I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: AMINÉ-Tiny Desk Concert #671 (November 14, 2017).

Aminé–is rapper Adam Daniel’s middle name.  And while I like his light manner and fun hair, musically, nearly everything else about this Tiny Desk is cheesy to me.  From the cheesy guitar (by Pasqué) that opens up “Spice Girl” to the “clever” lyrics all about the spice girls

Scary and Sporty, tell her what I want
What I really, really want is a Spice Girl
Zig-a-zig-ah, fuck up my whole world .

It segues into his debut single “Caroline” which peaked at No. 11 on Billboard’s Hot 100 last year.  It is so full of curses I can’t believe it made it that high.

Don’t wanna talk it out, can we fuck it out?
‘Cause we gon’ be up all night, fuck a decaf
You say I’m a tall thug, guess I’m a G-raffe
If ya want safe-sex, baby use the knee pads
Freaky with the sticky-icky, baby give me kitty kitty

There’s also the backing vocalist Fahrelle Devine who mostly says single words (that weird R&B thing) until she harmonizes quite nicely.

Despite his rather crass songs, he’s an entertaining guy: “I was trying to go to the white house you can’t go up to the gate anymore. That’s really bad.  What’s up with that y’all? Ain’t got an answer, cool.  Lets go on to the next song.  “Slide” has more cheesy keys from Davon Jamison and Madison Stewart (who is male, I’m sorry to say) and cheesy b vocals.  I guess the lyrics are funny, but they seem really tone deaf.  “This ain’t a booty call it’s just a late night snack.”

His delivery and voice are really nice, I wish that he would sing about more substantial stuff.

Having said that, he introduces the final song “Wedding Crashers” with “You ever been a to a wedding before?  Can we go to one real quick?”  The song begins with almost childlike keyboard sounds.  And while the verses go too far, the chorus makes me smile

This is dedicated to my ex lovers
Hope that you hear this, never find another
Me and my friends, we don’t worry or pretend
Hope you play this at your wedding
Yeah, the one I won’t attend (Sike)

I did enjoy watching drummer Cory Limuaco because for such simple drumming, he uses all kinds of mallets and sticks and sides of sticks, which is always fun to see.

[READ: April 25, 2017] Chekhov’s First Play

This play was created by Dead Centre.  Dead Centre was formed in 2012 in Dublin by Ben Kidd, Bush Moukarzel and Adam Welsh.

The play is based on the fact that Anton Chekov wrote his first play at 19 and then more or less denounced it: “there are two scenes in my first play which are the work of genius, if you like.  But on the whole, it’s an unforgivable, if inconsistent, fraud.”  The intro notes: to this day it is unclear which two scenes Chekhov was talking about.

The play was discovered after he died.  It had no title, but is probably a play he referred to in is letters called Fatherlessness, although most renderings of the play have named it after the central character–a philandering charismatic schoolteacher named Platonov.  It first appeared after his death as “That Worthless Fellow Platonov.”  Although almost all scholars believe that the piece is a conversation piece rather than a viable addition to the repertory.

Here’s a little bit of interesting history of the play from Wikipedia:

Chekhov’s own text, which despite a running time of about five hours, he never thought of as finished, is seldom played. However, in 1997 the director Lev Dodin and the Maly Theatre of St Petersburg presented a faithful, and once again untitled, version at the annual Weimar summer arts festival. Dodin cut nine characters (and their interlocking sub-plots) but replaced them with a nine-piece jazz band.  The running time was four hours.

Good grief.  Well, this production is considerably shorter.

To the best of my knowledge it conatins the same core characters:

Anna Petrovna Voinitseva; Sergey Pavlovich Voinitsev, Sofya Yegorovna, Porfiry Semyonovich Glagolyev, Nikolay Ivanovich Glagolyev, Nikolay Ivanovich Triletsky and Aleksandra Ivanovna (Sasha).  This play also adds the character of The Director.

The play begins in an unusual way: every audience member is given headphones to wear.  The the director addresses the audience and says that the previous version they did of this play was kind of confusing so for this version the audience will hear the play in one ear and the director’s commentary in the other.

The director tells us that the play isn’t very good but it is ambitious.  And then he shows the audience his gun and speaks of “Chekhov’s gun” and wonders if we are familiar with the concept.

The play begins on a country home in Russia 1878.  Anna is seated at the table and the director sets up the story for us.  But the director also seems to be…unsure of himself or of us because he tells us not to be put off if the actors don’t look at us, that’s just them staying in character.

The characters begin smoking and the director chimes in that they didn’t know about the dangers of smoking back then. And then corrects the doctor when he says that the best cure for tuberculosis is rest.  The director tells us that it is a specific regimen of drugs that is the real cure.

Then the director starts getting personal–he says that Chekhov had a hard time getting actresses for the play.  And that he, the director, did as well.  Later he says that the Russian names can get confusing.  When a new character comes on he says “That’s Dylan–sorry Voinitsev.”

The play proceeds almost despite itself as the Director criticizes the performance while it is happening–he played that too big, he missed his mark.  He tells us that the actors skipped about three pages of dialogue.  And then he even talks over one lengthy monologue.

Ultimately the director’s voice more or less takes over the play as he grieves about this production and his life in general, about how things really don’t seem to work out the way we want them to.

As the first act comes to an end, the Director comments “Chekhov once said that, ‘If in the first act you put a gun on stage, then in the last act it must be fired…. Otherwise don’t put it there.’  But if you fire it in the first act… you’re fucked.”  It’s followed by sounds of gunshots and the appearance of a wrecking ball that demolishes the set.

Woah.

As the second act opens an audience member rises and moves to the stage (I can’t tell if this audience member knew about this ahead of time or not).  This audience member is Platanov, the man that the characters have been talking about all during the first act (I haven’t really mentioned the plot of the play much, but primarily they are all waiting for Platanov to show up to their party.

When the characters return to the stage they are all different and they are speaking what is clearly not Chekhov.  The party is under way and we hear someone say that someone has been doing voice overs for organic products, and someone else offers sweet and sour pork for dinner.

All of the characters are interacting with Platonov and the audience hears this as if there were Platonov themselves.  And in an even weirder twist, all of the dialogue is now pre-recorded with the actors lip-syncing.

They speak of the great cities and how even the best are shite because at whatever party you are at you know that somewhere, some celebrity ( a staggering list of 50 or so celebrities is rattled off) are partying better upstairs.

Tuberculosis is mentioned and then cancer and how there’s always something trying to kill us and maybe in 100 years there will be a cure but for now we just wait.

The play ends with people renouncing everything while the cast sings “People Ain’t No Good” while they all play Russian Roulette.  There is a reckoning of personhood.

I don’t know much about the original play but I’m quite certain it was nothing like this one.  As with a lot of these contemporary plays (published by Oberon) there’s a lot that I enjoyed and then portions that seem tacked on and egregious (that list of celebrities) or just weird for the sake of weirdness.  But I’ll bet seeing it live is a hoot.

For ease of searching, I include: Amine.