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The Song Does Not Remain The Same

Gary Lucas — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 22:49:51 +0000

The Song Does Not Remain The Same Gary Lucas August 10, 2026 - 18:49

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The Beefheart Vantage! (Turn Image 90º To The Right for Normal View)

Sometimes all it takes is hearing a random sound out of context… a whiff of a subtle scent wafting your way…or coming upon a strange but naggingly familiar scene or tableau to trigger images buried deep in the past in your subconscious mind, memories you might have resigned as being lost to the ages if you ever recalled them at all. It's the old Proust and his madeleine effect. Here, an involuntary mnemonic device which comes to you out of nowhere and brings you up short and sharpish into the twilight world of phantoms and dreams…before the scene evanesces, and you are plunged back into what James Joyce referred to in Ulysses as the "shattering daylight of no thought."

The other day while walking in the West Village I came upon just such a recondite scene that brought to the surface of my cranial soup an entire chain of lost memories regarding my life in the West Village circa 50 years ago…which led to a vivid memory of a song lost to the ages involving me and my dear friend and collaborator Captain Beefheart (Don Van Vliet).

I had just turned the corner of Bleecker Street and Seventh Avenue on a stroll to Faicco's Italian Specialties, when...

Horrors!! Shrouded in construction netting, 285 Bleecker St., a 19^th-century cast-iron tenement near the corner of 7th Avenue now being renovated for the first time in 50 years, to the best of my knowledge. A 19th-century walk-up tenement building and the first place we lived in the West Village circa June '77. On the ground floor: the legendary Village butcher shop Ottomanelli's, with dead rabbits and other wild game hanging on hooks in the window and all sorts of offal on display (yecch). Right across the street, the legendary Matt Umanov Guitars. Down the block, Italian pastry joint Rocco's (best cannolis in NYC). A great location!

During the super-hot, sweaty Summer of Sam, we lived 4 flights up in a railroad flat, a middle-aged dominatrix operating her by-appointment-only trade next door (lots of spanking and barked commands could be heard emanating through her door at random times of the day, on the order of "Bend over, I'm gonna stick my big toe in your ass!"). Then there was the young couple who screamed at the top of their lungs for hours at each other until eventually having loud make-up sex in which the female would bawl her brains out between bouts of balling. At night I would sit in a comfortable chair gazing out the huge window at the Brechtian Street Scene below. Lots of foreign tourists always, the endless passing parade slowly funneling down to the real Human Zoo around McDougal in the central village on Bleecker east of 6th Ave.

At around 9 pm nearly every night until mid-summer, the French mime Philippe Petit, several months away from walking the World Trade Center, rolled up in full whiteface make-up and tattered frock coat on a unicycle directly under my window, quickly gathering a big crowd of rubberneckers as he strung a taut rope hitched from a fire hydrant to a lamppost at a 45-degree angle, and pranced up and down the rope from bottom to the top while juggling bowling pins, somehow managing to stay upright. I had a front row seat every night and a water pipe! Folks showered him with tips, and then he would cycle off to who knows where, coming back there night after night for at least most of mid-June into early July. One night he looked up rapidly, spotted me sitting in my 4th floor window perch (he was aware of everything going on around him), and gave me a quick wave.

And then came the BIG BLACKOUT of July 13-14th. The power went off all over the city around 9:30 pm, but somehow the phones kept working. The New York Times had recently run an article about what they dubbed "The Feral People," the homeless living for years in the sub-basements of Grand Central Station many levels under the tracks, who rarely came up for daylight, and then usually only to forage for food (a very lurid article that made them sound kind of like the race of troglodytes lurking in the London Metro in the 1972 UK horror film Death Line, entitled Raw Meat in the US. When the lights went off, my pal and horror film actor Bill Moseley called me and insisted we get flashlights and somehow make our way to Grand Central, go down into the basements, and explore the catacombs, so to speak. A notion I was unable to sign on to...

Years later, after I'd moved out to more salubrious lodgings in the farther West Village, a one-bedroom with a fantastic view of the Hudson out one window and the Empire State Building out the other, I became passionately involved in Captain Beefheart's music and overall care and feeding. We, the members of his Magic Band, were required to go out and purchase miniature Sony cassette recorders to capture on the fly any of Don's imperious pronouncements or oracular observations, some of which might make it into subsequent lyrics or titles of paintings or poems. Don LOVED the sound of words, and frequently deployed some good ones—"giggy ghee," "expoobident," "frowsy," "insultuous"…

One night in 1981 during a period when I was between wives, Don rang me at 3 am, rousting me from a very deep sleep. He insisted I fetch my tape recorder, as he wanted to run down a new composition over the phone. I sleepily got up to retrieve it, and coming back to the phone, I jammed my mini-recorder into the phone's earpiece to catch the full flavor of his new composition.

"You ready?"

Don started to whistle tunelessly—"pssss shoooooeeeee wheessh sheeee whee woowie whooooo"—producing nary a melody or a rhythm or an actual musical tone, the fundamental necessary skeletal building blocks of music per se that might give one something to hang on to and base a song on. His whistling, which on a good day could charm the birds out of the sky, had here devolved into a mere pushing of random air through pursed lips with no apparent compositional design overarching—Aleatory? Yes. The basis for a new song? Well…

"Didja get that?" he asked breathlessly when he'd finished. Yeah, I got it, Don.

"Gooood! Now learn that on guitar!"

Oh yeah.

He went on: "It's a new song of mine called" (wait for it)—"MELODY ARMS." Good title. Poetic—romantic even. Wish I'd heard anything halfway resembling a melody in there though…but still.

Go on…

Don waxed enthusiastic:

"It's a song about a hotel, or a boardinghouse, called 'THE MELODY ARMS.'"

Wha???

The old rascal had set me up and just pulled the rug out from under me.

"Each room in the building has a different character or characters living inside. Every verse describes a different room and tells a story about the lives of the folks living there." Sounded a bit like Nico's song "Chelsea Girls" (co-written with the Velvet Underground's Lou Reed and Sterling Morrison), in which Nico devotes a verse each to Warhol Factory denizens like Brigid Polk, Pope Ondine, and Ingrid Superstar who were then all living at the Chelsea Hotel. But I doubt Don had heard that, or maybe it was inspired by the cheesy "Tenement Symphony" as sung by Tony Martin in the Marx Brothers' late clinker The Big Store.

But I kept shtum.

Immediately I flashed on an image of 285 Bleecker Street in 1977…and the characters who dwelled within its chipped plastered walls (especially the dominatrix). That crummy little building could have been "THE MELODY ARMS." I started getting into the idea.

THIS SONG COULD WORK!

Next day though, "Melody Arms" had become the One That Got Away; yet another potential masterpiece lost way back in the queue inside the hyperactive compartmentalized psyche of Don Van Vliet, who was off in the ether and otherwise occupied—busy painting, sketching, whistling, singing and humming myriad new songs composed right on the spot—and growling at any Magic Band member that wandered too close into earshot.

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No Distance Too Great

Robert Cochrane — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 11:04:29 +0000

No Distance Too Great Robert Cochrane August 7, 2026 - 07:04

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Music Review

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singer songwriter

JOHN HOWARD: Overnight Bags (Think Like A Key)

From that foreign place known as the past, English singer-songwriter John Howard has magically conjured up an album of quiet nostalgia, but surprisingly little resentment or regret. A beautiful exercise of the kind an artist can afford when no longer pandering to the expectations of those dreaded men in suits. Expansive, eloquent and evocative, it presents a gentle sequence of cascading postcards. Images and lines that will caress and gently haunt the souls of those fortunate enough to experience its understatement and artistry.

"Chelsea in the morning

Everybody looking good

And glad to greet the day

Mama Cass is playing Sergeant Pepper

Through her open window

Singing harmonies with Rita Meter Maid

They'll never take away

The Crazy Chelsea Daze"

And so, the stories begin with "Chelsea Daze," a piece heady with sixties verve in a McCartney-flavoured Music Hall setting that references scenarios now marooned in the amber of the decade's pop mythology. A consequence of nods and winks and "say no more."

The theme of better days and that passing of the years is evoked in "Songs Of Old Times," which delivers a maudlin and poetic eloquence based on characters who once frequented an old pub, and would occasionally burst forth with an impromptu song. Were Billy Joel English, the lady in question could have been his creation, or from the achingly empathetic pen of the late Shel Silverstein.

"I was once a beauty

My hair was golden as the midday sun

I lay with those who needed comfort

And with a kiss as they slept, I was gone"

There's a dreamlike ambiance, a lullaby with a darkly lyrical edge that is almost psalm-like, to "In The Pursuit Of Love." The song sways, swirls, and almost hypnotizes with its mildly dervish-like chant, with darkness at its heart.

"Love scars and it wounds

It teases and grooms me

It sails me on seas

Then leaves and maroons me"

"Abbey Road, April 1974" is Howard's autobiographical paean to a dream realized, his sublime recollection of a long-wished-for moment, the recording of his songs in that legendary place. Possessed of an up-tempo cheekiness, it sounds reminiscent of The Zombies with a sly glance of acknowledgment to the Fab Four.

"This is the day of your life

The day you arrived into light

This is the day of your life

The day you surmised to make things right"

"A Painter's Gift (In Brushed Imaginings)" has chamber-baroque shadings. Wistful and haunting, but belied by an undertow of classicism. Those piano lessons were not wasted on young Master Howard. A certain refinement and prophetic nuance inhabits the lyric.

"When tales we told through a painter's gift

The headlands swept elsewhere

What memories joined the flood

The shores lifeblood

A watercolor wash

Of a child's imaginings

In brushed imaginings"

Dusty Springfield could have effortlessly bathed in the pop froth of "Look At Life" with the assistance of a full orchestral setting in sass, swing and sixties gusto. It is a cavalcade of evocations. A casual masterpiece, it doesn't overstay its welcome.

"Watching in a cafe

All the conversations going on

Some of them seem angry

Others holding hands in love's sweet bond

None of them I'll ever know

And wonder as they go

What futures they have planned or simply long for"

Overnight Bags by John Howard

A sunny, breezy deceptiveness of tone sweetens the sorrow touched upon in "What God Is This." That dreadful loss of a briefly youthful sense of permanence, cut even shorter by the scythe of AIDS. A carefree generation eclipsed and bowed. The title casually confronts the lack of divinity in God's followers who saw the disease as a rightful plague—the lack of grace and compassion from those supposed to exemplify those attributes.

"Tomorrow was never a place we looked for

Just lived for the moment

The urge to explore

Till the waters swept

The bodies from the shore"

There's a conversational take reminiscent of early Gilbert O'Sullivan, with a waltz-like motif and a host of polaroid-captured moments in "A Room At The Top," suggestions and themes, like questions or prayers.

"In the old attic window

I saw someone laughing

Or was it a reflection of a bird in full song"

"My Father's Prayer" has the irony of seeming like a show tune at the end of a theatrical event, and in a way it is since it reflects upon Howard's gentle and genial father, a fellow musician, and his disappearance within Alzheimer's. A piece of emotional scope and wide musical range, it is as complex as its subject matter.

"All of the people who healed

And then fractured me

Have all just abandoned me

Like a drunk in a bar

In the early hours of the morning

I look at the sky

Waiting for shooting stars waving goodbye"

We all have friends we wonder about, people who disappear but linger in the mind as a source of inner smiles. "Josie, Do You Remember?" stitches together a delightful series of diligent vignettes. Worldly wise without being world weary, a perfect reconsidering of the lost strands of an important soul, a letter of distance and longing dressed as a song.

"Josie, I've been wondering

If you're still out there and laughing

At the way your life is raveling

In the hurricane you made"

"Overnight Bags" is the closer and the title piece. A moody gem based on an actor's life on the road, it applies to anyone who performs and then moves on. Pure Howard in scope and pathos, a weaving and a wavering of eloquent reflections, it seems a kitchen sink melodrama in black and white worthy of the dulcet tones of Scott Walker, were he still here.

"We'll go down many roads

Past lives we'll never know

That brush against us

With the promise of possibilities"

If this collection of songs were to receive the acknowledgment it merits, justly and fairly, the album would be lauded, feted and observed. A discreet treasure of unfussy delights, it consolidates Howard as a master of his craft. A glam survivor from the early seventies now in his seventies, bedecked by a fabulous beard that should be embellished with glitter and stars, he remains a creative force to be reckoned with.

As Mr Ferry once so archly intoned, "A Fabulous Creation."

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An Ecology of Relationships

Dusty Wright — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 14:18:52 +0000

An Ecology of Relationships Dusty Wright August 6, 2026 - 10:18

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Art Review

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sculpture

D. Dominick Lombardi, CCWSI 205 (Tom Hanks Goes to College) 2025, acrylic, collage, canvas, 47 x 47 inches

WhiteBox Portable @ MTA presents The (Il)Logic of Things by D. Dominick Lombardi and The Garden We Carry by QinZa Najm. Both artists share an interest in the capacity of material culture to produce knowledge beyond representation. Through assemblage, collage, painting, and installation, they reveal that objects not only preserve memory but also organize relationships among histories, affects, and everyday experience. Although their material vocabularies differ, both understand the reconfiguration of objects as a means of generating new forms of meaning.

Objects retain the traces of their making, the labor that produced them, the uses they have accumulated, and the many histories they silently carry. Rather than erasing those experiences, their surfaces allow different temporalities, uses, and meanings to remain simultaneously present. At the same time, they contain unrealized futures, thereby acquiring the potential to participate in new constellations of meaning. Both Lombardi and Najm begin precisely from this moment of transformation. Their practices recover materials and objects that have already lived other lives, not to preserve them as relics, but to activate the memories they contain. Assemblage becomes a way of thinking through matter itself, where fragments cease merely to illustrate history and instead begin to reconstruct it.

D. Dominick Lombardi understands history as a constellation. By bringing together objects and images that seemingly share neither time, place, nor function, he subverts the rational logic of classification and constructs unexpected relationships among temporalities, affects, and memories. As in Aby Warburg's Atlas Mnemosyne, meaning does not reside in isolated objects but in the field of relationships that emerges between them.

His sculptures and mixed media paintings activate mnemonic processes that reorganize historical experience rather than simply represent it. Fragments relinquish their original identities in order to enter new systems of association, where assemblage becomes a mode of historical inquiry. Sand, papier-mâché, plaster, wood, antique books, industrial objects, toys, photographs, maps, and documentary fragments converge into hybrid formations that evoke both archaeological remains and speculative futures. Humor, playful distortions, and exuberant color initially seduce the viewer; yet beneath this formal richness emerge violence, consumerism, historical amnesia, and the contradictions of contemporary experience.

D. Dominick Lombardi, CC 200 (Back Scratcher) 2025, sand, papier-mâché, gesso, acrylic medium, ripped vintage book and objects,

Equally fundamental is Lombardi's relationship to matter. From his father and grandfather, he inherited not only the craft of woodworking but also an ethic of making grounded in attentiveness, patience, and respect for materials. There exists an intelligence of the hand that precedes conceptual thought: a form of knowledge born from contact, weight, texture, resistance, and duration. His works preserve this tactile intelligence, transforming matter itself into a living archive.

Conceived as an immersive installation, The Garden We Carry transforms everyday objects into landscapes of transition, where what was once destined for movement opens itself to new possibilities for rootedness. Rather than representing arrival, the installation occupies the productive interval where things are no longer what they once were, yet have not fully become something else. Suitcases no longer carry belongings. Shoes no longer lead anywhere. Industrial steel relinquishes its structural function. Moss, preserved foliage, reclaimed metal, and found objects remain suspended between what they once were and what they have yet to become.

Image 3. QinZa Najm, Exilmerica (closed and open) 2023-2025, oil on metal and objects of belonging from NY Immigrants, 24" × 18"

The installation proposes that transformation does not occur after arrival but precisely in the course of transit. Reclaimed materials retain the traces of their previous lives while opening themselves to new forms of growth. Rather than replacing one function with another, Najm places objects in a state of fertile uncertainty, where identity remains under construction and memory becomes the ground from which new forms of existence emerge. Their previous functions are not erased but held in suspension, allowing new possibilities to remain open before settling into another form. Her gardens are not bounded places but portable territories where movement ceases to oppose rootedness, and where the act of dwelling can arise even in the midst of passage.

QinZa Najm, Secret Love & the Little Bee, 2023, oil on reclaimed metal, 5 × 4 feet

Although their visual languages differ, both artists understand assemblage as an act of reconfiguration. Neither pursues nostalgia nor restoration. Their works reveal objects as active agents of cultural memory, capable of carrying histories into the present while generating new relationships among people, places, and time. In both practices, materials cease to respond exclusively to the functions for which they were conceived, becoming instead active agents of new relationships and meanings.

Within WhiteBox Portable @ MTA, these ideas acquire a particular resonance. Situated at the threshold between Times Square and the Port Authority Bus Terminal, the exhibition inhabits one of New York City's most intense infrastructures of movement, where millions of people and the objects that accompany them—suitcases, shoes, bags, books, tools, and packages—circulate daily alongside maps, advertisements, and signs, forming an immense assemblage in constant transformation. Within this context, Lombardi's material constellations and Najm's transitional landscapes converge into a shared reflection on transit as a condition of contemporary experience. WhiteBox Portable @ MTA becomes the space where their meanings continue to be reconfigured, reminding us that every infrastructure is also an ecology of relationships in which past and future coexist in perpetual motion. - Yohanna M. Roa

The (Il)Logic of Things and The Garden We Carry opens Saturday, August 8th from 3 - 6 pm, and runs through September 9th, 2026.

posted essay by Yohanna M. Roa

Looks wonderful Dusty. Thank you! Yohanna's writing really captures the work.

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Sobriety Refined

Robert Cochrane — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 14:00:00 +0000

Sobriety Refined Robert Cochrane August 4, 2026 - 10:00

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Music Review

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folk rock

Michael J Sheehy & The Hired Mourners: Don't We Deserve Some Kind Of Love? (Dimple Discs - Vinyl, CD, Digital Download)

When an album opens with the line "Stitches burst," it proves a perfect introduction to a raw and tender enterprise, the dark sides of songs. It is also the first effort in decades when not a drop of alcohol passed the singer Michael J Sheehy's lips. "Like Blood On Snow," the tune in question, glides along via a ghostly shimmering of guitar akin to an incidental sequence from a David Lynch vista; a semi-spoken vocal painting a unique impressionistic melancholy.

It is followed by "Full Moon, Empty Belly," which could be the late Lee Hazlewood in elegant cahoots with the mannered miseries of Chris Isaak, but with a playful skip in its steps of raw and reflective honesty.

"My wounds are deep and fresh

The mirror becomes a razor

And I carve away my flesh

I lean into the hunger

I lean into the fear

And I lean into the darkness

Till I disappear"

The ghost of Bill Fay casually haunts at his gossamer best the delicately graceful "Don't Put Yourself Beyond The Reach Of Love." A lightness of touch presides, unafraid in slow piano perfection, there, but almost not, whilst delivering an emphasis and yearning. eloquently understated by a casually refined vocal.

"And it's okay to be frightened

And it's okay to cry

It's okay to lose yourself sometimes

But don't let love pass you by"

"You Better Take Everything" possesses that dour hymnal aspect of David Ackles in what it choses to discard. a lo-fi confection from the "less is more" school of sparse nonchalance that Mickey Newbury perfected as sparse fragility. A song for the perpetually dispossessed, with aching strings and a mannered sorrowing.

"Every empty promise

Every moment of doubt

Every word I choked on

Before I could spit them out"

Like a slow dance, "Pure Deep Water" uses such a motif, a neat act in encompassing dangerous space whilst never overcrowding it. A kind of mystic perfection, "Only Drinking In My Dreams" is a hymn for the last dregs of a departing evening as tables are cleared and shutters rattle closed. It slithers like an insidious snake within the mind of listeners with neat brevity and dark humour.

"My car won't start

And my favorite porn star

Is born again

I'm out here alone

The whole world is stoned

And I need a friend"

The nifty "If Had Known It Was The Last Time" could in another life become a neatly deft cabaret ballad, but it neatly vanishes into the thinnest air just as it has accosted one's attention. A deft beguilement. Playful lushness attends "The Left Hand Don't Need To Know." A keening element of professed grief accompanied by a deft beguilement of violin implicit of darkness falling as mist settles across heads of purple heather.

"So, keep your actions pure

Without thought for reward or show

And if your right hand

Does a good thing

The left hand don't need to know"

"Don't We Deserve Some Kind Of Love" tugs at the heart in the poetic fashion of early Tim Hardin. clipped and archly bare, here is a song that Morrissey should steal, and hopefully shall.

"The damaged and the broken

The mighty and the small

The heathens who have

Seen and done most everything

And the holier than thou

Who've done nothing at all"

The closing bow arrives as "Tiny Blessings," a wry and rueful madrigal reminiscent of the deceptively lugubrious Jake Thackray. Precise, concise and effortlessly assured, it never overstays its sense of welcome.

"Always count your blessings

Even when you're feeling blue

Try to smile and remember

Someone is hurting more than you"

Full-bodied clarity, rendered in reflective maladies, raw but beautiful and never depressing, despite a somber cloaking. Carried aloft by subtle songcraft, these ten tracks gift a seemingly longer, more involved journey, a sure indication of reflective time well spent, milled and presented as a seamless stitching of disparate shadows.

Sobriety embraced and personified as brave defiance.

A tendering enterprise of considered exposure and expulsion

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What's your definition of dirty, baby?

Chet Kozlowski — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 22:06:57 +0000

What's your definition of dirty, baby? Chet Kozlowski August 3, 2026 - 18:06

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Film Review

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Erotic Comedy

When is a kinky sex comedy not just a kinky sex comedy? When it’s directed by Gregg Araki, a pioneer of New Queer Cinema. In the '90s, he was the go-to guy for a certain brand of teen angst with films like The Living End, The Doom Generation, and Nowhere. He, along with the earthier Larry Clark, exploited this genre of disaffected youth. Strangers came to town, kids regardless of gender cavorted and bed-hopped, and a hedonistic time was had by all. Mr. Araki’s films were wry, knowing, and had their finger on the pulse of a generation, wherever that pulse might throb.

He also made great use of young Mina Suvari, Ryan Phillippe, Rose McGowan and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. With his new film, I Want Your Sex, he has higher wattage stars to work with and has gone mainstream.

I Want Your Sex starts Hollywood Boulevard style, with a corpse face down in a swimming pool, and then cuts to trendy avant-garde artist/entrepreneur Erica Tracy (Olivia Wilde) who taps nebbish Elliot (Cooper Hoffman) to be her boy toy. Elliot works at her studio readying Erica’s art for her next big show. It’s a “hipster sweat shop,” where Elliot chews gum, along with a few dozen others, and presses the pulpy wads onto a canvas of an outline of a vagina. Erica descends on him and initiates him to the world of BDSM.

From there, twists and turns. Erica reams, steams, dry cleans (and skewers) ol’ Elliot. She gleefully dominates him through a laundry list of paces: Elliot is dressed up, dressed down, and even sent as a gift to a friend who’s in town. A hero’s journey with orgasms.

A disquieting undercurrent of domesticity bubbles under the proceedings. Elliot brings his lessons home to his cold girlfriend Minerva (an unremarkable Charli xcx), of whom his best friend Apple (Chase Sui Wonders) says, “she’s like what AI would generate if you told it 'total bitch'.” Elliot wants a wife, and in his mind pastes Erica’s face on Minerva’s inert body. He reacts wildly when he fantasizes Erica asking if he ever wanted kids. The climax (so to speak) involves an altar, with Araki stalwart James Duval officiating.

What does Elliot want? What is Erica actually giving? Signals get crossed, onscreen and in the script. I Want Your Sex would be a candy-colored trifle if not for the actors. Olivia Wilde plays Erica self-assuredly as the businesswoman she is, employing her feline eyes and cougar attitude. I assumed that Ms. Wilde would have produced this, to add to her impressive roster of films, like The Invite, Don’t Worry Baby, and Booksmart. Ms. Wilde has determinably taken the auteur role, but according to the press notes, her only role here is acting, which she handles with aplomb. As a bonus, Margaret Cho and Johnny Knoxville play detectives grilling Cooper.

The real revelation is Cooper Hoffman, Philip Seymour’s son, who continues to meet the promise of Licorice Pizza and Saturday Night. Mr. Hoffman is so genuine on the screen, so real, that you believe him even if you can’t quite believe what he’s doing, like spreading himself across Erica’s lap and being buggered with a dildo. When standing and clothed, he’s more compelling a reason for this movie existing as anything, pretty impressive for one who’s 23 years old.

Sadly, though, for all the talent and shiny latex, I Want Your Sex is surprisingly flat. It has a by-the-numbers quality that the script works valiantly to subvert, but its premise won’t let it. I Want Your Sex lacks the depth of Mr. Araki’s early films, particularly one as insightful and intense as Mysterious Skin (2004). It skitters across a candy-colored surface despite solid performances. Olivia Wilde makes a terrific Mrs. Robinson to Cooper Hoffman’s scruffy Benjamin. But we’ve seen it all before.

How will it play in 2026, when grade school kids know about whips and cock rings? Will the hijinks be quaint? As Elliot’s obligatory gay sidekick Zap (Mason Gooding) says, “Welcome to the sad reality of now.”

________________________

I Want Your Sex. Directed by Gregg Araki. 2026. In theaters. Runtime is 90 minutes.

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My Friend Chris Cornell, An Appreciation

Gary Lucas — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 21:25:42 +0000

My Friend Chris Cornell, An Appreciation Gary Lucas July 27, 2026 - 17:25

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Music Review

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remembrance

I just got a copy of the new vinyl double picture disc version of Chris Cornell's Carry On solo album from 2007. I am all over this album, playing on 11 tracks out of the original album's 14, mainly electric guitar (including a couple of maniacal solos such as the barn-burner above, and also on the James Bond thingy "You Know My Name" from the Casino Royale soundtrack, probably the best-known track from the album), plus National steel acoustic guitar on one cut. This picture disc vinyl version contains 2 more tracks hitherto unknown to me which were included on foreign versions of the album (the Japanese cut, for one).

I first met Chris at a memorial service for Jeff Buckley at St. Ann’s Church in early June 1997, shortly after Jeff passed. The two were friends, and Chris later wrote the song "Euphoria Morning" for him. Chris gave me the warmest smile at this very somber event, wherein Jeff’s Telecaster (a loaner from St. Ann’s Janine Nichols) was dead center on the church’s pulpit next to a large urn containing his ashes.

I wrote Chris’s manager afterward to say hello and also to express my willingness to work with Chris on any upcoming project he might be contemplating. I was a big Soundgarden fan, and had once opened for his band solo at CBGB.

I never got a formal reply. But nearly 10 years later, quite out of the blue, I got a call from producer Steve Lillywhite, whose work I'd admired ever since hearing his earliest productions (The Members, Big Country, XTC, and on through Talking Heads and U2). He was at the time heading up the A&R department at Columbia Records, but was still allowed to moonlight as a producer. He told me Chris was eager to have me play on his upcoming album for Interscope, to be recorded in LA with Steve producing—which I readily agreed to

So I flew out there shortly thereafter with my ’64 Strat, ’44 Gibson J-45, and 1921 National steel guitar, and a bunch of effects pedals, for what was supposed to be a day in the studio with Chris and Steve. They were both very warm and friendly, and they proceeded to throw a whole bunch of unfamiliar music at me. There were charts, and also some home demos Chris had made. I’m not a great sight-reader, but I handled everything they came up with with a certain esprit de corps. Chris was impressed, and at the end of the day he came over to my little workstation set up and asked: “Can you be here all week? I love the way you play.” Sure, man!

I worked out my extended revised deal with Interscope, the car rental company, and the hotel they’d booked me into—basically cleared the decks, and went to town in the studio over the next week. Looking back objectively now (haha, how could that be), thanks to this new Carry On double vinyl picture sleeve package, I would give the album a 7 for production, an 8 for creative risk-taking on Chris's part viz, the inventive songwriting, and choice of covers (a doom-laden trawl through "Billie Jean," anybody?), and 9 for his overall vocal performance. Chris possessed the leather lungs of a Viking and was certainly one of the most authoritative and commanding singers I've ever worked with, and that includes Jeff Buckley, Captain Beefheart, Lou Reed, and Nick Cave.

Producer Steve Lillywhite, Gary, and Chris on the last day of recording my guitars in LA

Turning my attention to this objet du disque nearly 19 years on, however, I am not sure that rendering the soupy glop of PVC into picture disc photos of Chris (nice photos...but still) enhances the playback quality much (I have a pretty good sound system)—and may well cause some problems there, like mucho popping and crackling on listening back. And did I mention this package is retailing for fifty bucks? If you're really into Chris and a super fan, he looks pretty damn good on the picture discs and in the gatefold. But if you're into high-end sound, well... Me, I still prefer digital to vinyl (a heretical position I know), mainly because it's a noiseless forever upon playback. Every time you play a CD you treasure, and eventually bequeath to your daisy chain of deadbeat descendants over the years, it's always gonna sound the same to them right till the very end of the line of succession, to the last syllable of recorded time as it were—just as it sounded the very first time you played it. (Although I recall when CDs first reared their shiny little circular heads, there was fear in the land amongst collectors that over the years the playback quality would diminish/drop off/degrade; ie, a limited shelf life. I dunno HOW exactly the CD would be rendered crappy and useless; maybe bits and bytes would drop off the shiny side of the disc all over your carpet like so many motes of dust as time marches on. But lo and behold, the original CDs issued in 1979 by Phillips and Sony still sound as pristine as the day they were first opened and played.)

Vinyl, on the other hand, as we all know, captures the overall analog frequencies of the original source material better than digital recordings of the same, but it is hardly forever, the playback sound degrading further every time you take the album out for a spin, as the stylus plows the vinyl furrow deeper and deeper into the groove until it becomes a noisy rut... But I digress.

This is an excellent album, and I was honored to play on it (and hey, I get no royalties for saying that; I was a gunslinger for hire). And don't believe everything you read on Wikipedia either; the entry for this album makes it sound like I just played acoustic on it. Zeesh!

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Tracing Light

Kathleen Cullen — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 18:22:09 +0000

Tracing Light Kathleen Cullen July 8, 2026 - 14:22

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Art Review

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painters

Modification No.3 2019, Borosilicate glass, Metal 170 x 170 x 170cm

“A single drop of water holds the entire continuum of time – capturing the essence of the past, and the promise of the future all at once.”

This poetic quote is used in reference to Tracing Light, the new show by South Korean contemporary artist Yoo Choong Mok. The show will be running until July 30, 2026, at AP Space, 555 West 25th Street.

During a recent visit to Chelsea, my writing partner, Carmine Desena, and I stopped in to meet the Gallery's Owner, Jean Park, and the artist.

Carmine Desena: Jean, you have really been featuring a very diverse array of contemporary artists at AP Space. What attracted you to the work in this show? How does it fit in with the gallery's overall program?

Jean Park: What attracted me to Yoo Choong Mok's work was its quiet power and emotional depth. At first glance, the paintings appear serene and minimalist, but the longer you spend with them, the more they reveal. There is a sense of contemplation and timelessness that resonates deeply with our increasingly fast-paced world. Yoo's work is unique in the way it transforms something as simple and universal as a droplet of water into a poetic metaphor for memory, reflection, and the passage of time. His use of glass on canvas creates an extraordinary interaction with light, making each work feel alive and constantly changing depending on the viewer's perspective and environment. At AP Space, we are committed to presenting artists whose work transcends cultural boundaries and offers meaningful dialogue between tradition and contemporary thought. Yoo Choong Mok's paintings embody this philosophy beautifully. While rooted in Korean aesthetics and a meditative sensibility, his work also speaks to the language of international contemporary art and modernism. What I particularly admire is that his work invites viewers not only to look, but to slow down, reflect, and experience a moment of stillness. In that sense, Tracing Light is more than an exhibition—it is an invitation to contemplate our relationship with time, memory, and ourselves. As a gallery, we are proud to present artists whose voices are both distinctly personal and universally relevant, and Yoo Choong Mok is an important example of that vision.

Formation Condensation 2, 2023 Glass, Gold leaf, Acrylic on canvas 162.2x130.3(cm) F100

Kathleen Cullen: Yoo congratulations on the show. Can you tell us why you chose to work with glass on canvas?

Yoo Choong Mok: The canvas fabric, which is the basis, is the most similar to the skin color of Koreans, so it forms the basis of my work, and glass expresses me. Glass and cloth are physically different, but I think that warmth and coldness can stimulate the visual at the same time, and are the media that can best convey my thoughts and experiences.

CD: Yoo, you describe the philosophy of Tracing Light as the poetic stillness of the droplet. You go on to describe the droplet as a mirror to the soul. Could you provide insight into what this means to you as an artist and what you believe the impact it will have on the viewer?

YCM: Rather than explaining the object, my work reveals the moment when the senses work. At the point where water droplets and glass, light and space, and the movement of the audience overlap, the work appears as a scene. The audience passes through it and slows down for a moment.

KC: The work is said to bridge traditional Korean aesthetics with contemporary Western modernism. What has influenced you in this combination to produce the work in the show? What art references might you have been thinking of while working?

YCM: All of my works have made my identity and directions of my work clearer through experiences abroad. Since I am a Korean, I can express Korean emotions and emotions more through my work than anyone else, and I hope that my work will heal emotionally. Mainly, works are done by thinking of Korean historical artists.

Formation Instersection 16, 2023, Glass, Gold leaf, Acrylic on canvas 97x 97 S60

Kathleen Cullen: Glass is always a prism for light. Light is always subject to change depending on the context it is seen in, much like our views of how we see our past and what we hope to see in our future. How do you think context and time have shaped or reshaped your views and the work that you do? Where do you think this will take you in the future?

YCM: It focuses more on the way the entire space becomes one state than on individual works. I am interested in constructing the space to constantly change through the density and margin of water droplets, and the flow of light.

In both American and Korean culture, water symbolizes purification, cleansing, and life balance. This is a course true for many cultures, which is why Yoo Choong Muk's themes are universal.

Interviewed by Kathleen Cullen & Carmine DeSena

Carmine DeSena is an accomplished magazine writer and book author and has published more pieces on the art world and its many goings-on, both in NYC and internationally.

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Careful What You Wish For

Chet Kozlowski — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 15:18:08 +0000

Careful What You Wish For Chet Kozlowski June 24, 2026 - 11:18

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Film Review

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drama

How far will you go for love? That’s the question posed to the characters of the new film Skin of Youth.

Set in Saigon, Skin of Youth centers on Nam and his transgender love, San. They are embroiled in a torrid romance, and both make a living with their bodies: Nam is a scrappy boxer, San is a bejeweled dancer in a drag cabaret show. San dreams of a sex change and scopes out the men who frequent her club. One, Mr. Vuong, offers to finance her operation (and throw in enough for a vacation besides), in exchange for, well, whatever the rich guy wants. Nam is crushed by the fact that he can’t help but love himself. He marries San in a fanciful ceremony. “Grandma,” he exclaims, “I have a wife!”

Nam’s grandma provides traditionalism: all she wants from Nam’s marriage is grandbabies, something San can’t biologically provide her. While San does Mr. Vuong’s bidding, Nam takes up with a prostitute, intending to make her pregnant. Mimi is barely an adult herself, and when San sees her protruding belly she resents her, then takes her in, and establishes a unique family.

Mr. Vuong has many uses for San. He is a sadist and abuses her. Which propels Nam: he’ll finance her surgery himself by abandoning “legitimate” boxing—where he is headstrong and resents rules—and getting into the bone-crushing “dog cage” circuit, where the stakes are higher, and he’s beaten to a pulp nightly.

If the subject is tawdry, the production is anything but. Writer/director Ash Mayfair immerses us in Nam and San’s lurid world, all neon and sweaty shadows. With elegant staging and jackrabbit editing, she crosscuts between Nam’s bloody carnage and San’s glitzy performances. For the most part, Skin of Youth is suspenseful, solid filmmaking. Ms. Mayfair spares us nothing, and the world she depicts is complex. The fights are blistering, while some of the most effective scenes simply show the characters moving around their humdrum life of Saigon poverty. Ms. Mayfair has a good eye for the telling detail and endears us to her characters within minutes. The sex scenes are frank and essential.

The performances are all excellent. Trân Quân as San has a doe-faced radiance, by turns seductive and tragic. She is heartbreaking as she yearns for and plans her surgery. Nam, a wide-eyed, rooster-haired Võ Diên Gia Huy, is earnest as he scoots through crowded alleys and markets on his motorcycle, barely avoiding the police. Phan Thi Kim Ngân plays Mimi with an endearing childlike innocence. And Hajime Onoue is properly sinister as Mr. Vuong.

On the downside: perky pop music takes the sting out of some hard-hitting scenes (was that a decision of its Western distributors? If so, it’s misguided). As the story unfolds and we wonder how Nam, San, and Mimi’s fates will be resolved, we are plunged into a courtroom drama. It’s a narrative copout. The climax is generic when it should be as powerful as all that comes before.

________________________________

Skin of Youth. Directed by Ash Mayfair. 2026. Vietnamese with English subtitles. Runtime 122 minutes.

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Straw Dog Patriots

Chet Kozlowski — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 15:18:12 +0000

Straw Dog Patriots Chet Kozlowski June 23, 2026 - 11:18

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docu-drama

Not nearly as expansive as its title suggests (A whole year? Of the Revolutionary War?), the new film 1780 is essentially a chamber piece, or in this case a log cabin piece. Small cast, few settings. One casting surprise.

Abner, a wounded freedom fighter takes refuge in the humble abode of Honore, a reclusive trapper who simply wants peace for himself and his young son Miles. The trapper isn’t so simple, it turns out. We soon learn that he is wilier than he looks. He is not above misdirecting the three British soldiers pursuing Abner. He calls up memories of his own fighting past, causing him to Rambo out, creating a Straw Dogs-style standoff. Surrounded and trapped in the cabin, the rebels hold firm against authoritarian forces, knowing their resistance may be futile.

Appropriately filmed in Pennsylvania, 1780 is mostly guys talking until the muskets come out. The battle action, so much promised in the opening credits, is limited except for some bursts of brutality and blood-spurting violence.

Since it’s dialogue-heavy, you’d expect writer Steffan Ralph Delpiano’s script to provide the thrills. In the name of “authenticity,” he tries too hard, making the dialogue stiff and self-conscious. “I see you’re silent now. Mere seconds ago, you had tongue enough for two sets of teeth.” Add to that an oddly airless sound mix, with hardly any ambient seasoning. The actor’s voices, however, crackle with post-sync precision.

The actors give it their all. They are mostly from TV and include PJ Marshall (the trapper Honore) from Your Friends and Neighbors and Mindhunter, Vince Eisensen (Abner the refugee) from New Amsterdam, and R. Keith Harris (the leader of the British soldiers) from The Walking Dead. DJ Qualls, a ubiquitous character actor in the early 2000s, makes a brief appearance. Conor Kowalski and John Potvin, also portraying Brits, have mostly appeared in shorts. Young Kamilo Alonzo is particularly fine as the trapper’s son Miles. They all do an impressive, professional job.

On the plus side, 1780 looks good. Cinematographer Tiago Mesquita’s colors are bright and highly processed (in what passes for “beautiful” in the style of pharmaceutical commercials). Director Dustin Fairbanks keeps his camera moving, circling characters. He stays in close, not revealing the breadth of the room or the density of the woods. His aspect ratio is wide and narrow, with no visible top or bottom, probably to mask a dearth of set dressing. Ultimately, this adds to the claustrophobic effect that provides the suspense, which is 1780’s strongest point. But the blocking and editing sometimes make it difficult to tell where the musket balls are coming from and how they hit their targets.

The casting surprise here is Kevin Spacey, whose fortunes have limited available movie roles. It’s good to see him, and he doesn’t disappoint. He brings his characteristic bravado to the role of Thomas, the town ne’er-do-well, playing both sides depending on who’ll pay him. With his scraggly hair and scruffy clothes, Thomas is more Foghorn Leghorn than Frank Underwood, and Mr. Spacey looks like he’s enjoying himself. Birds gotta fly, actors gotta act.

___________________________

1780. Directed by Dustin Fairbanks. 2025. In theaters. Runtime 83 minutes.

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The Impossible Dream

Bruce Bernstein — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:09:03 +0000

The Impossible Dream Bruce Bernstein June 21, 2026 - 20:09

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Music Review

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documentary

Sun Ra: Do The Impossible Soundtrack (Modern Harmonic)

My only complaint about the otherwise superb documentary Sun Ra: Do the Impossible, about the above named musical genius and cosmic revolutionary, which played the festival circuit in 2025 before its television broadcast on PBS’s American Masters this past February, is that I wished it would have at some point taken a respite from all the fascinating history, colorful backdrops, far out concepts and revelatory, sometimes anecdotal, information from witnesses, collaborators and experts and let some of the work of this legendary jazz artist play for an extended period of time. How else could a newcomer truly appreciate the artistry of what this visionary has concocted in the studio or on the stage over his multi-decade career?

Personally, I would have liked to hear a lengthy, preferably cacophonous segment from Sun Ra’s pivotal masterpiece The Magic City, just for the pleasure of knowing it would probably freak out a large portion of the staid PBS audience. That 1965 album is anchored by the mind blowing 27 minute title track, (they both take their name from the nickname of Sun Ra’s home town, Birmingham, Alabama), a towering monument in large ensemble free jazz improvisation that ranks alongside such mammoth and influential recordings as John Coltrane’s Ascension, Ornette Coleman’s Free Jazz and The Cecil Taylor European Orchestra’s Alms/Tiergarten (Spree).

But I can understand why the filmmakers felt that they couldn’t let a single piece of music (or even several pieces of music) stand as a representation for what this renowned Arkestra leader has endeavored to communicate over his lifetime. The scope of his career is immense. The man who legally changed his name to Le Sony’r Ra after being born Herman Poole "Sonny" Blount composed over 1,000 works and issued more than 200 self-produced records. They range from the swing era big band arrangements he wrote for Fletcher Henderson to the obscure doo-wop or R&B singles he created for the jukebox market to the various bop-derived avant-garde excursions into collective improvisation to the futuristic electronic experiments he dabbled in to the space age theatrics of his prime and finally to his contribution on a tribute album to Walt Disney towards the end of his life. It would be impossible, given the time constraints of a feature film, to use a few performances to encapsulate how Sun Ra figured in the world of jazz or music in general. Any example would beg the question of why any number of other works are being excluded.

Thankfully, Modern Harmonic, a subsidiary of the vital archival label Sundazed, has more than compensated for this absence by providing a double-LP soundtrack, pressed on high-quality, appropriately regal purple vinyl, and a Blu-ray of the film. (The soundtrack is also being issued on CD. According to the listing on Amazon, it contains 3 CDs, and I logically assume it’s actually a double CD plus the Blu-ray of the film, but I cannot be certain of this.) This is the label that, in recent years, has launched a serious reissue campaign for Sun Ra’s work, spearheaded by Irwin Chusid, who, decades ago, did everything in his power to bring back into print the all-but-forgotten catalog of Raymond Scott’s classic 78s.

While this release is indeed a retrospective of this bandleader's multiple styles, it shouldn’t be seen as a “greatest hits” package by any means. Although a few titles come from such famous albums as Jazz In Silhouette and Super-Sonic Jazz, the majority are taken from lesser-known releases, even from a few posthumous ones of recent vintage. There are four previously unissued performances: two from Denmark in 1971 and two from Montreux in 1976. For better or worse, 13 of the 37 tracks are abridged. And so, listening to this soundtrack is not at all akin to listening to, for example, a comprehensive box set issued by Mosaic Records, where all the takes are complete. Every alternate version known to exist is presented in full array, leading to an experience that can either be fascinating or tedious, depending on one’s level of scholarly interest. Rather, this set is curated and sequenced for optimal pleasure rather than scientific knowledge, for both the uninitiated and the seasoned expert. As such, it is invigorating. More importantly, it works best as a companion to the documentary, which means it was a brilliant decision to include a copy of this film, even though I suspect most people will more frequently return to the audio document than the audio/visual one. The album and the film truly speak to one another.

Highlights include the contemplative and moving solo piano piece, "Quiet Ecstasy," originally issued on Aurora Borealis in 1981. It’s an almost-lullaby that occasionally and effortlessly drifts in and out of dissonance to great effect. "Pescara Mini-Moog Solo," taken from an Italian broadcast in 1976, segues into an abridged version of "Space Probe" from the 1974 album of the same name (although it was recorded four years earlier). Combined, these trippy, intergalactic electronic improvisations sound like a transmission from Saturn, both the name of Sun Ra’s record label and the planet he claimed he was “transmolecularized” to, where he was apparently informed that “the world would descend into chaos and that he must speak through music.” Given the current state of things, it’s hard to argue the veracity of this. Two fun tracks are "El Is a Sound of Joy," originally issued on Live at Montreux (1976), and "Watusa," presumably from that same concert but previously unissued. The former is a swinging big-band romp that, without a doubt, conveys joy, primarily through the dominant trumpet solo. It’s unclear if it is played by Ahmed Abdullah, Chris Capers, or Al Evans (all trumpeters in that lineup) because, unfortunately, there are no musician credits listed on the sleeve. The latter is a lively percussive jam with a heavy African vibe. Also worth noting is the inclusion of a fairly straightforward but totally swinging big-band rendition of the Benny Goodman classic "Big John’s Special" from a 1982 broadcast recorded at the Kongsberg Jazz Festival in Norway, and an endearingly offbeat 1960 doo-wop single "Dreaming" by a combo called The Cosmic Rays. Both speak to the versatility of this maestro and his dexterity in working within the boundaries of the mainstream. Also, they are, to use a term frequented by the late jazz scholar Phil Schaap, “quite fetching.”

All told, the soundtrack is an excellent entry point to anyone who has heard of this iconoclastic twentieth-century artist, and maybe has some vague awareness of the myths and legends that surrounded him, but has never found an opportunity to do a deep dive into his legacy, possibly because there is far too much material to know where to begin. Yet it is also an eye-opener for those who have lived with his music over the course of their lifetimes, as it offers many pieces of a complex and sometimes contradictory portrait worth savoring in this collage-like presentation. While I could have done without some of the spoken-word introductions and transitions included, especially those not spoken by Mr. Ra himself, there aren’t that many, and they are all thankfully brief.

Sun Ra is currently experiencing a renaissance, thanks to the devoted efforts of record labels such as Modern Harmonic that are not only bringing some of his essential albums back into print but also unearthing newly discovered live recordings. Sun Ra: Do the Impossible is a delightful addition to his vast canon. In an ideal world, this documentary and its accompanying album would bring this virtuoso to the widest possible audience.