Culture

The banjo was present at the creation of jazz but, like the clarinet and the fiddle, it fell from favor, and for similar reasons. The saxophone and the electric guitar were easier to play, more expressive and much, much louder. The banjo was on the way out even as it was on the way in — in the Hot Five recordings of December 1927 that instituted the jazz solo as we know it, Johnny St Cyr played both banjo and guitar — but the banjo had somewhere else to go. The fleet-fingered took their four-and fivestringers to the hills — the Appalachians, for instance. There, the banjo thrived with those other refugees from early jazz, the fiddle and the steel-strung guitar. Metropolitan contempt caught up with it in the Seventies.

A few days ago, with somewhat bittersweet timing, Marvel Entertainment made an exciting announcement. This was at a time when low information people — up to and including the president — were realizing that, uhh, hey Chuck, this virus thingy might be quite a big deal. Might be a good time to stock up on rice and beans, you know? Back to Marvel’s announcement. They were creating a new generation of heroes for a grateful populace! Their names you ask? Well, there was Screentime, a ‘meme-obsessed super teen’ who has the ability to use Google without a WiFi connection. There was Snowflake (they/them) and Safespace; the former throws psychic snowflake shurikens at people who read Breitbart and the latter generates a pink force shield around them as they do so.

Linda Fairstein, the former head of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Sex Crimes Unit, is suing Netflix for defamation over the streaming platform’s series When They See Us, a dramatized retelling of the ‘Central Park Five’ rape case. Fairstein’s suit alleges that the series contains numerous inaccuracies and fictionalized events that were ‘deliberately calculated to create one, clear and unmistakable villain to be targeted for hatred and vilification for what happened to The Five’. Director Ava DuVernay and co-writer Attica Locke are also named defendants in the lawsuit.

Don’t be put off by the slow first episode, which makes you fear it’s just going to be another of those so-so emo magical-fantasy adolescent dramas in which Netflix abounds: Locke & Key is superior, addictive and bingeworthy stuff in the league of, or possibly even better than, Stranger Things. It begins with an achingly clichéd scenario — family driving across America to seek new life in exotic location, kids bickering in the back, awkward high-school experiences awaiting them, etc. — and the familiarity never lets up.

This article is in The Spectator’s March 2020 US edition. Subscribe here.The topics in The Necessity of Sculpture emerged randomly, thrown off by successive exhibition calendars and coming to range in time and place from ancient Mesopotamia to 21st-century Manhattan. As I made the selections, what began to take shape, beyond a conventional anthology, was a synoptic history of the art form. The title is a belated riposte to Ad Reinhardt’s famous dismissal, in around 1960, of sculpture as ‘something you bump into when you back up to look at a painting’.

Artie Lange has disappeared. His gigs are canceled. His podcast is on hiatus. His social media is hardly being updated. The legendary comedian is apparently ‘sick’ but fans suspect that something else might be going on. You needn’t be Sherlock Holmes to be suspicious about his absence. Lange has been flitting in and out of rehab for the past 25 years.God knows I hope that Lange is sick. The comedian has emerged out of the depths of an addiction so dramatic that his nose imploded like an overripe tomato after years of snorting cocaine and heroin. (According to Lange, the obliteration of his beak was the result of snorting drugs mixed with broken glass.

‘My current pianist, McCoy Tyner, holds down the harmonies, and that allows me to forget them,’ John Coltrane said in an interview in 1961. ‘He’s sort of the one who gives me wings and lets me take off from the ground from time to time.’ Tyner, who died on Friday at the age of 82, will be remembered for his crucial role supporting John Coltrane during some of the legendary saxophonist’s most creative years. But on the occasion of Tyner’s death it’s also worth recognizing that ‘the Real McCoy’ had a penetrating voice and lasting influence all his own.A son of west Philadelphia born in 1938, Tyner was encouraged by supportive parents and was playing piano by 13.

This article is in The Spectator’s March 2020 US edition. Subscribe here.March 2013 I have written a song called ‘Lou Reed, Lou Reed’. It’s a hymn to the man in the title — a petition, as Jim Morrison would have it, to the gods of rock ’n’ roll. The song runs for just two minutes and consists of a three-note, sub-moronic riff and a two-word mantra repeated 71 times. The two words are ‘Lou Reed’. The song isn’t a hit, but it does cut a bit of a dash. The song’s subject even hears it. I hear from someone who hears that he heard it that he likes what he heard. Then, in October 2013, the subject of my song dies. My song, a throwaway, begins a strange afterlife.

For years, Louis Farrakhan and his followers have been claiming that African Americans are divided against each other because of ‘the Jews’. And now Bernie Sanders has broken up Chuck D and Flavor Flav. Mr Flav, for those who went to older schools than the old skool, is a ‘hypeman’ for the musical entertainment group Public Enemy. In the mid-Eighties, Public Enemy caused some considerable stir among young pop-pickers with their appealing combination of stolen samples, Nation of Islam militarism and highly lucrative calls to black revolt. Mr Flav’s ebullient performances were especially entertaining, for it was his wont to wear a giant hat, outsize sunglasses, and a giant clock around his neck, while shouting signature phrases such as ‘Yeah, boyeeeee!’, ‘Flavor Flav!

This article is in The Spectator’s February 2020 US edition. Subscribe here. At the time of his death on Good Friday, 1520, Raffaello Sanzio of Urbino was the most successful artist the world had ever seen. In terms of sheer skill, expert judges like the historian Paolo Giovio rated him third among the supreme trinity of Renaissance artists — after the stiffest imaginable competition, Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. But in terms of worldly success, Raphael died as the unchallenged prince of artists. He was the favorite artist of the greatest patron in Christendom, the Medici pope Leo X. He had been commissioned to decorate the most prestigious monuments in Rome.

Founded 25 years ago, the History Channel quickly earned the nickname the ‘Hitler Channel’ for its relentless bombardment of World War Two programming. By the late-2000s, the ‘history' began to morph. With its crown jewels Pawn Stars, Ice Road Truckers and Ax Men, the channel adopted the not-very-historical slogan ‘History Made Everyday’. There were still historical programs, but they weren’t necessarily accurate, and the headliners were historically-based dramas like Vikings, Knightfall and the highly disappointing Sons of Liberty.The current lineup features Ancient Aliens, Swamp People, Project Blue Book and American Pickers.

This article is in The Spectator’s February 2020 US edition. Subscribe here. Washington, DC has a proud jazz history: the birthplace of Duke Ellington where he made his first arrangements as a highs-chooler; the home of U Street, where joints like the Crystal Caverns and the Howard Theatre hosted Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday and Count Basie. Today, jazz holds out in a few spots on U Street and in select clubs such as Blues Alley. A relative latecomer, founded in 1965 near M Street in the heart of hoity-toity Georgetown, Blues Alley touts itself as ‘the nation’s premier jazz and supper club’. Despite a menu featuring such delicacies as ‘McCoy Tyner’s Blackened Catfish’, the supper part can safely be labeled as hearty, but no more.

This article is in The Spectator’s February 2020 US edition. Subscribe here. ‘To many young people nowadays,’ H.G. Wells sighed in 1934, ‘I am just the author of The Invisible Man.’ He meant the movie, not the novel. George Bernard Shaw might have said something similar, only at greater length, had he lived to see the improvements by which Alan Jay Lerner turned Pygmalion into My Fair Lady. But would Wells recognize the latest variation on his 123-year-old character at all? This Invisible Man is not much interested in invisibility or men, or men who happen to become invisible. Elisabeth Moss is Cecilia Kass, a harassed woman trapped in an abusive relationship with a sociopathic tech bro.

First, Britney Spears was caught trying to pass off a 'Food Network' meal as her own cooking, then James Corden was caught on camera not driving the car on 'Carpool Karaoke', and now I find out ghostwriters are behind the acceptance speeches we just saw this awards season? Say it ain't so! After watching Brad Pitt’s acceptance speech at the Academy Awards last week, I commented to my wife how funny he was all awards season long and she showed me a Vulture article that suggests that Pitt doesn't write his speeches himself. The piece claims his 'representatives contacted at least one outside speechwriting agency to consult about engaging their services'.

Come friendly bombs and fall on Hollywood, it isn’t fit for doing good. Another year, another dreadful Oscars, another round of moral lectures from the beautiful people. It’s all so tiresome. The only reason most people pay attention to these irritating award ceremonies is precisely so that they can be irritated. So there was a vegan theme at this year’s Academy Awards. So the show had no host. So Brad Pitt is angry about impeachment. So someone said 'workers of the world unite'. So Joaquin Phoenix is mad (in all senses) about what mankind is doing to the animal kingdom. So Natalie Portman, in what she called ‘my subtle way’, had the names of the women directors who weren’t nominated for awards sewn into her dress. So what?

The aim of the documentary Taylor Swift: Miss Americana is about as subtle as a knee to the groin. The pop star, the film would have us think, was once constrained by her innocent and rather folksy image, but has seized control of her own destiny and become a far more political, outspoken and independent artist. As she has been doing so, of course, the viewer is meant to realize, America itself has been forced to abandon its pretensions to innocence and embrace a more radically progressive future. ‘Americana’ is less about charming rural quirks and more about self-expression and activism.Since abandoning her image as a purer than pure country warbler, Ms Swift has dabbled with styles.

This article is in The Spectator’s February 2020 US edition. Subscribe here. Was there ever a more audacious album title than Arthur, or The Decline and Fall of the British Empire? The name of the Kinks’ 1969 masterpiece could almost be described, in Sixties vernacular, as ‘far out’. But just two years after the lysergic hurricane of 1967, the content of Arthur was ‘far in’, even by the Kinks’ distinctly un-psychedelic standards. Not for them the late Sixties’ return to Americana of the Stones (Beggars Banquet), the Band (Music from Big Pink) and Dylan (John Wesley Harding).

Are we in our own revolutionary moment? Many of our leading institutions clearly believe so. Yale University has been working overtime to prove it is on the right side of history. ‘Problematic' colleges have been renamed. ‘Offensive’ stained-glass windows have been knocked out. Only the leadership of an Ivy League school could spread such a poisonous rash. Heading the charge against the Dead White Male has been a progressive Yale bureaucracy that is, for the most part, pale and stale. Now the task of dismantling Yale’s famous art history survey course has fallen to a scholar I respect, Tim Barringer. British-born, Barringer is the Paul Mellon Professor of the History of Art at Yale University and has been a leading curator at the Metropolitan Museum.

This article is in The Spectator’s February 2020 US edition. Subscribe here. If you want to get really depressed about the future of television, consider this: over Christmas, The Witcher was Netflix’s highest-rated original series on IMDb, beating everything from Black Mirror to Stranger Things and The Crown. The reason you should be depressed is that The Witcher’s popularity may send a dangerous signal to screen producers: don’t worry about the script or the acting, just chuck in lots of monsters, ultra closeups of swords cleaving heads, arrows going into people’s eyes and girls in body-hugging leather fantasy outfits, like a Dark Ages version of Hooters.

This article is in The Spectator’s January 2020 US edition. Subscribe here. ‘Ford to City: Drop Dead’ was the headline of the New York Daily News. To which the City said to Ford, you first. When the Daily News ran that famous headline on October 29 1975, New York was teetering on bankruptcy. President Gerald Ford had declared he would veto a federal bailout. It looked like the Big Apple was stewed. The world had written off New York. The feeling was mutual: the city had written off the world. Between 1970 and 1980, the city lost nearly a million residents, over a tenth of its population. Still, New York attracted people who, against the reigning wisdom, would not or could not live anywhere else.

This article is in The Spectator’s January 2020 US edition. Subscribe here. Jerry Bruckheimer is a quiet man who produces the loudest movies in the world. Early, arty Jerry was the fixer who put together 1980’s slight neo-noir American Gigolo. Thrusting mid-period Jerry, happily partnered with the 1980s zeitgeist and fellow producer Don Simpson, made the classics Flashdance, Top Gun and Beverly Hills Cop. Don died a truly maximal Hollywood death in 1996 — they found 21 different substances inside him — but Jerry, always the sober one, kept going bigger, faster, louder: The Rock, Con Air, Armageddon.

Last night I posted an incredibly innocuous tweet about Laurence Fox and the outrage it caused was predictably excessive. Now, for those of you not in the know, Laurence Fox is a privileged white British male actor who last week publicly said some of the most toxic and hateful things this country has heard in centuries. On the BBC’s political forum debate show, Question Time, Laurence was asked about his thoughts on the hateful racism Meghan Markle has been regularly subjected to from the British tabloids and his heartless response shocked the nation. I can hardly bear to type this, but he DENIED that any criticisms directed towards her were motivated by racism and called the UK...oh God...this is killing me...he called the UK a ‘lovely and tolerant country’. Jesus.

As per longstanding annual tradition, Hollywood yesterday woke up early to announce the 2020 Academy Awards nominees — and Twitter, as per slightly more recent annual tradition, woke up to be annoyed when the list of Oscar-worthy actors, writers, directors, and other filmmaking professionals was, as always, not particularly diverse. That this year's nominees could still be so overwhelmingly white and male was a particular slap in the face, especially since the Academy made a highly public move in 2019 to avoid exactly this outcome. July of last year saw the introduction of 842 new members, half of them women, into the Academy's voting ranks, with many spectators anticipating a wave of awards-season recognition for female and minority-led films as a result.

If you’re looking for answers as to why Joker, the Todd Phillips-helmed, gritty comic book Scorsese knock-off, garnered 11 Oscar nominations on top of being the highest-grossing R-rated film of all time, then buddy, this isn’t the piece for you. I don’t have an explanation. Joker is not a ruckus Marvel CGI theme ride. It’s an excruciating anxiety-inducing and unforgiving character study, a very good one along the lines of older cult callings like Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer.