St. Vincent – "Fast Slow Disco" (2018)

I’m so glad I came

But I can’t wait to leave

I just finished watching season four of the critically-acclaimed FX series, The Bear.

The Bear is a very intense show.  Watching it is downright exhausting.

Despite that, the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences classified it as a comedy – not a drama – when it nominated for a number of Emmy Awards after its first season.   

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The Bear has some funny moments, but is nothing like the other recent winners of the “Best Comedy Series” Emmy – shows like Schitt’s Creek, Veep, Modern Family, and Curb Your Enthusiasm.  (Actually, Curb Your Enthusiasm never won the best comedy Emmy, although it was nominated for that award no fewer than eleven times.  The fact that it never won proves beyond a reasonable doubt that Academy voters are about as sharp as a bowl of Jell-O.)

The Bear is a very compelling series.  It is beautifully shot, has a fabulous soundtrack, and features a great cast – none of whom (with the exception of Jamie Lee Curtis) were familiar to me.  

The Bear is different from most other TV series because it focuses almost entirely on work.   For most of us, our job is an extremely important aspect of our life, but most movies and television shows give the work lives of their characters very short shrift.

There’s a fair amount of stuff in The Bear about family relationships, and the show serves up a dollop of romance here and there.  But The Bear is mostly concerned with life at the titular restaurant where virtually all the important characters work.

I’ve never worked in a restaurant – much less a fine-dining establishment like the one in The Bear – so I don’t really know how accurately the show portrayed the lives of both the back of house and front of house staff.  But it seemed entirely authentic to me.

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My main problem with The Bear is that it fetishizes food.  I enjoy going out to eat as much as the next guy.  But for me, food is just food – what I have for dinner isn’t that big of a deal. 

In the world of The Bear, however, every meal is expected to be a work of art – anything short of perfection is unacceptable. 

One minor subplot of the most recent season of The Bear involves the efforts of one of the line cooks to lower the time it takes her to prepare a certain pasta dish to three minutes.  It’s not clear to me why being able to make that dish in exactly three minutes – as opposed to three and a half minutes, or three minutes and fifteen seconds – is that critical.  But that’s what the show would have you believe.

Everyone on The Bear always seems to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown.  (I can’t tell you how many times one of the cooks or servers asks another cook or server, “Are you OK?”  The answer is almost always “Yes” – but more often than not, that answer is a lie.)  If you ask me, they all need to lie down with a cool washcloth on their forehead. 

Take a chill pill, all you chefs and servers on The Bear!  I’m impressed that you care so deeply about your work.  I applaud you for going to the lengths you do to give your customers a memorable restaurant experience.  

But I’m sorry – I think The Bear takes itself waaaay too seriously.  Working in a restaurant isn’t like working in an emergency room – whether your experience at a fine-dining joint is transcendent or mediocre isn’t a matter of life or death.

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For many years, the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences assumed that shows that had half-hour episodes were comedies for purposes of the Emmys, while shows with longer episodes were placed in the drama category.

That rule made sense during the heyday of network television, when comedies (e.g., The Beverly Hillbillies and All in The Family) always filled 30-minute time slots and most dramas (e.g., Gunsmoke and Star Trek) were an hour in length.  

But classifying a series as a comedy or a drama strictly on the basis of the length of its episodes doesn’t make a lot of sense in today’s world. 

According to the rules now governing the Emmys, a comedy series is one whose content is “primarily comedic” while a dramatic series is one whose content is “primarily dramatic.”  (I guess having a circular definition is better than no definition at all . . . but just barely.)

When FX submitted The Bear to the Emmys as a comedy, the Academy could have chosen to place it in the drama category instead.  Variety reported in June that FX’s competitors have tried to get the Academy to move The Bear into the drama category.

But The Bear isn’t the first show whose categorization has been controversial.  So far the Academy seems to have taken a laissez-faire stance with regard to whether a network says that a show that it submitted for Emmy consideration is a comedy or a drama.  That’s probably because the Academy doesn’t want to be seen as taking sides.

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Why did FX submit The Bear to the Academy as a comedy?  Many people think it was so The Bear wouldn’t have to compete in the drama category against Shogun, another FX series.

If that was in fact the network’s strategy, it worked beautifully.  The first season of The Bear won ten comedy Emmys, and the show took home eleven awards the following year.  

But at the most recent Emmy Awards, Hacks took advantage of the backlash over The Bear’s questionable categorization and won Best Comedy Series.

I haven’t seen Hacks – I spend enough money on streaming networks with subscribing to HBO, or Max, or whatever the hell they’re calling it these days – but I understand that it’s actually a comedy.

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Click here to listen to “Fast Slow Disco,” one of the two alternate versions of St. Vincent’s “Slow Disco” that appears on the soundtrack of season four of The Bear.  (“Fast Slow Disco” is played over the closing credits of the final episode.)

St. Vincent

St. Vincent – who was born Annie Clark – has said that after Taylor Swift heard the original version of “Slow Disco” (which Wass released on the 2017 Masseduction album), she told her that she should turn it into a pop song.  A few months later, Clark released the uptempo “Fast Slow Disco.”

Click here to buy “Fast Slow Disco” from Amazon.  

St. Vincent – "Slow Disco (Piano Version)" (2017)

I’m so glad I came

But I can’t wait to leave

The soundtrack for the fourth season of the FX television series The Bear features two variants of St. Vincent’s “Slow Disco,” which was released in 2017 on her Masseduction album.

The 2000-odd records that I’ve featured on my wildly successful little blog include representatives of just about every musical genre you can think of – pop, rock, jazz, country, blues, punk, metal, hip-hop, Broadway, etc.  But the typical 2 or 3 lines post features a record that I first heard on the radio in the sixties or seventies.  

St. Vincent’s Masseduction album

I’m still listening to that music half a century later.  Prospecting for worthwhile new music is hard work, and I’ve always been pretty lazy.  It’s soooo much easier to just listen to the old familiar stuff.

If I do feature a newer record on 2 or 3 lines, there’s a good chance that I  became acquainted with it because it was on the soundtrack of a TV series I watched – for example, The Bear.

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I’ve heard of the artist known as St. Vincent – her real name is Annie Clark – but I don’t think I had ever heard her music before watching the third episode of the fourth season of The Bear a few days ago.

St. Vincent on stage

St. Vincent is kind of a big deal.  Three of her albums have won the Grammy for Best Alternative Music Album – tying Beck and the White Stripes for the most wins in that category – and the critics have gone gaga over her.  (Masseduction was described as “an album that defies explanation and critique, rendering the critic a dead weight in the dust of its ever-accelerating sucker-punch of ideas,” “nothing less than an absolutely towering achievement,” and “a genuine masterpiece: complex, funny, sexy, bleak, uplifting, inspiring and enthralling from start to finish.”)

Of course, St. Vincent is not even close to being the biggest recording artist whose music I know next to nothing about.  That title probably belongs to either Taylor Swift (who is a good friend of St. Vincent’s) or Phish.

A number of years ago, I featured one Taylor Swift record on 2 or 3 lines – but my knowledge of her music is very limited.  (Honestly, my five-year-old granddaughter would be a better source for info about Tay Tay’s records than I would be.)

But I know infinitely more about Swift’s music than I know about Phish’s oeuvre.  I think it would be impossible to know any less about Phish than I do because I’ve never heard a single note of Phish’s music – hard to believe, but true.

The New Yorker recently ran a long piece about Phish that called into question all my preconceived notions about that group.  So I’m going to add “Phish Radio” – Sirius/XM channel 29 – to my car’s presets and dive in.  I’ll let you know how that goes in a future 2 or 3 lines.

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I occasionally get obsessed with a record that doesn’t fit into any of my usual categories.

I’m talking about records like “Guided By Angels” by Amyl and the Sniffers, “Chaise Longue” by Wet Leg, or “Charleston Girl” by Tyler Childers.

But I’m mostly talking about “Fade Into You” by Mazzy Star, a slowcore/dream pop masterpiece that has a curare-like effect on me whenever I allow myself to listen to it.

“Slow Disco (Piano Version)” may become my new “Fade Into You.”  Time will tell, but it’s off to a good start. 

Click here to listen to “Slow Disco (Piano Version),” which is featured in the soundtrack of episode three of season four of The Bear.

Click here to listen to just the piano part of “Slow Disco (Piano Version).”  

Click here to buy “Slow Disco (Piano Version)” from Amazon.

Tom Petty – "Down South" (2006)

Impress all the women

Pretend I’m Samuel Clemens

Wear seersucker and white linens

Here are a few excerpts from a new biography of a famous and beloved American writer.  Let’s see if you can guess who the subject of that biography is:

Always a hypercritical personality, prone to disappointment, [he] often felt exasperated in everyday life.

He was a waspish man of decided opinions delivering hard and uncomfortable truths. . . . Some mysterious anger, some pervasive melancholy, fired his humor . . . and his chronic dissatisfaction with society produced a steady stream of barbed denunciations.

[He was] a hugely popular but fiercely pessimistic man, the scourge of fools and frauds.  On the surface, his humor can seem merely playful . . . but the sources of that humor are deadly serious, rooted in a profound critique of society and human nature. 

Probably no other American author has led such an eventful life. . . . [H]e courted controversy and relished the limelight. . . . [A] shameless self-promoter, he sought fame and fortune without hesitation.

[He] could be implacable in his hatreds and grudges.  A man who thrived on outrage, he had a tendency to lash out at people, often deservedly, but sometimes gratuitously and excessively.

A master of the vendetta, he would store up potent insults and unload them in full upon those who had disappointed him.  He could never quite let things go or drop a quarrel.  

And finally:

To portray [him] in his entirety, one must capture both the light and shadow of a beloved humorist who could switch temper in a flash, changing from exhilarating joy to deep resentment.  He is a fascinating, maddening puzzle to anyone trying to figure him out; charming, funny, and irresistible one moment, paranoid and deeply vindictive the next.

I’m guessing that most of you are saying to yourselves, “That biography must be about 2 or 3 lines – because those quotes fit him to a T!”

But before you lock in your final answer to my question, here’s one additional quote to consider.  You may change your mind after you read it:

[His] late-life fascination with teenage girls presents yet another disturbing topic for contemporary readers. . . . [He] pursued teenage girls with a strange passion that, while it always remained chaste, is likely to cause extreme discomfort nowadays.  Like many geniuses, [he] had a large assortment of weird sides to his nature, and this [biography] will try to make sense of his sometimes bizarre behavior toward girls and women.  

What’s that you say?  “Now I’m SURE that book is about 2 or 3 lines!”

Hmmmm . . . I see why you’re confused.  But the quotes above were taken from Ron Chernow’s new biography of Mark Twain – who was born Samuel Clemens:

Click here to listen to “Down South,” which was released in 2006 on Tom Petty’s Highway Companion album.

Click here to buy “Down South” from Amazon.

Bob Seger – "Fortunate Son" (1986)

It ain’t me, it ain’t me

I ain’t no millionaire’s son

John Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival is the guest host on the Sirius/XM “Classic Vinyl” channel this week.

Today, Fogerty told his audience a story about hearing a live version of “Fortunate Son” while doing his weekly grocery shopping many years ago.  

At the time, he and his record company were in the midst of a long-running feud, and he assumed that the bast*rds had released that recording without bothering to tell him.

But later Fogerty found out that the live “Fortunate Son” he had heard at the grocery store was actually a 1986 recording of the song by Bob Seger and his Silver Bullet Band.

John Fogerty and Bob Seger in 2013

Fogerty and Seger – who both turned 80 in May – are old friends, and Fogerty liked Seger’s cover of CCR’s greatest song.  However, when Fogerty combined with a number of other artists to record covers of CCR’s biggest hits, he chose to record “Fortunate Son” with the Foo Fighters rather than Seger.  (Fogerty and Seger did join forces to record a new version of “Who’ll Stop the Rain.) 

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I mentioned above that John Fogerty and Fantasy Records – CCR’s record company – feuded for years.

In fact, Fantasy sued Fogerty in 1987, alleging that “The Old Man Down the Road” – a 1984 hit for Fogerty – infringed Fantasy’s copyright on “Run Through the Jungle.”  (Fogerty had written “Run Through the Jungle” – so the lawsuit essentially accused him of plagiarizing himself – but Fantasy owned the copyright on the song.)

The judge in that case ruled in favor of Fogerty, who then sued Fantasy to recover his attorney’s fees.  That case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which ordered Fantasy to reimburse Fogerty for the money it cost him to defend Fantasy’s copyright infringement lawsuit.  Fogerty v. Fantasy, Inc., 510 U.S. 517 (1993).

By the way, Fogerty recently purchased the publishing rights to his CCR songs from the company that acquired Fantasy Records after Fantasy’s founder, Saul Zaentz, died in 2014.  

Later this year, he will release a new album consisting of re-recordings of 20 well-known CCR songs – including “Fortunate Son.”

Click here to read my 2018 post featuring Creedence Clearwater Revival’s original recording of “Fortunate Son,” a member of the original group of inductees into the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” HIT SINGLES HALL OF FAME.

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Click here to hear Seger’s cover of “Fortunate Son,” which was released on the Like a Rock album in 1986.

Click here to order that recording from Amazon.