I listened to St. Vincent’s newest release All Born Screaming last week but didn’t find enough about I liked to make it worth writing an album review. The track “Big Time Nothing” stood out for it’s funky Prince groove and grinding 90s industrial sound. So enjoy this track this week!
Title: The League Release Date: June 12, 2023 Director: Sam Pollard Production Company: Play/Action Pictures RadicalMedia Two One Five Entertainment YABBA Biri Productions Summary/Review:
The Negro Baseball Leagues allowed the best Black American baseball players to play in a highly-competitive and entertaining professional sport from the 1920s to 1940s. The leagues were Black-owned businesses who employed not only Black coaching staff and other Black employees on down to the vendors, becoming a major economic force in the Eastern and Midwestern cities where they played. As such, Sam Pollard’s documentary focuses a lot on the executives behind some of the most successful ballclubs such as Rube Foster of the Chicago American Giants, Cum Posey of the Homestead Grays, and Effa Manley of the Newark Eagles (who was also a notable woman’s voice in a man’s world).
The documentary also sets the Negro Leagues in the context of the Civil Rights Movements of the 20th centuries as it relates to Black soldiers fighting in the World Wars having to fight a second battle for equality, the Great Migration from the South, and the Harlem Renaissance. What the movie doesn’t focus on all too much is accomplishments on the playing field, which I found a little disappointing, although it does touch on many of the best players. Since almost everyone involved in the Negro Leagues has passed on, direct interviews were not possible, but the film does well incorporating historical interviews with figures like Satchel Paige. Passages from the memoir of a less well-known figure, Negro League umpire Bob Motley (voiced by Pollard), are used throughout the film as a connective thread.
While Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947 is celebrated as a moral victory, it comes at a cost. Major League executives like the Dodgers’ Branch Rickey openly scoffed at providing compensation to Negro League teams for signing away their contracted players. Soon the Negro Leagues were picked clean of their best players and folded, or continued in a reduced fashion until the final league disbanded in 1962. The economic effect on the Black community was devastating as well as the pride in being able to make something successful on their own. One of the great “what ifs?” of American history is the possibility that Negro Leagues could’ve merged into Major League Baseball (much like the later NFL/AFL and NBA/ABA mergers), something that Rube Foster envisioned back in the 1920s!
This is an excellent, well-constructed documentary that should appeal to a wide audience, not just sports fans. I learned a lot from it although I still feel in the time allotted it only skims the surface, leaving me wanting to know more.
Album: Sun Without the Heat Artist: Leyla McCalla Release Date: April 12, 2024 Label: ANTI- Favorite Tracks:
Open the Road
Sun Without the Heat
Tower
Love We Had
I Want to Believe
Thoughts:
A theme of recent album releases is their ability to defy genre classification. This holds true for this solo outing Leyla McCalla,a vocalist and multi-instrumentalist who plays cello, banjo, and guitar, and has performed with the Carolina Chocolate Drops and Our Native Daughters. Musically the album blends folk and Americana with Haitian folk, Brazilian tropicalismo, Afrobeat, and even indie rock! Lyrically the album is personal as the personal is political as a Black woman seeking to define her own creative expression.
Album: Only God Was Above Us Artist: Vampire Weekend Release Date: April 5, 2024 Label: Columbia Favorite Tracks:
Ice Cream Piano
Capricorn
Connect
Gen-X Cops
Mary Boone
Thoughts:
Only God Was Above Us is something of a return to form after 2019’s Father of the Bride, which was essentially an Ezra Koenig solo album with a jam band ethos. It sounds like the band’s early albums as if the melodies and drumfills of those early albums are being interpolated and remixed. This is not to say it is not original but their is a familiarity to it. Appropriately the album’s theme deals with the past, specifically New York City in the 20th century. The songs are a musical journey from cynicism to optimism.
Title: The Greatest Night in Pop Release Date: January 29, 2024 Director: Bao Nguyen Production Company: Republic Pictures | Dorothy Street Pictures | MRC | MakeMake Entertainment Summary/Review:
This documentary is a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of the charity megasingle “We Are the World” by USA for Africa. Of the key players behind the song’s origin, Harry Belafonte and Michael Jackson have passed on, and Quincy Jones is of an advanced age, so the key interviewee is Lionel Richie. This make sense as Richie is seen throughout the archival footage essentially coaching all the talent to bring the song together. It was a busy day for Richie as the recording session took place in Los Angeles after the American Music Awards, a show that Richie hosted (really, when did he sleep?).
Other artists interviewed for the film include Bruce Springsteen, Huey Lewis, Kenny Loggins, Cyndi Lauper, and Sheila E (who felt like she was being used to lure Prince to the recording session). I particularly enjoyed that the film takes time to interview behind-the-scenes players such as the recording engineer and a camera operator shooting the video simultaneously with the recording session. There’s a strange sense of awareness that many of the most talented American music artists are in the room together, which brings out a sense of vulnerability and humility in them.
Other highlights of the film include:
the group spontaneously singing “Day-O” as a tribute to USA for Africa mastermind Belfonte
Al Jarreau drinking too much and struggling with his solo
Huey Lewis, Cyndi Lauper, and Kim Carnes creating a harmony on the spot
the reason Bob Dylan looks so befuddled in the video is that he is anxious about having to sing among so many great vocalists
Diana Ross cried at the end of the night because she didn’t want it to end
Richie is interviewed in the very same A&M Recording Studios in Hollywood, which he calls “home”
Singer/songwriter (and Berklee College of Music alum) Lizzy McAlpine writes in a confessional style akin to Phoebe Bridgers or Taylor Swift. At 24 years old, McAlpine is by no means old, but the songs such as the title track reflect the fear of mortality and search for identity that comes with the quarter-life crisis. Other songs reflect on toxic relationships including one with an alcoholic partner (“Drunk, Running”). The raw lyrics are set to a stripped-down sound carried by McAlpine’s emotive voice.
Album: Halfsies Artist: Lizzie No Release Date: January 19, 2024 Label: Miss Freedomland Favorite Tracks:
Halfsies
The Heartbreak Store
Done
Annie Oakley
Babylon
Thoughts:
Lizzie No is a singer/songwriter, guitarist, and harpist from New Jersey who is broadly categorized as an Americana artist. But as it says on their website “genre is a construct” and Lizzie No cannot be so easily pinned down. No refers to her album as a video game in which a character named Miss Freedom goes on a journey through America touching upon the Black and LGBTQ experience. No’s voice is captivating throughout and their lyrics make this an album worth revisiting to get the full message.
It’s been a long time since I was in my 20s but this song is nonetheless relatable. Anyway, I’m in American in the 20s. Winnetka Bowling League are based out of Los Angeles and their debut album Sha La La is out on May 31.
In what should be a long-term project, I plan to watch and review every Star Trek television show and movie in the order that they were released.
Title: Star Trek: The Next Generation Release Date: September 20, 1993 – May 23, 1994 Production Company: Paramount Domestic Television Episodes: 26 Summary/Review:
After a month away with the crews of Deep Space Nine and Discovery, it’s nice to rejoin the Enterprise in their final season. Nevertheless, I had some trepidation heading into season 7. For one thing, I remember it not being all that good, at least before the finale “All Good Things…” The bigger thing is the nostalgia for 30 years ago when the end of Star Trek: The Next Generation was a bittersweet moment for me. It will be sad to have no more TNG episodes left for me to watch for the first time.
Watching the season, it was indeed wildly uneven, with some of the biggest stinkers since the early years of the series. But there were also some excellent episodes with a lasting legacy of what we think of The Next Generation crew 30 years later.
Title: Hundreds of Beavers Release Date: January 26, 2024 Director: Mike Cheslik Production Company: SRH Summary/Review:
Jean Kayak (Ryland Brickson Cole Tews) is an applejack salesman in the north woods of Wisconsin in the 19th century. After his farm is destroyed, he has to find a way to support himself. He begins furtrapping beavers and trading them to the Merchant (Doug Mancheski), hoping to win the love of his daughter The Furrier (Olivia Graves). That’s the plot in a nutshell for this movie that’s made in the style of silent movies, and while it’s not actually silent it is dialogue free.
Live action footage, animation, and puppetry bring to life this imaginative tale. It’s like if Charlie Chaplin/Buster Keaton movies were mixed with the slapstick animation of Looney Tunes and Aardman Animations with a touch of Guy Maddin style absurdism. Oh, and all the animals are played by people in furry suits. It’s a hilarious gag-a-second movie with a lot of great running gags. I think at 108 minutes it could be trimmed down, especially some of the repetitive bits in the middle section, but nonetheless it is terrific fun!
Note: No animals were the making of the film but people in animal suits are gruesomely killed in cartoonish ways, so be warned if that might trouble you.
Panorama of the Mountains 