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Author: breno
Date: 03-15-12 10:11
Is the return of Fiona Apple really this big an event? Cripes, her decision to return to sulking and pouting before a national audience is being greeted like it was Sinatra rising from the grave to give the world news from the afterlife - it's ring-a-ding, baby.
Anyhow, I don't get it. I thought people had to actually be missed before their return could be big news, and I recall a distinct lack of cries of "Only Fiona Apple can save us now!" emanating from the throats of the downtrodden music masses over the last seven years.
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Author: erikalbany
Date: 03-15-12 10:53
She's making a "big" appearance at SXSW during the NPR showcase. The combination of that sulky, anemic singer and the pretentious, bespectacled NPR throngs emitting high-arcing laughter and polite clapping (hear in your mind a Garrison Keillor audience, knowingly laughing at something allegedly "funny" that my merely human ear and sensibilities can't detect) sounds intolerable. To quote my kids, it's a "barf-y" proposition.
I'm with Brad on this one.
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Author: Delvin
Date: 03-15-12 12:19
Once again, the erudite, insightful TP crowd connects the dots like nobody's business. It never occurred to me that any comparison could be made between Garrison Keillor and Fiona Apple.
I had no idea that Fiona had a new album coming out, or was returning to live performance. The news (such as it is) went completely under my radar. Wow. Okay, I'm over it.
The Kaiser Chiefs are coming to Seattle on the 23rd. I've heard they're a good live act. Anyone here seen them?
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Author: nosepail
Date: 03-15-12 12:43
Come on, Delvin, I clued you in about this new album. I didnt mention Fiona by name, but the structure of the sentence should immediately have smelled like fapple.
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Author: HollowbodyKay
Date: 03-15-12 13:11
Quote:
The combination of that sulky, anemic singer and the pretentious, bespectacled NPR throngs emitting high-arcing laughter and polite clapping (hear in your mind a Garrison Keillor audience, knowingly laughing at something allegedly "funny" that my merely human ear and sensibilities can't detect) sounds intolerable.
Wait. Fiona Apple's stuff is supposed to be funny?
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Author: zoo
Date: 03-15-12 13:39
The only thing I can remember about her is that Beavis and Butthead did a send up of one her videos, referring to it as "kidde porn."
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Author: erikalbany
Date: 03-15-12 14:15
"Wait. Fiona Apple's stuff is supposed to be funny?"
No, but she will likely have some in-between song banter that the NPR crowd will find rich and clever. These people just love to chuckle--it shows the artist that, hey, we're with you, MAN; we FEEL you.
A better comment would have been "Wait. [Garrison Keillor's] stuff is supposed to be funny?"
Post Edited (03-15-12 14:17)
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Author: zoo
Date: 03-15-12 14:38
Quote:
No, but she will likely have some in-between song banter that the NPR crowd will find rich and clever. These people just love to chuckle--it shows the artist that, hey, we're with you, MAN; we FEEL you.
This describes the crowd at a Richard Thompson acoustic gig I went to about 13 years to a tee. This was definitely no rock and roll crowd. He did get them all to sing along to "Don't Sit On My Jimmy Shands," but I doubt that 90% could name a single one of his songs.
The opening act was this Russian woman on accordian (no lie). If she was an actress I'd accuse her of severe overacting. Her facial expressions were priceless, and so funny that my friend and I were turning purple from trying not to laugh.
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Author: Michael Toland
Date: 03-15-12 14:47
I have a friend for whom the Fiona Apple show was the only thing worth going to this SXSW. She's been talking about it for a week.
I know next to zilch about her, expect that she was a big deal around her first album, a joke around her second and hasn't been active of late.
I wonder if it's like Sex in the City and you have to possess ovaries to get it.
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Author: HollowbodyKay
Date: 03-15-12 15:04
Quote:
A better comment would have been "Wait. [Garrison Keillor's] stuff is supposed to be funny?"
It would have been ... if there was any doubt as to the alleged humor content of Keillor's stuff. His whole schtick just strikes me as a Yankee version of "Hee Haw."
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Author: nosepail
Date: 03-15-12 15:06
My parents went to some Garrison Keillor event in Harvard Sq a few years back. (Was there ever an event more likely to be preceeded with "An evening with..." ??) Apparently, he told a couple short stories, did 2 or 3 songs, and it was over. About 15-20 minutes. I think it was a big buck ticket. Fuck Garrison Keillor.
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Author: breno
Date: 03-15-12 17:18
I will still listen to the News from Lake Woebegone on occasion if I'm in my car at 6:30 Saturday night and figure what the hell, but I gave up on the rest of Prairie Home Companion somewhere back around 1990 due to extreme preciousness fatigue.
Re: my original post on Fiona Apple, I wasn't critiquing her actual work - "sulking and pouting" is an objective description that even her fans would have to concede to be accurate.
I'm not a fan by any stretch, though. She always struck me as the archetypical teenaged girl who feels things so deeply, deeper than anyone else can ever understand and oh, that Ricky shouldn't have ever made fun of my sneeze back in 7th grade but oh, I'll show him, I really will, I'll write a poem about him and put it in the school paper and even though I won't mention his name everyone will know it's about him and then that big jerk will know how it feels to be laughed at OH GAIEA, please let me get a good grade in chemistry this semester because when I flunked bio last year I cried all weekend and it made my skin look blotchy and hey wait there goes Janice she's a bitch and I'm not going to talk to her if she says hello yeah that'll show her!!!!
BUT ANYWAY, I always find it curious when some musician that no one even noticed was gone comes back and it's treated like a major event in human history. It was the same thing with Sade a couple years back. I like Sade just fine, but was completely mystified by the sheer amount of hoopla that greeted Soldier of Love. I just thought "Sade? Really? People are getting this worked up over a new Sade album? Since when?"
So the last couple of months of breathless articles trumpeting the news that "FIONA APPLE is back!!! Here's the title for FIONA APPLE'S new album! Where has FIONA APPLE been??? FIONA APPLE is going to tour!!!!!! FIONA APPLE to headline SXSW! FIONA APPLE to speak at U.N.!!!! FIONA APPLE to get last laugh at boy who cut in line at the water fountain in third grade!!!!" have been plum strange to me and has me wondering what's behind it.
Is it just the desire on the part of the music industry to be able to promote a familiar name to the dwindling demographic of people who still buy discs, and the willing collusion on the part of the music press to treat it like a big event? Or are all the bloggers and music journalists now children of the 90s, for whom Apple was either a mopey role model or a mopey sex symbol?
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Author: erikalbany
Date: 03-15-12 17:28
"Is it just the desire on the part of the music industry to be able to promote a familiar name to the dwindling demographic of people who still buy discs, and the willing collusion on the part of the music press to treat it like a big event? Or are all the bloggers and music journalists now children of the 90s, for whom Apple was either a mopey role model or a mopey sex symbol?"
I'm not sure, but when Ned's Atomic Dustbin make their inevitable return, it's gonna be HUGE, I tell ya. . . HUGE!
(*Adding this with the sudden realization that NAD did indeed unite in recent years. Is there no elbow room in this world for irony or farce anymore?)
Post Edited (03-15-12 17:33)
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Author: hoip chiggs
Date: 03-15-12 18:07
I never heard any desperate cries of "We need another Transformers movie" after the first piece of crap dropped on the screen, but we got them anyway.
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Author: Jermoe
Date: 03-15-12 20:08
My sister loves Fiona Apple. That should be reason enough to dismiss the hype regarding her return (Fiona Apple's, not my sister's).
I was out of work in the summer of 2006, with a pretty generous severance check burning a hole in my pocket, and an educator wife who gets summers off. We went to a bunch of movies. We took in a matinee of Altman's Prairie Home Companion. I enjoyed it. Subsequently, I developed a soft spot for Keillor and his schtick. It probably helps if you've been to Minnesota, too.
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Author: Delvin
Date: 03-15-12 20:25
My wife & I have seen PHC live twice. The first time, in Laramie, it turned out that we'd booked a reservation at the same hotel as the cast and crew. We even ended up having drinks in the hotel lounge with Keillor and the rest of them. It was a really nice evening. My wife is an authority on old radio programs, so she and Garrison ended up having a pretty good conversation.
> I never heard any desperate cries of "We need another Transformers movie" after the first
> piece of crap dropped on the screen ...
Had you worked at Paramount Pictures, Hoip, you would've heard them loud & clear.
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Author: HollowbodyKay
Date: 03-16-12 10:41
Quote:
I'm not a fan by any stretch, though.
I saw the video sans sound for "Shadowboxer" on MTV at a party back in the day and assumed (in error) that it was P.J. Harvey's big sell out move.
Then, I heard the tune and thought it kicked ass. Bought the first CD - partly to please a girlfriend at the time - and generally liked it (but not as much as that lone tune).
I'll buy any theory that states that all the attention went to her head. She did kind of run the Maya Angelou thing into the ground. The title of the second album revealed a streak that is far, far beyond precocious. If I've ever actually heard When the pawn hits blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah - I can't recall the tunes. I heard some MP3's off her third CD. The production was downright Beatlesque. None of it stunk.
Still, she's got a great voice and she's easy on the eyes. Funny how that works.
...
What's Kim Deal up to?
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Author: nosepail
Date: 03-16-12 10:50
I think she has crazy eyes. If you are feeling drawn to a girl with crazy eyes like that - RUN AWAY !!!! Unsafe, unsafe!
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Author: Delvin
Date: 03-16-12 11:59
> The title of the second album revealed a streak that is far, far beyond precocious.
It's far more than just a streak ... and precocious is way too kind a word. Jeez, who was she trying to impress? (Personally, I thought the first line — When the Pawn Hits the Conflicts He Thinks Like a King — would've been a good title. Maybe still too long, but certainly more interesting on its own terms. It actually says more, in its own compact way, than the poem in its entirety does. Oh well, that's what she gets for not consulting the wise sages of the TP board in the first place.)
I've heard some pretty good tunes from her, overall, but I have to listen through her singing to appreciate them. The sullen girl shtick didn't work for me when it was Hope Sandoval, and it certainly doesn't work from Fiona Apple.
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Author: HollowbodyKay
Date: 03-16-12 13:07
Quote:
The sullen girl shtick didn't work for me when it was Hope Sandoval
OK. The gloves are on the ice. You can stop talking about Hope Sandoval.
...
Besides, she's not sullen. She's forlorn. There's a difference.
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Author: erikalbany
Date: 03-16-12 13:29
"Besides, she's not sullen. She's forlorn. There's a difference."
Yeah, that was my first thought when reading that. Sandoval isn't sitting around glaring and sulking at people. She just seems kind of downtrodden and a whole lot less intrusive and full of attitude.
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Author: breno
Date: 03-16-12 13:32
Agreed. To my ears, there's a big difference between Sandoval's brand of ethereal glumness and Apple's narcissistic, self-pitying mopery.
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Author: R. Totale
Date: 03-16-12 15:55
For me, the best part of FA's return is that Warm Voices Rearranged will have another crack at one of her album titles. They nailed the Pawn one.
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