Brian Wilson at his piano (?)

Two tunes, “God Only Knows” and “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” have now been released from the forthcoming Brian Wilson album At My Piano. I have five thoughts:

~ The performances aren’t especially interesting. They remind me — much too much — of the wallpapery piano music I hear in our nearby antiques mall. Pleasant, but I wouldn’t want to pay to listen.

~ The piano sounds odd, as if it’s been run through a filter and an echo chamber.

~ Given Brian’s typical approach to the piano — pounding chords — I find it almost impossible to imagine that these performances are of his creation. And given recent evidence of his pianism (for example), I find it almost impossible to imagine that these performances are of his creation. Again, it’s not that the playing is especially interesting: it just doesn’t sound to me like what Brian Wilson might be doing at a piano.

~ And these performances at times are what no one person could be doing at a piano. Listen for yourself: there is sometimes a third hand.

~ The Brian Wilson website has nothing in the way of video to go with this recording, an omission that seems telling. I would love to see Brian playing what I’m hearing and feel foolish for having been skeptical. But for now I will stick with my suspicion that these performances have been engineered and assembled. I think there’s more and less here than meets the ear — more than Brian Wilson at his piano and less than Brian Wilson at his piano.

Related reading
All OCA Brian Wilson posts (Pinboard)

[There are some poets and musicians I have to call by their first names. Ted Berrigan is one. Brian Wilson is another.]

EXchange names in directories

The telephone directory, informally known as the ’phone book, allows the user to look up the name of a person or business and find their number. Ah — there’s Mr. Passmore’s number.


But the telephone company’s directory allows the user to look up a number and find the name of a person or business. Ah — there’s Mr. Craig’s name.

[From Craig’s Wife (dir. Dorothy Arzner, 1936). Click either image for a larger view.]

Someday I’m sure I’ll tire of seeing exchange names on screen. But not yet.

And, yes, ’phone is slang, or was.

More EXchange names on screen
Act of Violence : The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse : Armored Car Robbery : Baby Face : Blast of Silence : The Blue Dahlia : Blue Gardenia : Boardwalk Empire : Born Yesterday : The Brasher Doubloon : The Brothers Rico : The Case Against Brooklyn : Chinatown : Danger Zone : The Dark Corner : Dark Passage : Deception : Deux hommes dans Manhattan : Dick Tracy’s Deception : Down Three Dark Streets : Dream House : East Side, West Side : Escape in the Fog : Fallen Angel : Framed : The Little Giant : Loophole : The Man Who Cheated Himself : Modern Marvels : Murder by Contract : Murder, My Sweet : My Week with Marilyn : Naked City (1) : Naked City (2) : Naked City (3) : Naked City (4) : Naked City (5) : Naked City (6) : Naked City (7) : Naked City (8) : Naked City (9) : Nightfall : Nightmare Alley : Out of the Past : Perry Mason : Pitfall : The Public Enemy : Railroaded! : Red Light : Side Street : The Slender Thread : Stage Fright : Sweet Smell of Success (1) : Sweet Smell of Success (2) : Tension : This Gun for Hire : The Unfaithful : Vice Squad : Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

The quickening art

Anyone who doubts that music is “the quickening art,” as Oliver Sacks, borrowing from Kant, put it, would do well to watch last night’s 60 Minutes story about Tony Bennett, “The Final Act.” You’ll need to disable your adblocker to watch.

Related posts
“I have to sing” : On practicing : “Sweet Lorraine” : Tony Bennett’s pencil : “We’re all here”

ILGWU Co-operative Village

[From The Garment Jungle (dir. Vincent Sherman, 1957). Click for a larger view.]

ILGWU: the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. This sign stays on the screen long enough for the viewer to get the point: “where once the slums and sweat shops flourished.” Yes, the ILGWU created housing for its members.

I remember the song “Look for the Union Label” in television commercials from childhood. I remember it — perhaps accurately, perhaps not — as being sung by women. (There were several versions.) It was only when watching The Garment Jungle that I understood that though ILGWU membership was largely female, the members made ladies’ garments.

Also from The Garment Jungle
Park Avenue and E. 102nd Street

Park Avenue and E. 102nd Street

The ding of recognition dinged when we were watching The Garment Jungle (dir. Vincent Sherman, 1957). The wall, the underpass — that had to be Park Avenue. Train tracks run above. We walked through an underpass several years ago with our friends Luanne and Jim, on our way to and from the Museum of the City of New York. Here, look, then and now (the now courtesy of Google Maps):

[Click any image for a larger view.]

[The underpass for vehicles is flanked by two smaller ones for pedestrians.]

[Now with air conditioners and fire escapes.]

The underpass (one of eight) is at 102nd Street. The traffic pattern has changed since 1957. But if you look at the doorways and windows and the Carver Houses in the distance, you can see that it’s the same street. Bonus: the 1957 scene gives us the stuff of the city: stickball, an ice-cream man, a horse-drawn cart (notice the bells), people sitting on the stoop or looking out windows at a movie being made.

The Garment Jungle is a terrific movie, now streaming at the Criterion Channel.

10031 4th Avenue

[Fort Hamilton Beer Garden and Restaurant, Brooklyn, c. 1939–1941. Photograph from the New York City Municipal Archives.]

It’s worth clicking for the larger view.

This address at 4th Avenue and 101st Street later became the home of the Hamilton House, a venerable (now gone) Brooklyn restaurant. The 10031 address now belongs to an apartment building.

A related post
Green beans and the Hamilton House

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper, by Stan Newman, is a good one, more difficult than last week’s but still in the realm of Yes I Can. That, by the way, is the title of Sammy Davis Jr.’s autobiography. My dad had the paperback when I was a kid, with the title in big yellow capital letters on the cover. And remember when the edges of paperback pages were stained red or yellow? When did that practice end?

But I digress.

I especially liked the design of this puzzle’s center, with three eleven-letter answers descending a staircase. My only region of difficulty: the southwest corner, where 45-A, five letters, “Old-time nickname for Elizabeth” and 43-D, five letters, “Legalese, for instance” got me into difficulty. For 43-D I tried two wrong answers before hitting on the correct one.

Some clue-and-answer pairs I especially liked:

10-D, nine letters, “Script step.” Because I knew it.

15-A, nine letters, “Some dough, but not much.” What kind of dough?

31-D, nine letters, “Arrived with a bang.” Or several.

33-A, eleven letters, “Type of wooden siding.” The noun helped me better understand a verb.

34-D, eight letters, “Psych out.” Psych instantly puts me back in high school, when one was psyched up or out or just plain psyched, with up implied.

44-A, three letters, “Shake, rattle and roll.” I once sat next to Big Joe Turner at the bar in Tramps, where he was relaxing before doing a set. I

a. wanted to give him his privacy, or

b. was too shy to say hello.

Your choice. Either way, this clue adds value to the answer.

45-A, five letters, “Old-time nickname for Elizabeth.” My first guess was off by a letter.

48-D, four letters, “My Way autobiographer.” Aah, so this must be why I started thinking about Yes I Can.

56-A, five letters, “Word from the Greek for ‘apple.’” I feel I should know this.

57-A, nine letters, “Talk host whose full first name ends in ‘let.’” Fun trivia, though it’s not trivial to the name’s owner.

One clue-and-answer I’d quibble with a little: 28-D, five letters, “Odyssey king.” Well, yes, he’s in there, but I think the clue is more than a little arcane.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

A related post
Which Joe Turner? (Getting The New York Times to make a correction)

Pocket notebook sighting

[The Case of the Howling Dog (dir. Alan Crosland, 1934). Click for a larger view.]

One of Perry Mason’s countless operatives has been watching a certain address. When a taxi picks up a hastily departing visitor, he trusts his pocket notebook to preserve the details, and the notebook fills the screen.

More notebook sightings
All the King’s Men : Angels with Dirty Faces : The Bad and the Beautiful : Ball of Fire : The Big Clock : Bombshell : The Brasher Doubloon : Cat People : Caught : City Girl : Crossing Delancey : Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne : Dead End : Deep Valley : The Devil and Miss Jones : Dragnet : Extras : Eyes in the Night : The Face Behind the Mask : Foreign Correspondent : Fury : Homicide : The Honeymooners : The House on 92nd Street : I See a Dark Stranger : Journal d’un curé de campagne : Kid Glove Killer : The Last Laugh : Le Million : The Lodger : Ministry of Fear : Mr. Holmes : Murder at the Vanities : Murder by Contract : Murder, Inc. : The Mystery of the Wax Museum : Naked City : The Naked Edge : Now, Voyager : The Palm Beach Story : Perry Mason : Pickpocket : Pickup on South Street : Pushover : Quai des Orfèvres : The Racket : Railroaded! : Red-Headed Woman : Rififi : La roue : Route 66 : The Scarlet Claw : Sleeping Car to Trieste : The Small Back Room : The Sopranos : Spellbound : Stage Fright : State Fair : A Stranger in Town : Stranger Things : Sweet Smell of Success : Time Table : T-Men : To the Ends of the Earth : 20th Century Women : Union Station : Vice Squad : Walk East on Beacon! : Where the Sidewalk Ends : The Woman in the Window : You Only Live Once

Pocket notebook sighting

[Deep Valley (dir. Jean Negulesco, 1947). Click for a larger view.]

A guard is about to lick his pencil before writing up convict Barry Burnette (Dane Clark). Which raises the question: Why did, or do, people lick their pencils before writing? The practice goes back a ways. I think I’ve seen it happen only in the movies. Certainly pencil-lickers weren’t, or aren’t, all using indelible pencils. The plausible answer, from MIT: the wet lead makes a darker line.

More notebook sightings
All the King’s Men : Angels with Dirty Faces : The Bad and the Beautiful : Ball of Fire : The Big Clock : Bombshell : The Brasher Doubloon : Cat People : Caught : City Girl : Crossing Delancey : Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne : Dead End : The Devil and Miss Jones : Dragnet : Extras : Eyes in the Night : The Face Behind the Mask : Foreign Correspondent : Fury : Homicide : The Honeymooners : The House on 92nd Street : I See a Dark Stranger : Journal d’un curé de campagne : Kid Glove Killer : The Last Laugh : Le Million : The Lodger : Ministry of Fear : Mr. Holmes : Murder at the Vanities : Murder by Contract : Murder, Inc. : The Mystery of the Wax Museum : Naked City : The Naked Edge : Now, Voyager : The Palm Beach Story : Perry Mason : Pickpocket : Pickup on South Street : Pushover : Quai des Orfèvres : The Racket : Railroaded! : Red-Headed Woman : Rififi : La roue : Route 66 : The Scarlet Claw : Sleeping Car to Trieste : The Small Back Room : The Sopranos : Spellbound : Stage Fright : State Fair : A Stranger in Town : Stranger Things : Sweet Smell of Success : Time Table : T-Men : To the Ends of the Earth : 20th Century Women : Union Station : Vice Squad : Walk East on Beacon! : Where the Sidewalk Ends : The Woman in the Window : You Only Live Once

Artist’s conception

[Or “artist’s” conception. Drawing by me.]

A related post
Block that metaphor