Paul Levinson's Infinite Regress

reviewing American Rust; CSI Vegas; Curb Your Enthusiasm; Dexter New Blood; Fauda; For All Mankind; Foundation; Hanna, Hightown, His Dark Materials; Invasion; Jack Ryan; Killing Eve; La Brea; Line of Duty; Luther; Narcos; Outlander; Ozark; Peaky Blinders; Raised by Wolves; Sneaky Pete; Star Trek: Discovery, Picard; The Crown; The Orville; Virgin River; Westworld; You; Your Honor +books, films, music, politics

George Santayana had irrational faith in reason - I have irrational faith in TV.

Sunday, November 28, 2021

Hightown 2.6: True Love and Deception

Hightown 2.6 came back tonight after a two-week gap with a top-notch episode.

[Spoilers ahead ... ]

First and foremost: Good to see Ray and Renee together. But why, when Ray asked her what it was that got her to come see him, didn't she tell him that she thinks she's carrying his baby? I mean, yeah, she wants to keep her options open, but certainly telling Ray that is better than her telling him she accidentally shot and killed Jorge, or telling Ray nothing, which will keep his suspicions in play?

Next, not so good to see Jackie in such a tailspin. Leslie did make it clear that she was in it just for the fun, and she was straight. But that's Jackie's character -- she falls fast and hard for people, and that can pull her in directions way beyond her common sense. I felt bad to see Ed say he's going to retire because of what Jackie said to him -- but I did say that I didn't expect to last this season.

I'm enjoying seeing Frankie under increasing pressure. He's usually about as calm as they come, but Jorge missing after Frankie killed Daisey right in from Jorge is getting to Frankie. Here's my prediction: when Frankie goes, it will be because Osito kills him.

Speaking of which -- it's beginning to be time for Osito to get out of prison. I have no idea just how that is going to come to pass, but especially with Jorge gone, Frankie needs someone to back him.

The table's set for major confrontations and upheavals in Hightown. The Cape in December is a good time for that to happen.

Dexter: New Blood 1.4: Harrison and Kurt

A superb Dexter 1.4 tonight, in which the truth comes out -- at least to us, and in one case, also to Dexter -- about two people we wondered about after last week's episode.

[Spoilers follow ... ]

First and foremost, we now know that Harrison is Dexter's son in the way that Dexter most feared. Harrison stabbed and nearly killed Ethan. Harrison revved himself up, looking at images of the Trinity killer and Harrison's mother, slain by Trinity -- and then he attacked Ethan. Why Ethan? His drawings, which Harrison saw, made Ethan a good victim, someone whom Harrison could spin his made-up story around. And Harrison knew that Audrey and the school bullies, for their own separate reasons, would admire Harrison for his "heroism". The only problem that Harrison may not have thought about, or thought out to any big extent, is what his father Dexter will do about this. Possibly, one of Harrison's motivations is to get his father to totally love him by doing what Dexter did and does. As for Dexter, I'd say there's no way he'll do anything other than using all his smarts and talents to protect his son.

And then there's Kurt, someone who, so far, Dexter doesn't know the full truth about. Clearly, Kurt made up the story about Matt facetiming him, to tamp down the police investigation into Matt's disappearance. And that's because ... Kurt is the sicko who is kidnapping and then killing those girls, and doesn't want the police anywhere near him.

Is it too much of a coincidence that the father of the guy Dexter killed is himself a killer? Probably. But the story is so good, the situations so compelling, that I'm ok with that coincidence, and very much looking forward to next week and beyond on this riveting reboot.

Reviews of Season 2: Dexter's Back: A Preview and Dexter Meets Heroes and 6. Dexter and De-Lila-h and 7. Best Line About Dexter - from Lila and 8. How Will Dexter Get Out of This? and The Plot Gets Tighter and Sharper and Dex, Doakes, and Harry and Deb's Belief Saves Dex and All's ... Well

See also about Season 1: First Place to Dexter

"The Soft of Your Eyes" on new Folk/Psychedelic Rock NTS Radio Playlist

Paul Levinson

Hey, it's been a while since I wrote to you about a song from Twice Upon A Rhyme, my 1972 album reissued on remastered vinyl by Whiplash/Sound of Salvation Records about a decade ago. But I just found out that "The Soft of Your Eyes," the song I wrote for Tina back in the late 1960s, was added to Jocelyn Romo's folk/psychedelic rock Heaven and Earth playlist on NTS Radio where it's been getting tons of play, alongside songs by Gerry Rafferty and Don Everly.

Meanwhile ... Peter Jackson's documentary The Beatles: Get Back is amazing and life-changing and I highly recommend it! I review all three parts here (written reviews) and here (audio podcast reviews).

Songs from Welcome Up: Songs of Space and Time played this and last year on

Plastic Tales from the Marshmallow Dimention, WNYU-FM Radio
Dig Vinyl's Melodic Distraction playlist, American Dream with Yvonne
Howard Margolin's Destinies, 24 & 31 July, 7 Aug 2020, WUSB-FM Radio
Howard Margolin's 37th Anniversary Destinies, and 38th Anniversary Destinies, WUSB-FM Radio
Carl Thien's WZBC show (8 Dec 2020, and earlier this year)
Patrick Rands' Abstract Terrain show on WZBC-FM Radio in Boston
Kevin Anthony's Psychedelic Jukebox
Captain Phil's WUSB-FM show.
Plus the following stations: Bellarmine Radio, Louisville, KY; KDWG Radio, Dillon, Montana; The End, Cleveland, OH; SYN Radio, Melbourne, Australia

You can get all the Welcome Up music, any time, here:

Listen to entire album FREE on Bandcamp and Spotify
Order multi-color vinyl from Light in the Attic
CDs in stock - get them here

And here's Twice Upon a Rhyme:

Listen to entire album FREE on Bandcamp and Spotify
Original, sealed 1972 HappySad Records vinyl
New remastered Sound of Salvation vinyl from Those Old Records

Here's a one-hour virtual concert I did in April 2020 with songs from both albums at HELIOsphere: Beyond the Corona. Here's a video of me singing "Alpha Centauri" at my virtual concert at Amazingcon in June 2020. More video clips from Welcome Up here and here.

Welcome Up Reviews and Interviews:

Jon Pruett says in Ugly Things Magazine that Welcome Up is "eight slices of interstellar delight".
Joseph Neff says in The Vinyl District that Welcome Up "hits the ear as the best kind of long-delayed follow-up to a phenomenon of cultish proportions ... sounding like nothing else on the current scene."
Taro Miyasugi says Welcome Up is "a stunning folk pop album with gorgeous late 60s elements like vintage velveteen cloth..."
Evan LeVine observes about Welcome Up that "any fan of Twice Upon A Rhyme will be overjoyed by it... As otherworldly, mystical and far-out as the subject matter may be, the songs burst with love and warmth and humanity."
in-depth interview about Welcome Up in Klemen Breznikar's Psychedelic Baby Magazine
audio Bear Tones podcast in which I talk about Welcome Up and Twice Upon A Rhyme.
I talk with John Anealio -- with whom I wrote "If I Traveled to the Past" and "Tau Ceti" -- about those songs on The Functional Nerds podcast.

Looking a bit into the future ... I may be doing another new album in 2022 ... stay tuned!

Music

	Samantha (from Welcome Up)
	If I Traveled To The Past (from Welcome Up)

MORE MUSIC

Press

"Welcome Up is ... eight slices of interstellar delight."— Jon Pruett, Ugly Things Magazine, Aug 15, 2020

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Catch and Release 1.1: Nordic Noir in the Twilight of Life

I just saw the first episode of Catch and Release, a new Norwegian Nordic noir series by Kristine Berg and Arne Berggren, the team who made Outlier, which I saw on Acorn via Prime Video and very much liked and reviewed here this past August. Catch and Release is currently airing in Norway, and should be up on Acorn in 2022. I'll definitely watch and review the rest of the series as soon as that happens.

Like Outlier, it's a very different kind of suspense thriller. The protagonist is an elderly former police woman, Irja Lantto, who has left the force because she has only weeks or a month of so left to live. In fact, she's putting a gun to head, to end her life right there and then, when she hears the sirens of a police car. They're on the way to investigate the murder of a man who was fishing in the clear waters of Norway.

Of course, the current police would rather Irja go home and rest (i.e., die) rather than be troubled by her investigating the murder, but she'll have none of that. And in this first episode, we see there is plenty to investigate, including people with all kinds of problems in all kinds of situations. Near the end, we also learn that there's a man who lives deep in the woods, who tells Irja that there's some kind of inchoate evil afoot.

The last TV series about an elderly investigator that I recall was Barnaby Jones, in which Buddy Ebsen played Barnaby from 1973-1980 on CBS. That show was one of the pillars of my "defective detective" theory of television back then, in which I noticed that just about every detective on television had some kind of physical problem: Barnaby was old, Longstreet was blind, Ironside was in a wheelchair, etc. The hero (or anti-hero, still a little early to tell) of Catch and Release would fit right in with that group, and in fact Irja will likely give a more profound accounting of herself.

I'll be back here with a review of rest, as soon as I see it.

Saturday, November 27, 2021

Podcast Review of The Beatles: Get Back, Part 3

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 218, in which I review Part 3 of Peter Jackson's The Beatles: Get Back documentary.

Relevant links:

review of Get Back, Part 1
review of Get Back, Part 2
The Omnipotent Ear
my review of Rob Sheffield's Dreaming the Beatles
A Vote for McCartney (my first published article, in The Village Voice, 1971)

Check out this episode!

The Beatles: Get Back, Part 3: Up On the Roof

If I had to pick the single best moments in the nearly nine hours of the superb, one-of-a-kind documentary that is Peter Jackson's The Beatles: Get Back, it would be Paul McCartney saying "whew," smiling, and continuing the concert, after turning and taking note of the robotic cops (or whatever they call them in London) intruding into Beatles' rooftop performance. The same cops on the ground floor had been threatening arrests and claiming they weren't making threats before they demanded to go up to the roof. Good thing they don't carry guns like the police do here in America.

Widening the focus a bit, the whole rooftop concert was a splendid, high-octane tour-de-force, finally shown in Jackson's movie in its full extent, making the original film of the concert that we've been watching all these years seem two-dimensional in comparison. That original movie has flashes of the energy of that rooftop performance, which takes full and gorgeous expression in Jackson's documentary.

It may have been the Beatles' finest moment. It certainly was their final moment in a public performance. Some of the earlier part of Part 3 tells us why:

Paul says to George Martin -- with Paul not sure that going on the roof the next day was the best thing, John saying it was, and George Martin saying they had to respect deadlines -- "that's why I'm talking to John not you".
A little later, Paul's still not sure about the roof, George Harrison says he'd rather not do it, and Ringo declares they should do the roof concert. Ringo's opinion carries the day. But Paul is quietly a little dismayed with Ringo's opinion, or maybe that he has to put up with it.
George tells John he wants to do an album of just his own songs, to see "what they all sound like together". George winds up doing none of his songs on that roof.

But there are many beautiful moments to be treasured in the footage before the concert:

George Harrison comes over to Ringo to help him write his song "Octopus's Garden". It's a wonderful, redeeming moment.
And then George Martin gets interested in the song. Soon we see John on drums on the song. In previous parts, we saw Paul and George on Ringo's drums. In an interview conducted much more recently, Ringo lamented that every time he stepped out for a cup of tea, he'd return to find someone else in The Beatles on his drums. But it's all endearing,
Great jamming with Linda's daughter Heather in the studio, and it's great to see how each of The Beatles relate to her.
Paul really groovin' and enjoying working on one of George's songs.
George Harrison telling John he took John's advice, given some ten years earlier, that when you start writing a song, you should stay up and finish it.

So there was lots of love and good energy between the Beatles, even with all the problems, and the rooftop concert was magnificent. So why didn't they stay together? There's clearly even more to the story than Peter Jackson showed us in his documentary. But watching it changed my perspective on The Beatles forever, largely for the better, and I'll be forever grateful Peter Jackson made it.

See also The Beatles: Get Back, Part 1: Soul Touching Anecdotes and The Beatles: Get Back, Part 2: Back from the Threshold and my review of Rob Sheffield's Dreaming the Beatles and A Vote for McCartney (my very first published article, in The Village Voice, 1971)

Podcast Review of The Beatles: Get Back, Part 2

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 217, in which I review Part 2 of Peter Jackson's The Beatles: Get Back documentary (review of Part 3 to follow soon).

Relevant links:

review of Get Back, Part 1
The Omnipotent Ear
my review of Rob Sheffield's Dreaming the Beatles
A Vote for McCartney (my first published article, in The Village Voice, 1971)

Check out this episode!