and observed. A discreet treasure of unfussy delights, it consolidates Howard as a master of his craft. A glam survivor from the early seventies now in his seventies, bedecked by a fabulous beard that should be embellished with glitter and stars, he remains a creative force to be reckoned with.

As Mr Ferry once so archly intoned, "A Fabulous Creation."

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An Ecology of Relationships

Dusty Wright — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 14:18:52 +0000

An Ecology of Relationships Dusty Wright August 6, 2026 - 10:18

Topics

Art Review

Tags

sculpture

D. Dominick Lombardi, CCWSI 205 (Tom Hanks Goes to College) 2025, acrylic, collage, canvas, 47 x 47 inches

WhiteBox Portable @ MTA presents The (Il)Logic of Things by D. Dominick Lombardi and The Garden We Carry by QinZa Najm. Both artists share an interest in the capacity of material culture to produce knowledge beyond representation. Through assemblage, collage, painting, and installation, they reveal that objects not only preserve memory but also organize relationships among histories, affects, and everyday experience. Although their material vocabularies differ, both understand the reconfiguration of objects as a means of generating new forms of meaning.

Objects retain the traces of their making, the labor that produced them, the uses they have accumulated, and the many histories they silently carry. Rather than erasing those experiences, their surfaces allow different temporalities, uses, and meanings to remain simultaneously present. At the same time, they contain unrealized futures, thereby acquiring the potential to participate in new constellations of meaning. Both Lombardi and Najm begin precisely from this moment of transformation. Their practices recover materials and objects that have already lived other lives, not to preserve them as relics, but to activate the memories they contain. Assemblage becomes a way of thinking through matter itself, where fragments cease merely to illustrate history and instead begin to reconstruct it.

D. Dominick Lombardi understands history as a constellation. By bringing together objects and images that seemingly share neither time, place, nor function, he subverts the rational logic of classification and constructs unexpected relationships among temporalities, affects, and memories. As in Aby Warburg's Atlas Mnemosyne, meaning does not reside in isolated objects but in the field of relationships that emerges between them.

His sculptures and mixed media paintings activate mnemonic processes that reorganize historical experience rather than simply represent it. Fragments relinquish their original identities in order to enter new systems of association, where assemblage becomes a mode of historical inquiry. Sand, papier-mâché, plaster, wood, antique books, industrial objects, toys, photographs, maps, and documentary fragments converge into hybrid formations that evoke both archaeological remains and speculative futures. Humor, playful distortions, and exuberant color initially seduce the viewer; yet beneath this formal richness emerge violence, consumerism, historical amnesia, and the contradictions of contemporary experience.

D. Dominick Lombardi, CC 200 (Back Scratcher) 2025, sand, papier-mâché, gesso, acrylic medium, ripped vintage book and objects,

Equally fundamental is Lombardi's relationship to matter. From his father and grandfather, he inherited not only the craft of woodworking but also an ethic of making grounded in attentiveness, patience, and respect for materials. There exists an intelligence of the hand that precedes conceptual thought: a form of knowledge born from contact, weight, texture, resistance, and duration. His works preserve this tactile intelligence, transforming matter itself into a living archive.

Conceived as an immersive installation, The Garden We Carry transforms everyday objects into landscapes of transition, where what was once destined for movement opens itself to new possibilities for rootedness. Rather than representing arrival, the installation occupies the productive interval where things are no longer what they once were, yet have not fully become something else. Suitcases no longer carry belongings. Shoes no longer lead anywhere. Industrial steel relinquishes its structural function. Moss, preserved foliage, reclaimed metal, and found objects remain suspended between what they once were and what they have yet to become.

Image 3. QinZa Najm, Exilmerica (closed and open) 2023-2025, oil on metal and objects of belonging from NY Immigrants, 24" × 18"

The installation proposes that transformation does not occur after arrival but precisely in the course of transit. Reclaimed materials retain the traces of their previous lives while opening themselves to new forms of growth. Rather than replacing one function with another, Najm places objects in a state of fertile uncertainty, where identity remains under construction and memory becomes the ground from which new forms of existence emerge. Their previous functions are not erased but held in suspension, allowing new possibilities to remain open before settling into another form. Her gardens are not bounded places but portable territories where movement ceases to oppose rootedness, and where the act of dwelling can arise even in the midst of passage.

QinZa Najm, Secret Love & the Little Bee, 2023, oil on reclaimed metal, 5 × 4 feet

Although their visual languages differ, both artists understand assemblage as an act of reconfiguration. Neither pursues nostalgia nor restoration. Their works reveal objects as active agents of cultural memory, capable of carrying histories into the present while generating new relationships among people, places, and time. In both practices, materials cease to respond exclusively to the functions for which they were conceived, becoming instead active agents of new relationships and meanings.

Within WhiteBox Portable @ MTA, these ideas acquire a particular resonance. Situated at the threshold between Times Square and the Port Authority Bus Terminal, the exhibition inhabits one of New York City's most intense infrastructures of movement, where millions of people and the objects that accompany them—suitcases, shoes, bags, books, tools, and packages—circulate daily alongside maps, advertisements, and signs, forming an immense assemblage in constant transformation. Within this context, Lombardi's material constellations and Najm's transitional landscapes converge into a shared reflection on transit as a condition of contemporary experience. WhiteBox Portable @ MTA becomes the space where their meanings continue to be reconfigured, reminding us that every infrastructure is also an ecology of relationships in which past and future coexist in perpetual motion. - Yohanna M. Roa

The (Il)Logic of Things and The Garden We Carry opens Saturday, August 8th from 3 - 6 pm, and runs through September 9th, 2026.

posted essay by Yohanna M. Roa

Looks wonderful Dusty. Thank you! Yohanna's writing really captures the work.

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Sobriety Refined

Robert Cochrane — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 14:00:00 +0000

Sobriety Refined Robert Cochrane August 4, 2026 - 10:00

Topics

Music Review

Tags

folk rock

Michael J Sheehy & The Hired Mourners: Don't We Deserve Some Kind Of Love? (Dimple Discs - Vinyl, CD, Digital Download)

When an album opens with the line "Stitches burst," it proves a perfect introduction to a raw and tender enterprise, the dark sides of songs. It is also the first effort in decades when not a drop of alcohol passed the singer Michael J Sheehy's lips. "Like Blood On Snow," the tune in question, glides along via a ghostly shimmering of guitar akin to an incidental sequence from a David Lynch vista; a semi-spoken vocal painting a unique impressionistic melancholy.

It is followed by "Full Moon, Empty Belly," which could be the late Lee Hazlewood in elegant cahoots with the mannered miseries of Chris Isaak, but with a playful skip in its steps of raw and reflective honesty.

"My wounds are deep and fresh

The mirror becomes a razor

And I carve away my flesh

I lean into the hunger

I lean into the fear

And I lean into the darkness

Till I disappear"

The ghost of Bill Fay casually haunts at his gossamer best the delicately graceful "Don't Put Yourself Beyond The Reach Of Love." A lightness of touch presides, unafraid in slow piano perfection, there, but almost not, whilst delivering an emphasis and yearning. eloquently understated by a casually refined vocal.

"And it's okay to be frightened

And it's okay to cry

It's okay to lose yourself sometimes

But don't let love pass you by"

"You Better Take Everything" possesses that dour hymnal aspect of David Ackles in what it choses to discard. a lo-fi confection from the "less is more" school of sparse nonchalance that Mickey Newbury perfected as sparse fragility. A song for the perpetually dispossessed, with aching strings and a mannered sorrowing.

"Every empty promise

Every moment of doubt

Every word I choked on

Before I could spit them out"

Like a slow dance, "Pure Deep Water" uses such a motif, a neat act in encompassing dangerous space whilst never overcrowding it. A kind of mystic perfection, "Only Drinking In My Dreams" is a hymn for the last dregs of a departing evening as tables are cleared and shutters rattle closed. It slithers like an insidious snake within the mind of listeners with neat brevity and dark humour.

"My car won't start

And my favorite porn star

Is born again

I'm out here alone

The whole world is stoned

And I need a friend"

The nifty "If Had Known It Was The Last Time" could in another life become a neatly deft cabaret ballad, but it neatly vanishes into the thinnest air just as it has accosted one's attention. A deft beguilement. Playful lushness attends "The Left Hand Don't Need To Know." A keening element of professed grief accompanied by a deft beguilement of violin implicit of darkness falling as mist settles across heads of purple heather.

"So, keep your actions pure

Without thought for reward or show

And if your right hand

Does a good thing

The left hand don't need to know"

"Don't We Deserve Some Kind Of Love" tugs at the heart in the poetic fashion of early Tim Hardin. clipped and archly bare, here is a song that Morrissey should steal, and hopefully shall.

"The damaged and the broken

The mighty and the small

The heathens who have

Seen and done most everything

And the holier than thou

Who've done nothing at all"

The closing bow arrives as "Tiny Blessings," a wry and rueful madrigal reminiscent of the deceptively lugubrious Jake Thackray. Precise, concise and effortlessly assured, it never overstays its sense of welcome.

"Always count your blessings

Even when you're feeling blue

Try to smile and remember

Someone is hurting more than you"

Full-bodied clarity, rendered in reflective maladies, raw but beautiful and never depressing, despite a somber cloaking. Carried aloft by subtle songcraft, these ten tracks gift a seemingly longer, more involved journey, a sure indication of reflective time well spent, milled and presented as a seamless stitching of disparate shadows.

Sobriety embraced and personified as brave defiance.

A tendering enterprise of considered exposure and expulsion