Treme 2.9: Pied Pipers

Well, my favorite sequence in the brutally ending Treme 2.9 features Antoine and trumpet player Kermit Ruffins (playing himself, of course).  Antoine's audience is a little low - in numbers - in the club his band is playing.  He soon learns why: Kermit is knocking 'em dead a few feet down the street.

But Antoine has an idea.  He walks over to Kermit's club.  Kermit sees him and invites him on the stage, where Antoine beguiles the crowd with his music.  He leaves and tells everyone where they can hear more of it.  The crowd follows him back to his club.

But wily Kermit is not be outdone.  He soon shows at Antoine's club, and plays the best trumpet you and I ever heard - had I been able to go through the screen, I'd have have joined the crowd that followed Kermit back to his club.  Even without me, the crowd was bigger than the one Antoine wooed away.

A great sequence.

But this is New Orleans more than a year after Katrina, and crime is viciously on the rise, as we've seen all season.   And before the night is over, Harley Watt - played by Steve Earle - will be shot dead in front of Annie's horrified eyes.  His mistake?  He gave a little advice to a mugger, after giving him his money.  Muggers don't like being lectured in New Orleans.

The pace has now picked up.  With Colson now on the murder squad, he'll be directly involved in Watt's murder case.  Just two more episodes left to see how this all plays out.

And here, in honor of Harley Watt, is a taste of Steve Earle's great song This City, from the first season of Treme ...

See also Treme Is Back! ... Treme 2.2: Bounce and Jazz ... Treme 2.3: Crime and Music ... Treme 2.4: Angry Albert ... Treme 2.5: "Today I'm Gonna Write a Song" ... Treme 2.6: "Phil Ochs Said" ... Treme 2.7: "One-Murder Mardis Gras" ... Treme 2.8: Antoine's Music

And also Treme! ... Treme 1.2: "If you ain't been to heaven" ... Treme 1.3: Fine Sweet and Sour ... Treme 1.4: New Orleans, New York, Nashville ... Treme 1.5: Delicious! ... Treme 1.8: Passions and Dreams ... Treme 1.9: Creighton ... Treme Season One Finale: Happy Sad Life

And: My Favorite Moment in Treme (Season One)

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The Plot to Save Socrates
"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

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Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...

Treme 2.3: Crime and Music

Well, it's been clear, and I've been mentioning in previous reviews, that crime is rearing its ugly head much higher in this season of Treme than in last season.   In Treme 2.3, the worst crime we've seen so far dominated the episode,  as Ladonna is raped, robbed, and badly beaten.

It's not clear what Ladonna remembers, but the medical examination confirms the rape.  She has not yet told her husband - or anyone - and it's also not clear whether she's taking the "Plan B" (morning after) pills she's given in the hospital, in case she's now pregnant.

Ladonna did put in a call to the police, when she was first approached by a suspicious character as she was locking up her bar.   The cops, at very least, certainly did not respond with alacrity.   What will Lt. Colson do when he finds about this insufficient police response?  Presumably he'll be livid, and launch some kind of investigation, as indeed he should.   Sooner or later, there'll be at least three people hunting Ladonna's attackers:  Colson, Antoine, Ladonna's husband ... and likely Toni, too.

In other difficult but happier stories, it's good to see Janette back in New Orleans.   But her house has been looted and trashed - more crime - and she's having no easy time of it with the officials (that's because she came in without an appointment, but even so).

Musically, it's great to see Antoine progressing with his band, and the hilarious banter around his feeling that they're missing a beat.   It's soon realized that what the band is really missing is a guitar, and it's good to see Sonny on his way to filling that position.

And my favorite music in Treme 2.3 is Louis Armstrong's "Mack the Knife" - hey, the Kurt Weill-Bertolt Brecht song has always been one of my all-time favorites, ever since I heard Bobby Darin's hit version in 1959.   Darin's was a #1 song, Satchmo's only got to #20, but it was released 3 years earlier, giving it a little precedence.  (Good to see Steve Earle out on the streets, too, in another number.)

And here's a taste of Louis Armstrong's Mack the Knife ...



5-min podcast review of Treme

See also Treme Is Back! ... Treme 2.2: Bounce and Jazz

And also Treme! ... Treme 1.2: "If you ain't been to heaven" ... Treme 1.3: Fine Sweet and Sour ... Treme 1.4: New Orleans, New York, Nashville ... Treme 1.5: Delicious! ... Treme 1.8: Passions and Dreams ... Treme 1.9: Creighton ... Treme Season One Finale: Happy Sad Life

And: My Favorite Moment in Treme (Season One)

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                 Special Discount Coupons for Angie's List, Avis, Budget Car, Garden.com, eMusic

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The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

---

Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...

Treme Season One Finale: Happy Sad Life

A memorable Season One finale for Treme on HBO last night,  complete with a satisfying flashback coda which showed what most of our characters were up to when Katrina blew in.

The music was about the best of any episode, which means fine indeed, and I give first place a tie between two excellent performances:  Lloyd Price singing a few lines of "Stagger Lee" (I met Lloyd a few times in 1969-1970, when I was recording my Twice Upon a Rhyme album in Herb Abramson's A-1 Studios near 72nd Street in New York City, and it was great to see Lloyd still looking and sounding good); and John Boutté (the great Treme intro song) singing some of Sam Cooke's "Bring It On Home to Me" as part of McAlary's attempt to serenade Janette into not leaving New Orleans.   You know what?  I also have to put Steve Earle and Annie (Lucia Micarelli) singing "This City" in first place, too - the music was just that good.

As to the story, some happy endings, some not, as befits life:

• McAlary's not able to persuade Janette to stay, though she could always come back.  And McAlary has his job back as dj, and Annie showing up at his door near the end.
• That's because Annie and Sonny are pretty well done - his last scene has him drugging out
• Antoine gets a thousand dollar gig - the one with Lloyd Price (and Allen Toussaint) - but blows most of it on cards
• Albert had the happiest story - in good with his family, and walking with full feathers and not getting arrested or beat up by cops - because the Sgt has a conscience, and no doubt on the Lt's orders stops his men from doing their worst
• Creigton has the worst - he's gone, leaving a wife, daughter, and a fine career as a professor, author, and videocaster - it wasn't really Katrina, it was something inside of him
• Ladonna finally gets some closure, putting her brother Daymo to rest in full New Orleans style

And that brings us to the coda, which finally tells us what happened to Daymo as the storm came in.  The finale was wisely 90 minutes not 60, and it only scratched the surface of this excellent, original nexus of characters and stories.  Fortunately, they'll be next season, and I hope many more to come.



8-min podcast review of Treme

See also Treme! ... Treme 1.2: "If you ain't been to heaven" ... Treme 1.3: Fine Sweet and Sour ... Treme 1.4: New Orleans, New York, Nashville ... Treme 1.5: Delicious! ... Treme 1.8: Passions and Dreams ... Treme 1.9: Creighton

And: My Favorite Moment in Treme (Season One)

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The Plot to Save Socrates


"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Treme 1.4: New Orleans, New York, and Nashville

Well, this time my favorite number in the music-rich Treme - episode 1.4 - was none other than Antoine (Wendell Pierce) singing his own lyrics to St. James Infirmary as he waited to see a doctor after the beating he received by New Orleans' worst (i.e., out of control police) last week.   It was a great example, in one fine scene, of the role music plays in all of New Orleans:  always in the air, ever ready to break through, providing an invitation to zest that can buck and surmount the dreary conditions,

Prof. Creighton displays another way - putting up a YouTube video that tells the world exactly what he thinks of the way New Orleans is being mistreated, in appropriate salty language.  The YouTube interface looked a little newer than what they had in December 2006, but the impact the video had - making Creighton a minor celebrity in town, as people on the street recognize him from the video - was right on.

Lots of true love percolating in this episode of Treme - some of it running less smooth than others.  Sonny is tempted and talked in going to Houston for a gig that proves far less than he'd expected.   And this pulls him away from Annie, who's superbly playing her fiddle (so far, that's all) with another group that happens to include Steve Earle and his son Townes.   But Albert is invited to Lulu's for dinner, and it's clear that those two are headed for the right place and the right time.

Back in New York City - which plays the role of the alter-city to New Orleans in Treme - Delmond attends a fancy party famously peopled by Stanley Crouch and others.   It occurred to me, as I was watching this scene, that Treme has a Robert Altman-esque quality, certainly as seen in Altman's 1975 movie, Nashville, which also had a mix of music and celebrity stirred through the story.

Note added 7 May 2010: And some tragic parallels to the devastation brought by flooding in Nashville right now.


6-min podcast review of Treme

See also Treme! ... Treme 1.2: "If you ain't been to heaven" ... Treme 1.3: Fine Sweet and Sour

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The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Joan Baez Sings Dylan, Lennon, Earle, and Speaks Obama at NY Town Hall Concert

My wife and I just returned from Joan Baez's splendid concert at Town Hall in New York City, where she celebrated half a century of singing and campaigning for peace, justice, sanity, and the better angels of our life.

Her voice is as angelic as ever. She sang Dylan's "Love is a Four Letter Word," Lennon's "Imagine," a song by Steve Earle - "God is God" - from her new Day After Tomorrow album, as well as Earle's classic "Christmas in Washington," and some of her own great songs, too, including "Diamonds and Rust" (about Dylan). Her back-up people were superb - John Doyle on guitar, Dirk Powell on violin, banjo, mandolin, accordion, and who knows what else, and Todd Phillips on acoustic bass (not stand-up bass fiddle). And they all sang.

Powell has done a video for Obama. Joan Baez asked the audience to "give it up for Obama" and the crowd erupted in joyous applause.

Joan Baez has endured a lot. Disdained by Dylan after she helped light up his career at Newport, called "Joanie Phonie" by the Neanderthals in both Republican and Democratic Parties because she spoke and sang out against our unconstitutional, immoral war in Vietnam - with apologies to the prehistoric Neanderthals, I have no reason to think they were that bad - but Joan Baez has soldiered on, with grace and dignity and hope.

Dylan has seen the error of his ways - he apologized, in a manner of sorts, in Scorcese's No Direction Home. But the war mongers, those who want to step on other people, both here and abroad, and label anyone who doesn't "anti-American," or worse - well, they're obviously still with us.

But, maybe, at last, after lo these many years, not for much longer. No one would have predicted, or did predict, back in the rubble of the 1960s, that in 2008 we might elect someone who would galvanize the nation, call upon our better spirits, replenish the democratic spirit, as has Barack Obama.

There's less than a week left until the election. Joan Baez has held a public vigil on the right thing to do for so many years. I'm looking forward to toasting her through the virtual firmament next Tuesday night ... Make sure you vote!

And in the meantime, I don't have a video of tonight's concert, but here she is singing one of the very best of Dylan's songs - "With God On Our Side" - in 1966... Followed by Dirk Powell's "Oui, On Peut - Yes We Can!" for Obama...

The Wire Bows Out Gracefully; Kudos to Cast and David Simon, the Charles Dickens of Television

I sometimes, often, in fact, think The Wire is the best show ever to have been on television. It's hard to compare to The Sopranos, which was just about one person, really, Tony. The Wire was an ensemble show par excellence, with at least 15 to 20 centrally important players over the past five seasons. You can't compare it at all to Lost, which is in another - fantastic - universe, entirely.

The Wire is certainly the best cop show, ever. My previously favorite was Homicide: Life on the Street. David Simon was the brains behind that Baltimore masterpiece, too. And there were lots of other connections - including Clark Johnson, Meldrick in Homicide, Gus in this last season of The Wire.

But The Wire was much more than a cop show - in fact, the cops were less than half the story. There was the dock, in Season 2; politics in Season 3 and after; the school in Season 4; and the paper, the media, in this final Season 5. All of these were done superbly - though perhaps the cynical ending to the paper story this season, with fraud rewarded with the highest honor, was a little too much, though I suppose not unrealistic.

But the real star of The Wire, season after season, in addition to cops, was the street. I can't recall ever getting such a clear picture of life in the street - or, the corner, real and metaphoric, on which drugs are sold and life is lived - as we got, season after season, in The Wire. Not in any movie, or book. First the Barksdale crew, then Marlo's, were as vivid a tableau of intelligent, brutal, sensitive, savvy, focused characters as ever presented. One of the shows this season was called "The Dickensian Aspect" - and, the truth is, that could easily apply to the whole series. David Simon, just by virtue of The Wire, could be called the Charles Dickens of television.

If you'd like a look at the characters and cast of The Wire in all five seasons, HBO has put up a fine page of photos. My favorite is still the extraordinary Stringer Bell, second-in-command in the Barksdale crew, The Wealth of Nations on his bookshelf, played to perfection by Idris Elba, but that takes nothing away from the dozens of other razor-sharp performances in The Wire.

And how did it all end?

The Wire did something exceptional and original here, too. Totally unlike the brilliantly ambiguous ending of The Sopranos, the ending of The Wire had complete closure, and was brilliant, too. And against all expectations, it was happy. McNulty is stretched out on a table for his wake - but it's only a mock wake - he's leaving the police, not life at all. Carcetti is elected governor; Rawls gets an appointment as a high state cop; Daniels looks happy as a lawyer; Rhonda Pearlman is a judge ... well, you get the picture.

The street does as well as can be expected, too. Marlo's free, rich, and likely out of the game (though you never know). Bubbles is eating upstairs with his sister. Michael may be a stick-up man, not good, but maybe he's just doing this once. Dukie is, sadly, in the worst shape ... going doing the road to addiction that Bubbles just left.

My guess is we won't see a series like this again for a very long time. Even the music was perfect, from the different versions of Tom Waits' "Way Down in the Hole" that opened shows for each of the five seasons (Steve Earle did the honors for Season 5, as well a good performance as Bubbles' sponsor at Narcotics Anonymous), to the great music that ended every episode, to the special version of "Way Down in the Hole" that accompanied the montage near the end of tonight show.

~When you walk through the garden ...~

That's a walk I bet viewers will relish for decades to come.

See also The Wire's Back! Review of Season 5 Episode 1 and Episode 2: The Great, Dangling Conversation ... 3. McNulty and Marlo ... 4. One Down ... 5. Media Chasing Their Own Tales and Tails ... 6. Superman Omar and Tall Stories ... 7. King of Diamonds ... 8. Two Down ... 9. Cold, Killer Sweetheart

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The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

more about The Plot to Save Socrates...





Read the first chapter of The Plot to Save Socrates .... FREE!

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The Wire's Back! Sneak Preview Review of Season 5, Episode 1 (no real spoilers)

Whoah! What a New Year's treat. I just saw the first episode of the new, final Season 5 of The Wire on HBO's On Demand!

And I loved it!

Here are some of the reasons why ...

It's great to hear Steve Earle's rendition of "Down in the Hole". Clear and smooth as a whistle. You can hear it here, if you don't believe me ... And here are more of my thoughts about the now-five versions of this great title song...

And the storyline this season looks fine, too. This television season - 2007-2008 - may be remembered as one of the great years for newspapers on television. Journeyman featured a time traveler working out of a newspaper in San Francisco (and I sure hope it continues), and The Wire's finale season will look at the workings of a newspaper in Baltimore.

Meldrick from Homicide: Life on the Street - aka Clark Johnson - looks to be playing the main newspaper part, and that's good news. Johnson's a fine actor. And I'm in favor of all possible, deepening connections between Homicide and The Wire, two now-classic Baltimore cop and crime shows. (My favorite, until now, was Callie Thorne (Laura Ballard on Homicide -> Elena McNulty on The Wire). Hey, McNulty, you were crazy to let that fall apart, and I still hope the two of you get together somehow at the end of this season...

And speaking of McNulty - Dominic West is better than ever in that role, and gives The Wire something else in common with Journeyman: both have Brits playing Americans. West is incredible in his American accent - you can't hear a trace of his UK. (Kevin McKidd as Dan Vassar on Journeyman is almost as good...)

Lots of other good stuff in the season premier. Michael (Tristan Wilds) has really grown into his role. He's on his way to becoming a leader - with all the good and bad that that entails - including looking out for Dukie (Jermain Crawford). Herc (Domenick Lombardozzi) is working for the drug-lawyer Levy (Michael Kostroff). And Marlo's power - starting with the ice-cool Marlo (Jamie Hector) himself, and his deadly-duo muscle Snoop (Felicia Pearson) and Chris (Gbenga Akinnagbe) - is looking more chilling than ever...

But, hey, I promised not to give too much away ...

So, suffice to say, don't miss this premier next week. Or, if you have HBO On-Demand, don't miss it right now ...

"When you walk through the garden...."



4-minute podcast of this Wire review

See also Looking Back At The Wire and Episode 3: McNulty and Marlo ... 4. One Down ... 5. Media Chasing Their Own Tales and Tails ... 6. Superman Omar and Tall Stories ... 7. King of Diamonds ... 8. Two Down ... 9. Cold, Killer Sweetheart ... 10. The Wire Bows out Gracefully

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The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

more about The Plot to Save Socrates...





Read the first chapter of The Plot to Save Socrates .... FREE!