It’s the moment half way through the set when she arrives, with a swish of the curtain, on stage astride a giant silver skull, wearing a flowing red trouser suit and cap, that we realise we just aren’t in Kansas any more, Toto.
Leafing through last week's edition of Entertainment Weekly during a quiet moment in the office, I came across a three-quarter page spread devoted to a new band called She & Him. The "Him" here is M Ward while -- and this is what piqued my curiousity -- the "She" is Zooey Deschanel, the American indie actress who made her rep in David Gordon Green's brilliant All The Real Girls.
It struck me, following on from Scarlett Johannson's album of Tom Waits' covers, that this is the second time in as many months an alt-Hollywood "It" Girl has made a record. Which, inevitably, led me to wonder why exactly the good ladies and gentlemen of the movie industry feel the need to divert their talents out of their immediate comfort zone and into the world of music.
HAPPENINGS TEN YEARS TIME AGO
April 2 to 8, 1997
The Wallflowers, led by Jakob 'son of Bob' Dylan, leap more than 50 places to No 5 in the US albums chart with Bringing Down The Horse, on its way to shifting more than two million copies - thereby out-selling any record ever released by Dylan senior.
FEW ARTISTS IN ANY MEDIUM?Bowie, maybe, or Scorsese?enjoyed such a terrific'70s as Woody Allen. This box comprises every comedy that Allen wrote, directed and starred in from 1971-'79?save 1972's Play It Again, Sam and 1978's psychodrama Interiors, neither of which are included here. Bananas was his second auteurist venture (1969's Take The Money And Run being the first) and saw him fusing the wisecracks of Bob Hope and slapstick of Buster Keaton to create this immortal nebbish New Yorker who bears as much relation to the real Allen Konigsberg as does Dylan to Robert Zimmerman.
It's an odd time to evaluate Paul Simon's solo career in light of his successful 2004 reunion tour with Art Garfunkel. But maybe all that boomer nostalgia needs a little levity, and the sweep of his solo work proves Simon has never dwelled on the past. The Studio Recordings 1972-2000 is that rare bird—an attempt to collect an artist's entire oeuvre.
