I try to do right, I try to do right, because I only got, only got, only got, only got…all that I have is one life to live.
These are the words that greeted viewers of the long-running ABC daytime serial One Life to Live when they tuned in for a pair of episodes last May, thanks to a remixed-and-revamped version of the show’s theme song performed by Snoop Dogg. Yes, that Snoop Dogg. You may have seen blurbs here and there about Snoop’s OLTL appearance and chalked it up to a joke, or some of the hard-hitting investigative journalism the Internet is known for, but no — Snoop really did tape a two-episode guest stint that had him rolling into the fictional Pennsylvania town of Llanview to perform at a bachelorette party. As far as musicians-on-scripted-TV crossovers go, it was both utterly ridiculous and eminently believable — of all the multiplatinum veteran rap artists in the world, who would be more likely than Snoop Dogg to take the microphone for a small club filled with screaming women in a random Philadelphia suburb? — and far less awkward than, say, the Counting Crows showing up to play in a bar during an episode of Boston Public:
As any Ricky Nelson fan could tell you, musicians have been taking advantage of television shows’ built-in audiences pretty much since the dawn of the medium. But the slow, painful death of Top 40 radio — hell, of radio in general, at least as a reliable conduit for new music — has given rise to a new breed of TV music supervisors who actively work to connect their viewers with songs and artists. One such music supervisor is One Life to Live’s Paul Glass, who has used his position with the show to help turn it into a surprisingly popular destination for musicians promoting new releases. Many of us still tend to think of daytime television as the last refuge for cheesy strings and organ music, but when Mary J. Blige booked an appearance on One Life to Live in 2006 — and enjoyed a 40% bump in sales the following week — OLTL quickly became the Ed Sullivan Show of the soaps, with Glass booking and producing a succession of artists that now includes Lifehouse, Nelly Furtado, Simply Red, Erykah Badu, Timbaland (with the loathsome OneRepublic), and, uh, Puddle of Mudd (you can’t win ‘em all). (more…)
For the benefit of those who haven’t seen Max Payne yet, but are considering renting the DVD, I’m going to spoil as much of it as possible for you. Why? Because this is a film that shouldn’t be seen under any circumstances, even if you’re dragged off an airplane under the Presidential Directive of Rendition, and are placed in a dark room where CIA operatives intend to show it to you in order to forcefully extract information.
Forewarned is forearmed.
In the movie, based on the immensely popular 2001 videogame, Mark Wahlberg (The Departed, The Happening) stars as the titular character, a detective whose wife and infant son were brutally murdered by three home intruders, one of whom managed to escape and was never found. Despondent over the loss of his family and that the final assailant was never brought to justice, Max now works the Cold Case division of the NYPD, and in his spare time hunts down clues as to who the final killer might be.
Three years have passed since the murders, and one night Max tricks three punks into trying to rob him in a subway men’s room, and instead takes two of them down–riding one for clues while the third escapes into the darkness of the subway tracks. As the last punk flees, he is suddenly accosted by what appear to be winged demons (or possibly angels), before he meets his end as a train slams into him on its way to its final destination (ba-dum-bump!)
Max then heads to a club to gain more helpful info from the stoolie who led him to the subway punks. While there, he meets up with Russian hottie Natasha Sax (Olga Kurylenko) and her sister Mona (Mila Kunis). The girls enter into a heated debate before Max brings Natasha home to gain intel on a series of odd wing-shaped tattoos he spotted on one of the subway thugs, and which Natasha has as well. When Natasha unintentionally insults Max’s dead wife, he kicks her out of his place. Shortly afterward, Mona is murdered–seemingly by the selfsame demons from earlier, and Max soon becomes the prime suspect. Caring more about solving his wife’s murder than clearing his name soon plunges Max into a race to find the real killers, and eventually forces him to team up with Mona–head of a Russian mob family–before Max can be brought in by Lt. Jim Bravura (Chris “Ludicris” Bridges), another detective investigating both Natasha’s murder and that of Max’s old partner, in which Max is now also a suspect. (more…)
A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to see David Byrne live in concert. It was purported to be a celebration of the work he did with Brian Eno, famed producer and musical renegade, encompassing Eno’s production on classic Talking Heads albums as well as their collaborations like My Life In The Bush of Ghosts and a new, currently digital-only release Everything That Happens Will Happen Today. The show was composed of Byrne, a backing band, a trio of backup singers and a trio of interpretive dancers, and while that sounds like a bad, pretentious idea the whole thing came off very entertaining and ended up being a fine night of live music.
Another big plus was the lack of squirrels in the road. Come on, if you go to see bands with an extensive and memorable back-catalog you know about the squirrels. A pace is building, the classics are rolling out and the audience is having a grand old time, then suddenly the performer announces, “We’d like to play something from our new album” and suddenly it’s all screeching brakes and momentum sliding to a halt. Damn squirrels, they’ll do it every time.
That’s what’s so great about the new collaboration: nary a squirrel to be found. All the songs, even if they’re not immediate attention-getters, are very good and surprisingly song-like. I hesitate to use the word ‘conventional’ because it would tend to paint Everything That Happens… as by-the-numbers, which it definitely isn’t. These songs sat side by side with tunes like “I, Zimbra,” “Once In A Lifetime,” and even “Help Me Somebody” and never interrupted the flow, never incurred massive pee-breaks and beer raids. The album is an album, and not an excuse to tour based around weak product, thank God.
The story goes like this: Byrne found himself in the company of Eno unexpectedly, as both hadn’t co-created in awhile. Eno, over the years, made his bones by becoming an ambient artist as well as the big-time producer of several classic albums, including U2’s The Joshua Tree. Byrne mixed his sound with massive multiculturalism and founded the Luaka Bop label. Now here they were in the company of each other and the inevitable happened: one asked the other if they were up for doing something. The result? Eno sent Byrne some instrumentals he had worked up, yet these frames were distinctively song-based. (more…)
Every summer, the city of San Francisco has a free concert series featuring noteworthy bands, and some that are yet-to-be-noted — at least in the United States, anyway.  Case in point, Bajafondo — the South American “electrotango” band whose members come from Argentina and Uruguay. I had no idea what “electrotango” would sound like, but I was game, so off I went to see them perform live at a free concert. To my surprise, the place was packed with fans, and it was instantly understandable why: their music has a wonderfully cosmopolitan vibe that fuses a number of styles. For those who are fans of Shakira, you might find some of Bajafondo’s electrotango sounding a bit like Shakira’s 2002 single, “Objection (Tango).” Other times, the band has a kind of Russian sound with songs like “Hoy” that bring to mind Zvuki Mu.
However, Bajofondo is not a evanescent bit of exotica that screams “flavor of the week.” Their sound has certainly captured the heart (and ears) of artists like Elvis Costello and Nelly Furtado — each of whom contributes vocals on the album, Mar Dulce. Interestingly, the rather relaxed vocals of Furtado on “Baldosas Mojadas” makes her trademark nasally voice almost disappear–leaving the listener with a greater appreciation of her singing abilities.
For a band that only has two albums under their belt, it’s clear that Bajofondo is comprised of some wonderfully talented and accomplished musicians who, as luck would have it, have a chemistry that keeps a signature sound fairly consistent throughout their genre-hopping fusion of styles.
![Cover of "Max Payne [Blu-ray]"](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61z8-9qmweL._SL200_.jpg "Cover of \"Max Payne [Blu-ray]\"")
A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to see David Byrne live in concert. It was purported to be a celebration of the work he did with Brian Eno, famed producer and musical renegade, encompassing Eno’s production on classic Talking Heads albums as well as their collaborations like My Life In The Bush of Ghosts and a new, currently digital-only release 
