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It’s hard to underestimate the influence that Def Jam Records brought to bear on contemporary culture. Not only did the label help to legitimize rap and hip hop as commercially viable (and artistic) art form, it also helped to redefine attitudes about fashion, culture, race, and even business. At its core, the early days of Def Jam were an energetic experiment in synthesis, combining the DIY spirit of punk rock with the nascent rhythms of hip hop, all twisted up in a graffiti writer’s aesthetic. Def Jam 25, a huge, overstuffed illustrated oral history of the label’s first quarter century, details the fascinating beginnings, successes—and many, many troubles—of the strange child of Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons.
Def Jam 25 focuses its initial energy on Rick Rubin, who comes across as the dark, eccentric spirit whose aesthetic and temperament would come to define the label’s early successes. Rubin started the label out of his NYU dorm to release a single by his artcore band Hose. Rubin was soon introduced to Simmons (by Vincent Gallo, of all people), and the duo would go on to produce and release huge hits from the Beastie Boys, L.L. Cool J, Run DMC, and a host of others.
Def Jam 25 combines photographs and essays with shorter eyewitness commentaries from the artists, designers, musicians, producers, and business guys who helped define Def Jam. The effect is intriguing, often insightful, occasionally funny, and especially fascinating when folks share very different accounts of how things went down. The early years of the label are documented with an energy that matches the verve of Def Jam’s pioneering work in the ’80s, and if I dwell on the first thirds, it’s only because there’s something so electrifying about those early years, when Slayer and Public Enemy were labelmates and Aerosmith and Run DMC could craft a top ten hit together.
Def Jam’s success continued unabated after Rubin’s departure in 1988, and it’s hard to argue that a label putting out records by EPMD, Nas, De La Soul, Public Enemy, and the Roots was somehow less artistic and more commercial after that point. Still, Rubin’s strange punk rock energy was clearly irreplaceable, and while it remains part of the Def Jam template to this day, it’s hard to get as psyched about Rihanna and Ja Rule as it is about Slick Rick or even Onyx. But that has little to do with the actual book I suppose, which is lovingly crafted and impeccably designed.
Def Jam 25 is a great big coffee table book for people who actually like to read (and for your guests who don’t like to read, the book explodes with vivid imagery). The book reveals (and reflects) Def Jam Records as a marvelous synthesis of art, design, fashion, and business, a label that was (and is) dramatically unstable and also wildly innovative. The book will appeal to fans of music and culture alike. Def Jam 25 is new in hardback from Rizzoli.
The original SNL cast’s take on “Winter Wonderland” is one of my favorite Christmas recordings ever. It’s from the first season of Saturday Night Live; Candice Bergen is hosting, and you can see her singing along with Gilda Radner, Jane Curtin, and Laraine Newman. The underrated Garrett Morris delivers the powerful lead vocal, and there’s something magical about the moment when the boys — Chevy, Aykroyd, Belushi — come in for support.
When I was a kid, I was always puzzled by the clip. I saw it several times on Comedy Central reruns; this is back when Comedy Central was a fledgling network that ran SNL about 8hrs a day, along with lots of bad ’80s stand up shows, MST3K, and a show I loved called Short Attention Span Theater hosted by some guy named John Stewart. Anyway, I guess what puzzled me so much was that it seemed so damn sincere, and so good. I suppose Morris’s vocal provides much of the earnest authenticity that so baffled me when set against the goofy, ironic sloppiness of those (very) early SNL skits. I guess I was looking for a joke and couldn’t find one. They didn’t seem to be mocking the song. In retrospect, I can see that there’s something of a loving parody at work in their version of “Winter Wonderland,” a gentle poke at old, hokey Christmas musicals, but the emphasis is on loving — it’s almost bizarre in its tenderness and earnest emotion.
Vincent Cronin
Tony Geiss
MK Binodini
Kenneth Grant
Joe Gores
Maria Elena Walsh
Del Reisman
Christopher Trumbo
Loreen Rice Lucas
Diana Norman
Reynolds Price
John Ross
David Hart
B.H. Friedman
Dick King-Smith
Susana Chavez
Park Wun-suh
Wilfrid Sheed
Jean Dutord
Sun Axelsson
Ruth Cavin
Max Wilk
Hans Joachim Alpers
Donald S. Sanford
Peter J. Gomes
Ion Hobana
Rudi Bass
Anson Rainey
Perry Moore
Sean Boru
Bo Carpelan
Elaine Crowley
Martin Quigley Jr.
Charles E. Silberman
Andree Chedid
Iakovos Kambanelis
Sara Ruddick
Doris Burn
Steven Kroll
May Cutler
Thor Vilhjálmsson
H.R.F. Keating
Joe Bageant
Jean Liedloff
Bill Blackbeard
Alberto Granado
Hazel Rowley
Al Morgan
Raymond Garlick
John Haines
Ernesto Sabato
Abdul Hameed
Rafael Menjívar Ochoa
John Sullivan
Sidney Michaels
Madelyn Pugh
Sol Saks
Arthur Marx
Bill Brill
L.J. Davis
Ulli Beier
Kevin Jarre
Joanna Russ
David Wilkerson
Beverly Barton
Craig Thomas
Ira Cohen
W.J. Gruffydd
Anne Blonstein
Paul Violi
Johanna Fiedler
Dick Wimmer
Oniroku Dan
Hans Keilson
Martin Woodhouse
Newton Thornburg
Patrick Galvin
Wallace Clark
Carlos Trillo
Kate Swift
Arthur Laurents
Frans Sammut
William Kloefkorn
Thierry Martens
E.M. Broner
Tom Hungerford
Kathryn Tucker Windham
Harry Bernstein
Joel Rosenberg
Simon Heere Heeresma
David Rayfiel
Oscar Sambrano Urdaneta
Robert Kroetsch
Josephine Hart
Gloria Sawai
Anne LaBastille
Blaize Clement
Sissel Solbjørg Bjugn
Francis King
Agota Kristof
Henry Carlisle
Iain Blair
Hideo Tanaka
Michael Legat
Ruth Thomas
Colin Harvey
David Holbrook
Simona Monyová
William Sleator
Samuel Menashe
Selwyn Griffith
Sara Douglass
Ida Fink
Sergio Bonelli
Arthur Evans
Hella Haasse
David Croft
David Zelag Goodman
Emanuel Litvinoff
José Miguel Varas
Jo Carson
Cengiz Dağcı
Frank Parkin
Hugh Fox
Herbert Lomas
Florence Parry Heide
Stanley Mitchell
Uno Röndahl
Mildred Savage
Mick Anglo (LINK)
Alvin Schwartz
Sri Lal Sukla
Piri Thomas
Gerald Shapiro
Vittorio Curtoni
Morio Kita
Andrea Zonzotto
Taha Muhammad Ali
Georg Kreisler
Daniel Sada
H.G. Francis
Helen Forrester
Čestmír Vejdělek
Hal Kanter
Les Daniels
Leonid Borodin
Franz Josef Degenhardt
Morris Philipson
Ana Daniel
Ruth Stone
Peter Reading
Ruslan Akhtakhanov
Ivan Martin Jirous
Tomás Segovia
Kabir Chowdhury
Hans Heinz Holz
Ke Yan
Mario Miranda
Jean Baucus
Gilbert Adair
Jerry Robinson
Ambika Charan Choudhury
Matti Yrjänä Joensuu
Louky Bersianik
Christopher Logue
Christa Wolf
Elisabeth Young-Bruehl
Michael Frayn’s memoir My Father’s Fortune. Publisher Picador’s (trade paperback) description:
Winner of the PEN/Ackerley Prize
Award-winning playwright and novelist Michael Frayn “makes the family memoir his own” (The Daily Telegraph) as he tells the story of his father, Tom Frayn. A clever lad, an asbestos salesman with a winning smile and a racetrack vocabulary, Tom Frayn emerged undaunted from a childhood spent in two rooms with six other people, all of them deaf. And undaunted he stayed, through German rockets, feckless in-laws, and his own increasing deafness; through the setback of a son as bafflingly slow-witted as the father was quick on his feet; through the shockingly sudden tragedy that darkened his life. As Peter Kemp wrote in The Sunday Times (London), “Frayn has never written with more searching brilliance than in his quest for his past.”
Russell Hoban, author of Riddley Walker and other cult classics, died last night at the age of 86. The first “review” I ever wrote on this site was for Riddley Walker (the review is so bad that I won’t link to it out of shame); that was back when Biblioklept’s primary mission was to document stolen books. I stole the book from a dear friend and subsequently lent it to a student who never returned it. Oh, the circle of theft! Riddley Walker is the sort of book that begs to be stolen (or never returned, or passed on to another). It’s an apocalyptic Huckleberry Finn, a coming of age story set against the backdrop of a new dark age. Riddley Walker is deeply weird and strongly strange; I don’t know what a “cult” novel is, but I know of no better example.
Riddley Walker might be Hoban’s most famous work (aside from his children’s works, including the Frances the Badger series), but readers who stopped there would do well to pick up some of his earlier books. The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz is a fantasy piece about fathers, sons, and map-making; Kleinzheit, a baffling schizophrenic novel, explores death and illness in an animistic world; Pilgermann plumbs the medieval intersection of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, narrated through the eyes of the ghost of a castrated European Jew on a bizarre holy quest—it’s like Hieronymous Bosch on LSD.
The Guardian has a short but lucid biographical obit for Hoban, which ends with Hoban contemplating how death might affect his career:
Death, Hoban predicted in 2002, would “be a good career move”. “People will say, ‘yes, Hoban, he seems an interesting writer, let’s look at him again’,” he said.
The grim humor there was always part of Hoban’s program, and I hope that he’s right: I hope that folks who haven’t heard of Hoban will pick up Riddley Walker, and perhaps those who haven’t read beyond that book will make time to read another.
(I know we all saw this a few years ago, but damn, I just love it).
The Tree of Life: Solid, evocative, stately.
Melancholia: Simple and meaningful, but also easy to remember.
Star Watching Dog: I have no idea what this movie is, but I love this as an idea or as an image, or as a plot for a film. It makes me want to find out which of those three it actually is. If I’m lucky it will be all three.
We Need to Talk About Kevin: This has the right kind of loaded evocation to it. It’s great as a long-but-not-too-long title.
Tyrannosaur: Awesome. One word with a huge amount of weight, probably the best title of the year except for the obvious problem that it probably confused people into thinking the film was about dinosaurs. But other than that it doesn’t get better than this.
Your Sister’s Sister: I don’t really know what this means. Is it wordplay? Is there plot relevance? It makes me want to know though.
Another Earth: A brilliant combination of two words that manages in three syllables to open up hours upon hours of thoughts and possibilities.
Outside Satan: I would compare to the previous entry. A great two words that sounds good and suggests a lot of weird things, many of which I can’t quite put my finger on. Definitely makes me want to see what happens in the movie.
I Am A Good Person/I Am A Bad Person: Maybe it’s too long. And maybe it’s totally confusing. But I would watch something called this for sure.
The Rabbi’s Cat: Well it sounds like I know upfront two things I can expect to see. And I like both of these things.
The Catechism Cataclysm: Alliteration sucks. Here’s an exception that proves the rule.
Blackthorn: I would buy a cut of meat called Blackthorn, I would buy a bottle of wine called Blackthorn, I would vacation in a mountain city called Blackthorn, I would buy an album from a doom metal band called Blackthorn. Blackthorn would be a good word for many things. This time it is a movie.
Gingerdead Man 3: Saturday Night Cleaver: Double puns! Really? Okay fine, sure. It’s better than all the Air Bud titles combined.
Red State: Two evocative words, a sort of double-entendre but still easy to remember.
The Future: I would eat a burger called The Future, I would name my car The Future, I would name my dog The Future, I would love for my friends to give me the nickname The Future. So yeah I would watch a movie called The Future.
I Melt With You: Memorable and emotional, it tells me nothing about the film in any literal way, but it gives me some kind of sense of expectation.
Hobo With a Shotgun: Perfect. Truth in advertising; we’re all on the same page here.
***
Margin Call: What the hell is a Margin Call? Why would I voluntarily pay for anything called Margin Call. It sounds like something your accountant would suggest, but that’s why you hire that guy: to deal with boring stuff like Margin Calls. I would rather be watching a good movie than worrying about a Margin Call. If there are two things, and one is called Tyrannosaur and the other is Margin Call, which do you think I will be buying?
Hugo: Hugo is a stupid little word and I don’t like saying it or hearing it. The only thing worse is the original title, The Invention of Hugo Cabret. Gross. Cabret is far too close to Cabaret and Cabaret is least appealing noun I can think of.
Weekend: Wow, title your indie movie the same thing as a famous art film. Always a good idea when your only potential audience is the miniscule slice of people who know this. Watch for the director’s next small festival hit, sure to be called The 400 Blows.
The Brooklyn Brothers Beat The Best: Alliteration is the worst.
A Beautiful Belly: Further proof of the above sentiment, only this one is also gross sounding. The only way I can even imagine saying this out loud is if it was the humorous name of a menu item at the best BBQ joint in Atlanta or something.
The Skin I Live In: I blame the second-language aspect here, but something about this sentence is annoying.
Martha Marcy May Marlene: AKA Marble-Mouthed Nonsense. I will concede that this one may be actually brilliant, as everyone who sees the film seems to universally love the title after the face. Still, there is definitely something idiotic about giving yr film a title no one can remember.
Crazy, Stupid, Love.: I hate seeing this written down, I hated typing it, I hate hearing it out loud and I can’t imagine speaking it. There is a weird kind of perfection here. Three words that are just fine on their own, but somehow in this order they make me want to die.
Take This Waltz: And shove it.
No One Killed Jessica: Oh well that’s a relief, you had me worried for a second there. I guess I can skip watching the movie altogether and go eat some lunch or something.
Water for Elephants: This sounds like part of some little piece of wisdom like “pearls before swine” or something, except that you think about it for five seconds and realize that it isn’t and that it’s just dumb sounding.
Twixt: This is one of those words that maybe girls under the age of 16 could get away with saying. Or like the name of new line of sexy dolls, like the new Bratz or something.
Soul Surfer: Soul Surfer sounds like the shittiest tattoo idea possible.
The Beaver: This immediately undercuts the notion that it can be at all serious by virtue of the obvious vulgar connotations. Unless of course the writer only chose the word “Beaver” because he thought it would be such a riot to see it written everywhere and to have serious actors say it a million times for two hours. So either way what we have here is totally ignorant or absurdly immature. Count me out either way.
Our Idiot Brother: If I wanted to watch a shitty ’90s sitcom I would have stayed home.
This Is Not A Movie: Yes it is.
Benjamin Sniddlegrass and the Cauldron of Penguins: This is so stupid that maybe it belongs on the “Best” list. Nah, maybe not.
Cowboys & Aliens: This and Hobo With a Shotgun are two sides of the same coin. This side is the shitty one that loses all the time.
I Am Number Four: The only way this could be worse is if it was I Am Number Two.
Green Lantern: The discussion surrounding this movie’s failure brought up a lot of valuable points: 1) Ryan Reynolds is The Worst, 2) The movie was a piece of shit and 3) Martin Campbell is not an auteur. But the big point I think everyone missed is that The Green Lantern is also just a stupid combination of three English words. I don’t care how long he’s been a comic book hero, please compare the title of this movie to the other famous DC tentpole franchises: Batman and Superman. And please analyze the various connotations involved in three titles: One is a man who is also a bat, alright cool. The other is a man who is super, yeah alright I bet he’s pretty tough. This is a lantern that is somehow green… is this meant to surprise or excite me? “No shit!? All my lanterns are blue, this guy must be AMAZING!” Even The Green Hornet is a better title because it has the word Hornet in it and everyone knows that Hornet is basically the coolest word in all of entomology, with the obvious exception of “Scorpion.” No movie with the word Lantern in the title will ever gross 500 million dollars, unless preceded by the words “Harry Potter” or “Twilight.” Lanterns suck and somehow this fact is known deep in the hearts of all Americans.
A Good Old Fashioned Orgy: The obvious sarcasm just tells me right away that this is insincere bullshit.
Straw Dogs: As the title for some weird VHS tape you find at the video store and rent on a lark only to be blown away by how gnarly and intense movies were allowed to be in the ’70s: Yes Straw Dogs is a great title, and it’s implacable weirdness somehow fully encapsulates everything strange an unnerving about that movie. But as the title for a contemporary product on the market for people who have no built-in context I can’t imagine anything worse. It might as well have been called Marble Lanterns, it would have done just as well.
Another Happy Day: Either the movie is actually about a succession of days that are happy, or it is very obviously the exact opposite. Both options annoy me and put me off for different reasons. They could have called it Are We Having Fun Yet? and it might have been a bigger hit, but that is equally stupid and probably taken already.
Biblioklept 