The Highballers light up Greenbelt on a stormy night

I haven’t seen my friend Kendall’s band The Highballers much lately (though not for lack of opportunities; they play a lot of shows around D.C.), but I went with my wife and my friends Kevin and Megan tonight to Greenbelt, a little town in Maryland envisioned by FDR as the first intentional community. Once there, and secure from the raging heat storm outside, we stepped in the see the band in a great little concert room behind the New Deal Cafe. 

As Kendall said, the place always gives him "a real good vibe," and indeed there was a good mix of newbies like us and regulars. The place felt like if there were a bar and restaurant (tasty BBQ) at the cohousing community where we used to live in Silver Spring, Eastern Village Cohousing. Funky, fun, intelligent people all around just enjoying their time on Earth.

The Highballers have consistently gotten tighter and better. The whole band really seems committed and they played a lengthy and pleasurable set of covers and mostly originals. While Kendall and Belen traded off amazing harmonizing vocals throughout the country set (the good kind of country, it should go without noting), with such highlights as “I Didn't Mean to Get Drunk Last Night But I Did,” my favorite might have been “Older Guys,” a Gram Parsons tune covered later by Teenage Fanclub and made to sound like an Uncle Tupelo country-punk rager by The Highballers.

Kendall reminded us that it had been 10 years since we celebrated the band's album release at the time at the old Iota in Arlington, Va. Here was what I wrote about that album at the time, in my Best New Albums of January 2013 column:

The Highballers - Soft Music and Hard Liquor

My son was in the process of getting married to The Highballers' showman-leader Kendall's daughter in their preschool class. That would have made this review a conflict of interest, but luckily it was clean-up time and the kids were unable to comlete the ceremony. Regardless, I saw this band live at Arlington's Artisphere and they were a force. It's easy to compare them to an offshoot of Johnny Cash and June Carter (what with the boy-girl vocals and all), but The Highballers are much funnier, have smoking and tasteful musicianship all around, have lots of songs about drinking (which is, let's admit, the point of honky tonk), and gloriously adds a modern twist ala Uncle Tupelo and The Bottle Rockets.

So they be improving (or just consumate musicianship-ers), but they are also clearly just naturals. Oh, and our kids may not be married yet, but they are still friends. 

RIP Randy Meisner

Randy Meisner was the original bass player for Eagles (please, not the Eagles) before Timothy B. Schmit joined. He, like Schmit, also played for a time in the band Poco. Meisner was obviously a key player in the yacht rock era, a time when rock music was probably at its apex of mass popularity. While he was not a lead singer in Eagles, he was on one key song, "Take It to the Limit," which became the band's first million-selling single. He died in L.A. at 77 of breathing problems.

Wildflower showcases Mad Men's Kiernan Shipka perfectly

Wildflower was by no means at the top of my must-watch list, but anything with anyone from Mad Men (still my favorite TV show of all time) can't be too bad in my book. Kiernan Shipka, who played Don and Betty Draper's daughter Sally, returns all these years later as a high-school senior in a novel twist. She takes care of her parents, who are both intellectually disabled.

Released a few months ago to Hulu, Wildflower is a coming-of-age comedy-drama in which Shipka's charachter Bea (short for Bambi), falls into a coma right as she is getting into a romance with a hot new kid at the school played by the likeable Charlie Plummer. Shipka is also trying to figure out if she should keep taking care of her parents or start taking care of herself; she's great and in general a really mesmerizing actor. The Mad Men creators really knew what they were doing in terms of casting.

She's perfectly cast for this part too. A lot of the humor comes from the differences in the two parents' extended families. And the movie is quite funny and even silly. Despite the seeming seriousness of the content (disabilities, a coma) and the relatively deep explorations of love and acceptance, it is by no means a downer.

3.5 out of 5 stars

RIP Beatle Bob

I've now lived nearly half my life in the Washington D.C. area, but the first half of it happened in the St. Louis area. And it feels like just yesterday that I was dancing and singing along next to Beatle Bob (or at least standing there while he danced and sang). We never had any substantial conversations. The rock was enough for both of us. And he seemed to be at most shows that I attended, at least the club shows at the likes of Mississippi Nights, Cicero's, and Kennedy's. Beatle Bob announced in January on Facebook that his streak of 9,439 days in a row seeing concerts (minus 85 days during COVID when the city's ordinance shut down musical performances) was coming to an end, as he had been weakened by ALS Lou Gehrig's Disease.

Page-Turner Recommendation: Romantic Comedy is a great read, especially for fans of SNL

It seems like just yesterday I was excited to read Curtis Sittenfeld's 2020 novel Rodham. I haven't gotten to that one yet, but I have finished her new release Romantic Comedy, and it's a gem.

The author is one of our top comtemporary novelists. Her vibe and style are like the masterful Taylor Jenkins Reid, but Sittenfeld leans a little more witty, similar to Woody Allen. She usually aims for dialogue about the issues that often go unspoken in romantic relationships. It helps the story feel real and makes readers remember those early days of falling in love, when couples are learning about each other and fascinated with utmost curiosity about all the new things one learns from and about another person when getting to know that other person on a deep level. 

Sittenfeld has done her homework on the topic as well. She's read many of the same books, listened to the same podcasts, and watched the same TV and movies as I have about and by the stars and players of Saturday Night Live. Sally Milz writes for an SNL-like show and happens into a relationship with the featured and musical guest of one episode, Noah Brewster, who is a major pop star. She is a complex and exceptionally witty character who is the driving force behind making this an ultimate page-turner.

Romantic Comedy is every bit as good as her debut Prep, which I reviewed in 2014, and wrote that it's "a true coming-of-age story, reminiscent of Catcher in the Rye or Ethan Canin's novels, but with an even sharper microscope."

4.5 out of 5 stars

Bonus fun fact for fans of St. Louis: Sittenfeld moved to the city in 2018 because her husband got a job teaching at Washington University. She has said she likes St. Louis because of its "sense of history, its Midwestern sensibility, its vibrant arts scene, its friendly people, and its rich literary history."

Is Wham! possibly the second greatest pop duo of all time?

It’s easy to forget that George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley’s band Wham! was only around for about four years in the early 80s. And when you watch the Netflix documentary, simply called Wham!, it’s amazing to recall that they had a ton of unsuspectingly great pop hits.

Michael of course came to a sad end. But this new rock doc stays away from that part of the story other than to plant the seeds that were occuring under the surface in terms of Michael's fear of coming out as gay to his father and the world and the tremendous identity crisis it was causing for him. 

The movie is fascinating to watch not only because of the band's undeniable likeability, but also because of the way the colorful work takes us all back to a certain time and place whether we liked Wham! or not. Piecing it all together came quite a bit easier because of the voluminous scrapbooks Ridgeley's "mum" kept of Wham!'s rise to global superstardom. 

Definitely check it out. And here are some other interesting tidbits about Wham! that I uncovered as I dug a little deeper:

• George Michael's real name was Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou.
• Michael and Ridgeley met as teens at Bushey Meads School in Hertfordshire, England.
• The band's debut single, "Wham Rap! (Enjoy What You Do)," was released in 1982 and was banned by the BBC due to its profanity.  
• Hard to believe, but "Last Christmas," which was alleged by Michael to have been written in just one hour, was the band's biggest hit, even bigger than "Careless Whisper" and Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go."
• Wham! were the first Western pop act to tour China.
• The band's final concert was held at Wembley Stadium in 1986. Even after their breakup, they always remained friends. They also reunited for a one-off concert in 2009 that was a huge success and raised money for AIDS charities.
• The band's music has appeared in films, including The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and TV, including Glee.
• The band was inducted into the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2005.

For my money, Daryl Hall & John Oates are still the greatest duo of all time, but Wham! makes a convincing case here in this movie for the #2 spot on that list.

4.5 out of 5 stars

RIP Sinéad O'Connor

Sinéad O'Connor was never a musician I gravitated to, but put "Nothing Compares 2 U" on the old sound system and I guarantee you'll be moved and even shed a tear. Any writer who can make most of the world do that with just one song deserves to be celebrated. 

Don't Worry Darling is the worst movie I've seen in the past year

You may recall high drama on the set of a movie from last year that you probably vaguely remember kind of wanting to see. Off camera, actor Harry Styles, whose music I think I like a little less all of a sudden, started having an affair with actor and director Olivia Wilde, who was still married at the time to Jason Sudeikis, who is thankfully not involved in said movie and may be the only one to come out of this whole mess unscathed.

Don't Worry Darling is about a desert town (the only thing going for it is the beautiful scenery that resembles Death Valley and Palm Springs) of 100 homes or so constructed in a circular pattern and filled with teams of husbands and wives. The husbands go by day to a secret production facility, the wives stay home and do 1950s Stepford housewife things, and then they get together with their neighbors at night and on weekends for socializing and heavy drinking. We later learn that everyone has been brought to the isolated area in the past through virtual reality, presumably to forget their old miserable lives and to live without real-life cares and consequences.

Chris Pine is the big boss and his acting is not bad but he hardly has a script to work with. We learn little of his backstory (my guess is tech bro), his reasoning for bringing people to the town (they pay him money to take them back via VR to a time when America was "great?"), or why his eventual downfall occurs (his wife wants to be the powerful #1).

Florence Pugh is also not awful as the lead Alice, who discovers hints that all is not right in the desert. Her life becomes imperiled as she gets closer to ratting out Pine to the other members of what one could call a cult, but I love cult and sci-fi stuff, and this just doesn't pass mustard. Most of all, her performance is hindered by several really slow sequences hiding behind the guise of suspense.

Also, I got excited when I realized at the start of the movie that Nick Kroll is in it because he's one of my favorite comics, but he gets a next-to-nothing part. Even Wilde, who did a nice job acting in Vinyl in 2016 and directing Booksmart in 2019, doesn't have much acting space to bite into.

If the moral of this stinker is to question authority, then sign me up for a job working with the authority.

1.5 out of 5 stars

Courtney Love dishes the gossip on 90s indie rock, plus my favorite Hole songs

Courtney Love and daughter Francis Bean

Writer Jim DeRogatis doesn’t disappoint with his Courtney Love essay in his excellent book Milk It. He of course comes right out of the gates saying Love would never top her band Hole’s album Live Through This, which, in my mind, is nowhere near as accomplished as the band’s next album Celebrity Skin.

I do agree with DeRogatis that Love sounds a lot like Joan Jett. The music is a “skillful synthesis” of the formula laid out by Louie, Louie: quiet, loud, quiet, loud, big ending. 

Hole’s first big American show after her husband Kurt Cobain and her bassist Kristen Plaff both died was in Chicago, “sandwiched between forgettable openers Marilyn Manson and over-hyped headliners Nine Inch Nails.” Love destroyed her guitar and amp and jumped into the crowd. The show was deemed a cathartic success and kicked off a shining time for Love and her band’s popularity.

Interesting gossip nuggets from the article include:

• She hated Vanity Fair for writing that she did heroin while pregnant (she clarifies it was only in the first trimester). 
• Love said Billy Corgan helped her through tough times and adds that he told her his Mellon Collie album was Gen X’s The Wall. She also claims the Pumpkins’ Siamese Dream LP is all about her.
• She said Trent Reznor was a homophone and, like his friend MTV’s Kennedy, a Republican. 
• She lived in Elvis Costello and his wife’s house for a while when she was 18. 
• She said Kurt hated Eddie Vedder. 
• She said Kurt admitted to having a crush on Kim Deal, and also possibly Juliana Hatfield. 
• She likes to project as crazy in interviews because, she says, in business, you do that and people write you a check. 
• She says she heard Tom Petty used to stab a knife into the table when he wanted to make a point with people.
• She claims there was once a poll “in some women’s magazine” that said she was second most likely to go into politics behind Tom Hanks. (That didn’t pan out very accurately.)

And finally, although obviously not part of DiRogatis' essay, my top 6 favorite Hole songs are:

6. Awful (Celebrity Skin, 1999)
5. Violet (Live Through This, 1994)
4. Doll Parts (Live Throught This, 1994)
3. Celebrity Skin (Celebrity Skin, 1999)
2. Miss World (Live Through This, 1994)
1. Malibu (Celebrity Skin, 1999)

Barbie brings patriarchal and matriarchal philosophy to the masses

Barbiemania is taking hold right in time for my daughter’s 10th birthday, and the whole family took her today to a Sunday morning showing of Barbie in Wheaton.

She loved all the pretty shades of pink and the great soundtrack that makes the movie a bit of a musical. Meanwhile, adults can love all the jokes about gynecology, masturbation, virginity, and patriarchy, which are really pretty subtle.

Will Ferrell lends an Austin Powers feel to the proceedings as the leader of the Mattel corporation. Margot Robbie is now confirmed as a Brad Pitt/Leo DiCaprio-level star as Stereotypical Barbie, leading the other Barbies through a newfound wave of sadness and depression, even being relegated to second-class citizens of Barbieland by Ken and the other Kens, and then into a path towards being able to feel. Ryan Gosling’s abs are mesmerizing while his brain is more like The Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz - mostly missing. But even he eventually comes around towards trying to feel what it’s like to not be entirely dependent on Barbie and “beach.”

Greta Gerwig makes a gargantuan (but not really gargantuan) leap from her independent film acting and directing. She takes that indie sensibility and pastes it right smack into mainstream land, in a big way, forcing us to more deeply consider the ongoing gender wars in a fun, candy-colored wrapping.

There is so much content and media for us all to process these days. But I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that this is indeed (at least this season’s) Land of Oz.

5 out of 5 stars