[Landline] Easter Everywhere
Winking beans, Spring King Al Green, Liz Fraser and Steve Hackett, Adam Egypt Mortimer on RRR, Talk Talk, the greatest video ever made, more
“LANDLINE”
No. 0034
Wednesday, April 13, 2022
Greetings friends,
1. APRILSONG VIDEO PARADE
Spring is in the air, pollen is in our sinuses and the neighborhood cats are getting frisky. Life—it’s irresistible!
A classic Aprilsong from Talk Talk, in their gorgeous, minimalist/all-colors “experimental Traffic” mode, just… lingering there, on the cusp of it all…
…and I was thinking of this fresh one from Sun’s Signature—the new project from Cocteau Twins’ Liz Fraser and her partner Damon Reece—which features absolute legend/original Genesis guitarist Steve Hackett in extremely fine fettle…
…and the tremendous new Beach House album, especially this ecstatic choral hymn to Spring’s night bloomers…
…and this almost-secret late XTC song, a 23-out-of-10 perfect orchestral pagan pop ode to the season’s varied proceedings. Behold the burst into the chorus! Full morning glory.
And finally, of course: Spring King Al Green — GREEN! come on! it’s right there in his name! — was born on this 13th of April. Witness this peak of 20th-century human culture, keep an eye on those let’s-get-together eyebrow moves…
2. GROW THE RIGHT THING
So what are you planting in the yard—on your balcony, in your kitchen window, on the roof, in the abandoned lot, on the median, whatever—right now? Here’s a simple suggestion from our biophiliac friends at Tucson’s frankly heroic Spadefoot Nursery1…
3. WINKING BEANS!
The best horticulture literature published recently, that I know of, is Brian Blomerth’s work in Smoke Signals No. 32, published FOR FREE in glorious 11x14 full-color newsprint almost two years ago by the great Desert Island Comics out of Brooklyn. Is it still gettable? I have no idea! You may need to know somebody who knows a guy. In any event, here’s a relevant page—just one out of 40!—for you bean freaks…
4. REMEMBER DAVID GRUNDMAN, FELLED BY THE SACRED SUCCULENT HE SHOT
From a piece by Boyce Upholt in the latest issue of Emergence Magazine…
In 1982, a man named David Grundman shot a twenty-seven-foot-tall saguaro cactus. His reason remains unarticulated in the Arizona Republic article that recounts the crime, but we know that Grundman managed to get off two blasts from his sixteen-gauge shotgun before the cactus enacted its revenge: twenty-three feet of its central column—thousands of pounds of cactus flesh—fell atop his body. According to witnesses, he had only gotten halfway through the word “timber!” Grundman was dead before authorities arrived on the scene, though he lives on now as the subject of a sardonic country ballad: “Saguaro / A menace to the west,” as the chorus goes…
5. AND NOW, VENTURE WITH US TO ADAM EGYPT MORTIMER’S FILM CORNER
Old friend and filmmaker Adam Egypt Mortimer tweeted recently about what happened when he saw Indian director S. S. Rajamouli’s sensational new film, RRR. I asked Adam to expand a bit for Landline readers…
Adam Mortimer: I don’t know how best to tell you about RRR except to say it’s like the finest of John Woo — the incredible reimagining of how huge and insane action can be, the peculiar intensity of emotion between two men — but Woo never depicted friendship blossoming through an UNREAL musical number slash dance competition. I also can’t recall him doing a slow motion sequence where a dozen tigers burst out of a flaming carriage into a carnage-filled battlefield, weaponized to destroy British colonialists. Here are some of the things that happen in this movie BEFORE the main title comes on: one of the heroes fights 100 people all at once with a baton while still keeping a hand on the one man he’s trying to arrest; a tiger fights a wolf, then a man; the two men perform a rescue by tying together a horse and a motorcycle then riding off each side of a bridge over a flaming river. All of these events are filmed with a cinematic precision that’s perfectly clear, entirely mythic, and yet intimate enough to always feel the extreme emotions of the characters in the moment. Before heading in to the 3 hour and 8 minute movie I thought to myself « I guess I’ll go pee during the dialogue parts, I’m just here for the action » but in fact every scene — whether it was action, drama, romance, intrigue, tragedy — every single scene was truly gripping, every scene idea was at 11. Really, the flame tigers were the most intense action I’ve seen in years but ALSO a shot of our hero Bheem emerging from the water with a spear in slow motion was the most ICONIC and emotionally uplifting pre-action moment I’ve seen in years. What’s crazy about this next-level cinematic action movie is that I actually cried two or three times because I so completely bought into the emotional lives and stakes of these heroes, a feeling I have never had (but still hope to!) in an Avengers movie. That it’s a hyper-mythologizing of two real life revolutionaries, and the whole story is about rising up against the ACTUAL REAL LIFE empire uplifts the movie until the highest levels of epic.
Landline: Wait, there’s no intermission?!?
Adam Mortimer: In the US screening you can see the frame where it says “intermission” but then it just goes straight to the next reel. For some reason mainstream theaters don’t do intermissions, even though it would drive up concession sales! I saw this at AMC Citywalk. Maybe if it ever plays art houses they’d do the intermission like they do with 2001 or Lawrence of Arabia (I’ve experienced both of those at the Egyptian) but not in mainstream theaters, which, amazingly, is where RRR is playing now…
6. TWEETS OF THE WEEK
7. CORRECTIONS/ADDENDUM
Somehow I neglected to mention in last week’s Landline item about Mati Klarwein’s “Exterminating Angel” painting the very salient fact that the angel in question was based by Klarwein on well-known pin-up photos from Brigitte Bardot from her “Harley Davidson” song era. Sorry to leave out that crucial point and thus render the Klarwein text about the painting even more obscure! On the other hand, maybe it’s what Bardot, who has become a horrible racist in her later years, deserves. Ah well.
On a much brighter note, desert rock band Etran de L’Air, who were spotlit in last week’s Landline, have released a raucous 37-minute live outdoors performance in Agadez on the youtube. The drummer is what, eleven years old? Good times. Enjoy:
8. GRATITUDE
Welcome to all of the new subscribers, and thank you very much indeed to everyone who’s become a paying subscriber in the last week. With your help, Landline is on its way to being self-sustaining, and remaining completely independent. Please, folks, folks, make your subscription a paying one ($5/month, $40/year) via this handy button…
…or if it makes more sense, never mind all of that subscription commitment and just leave a tip of any amount in this handy PayPal TipJar. Thank you kindly!
More soon, stay sweet,
Jay Babcock
Tucson, Arizona
For more on what Spadefoot is up to, see David Fenster’s six-minute 2021 film for Arizona Illustrated: