Intervista #6

Last week I was interviewed for Film in Focus's ongoing series of film blogger profiles, Behind the Blog (a series that recently featured our own Kimberly Lindbergs). After much internal debate I decided to risk posting a link to it here. Granted, I'm the only member of Team Gunslinger represented, and you could perhaps make a case that posting it at all is horrifically self-indulgent on my part (I certainly won't defend myself against the charge). But the principal subject of the interview is this blog, and it might possibly give our regular visitors some marginal insight into how the thing works (as well as my chronic inability to write a simple, uncongested sentence of english) . . . assuming that's of any conceivable value at all.

So until I rethink the matter and delete this post, dive in.

Intervista #5When Legends Gather #410

Well, here's a strange bit of audio I've had hanging around for a while: An interview (I think) conducted in November of 1961 for (get this) Redbook magazine. The principals are playwright/composer/actor/diarist/Vegas headliner Noel Coward, and Vincente Minnelli's ex, Judy Garland. Now, whom is supposed to be interviewing whom is not entirely clear to this reporter. If any of our visitors have the backstory on this lively exchange, feel free to drop me an email; or, better still, t'row it in the Comment section. We'll be glad you did.

Update (07/01/08)

Lloyd Fonvielle of the frequently amazing and highly-recommended blog Mar de Cortes Baja, makes the following case:

"I'm guessing this was recorded in Boston during the out-of-town tryouts for Coward's musical Sail Away, which ended up running for 167 performances on Broadway. Could the Kay who sometimes moderates be Kay Thompson, vocal arranger and vocal coach to Judy when she was at MGM, later a nightclub chanteuse and author of the "Eloise" books?"

Pursuing that line of (good) speculation, Lloyd continues:

"There seems to be some guy from the magazine there, in addition to 'Kay'. At one point, 'Kay' offers to moderate the discussion -- 'You can cut me out later,' she says. Then Coward says to Kay and Judy that the last time they came over to his apartment his neighbors almost asked him to leave the building.

"Kay Thompson was known as something of a character -- it's said that Auntie Mame was based on her -- and she and Garland remained friends after both had left Metro. Thompson did the vocal arrangements for a TV special Garland appeared on a year after this conversation.

"So this 'Kay' could very well be her."

I'll buy that. Well reasoned and well done, monsieur.

Intervista #4

In August of 1968, Chicago's WFMT-FM broadcast this edition of Studs Terkel's Wax Museum featuring composer, guitarist and full-time anarchist Frank Zappa. In between LP cuts by The Mothers of Invention (which have been edited out of this recording . . . not by me, I hasten to add), Zappa and Terkel discuss the psychology of audiences; Zappa's formative years in the California desert; the true meaning of such compositions as Who Are the Brain Police? and Brown Shoes Don't Make It; the genesis and hidden wonders of Zappa's first solo LP, Lumpy Gravy, as well as the uncertainties inherent to the life of an American composer with no commercial potential.

Frank Zappa sounds understandably depressed throughout.

Intervista #3Broadcasters #23

Everything that was good and everything that was ridiculous about Tom Snyder (who passed away earlier this week at the age of 71), is on display in this 1981 interview with Singer-Songwriter Charles Manson; recorded for NBC's Tomorrow show at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville.

Intervista #2:Christmas Week Edition

When he wasn't marinating journalists in his contempt for the whole interview process, Miles Davis had an undeniable gift for being cryptic. It wasn't just the sound emitted from that self-sabotaged voice box of his (though that certainly didn't make the enterprise easier), it was his overarching determination to protect the essence of his art from revelation, even when purporting to explain it. In a sense, Davis couldn't be completely open about his work even if he wanted to be; perhaps because it relied on so many inarticulable components (the thousand alchemies in his interaction with other musicians, whether in a recording studio or on the bandstand, for example). At a certain point technique surrenders itself to a realm governed by forces beyond anyone's control; and only very few artists worth paying attention to will ever pretend to know where that point is, or where the work goes thereafter.

So even when speaking with relative candor, as he does in this recording from May of 1986, a Miles Davis interview was bound to have its impenetrable dimension. Fortunately (for us) Miles' interviewer on this occasion was not some stringer writing for a Jazz sheet or your average disc jockey . . . the kind of journalistic tragedy whom, it can be argued, fairly begged for his disdain . . . but historian and (perhaps crucially) musician Ben Sidran, for his NPR program Sidran On Record. Sidran knew enough about his subject . . . an often prickly individual even under the best of circumstances . . . to keep him talking by not trying to steer the conversation too directly. At its best (which is much of the recording), this may be the most interesting talk with Miles Davis ever committed to tape; at its worst it's not unlike the fawning S&M interviews critics in the late 60s used to conduct with washed-up movie directors (albeit without the sadism, latent or otherwise).

As an accompanying treat . . . something of an après dinner mint . . . is a 12 minute excerpt from another Sidran On Record interview (also from '86), this time with composer, arranger, wizard, saint and frequent Miles Davis co-conspirator, Gil Evans.

From now until December 31st, we here at If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger . . . will be bringing our visitors small offerings of this character; some musical, some not, but all music-related.

Thus do we (hopefully along with you) celebrate this holiday season.

Intervista #1

This is a 1974 interview with Orson Welles, conducted by BBC stalwart Michael Parkinson.

In the 1970s, Orson Welles appeared on a great many television chat shows, generally avoiding any serious discussion of his filmmaking. It was a topic he would save for credulous interviewers, generally of the cinephilic variety, whom he knew would unhesitatingly, unquestioningly set down every crazed fabrication he might concoct with all the solemnity of the recording angel. The results were extremely entertaining for those in on the joke, but they often threw the shade of perversity perhaps a bit too far. Syncophancy as a spectacle might be fun to watch from the sidelines, but the ease with which Welles could embroider an already brilliant career (albeit with more than its share of self-inflicted misfortune) and get away with it was a little bit dispiriting. Babies put up more of a fight when you take candy away from them.

On programs such as Parkinson's, however, he was a nonpareil raconteur and bullshit artist, and everyone knew it. He played that larger-than-larger-than-life king-like persona to the hilt. They were beautiful performances.

In today's offering, Welles discusses a myriad of subjects: Acting, his one-time political aspirations (which I've never bought into . . . no film artist of his caliber could walk away from their art of their own volition, no matter how much agony they'd had visited upon them), Bullfighting, Spain, Hemingway, Churchill, the then-current Watergate scandal, and his own highly ambivalent feelings about Hollywood.

(My deepest thanks to Richard Gibson for providing me with this interview)