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“The Cube” from NBC Experiments in Television (1969) Perhaps the most challenging and rewarding television episode I have ever watched. This episode is an example of the promise and maturity television as a medium can strive and succeed at. Unfortunately, when the profit motives of multi-national corporations come into play, such unique expressions can become a liability. This episode was from the show NBC Experiments in Television, a series which ran from 1969-1971, which featured hour long episodes of drama, comedy or documentary —without commercial interruption on Sunday nights. Some of the actors in the episodes include Yaphet Kotto, Bernadette Peters, George Plimpton and Christopher Plummer. Behind the camera featured writers like Tom Stoppard, John Hughes and Jim Henson, who wrote and directed “The Cube.” The Cube tells the story of a man (played by an excellent Richard Schaal) without a name who wakes up in a cube, with no idea how he got there or why he is there. All the action takes place in this white cube, as he questions people who come in and out of the all white cube, and becomes increasingly enraged at the lack of concrete answers. It may seem static, but the strong narrative push comes from trying to figure out why he’s there, who or what put him there, and ultimately what the cube he is trapped in is a representation of. The whole episode points towards a counter-cultural re-imagining of the white individual in a post-war environment that is becoming more constricting and emotionally hostile. The episode uses abstraction and a breakdown of form and structure to show the individual’s confusion and loss of identity in the face of progress, while at the same time challenge the conventions and techniques used to entertain these same trapped individuals. It addresses conflicts of identity, marriage, race, and the suburbs, all in that cold, implacably white self-made prison. It’s telling that Jim Henson did this right before he undertook work on Sesame Street, which revels in a layered approach of multiculturalism, a response, or perhaps an antidote to the discomforting problems raised in “The Cube.” It truly was Television’s version of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, except less inscrutable, and filled with an energy and dynamism only the medium of television could ever provide. The best hour of television hands down. Enjoy. 
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Somebody Gotta Die - Notorious B.I.G. from Life After Death Fifteen years ago, at the end of a mournful, numbing March that saw the death of Brooklyn native Christopher Wallace, (who rapped under the formal alias Notorious B.I.G. and informally as Biggie Smalls) and by extension the inflamed East Coast-West Coast rivalry, a brooding, sprawling double album was released that changed the way rappers approached their topics and even albums altogether, an album as heavy as mausoleum doors, diverse and dense with tales of murder, remembered hope, threats given, threats received, Black success, Dionysian sexcapades, of rivalries described as wars, and this obsession with death that is intended as entertainment, but through Biggie’s death, is transcended into one of the great mythologies of recorded music. The opener, “Somebody’s Gotta Die” sets the appropriate tone of ambition, urban grandeur and death. At a time when many rap producers employed samples over funk drums or modest keyboard lines, Sean “Puffy” Combs and his Hitmen co-horts (Nashiem Myrick, Carlos “6 July” Broady) feature prowling drums, timpani boom and atmospheric piano stabs, then awash the whole thing in orchestral strings, rising to match the pathos. Upon this stage is Biggie, in full storyteller mode, reviving his character from 1995 debut album Ready To Die’s “Warning,” that of the successful criminal too paranoid to fully enjoy his trappings, instead fueled by revenge and resentment. Interestingly, the coastal beef is touched on immediately as Big starts with descriptions of his dream —Lear jets, female rapper Salt in gyration and envy for the success of west coast superstar rapper Snoop Dogg, famously booed in New York at the 1995 Source awards. In this violent revenge tale, it’s Biggie’s ease of describing details that seduces the listener to identify with this anti-hero. The second verse in particular is impressive for its skill and economy as the particulars of his friends C-Rocks’ death is told in a back and forth conversation, with his fellow hustler cautioning him at one point, “let me proceed, don’t fill that clip too high give them bullets room to breathe,” this technique heightening the voyeuristic quality of the whole song. The chorus is catchy and nihilistic at the same time. “Somebody gots ta die, if I go, you gotta go…somebody gots ta die, nobody has to know that I killed your ass in the mix,” Biggie coldly raps in a monotone snarl, the listener a full accomplice by the third verse, those strings rising again as Biggie and his cronies creep up behind the killer Jason, calls out his name, the man turning away from his money, crack, from his cherished camaraderie, the tension pierced by the shots ringing out over the song, then Biggie letting the final image fall, “the nigga turnt around holding his daughter.” And while the strings descend and slow down, Jason slumped against his Honda stationwagon, the footsteps fade away while the baby’s cries stay constant, the listener is fully indicted, carried along by a crafted (or crafty?) telling of a murder of a young man on some cold anonymous Brooklyn street, us entertained by the beef until it’s too late to stop anything, to voice any reservations about what this will solve, left with another girl without a father, the story mirroring the outcome of the storyteller; the epic troubadour as oracle; a moral-less song to go along with a discomforting reality. 
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Let Me Roll It - Paul McCartney from Band On The Run Nice, echoed bluesy rock from Sir Paul. 
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I Cant Help It - Esperanza Spalding from Radio Music Society Cozy and warm cover of the Michael Jackson song, reflective of the overall vibe of the jazz bassists’ latest album, 
A picture I’ve always liked for the way it directs the eye and scares you. True story: Eowyn has been my girlfriend since I was eleven. Middle Earth is pretty accepting of inter-racial relationships.
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My Home - Nneka from Soul Is Heavy The highlight of Nigerian singer Nneka’s recent release, a light reggae skank on the verses, that blasts out into a Big Band romp on the chorus, Nneka’s voice solid and melodic throughout. Soul… on a whole is impressive if slightly overlong, and this early album song is a welcome treat, giving the first half a promising momentum.
Quotes on duality from The Thin Red Line
Here are four quotes from the 1998 film The Thin Red Line (based on the book of the same name), delivered in voiceover by an older, wiser Pvt. Train (or Pvt. Doll?) over the course of the film. Separately they illuminate the corresponding images on the scene they appear in, heightening the atmosphere and tension, but collectively the quotes wrestle with the question started in the first quote, of a duality in nature that may exist in the same quantities in man as well. The extremes of these dualities —the inspiring beauty of nature; the blind viciousness of battle, are captured during this war between Allied and Axis forces attacking and defending this island of Guadalcanal like waves and the shoreline, during the Pacific theatre of the Second World War. “What’s this war in the heart of nature? Why does nature vie with itself – the land contend with the sea? Is there an avengin’ power in nature? Not one power but two?” “Who are you that live in all these many forms? Your death that captures all. You too are the source of all that is going to be born. Your glory, mercy, peace, truth. You give calm a spirit, I understand it. Courage. The contented heart.” “This great evil – where’s it come from? How did it steal into the world? What seed, what root did it grow from? Who’s doing this? Who’s killing us? Robbing us of life and light. Mocking us with the sight of what we might of known. Does our ruin benefit the earth? Does it help the grass to grow or the sun to shine? Is this darkness in you to? Have you passed through this night?” “Where is that we were together? Who were you that I lived with? Walked with? The brother, the friend? Darkness from light, strife from love – are they the workins’ of one mind, features of the same face? Oh my soul. Let me be in you now. Look out through my eyes. Look out at the things you made. All things shinin’…”
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Love - John Lennon from Plastic Ono Band Exposed, confessional lyrics populate Lennon’s first solo record, dealing with subjects as elemental as father, mother and God along with disillusionment with the sixties counter-culture idealism, Kennedy, gurus and his former band The Beatles over thumping indignant rockers (“Well Well Well,” “I Found Out”), rumbling slow burners like opener “Mother” and the acoustic ale-house balladry of “Working Class Hero.” As direct and stark as his lyrics and voice are over the record, nothing on Plastic Ono Band prepares the listener for the fragile beauty of “Love.” While the album on a whole distances itself from the pretensions of some Beatles albums, opting for a just-the-facts lyricism, on “Love” there is an even further reduction of the lyrics, until turning in on itself where a verse starts with the line “Love is touch, touch is love,” the song ending with “love is needing to be loved,” each line sung controlled and patient, like softly unfolded advice, the words revealing no details about the superstar singer/activist, but its poetic simplicity reflecting a philosophy of a shared, lived-in intimacy. John’s strumming is clear and subdued behind the beautiful piano line by Phil Spector, developed astutely during the final takes of the recording process. Spector, who famously left The Beatles last album Let It Be over-laden with choirs and storybook strings, shows striking restraint here, the fade in at the beginning and end giving the song extra gravity and space. A peaceful ballad that holds its own against the snarling drama of its surrounding songs decades later. Lyrics as follows: Love is real, real is love |
