Monthly Archives: December 2024

You think you know Bob Dylan? A new film will give your head a spin

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Timothy Chalamet as Bob Dylan. WSJ 

Film review: A Complete Unknown Directed by James Mangold

I had been moved to tears by movies plenty of times, but this time Bob Dylan made me wonder through a stethoscope to his heart. I’m not surprised – I like countless others have been moved and inspired by his work often. But here we get so many songs (though fragments) performed live superbly, all by the actors, often with Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez, Dylan’s itinerant lover and devotee. As Dylan, Timothy Chalamet molds a searingly tender, combustible chemistry with her. So, I felt generous. Chalamet’s winningly convincing interpretations stand up well to one’s innate memories of the material.

The cumulative effect on my psyche was magnified literally by being forced with incorrectly administered seat tickets to the theater’s first row, where the view proved almost painfully panoramic (but not too loud!). So, song piled upon song, 32 in total, triggers aplenty. That’s admitting plenty of subjectivity but it’s a primary effect of the film given that its subject is our greatest singer-bard, the perpetually scruffy Nobel laureate adored by cultured masses.

The film’s 73% Rotten Tomatoes score doesn’t surprise me, upon reflection. My biggest problem is feeling cheated by those countless flirtations with his greatness fully embodied in a very attractive actor. Imagine hearing one “live” chorus of Like a Rolling Stone in such a provocatively manipulative context. It’s only arguably the greatest rock

song of its times. Director James Mangold shoulda let loose at lease this once.

Monica Barbaro (Joan Baez) and Timothy Chalamet’s chemistry are hard to miss in “A Complete Unknown.” The New Yorker 

Also, it’s a fairly conventional if swiftly-crafted biopic — given what it jam-packs in — sticking to romantic conventions of artistic drama and relations. The title is apt in that a 19-year-old Minnesotan hits upon the Greenwich village folk scene like a hellion outlaw brandishing a six-string.

He hits women the same way: Barbaro and Elle Fanning’s bohemian artist Sylvie Russo (a renaming of the historic Suze Rotolo, Dylan’s Freewheeling album cover girl) are proverbial moths around the flickering flame, artistically distracted as he often was. And a fleeting Mavis Staples (Laura Kariuki) declares that she “loves him” upon just meeting him, a scene whose brevity insults that magnificently talented woman. On the other hand, Doe-eyed Fanning especially bleeds pure poignance as she eyes Dylan and Baez making musical love in public.

Elle Fanning and Timothy Chalamet mirror a famous album cover “Freewheeling Bob Dylan” in this scene from “A Complete Unkown.” WTYE 

The New York folk scene seems thirsty for a visionary artist — Edward Norton’s obsequious Pete Seeger is about six-proof banjo swizzle, a bit too hopped-up hootenanny, while Dylan is raw flesh and blood — an id, ego and alienated conscience in naked array, an incendiary harbinger and miked-up rebel perfectly attuned to the changin’ times. Pete knows this right away, too.

So does Johnny Cash (Boyd Holbrook) in this telling. But the man in black reportedly was a back-stage run blocker for the diminutive Dylan through the hysteria and naysayers. And, of course, they sounded like long-lost brothers on “Girl from the North Country” on Nashville Skyline.

Remember this is a liberal interpretation of a man, a sped-up, almost shrink-wrapped narrative and I can’t argue with critics who assert it fails to capture “the real” Dylan, quintessentially elusive, better than any other such films.

His relationship with his dying idol Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy) is the dramatic linchpin and here Mangold almost overplays, letting things ride for several almost agonizing powerful encounters with the preternaturally eloquent activist Guthrie, reduced to muteness by Huntington’s disease.

“Hey, hey Woody Guthrie I wrote you a song.” He and Seeger are transfixed by the “complete unknown” strumming at his bedside.

This is besides the fact the film really climaxes naturally when Dylan infamously ”goes electric” at the Newport Folk Festival in 1964 and a lovingly aghast Seeger does his Paul Bunyan routine. The Butterfield Blues Band’s key role in that event also seems trimmed, at best. Yes, he’s probably a genius, but after all, Dylan “plugged in” alone isn’t much a of relevation.

The real Bob Dylan (right) with the Butterfield Blues Band at the Newport Folk Festival. New England Public Media

I may sound like I didn’t enjoy the film nearly as much as I did. I’m kind of picking over the stray seams. Nevertheless, I stand in awe of what Dylan accomplished in five years. Try reading his Joycean liner notes, or his novella Tarantula — during that period — to get a feel for how he emitted pure poetics, almost like his cold Minnesota breath.

These performances and songs transcend flaws and, I repeat, the film’s impact was stupendous for this “Dylanophile.”

Really? I not sure I think of myself quite in those terms, but soon I’ll be cueing up those early Columbia sides, bringing it all back home, the sure sign of a performer’s triumph.

 

Restless searcher Jamie Breiwick knows jazz history also shines forward

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The Jamie Breiwick Quartet performs, “Spirits: Live at The Jazz Estate,” Thursday Dec. 5. 7 p.m. $10-$15.
Album released May 4, 2013. Recorded live at The Jazz Estate, Milwaukee, WI — Nov 30th, 2012
Tickets: 
Restless searcher Jamie Breiwick wisely knows jazz history also shines forward. He leads a hip-hop jazz group, KASE, but also another dedicated to bop genius Thelonious Monk’s repertoire. Another is the fluid “book” of innovative trumpeter/pioneering world musician Don Cherry.
Several other performance projects ebb and flow through his prolific talents, including recently the daring paired-solo-sets at the Jazz Gallery Center for the Arts with powerhouse East Coast trombonist Joe Fielder. He’s even written a tune that is a luminous soundtrack point for an adventure/thriller film, Deep Woods.
That suggests some of the range of his interests. But also how the horn player/conceptualist understands that American music’s lineage casts profoundly forward. Or, you might call it the ever-flowing nourishment of “culture currents,” especially those where vernaculars, musical and literary, “speak” to audiences of the past, present and future.
Reviving the album live — Breiwick’s artistic breakthrough project — will take place this Thursday, Dec. 5. It was recorded in this very hallowed Milwaukee jazz space, known for decades as the Jazz Estate (which can apparently now be rented out for musical events, though no longer a regular jazz joint).
I was honored to write the album liner notes (included a few paragraphs below) based on the recording. Spirits: Live at the Jazz Estate was the first jazz album I’ve heard to cover Taylor Swift, back in 2012, before she became a Beatle-esque four-artists-in-one phenomenon (comparable talent is another story).
There’s also a Death Cab for Cutie cover, as well as one by Wayne Shorter, jazz master of visionary obliquity who, after Monk, might be the most-covered modern jazz composer. Also you’ll find a tune by Breiwick’s Wisconsin-born contemporary, trumpeter Philip Dizak (a Milwaukeean now East Coast-based), plus originals by Breiwick and two band members.
The album closes perfectly with the incomparably timeless Duke Ellington, the apt and poetically titled “Sunset and the Mockingbird.”
Jamie Breiwick. Photo by Leonardo Moscaro
What’s more, Breiwick may be as gifted a graphic artist as he is a musician. His daringly stylish album covers, which boldly extend the Blue Note design tradition, adorn scores of albums and have been used by such notable jazz labels as Verve, Palmetto, Sunnyside, Candid and Mack Avenue.
In this case, he honored the club’s  legacy by originally displaying the red door entrance to The Estate on his original retro-Blue Note typeface cover (see below). Later he decided to capture the spirit of the album by re-imagining the cover into one of his most inspired visual creations (at top).
Here, Spirits soars into the stratosphere. The highly stylized title typeface, to me, suggests aeronautic striving, as a gaggle of birds frolic through the sky buoyed by a painterly cloud floor. The whole effect carries a faintly mystical aura — the space between humanity’s striving to transcend gravity and the bird’s natural gift to do so.
The new cover is so elegantly striking I might’ve found a different cast for the liner notes I wrote for the album. Kind of like, all his knowledge shines forward in time, as far as the light can reach.
The quartet Thursday is the same as the recording except, instead of Tony Barba, acclaimed Chicago-based tenor saxophonist Dustin Laurenzi will perform (his own musical unearthing includes a recording reviving “The Music of Moondog”). Laurenzi has also recently toured with Grammy-winning indie-rock artist Bon Iver.
 There’s no guarantee though that, like most jazz musicians, Breiwick doesn’t stray from the implied script of the album’s tunes.
As it is, here are those original notes to give you a sense of the music to be played:
Jamie Breiwick – Spirits: Live at the Jazz Estate (BluJazz). 

Open the door on the album cover and you enter the Jazz Estate, a Milwaukee club that exemplifies a venue that nurtures modern straight-ahead jazz and makes money at it. This recording was made there one night, even if the program has the well-considered sense of purpose of a studio recording.

The melody of the opening “Gig Shirt” has a slightly skewed trumpet-saxophone harmony, recalling Ornette Coleman’s classic/radical quartet, which certainly influenced the album’s piano-less instrumentation. The theme bodes well for a musical departure, especially in its expansive rising last notes.

This journey’s departure mean’s arrival at many musical ports, including some adapted pop-rock. “I Will Follow You into the Dark” by Death Cab for Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard, is a mournful yet oddly resolute melody. Breiwick’s muted trumpet sounds playful, as if he’s wooing a young woman with a joke. The rhythm players burble along in the same coy spirit, lifting the interpretation’s insouciance and the band ends with an exquisite exhalation.

“Safe and Sound,” by country-pop artist Taylor Swift, is another strong and pliable melody that tenor saxophonist Tony Barba builds from close, pinprick-sharp variations until he unfurls some Joe Henderson-like flag-waving. Breiwick’s own “Little Bill” is a funky, amiable tune that honors the memory of his Grandfather Bill and also refers to the cartoon of the same name, which Breiwick’s children love to watch. “Dad” adopts a slightly gruff tone and Barba is almost flippantly offhanded, befitting the sit-com mood.

This band has a svelte-but-sure grip on the harmonic and rhythmic tension of “Capricorn,” a Wayne Shorter theme that seems to move in two directions at once while flowing as a seamless melody — characteristic of Shorter’s ineffable compositional genius. If that sounds like a chops-busting practice-room etude, “Capricorn” rises like an indelibly hummable melody. The band swings hard out of the gate, as Barba plunges in with pithy Shorterisms — slanting shards, open-throated exhortations and quotes of the sorcerer-like theme. Breiwick shifts gears, then creeps into a softly growling, splattered tone that recalls Don Cherry. He’s clearly finding his own forward-pushing place in the trumpet tradition. Bassist Tim Ipsen steps in like a heady middleweight contender, with a sly combination of punchy harmonic intervals.

The aphoristically titled “Walk through Daydreams, Sleep through Nightmares” reflects Breiwick’s magnanimous depth as a member of the jazz community. He leads two jazz bands, including a more pop rock-oriented one called Choir Fight. He’s also an educator, organizer and all-around go-getter, having co-founded Milwaukee Jazz Vision, a musician-run organization that promotes the local jazz scene, especially with an excellent website: mkejazzvision.org. This tune is by one of Breiwick’s own former students, Philip Dizack, a fast-rising young trumpeter of uncommon lyrical strength and compositional maturity. Breiwick acknowledges that crafting a songfully expressive melodic line is a primary concern of his. “I believe the album’s aesthetic intent points to a depth of feeling in the music,” he says. “Beyond technique, which is obviously hugely important, emotional communication is a priority.”

“Walk” opens with swelling mallet rolls and cymbals. The two horns resound like one voice, or mind, experiencing a revelation. Then everyone pulls back, as if in a slight state of awe, to contemplate the implications of the eureka moment. One imagines a lightning bolt having struck the narrative consciousness right at its precipitous leap from daydream to nightmare. It recalls John Coltrane’s more pensive lyrical moments in his late years, when he pushed the spiritual-empowerment envelope like the shaman Dr. King might have met on that windswept mountaintop.

The program follows appropriately with Barba’s title tune “Spirits.” A simple rising interval, extrapolated and harmonized, seems like a wisp of a theme, yet these men plumb its modality as if climbing the branches of a majestic tree. It stands like a spirit, inviting as it is inherently challenging for the earthbound.

Consequently the closing tune, “Sunset and the Mockingbird,” is also apt, from the pen of Duke Ellington, a timeless jazz presence. This is Duke’s indigo mood, and Barba proves he can fabricate a short story whole cloth from textured whole notes, while Breiwick is a mockingbird with genuine feelings. He evokes Ellington trumpeter Cootie Williams’ muted sorrow, as an elegy to whatever the sunset bade farewell, something to cherish, and live up to.

Spirits demonstrates extraordinary range and vision from this new jazz generation, and delivers on promise as if tapped into a musical wellspring flowing through their veins.

— Kevin Lynch

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Lynch has written for Down Beat, The Village Voice, CODA, American Record Guide, The Chicago Tribune, The Milwaukee Journal, The Cap Times, and other publications, and blogs at Culture Currents (Vernaculars Speak).

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