SOUNDTRACK: AUDIOSLAVE-Audioslave (2002).
Despite the pedigree of this band: Rage Against the Machine + Chris Cornell, I wasn’t all that interested in the band when they came out. I was over Rage and was bored by Cornell’s solo stuff. But then recently, someone donated a copy of this album to th elibrary, so I thought I’d see what all of the fuss was about (nine years ago).
There are times when this album is really superb. The Rage guys get an amazingly full sound out of their instruments (the choruses of “Show Me How to Live” are so full). And when it works, and Cornell’s amazing voice is in full force, this seems like a genius pairing.
But there’s a lot that feels kind of clunky here (and there’s some really bad choices of guitar solo work by Tom Morello–the weird noises that compriose he solo of “What You Are”–in Rage the noises were weird but exciting and inflammatory, these are just kind of dull. Worse yet, is the, well, stupid solo in “Like a Stone”–boring and ponderous at the same time). Although he redeems himself somewhat with the cool solo on the otherwise dull “Intuition”.
The biggest surpise comes in “Like a Stone” which is insanely catchy and mellow–something one assumed Rage didn’t know how to do). Lyrically the song is pretty stupid (as are most of the songs), but the combination of melody and Cornell’s great vocal lines really raise this song high–shame about the solo). Also, a song like “Shadow of the Sun” seems to highlight Cornell’s more mellow moments (and shows that the Rage guys can actually play that slow), and they all seem to be in synch.
And there are several songs that rock really hard, sounding at times like Rage and at time like Soundgarden, but working on all cylinders together. “Cochise” and “Set It Off” are simply great riff rock songs.
But ten or so years later, and twenty years since Badmotorfinger (my favorite Soundgarden album), it’s nice to hear Cornell rocking again. Although man, the record is too long!
[READ: June 1, 2011] Five Dials Number 8
For Issue Number 8, Five Dials went to Paris. And so the whole issue is given over to French concerns and ideas. For a magazine that didn’t need a change of pace, it’s a delightful change of pace. The feel of the magazine is different, and there’s an air of vacation about it (which is not to suggest that it is slacking off in any way), and it feels really vibrant.
I don’t know a lot about France in general. I mean, I’ve been there, and I keep up with things, but I am not a Francophile by any means. So a lot of this stuff was simply new to me, which is always fun. What I especially liked about the issue was that they were not afraid to show some of France’s uglier sides as well–it’s not just a tourism booster.
It even starts out differently than the other issues.
ALI SMITH-An Introduction: Phantoms Over Paris
The issue opens, not with a letter from Craig Taylor, but with one from Ali Smith. Smith reminisces about Paris, both from pictures and from fiction and then revisits the time that she spent there. It is a rambling sort of story, with snippets of ideas that really convey the excitement of Paris.
ELLEN HINSEY-From the Encyclopedia of Exile: Arabesques
This is another view of Paris. And although it opens with some engaging scenes, it quickly shifts perspective to view some folks who are down and out. Specifically, it talks about immigrants, both those who have made it to Paris and those who have been turned away.
SUSAN SONTAG-Appraisal: Ideal Husband of Ideal Lover?
Sontag appraises Albert Camus as to whether (as a writer) he is an ideal husband or lover. She claims that Camus is the ideal husband because he writes “with such an air of reasonableness.” He also causes pure affection from his readers.
ALBERT CAMUS-Travel Advice: Paris as Desert
I don’t know that this confirms anything that Sontag wrote about him (it’s only half a page, so who can tell), but this brief piece discusses the power of Paris, specifically “being able to live alone in a cheap room in Paris.”
CRAIG TAYLOR-An Interruption from the Editors: On Paris and Our Paris Issue
I enjoyed that Taylor “interrupted” the issue with his essay, signalling that it is a different issue, but it is still under the control of the people we have come to know and respect. He reminisces about his own first trip to Paris and then talks of others’ trips there. The final one, about the woman with the Eiffel Tower tattoo is charming and sweet (and I’m not one for tattoos).
MARK OVENDEN-Chic Beneath the Street
This is an essay that posits 12 details you should know about le Métro. The details are fascinating (I won’t repeat them all here), and they provide an insight into the subway with the second most stations in the world (after NYC). I was fascinated by the whole article.
JOHN UPDIKE-An Appreciation: Chanel No. 1
I didn’t know much about Coco Chanel, but I feel like I do now. It’s funny that most of this biography comes from another source, but this is a wonderful mini bio (warts and all), including two possibilities of where the name “Coco” came from. It really portrays Chanel as a fascinating woman, and someone who I’d like to know a little more about.
TRUMAN CAPOTE: An Appreciation: Chanel No. 2
Capote’s mini bio is even more of a mini bio (less than half a page). It is actually designed as a caption for Richard Avedon’s photos of Coco Chanel. Sadly the photos aren’t included here, but I see that the essay (and the photos) are in the book Observations (and the whole page has been scanned here). The text is charming and clever, as you might expect from capote.
GEOFF DYER-Our Scattered Authors: Fabulous Clothes
Dyer, presumably a man’s man, admits that he knows nothing about couture (he asks why Christian Dior does not come out at the end of his show…becuase he died in 1957) . Nevetheless he was sent by Vogue to cover a couture runway show. By the end, after seeing several, and getting behind the scenes for one, he has come to appreciate the show, not as a practical assessment of garments, but as a kind of ritual. He compares clothiers to ancient shamen, and the comparison actually works. It’s a neat trick.
STEVE TOLTZ-Fiction: L’Asticot
L’Asticot means maggot. This story is about a novel that the narrator has written. The narrator explains that when he was in a literature class, rather than answering the final exam, he submitted two chapters of his unfinished novel, L’Asticot. The teacher never reveals his opinion of the novel, but the narrator tells us a lot about the contents (paraphrasing rather than quoting the book).
His main character is named Z and the story is full of complex meta-fiction and postmodern conceits. I particularly enjoyed this passage
Three pages of street names later (I read somewhere that contemporary authors achieve realism by copying the street directory), Z finds himself at the Louvre where he is accosted by a group on a Da Vinci Code tour.
After writing this sentence, he realizes that the book is not an homage to French existentialism but to cheap mass market thrillers.
The narrator runs into his teacher twice. Once at the grocery store (where the y are both shoplifting), and once a year later at a prison.
The story is funny and very weird. And I enjoyed it despite how willfully difficult it tried to be.
LAUREN ELKIN-OUR SCATTERED AUTHORS 2: République des Lettres
This is a fascinating article about bookstores in France. For a country that doesn’t read much (1 in 4 say they haven’t read a book this year) there are almost 800 bookstores. A little investigating shows that the French are very proud of their literary traditions and as such tend to exempt independent bookstores from a lot of fees. Indeed, if you meet certain criteria, you will be given a lot of state money (The French spend 1.5% of gross interior product on cultural activities as opposed to 0.3% in the US). As a book lover, I found this article really interesting.
JOE DUNTHORNE-Introducing a Poem: This is Crispin
Dunthorne introduces his Oulipo-inspired poem with a brief explanation of Oulipo: what it is and how to get into it. I rather enjoyed that he worked very hard to created this poem with I as the only vowel, and when he was done, the Oulipian’s to a man all asked how come he also used the letter Y (for it is a vowel, too).
The poem, “This is Crispin” is presented in all of its vowel-less-ness. For a poem that is following a very strict convention, it’s very readable, and quite enjoyable.
HUGO VICKERS-Portraiture: Un Homme Fatal
This is a lengthy portrait of Alexis de Redé. And indeed, he did have a fascinating life. Trouble is I’d never heard of him before, and this was a bit longer than I cared to read.
SYBILLE BEDFORD-Archive: Leaving Paris, 1950
This is a funny little story about leaving Paris for Italy in a car. They had precious little time to make their trip, so they ate in the car (unheard of!) and wound up trying to find a new tire on a Sunday in the middle of nowhere. For a story with no consequence to really much of anyone, this was a really engaging tale.
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAUL DAVIS has 7 pages of illustrations. He apparently put some text through several different translators and then wrote out the results. He also adds a drawing of each speaker’s head (Queen Elizabeth, Marie Antoinette, etc).
LEANNE SHAPTON has 7 pages of illustrations and hers look so very French to me–perhaps they feel like the work of Toulouse-Lautrec?) Interestingly, they also have text, but these are more descriptive. They depict a number of scenes of ordinary life (and they are very good).
Other illustrators include JOANNA WALSH & TOR FREEMAN. I’m not sure who drew what.
There are beautiful grayscale drawings of buildings which are compact but very neat and which offer a lot of details. And there are a number of watercolor-appearing pictures with large text and nothing else on them. The text is in French, so I can’t really speak to what they say.
This is another great Five Dials issue, and from what I can see, the first in many to travel to a new location.
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The publication date was cemented by reading this news item from the Five Dials’ news feed. Read the whole thing to get a sense of the release party.
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