Month: July 2023

Sinéad O’Connor, and the voice that could not be ignored

I don’t know no shame / I feel no pain / I can’t see the flame – “Mandinka,” Sinéad O’Connor

We spend most of our lives chasing the music we loved when we were 17.

Sinéad O’Connor came into my sheltered little musical world like a thunderbolt, and she blazed hard and bright through her trouble-plagued, too-short life before dying this week at only 56. 

It’s an embarrassing kind of revelation to make, but I think she was the first female singer-songwriter I ever truly listened to and adored, as I emerged from my adolescent male-dominated world of Guns ’N Roses and Billy Joel music.

She was a pathway for me to discover her influences like Patti Smith and Joni Mitchell and her peers like PJ Harvey and Fiona Apple. I could not fully understand her life – how could I, a small-town California dude? – but I listened to her. 

Her first two albums will always be part of the soundtrack of teenage love to me, of the jittery combination of urgency and anxiety your entire life seems made of at that age. 

For a few months in 1990, the girl from Ireland was inescapable with the striking video for “Nothing Compares 2 U.” There were no women like her then at the top of the pop charts that year. She stared at you in that remarkable video with candour and a sincerity that was startling in a year when MC Hammer, Vanilla Ice and Paula Abdul ruled the airwaves. With that extraordinary voice, she could channel a world of emotions, from bliss to defiance. Unlike far too many pop singers, you never felt her showing off. She simply let out what was inside her. 

I love I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, but it’s her debut The Lion And The Cobra I play the most, her rawest and most punk-rock moment. Barely out of her teens, Sinéad blew like a hurricane through an otherworldly mix of anthems, anguish and adoration. She would never sound so carefree as she did on “Mandinka,” or as ominious as she did on “Jackie,” but if I had to take one song by her with me, it would be the triumphant epic “Troy,” which howls and builds with energy. It’s a song that blows me away every time I listen to it, and while it was “Nothing Compares 2 U” used in all the headlines and tributes, it is “Troy” that sums up Sinéad O’Connor’s essence. 

Number-one album I Do Not Want and that unstoppable hit Prince cover song were both her making and unmaking as a hit singer. She followed it up with a criminally underrated album of torch song covers, Am I Not Your Girl, and she bent those songs into her sphere marvellously. 

I always considered myself a fan but realised I had only dipped a little bit into most of Sinéad’s music after 1994’s mellow and contemplative Universal Mother. I kept meaning to catch up because I always had a soft spot for her. I had drifted away from paying attention to her music, and I wish I hadn’t. 

I wish I could say her death was surprising. 

I knew she had a background of terrible abuse and repeated mental health issues, which were surely escalated by the suicide of her teenage son last year. I knew she sometimes said things that were off the wall or offensive and never quite seemed the same after being so rudely scorched by the public eye in the 1990s. She dared to speak out angrily about child abuse by priests and her mainstream career as a musician never really recovered, even though history has proven her defiantly right. She was a woman with opinions, and some people never forgave that. She was not your internet content. 

It’s been bittersweet to see so many people talking about how much Sinéad’s music meant to them in the last day or so. This complicated woman, despite all the troubles and obstacles in her life, touched the lives of many. 

I’ve seen some in the aftermath of her death saying the many controversies of her life never drowned out her music. I’m sorry, it’s a noble thought, but I think unfortunately, and terribly, for the vast majority of the mainstream world that just wasn’t true, and the tabloid clamour over her life swamped coverage of her musical career. 

I wish it hadn’t. I wish she’d found a little more peace in this life. She changed me, just a little bit, by the very act of listening to her, and I wish somehow all of us who felt that way could have helped this beautiful woman make a different way in this hard old world. 

I am not like I was before / I thought that nothing would change me / I was not listening anymore / Still you continued to affect me – “Feel So Different”, Sinéad O’Connor

Where to get help:

Lifeline New Zealand

(United States) Crisis Helpline

Dungeons and Dragons: The Monster Manual is all I’ve ever needed

It’s probably been literal decades since I played Dungeons and Dragons, but I’ll never forget the monsters. 

I grew up during the mid-1980s pre-internet heyday of the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons first edition, before multiple revisions, digital versions and blockbuster movies and the like, when the primary sources were only a Player’s Handbook, a Dungeonmaster’s Manual and, best of all, the Monster Manual.

I’d play D&D with a handful of fellow pre-teen travellers back then, and for an awkward, gangly kid trying to figure out his place in the world, those silly, strange adventures were a great escape from the real world.

I was never a dungeonmaster, always a player, throwing around all those great multi-faceted dice (the 20-sided die remains a favourite, although I also love the pyramidal solidity of the 4-sided die). With our rustic pencils and graph paper to map our way, plucky dice and a heaping helping of imagination, my friends and I would storm castles, kill trolls and hunt for treasure, as all good D&D players should.

Eventually I wandered away to other diversions, and while I’ve always had a certain fondness for D&D in the years since, I’ve never really played again.

But one thing has stuck with me, over the years – all those lovely monsters. The original Monster Manual from 1977 was a charmingly low-fi bestiary of all kinds of imaginary and mythical creatures one might encounter in a campaign, from the Aerial Servant to the Zombie. I love a good guidebook, and many years on I still own a copy of the Monster Manual, and its grittier British-generated sequel, 1981’s Fiend Folio.

Both books remain enjoyably retro yet overflowing with ideas – each monster is gridded up with nerdy game statistics (what armor class is the Owlbear? What’s the difference between a Werewolf and Weretiger?) and kind of amateurish but passionate artwork.

In later year, D&D art materials would all get that polished, airbrushed and vaguely soulless quality of some heavy metal album cover, but for the ’77 Monster Manual, you got the feeling some of these critters were dashed off on scrap paper, and all the better for it. These weren’t monsters slapped out as part of some corporate committee, but raw material from D&D’s early, fan-driven days. 

The huge variety of creatures sourced mythology and legend and ranged from the incredibly mundane (yes, there’s an entry for Mules, and one for the humble Badger) to the gloriously weird and creative like the many-eyed Beholder, the slippery Gelatinous Cube or the bizarre Owlbear. There were hints of nudity amongst some of the female monsters, which I’m sure attracted many a young fan.

In Fiend Folio, the art took on a raw, gorier quality and some of the creatures in there are truly terrifying to me still, like the Penanggallan, basically a flying decapitated female vampire head with a sack of guts hanging off it – ew!

What attracted me – and so many others, I’m sure – to D&D was the epic world-building involved, huge thick manuals covering every permutation of your fantasy world and characters. The Monster Manual felt like it might’ve been a real guide, somehow, with its genial authority. I loved that you had not one but several kinds of dragons and giants explained (Red Dragon or Green or perhaps, the regal Bronze? Why is a Stone Giant so much scarier looking than a Hill Giant?). 

I know there’s been dozens of other manuals and guides and handbooks for D&D in the years since my playing days, and hey, that’s cool, I’m glad the game still endures.

But for me, the original handful of books are where it’s at.

Everything tends to get too complicated in fandom after a while, but in those early days for the great game, it was pretty simple. Here’s a book of monsters. Which one will you fight?

I guess that’s why I’ve kept copies of these monster manuals about, long after I rolled my last 20-sided dice – they’re guidebooks to a world that never was but one I mightily enjoyed visiting. I’ll never see an Owlbear or the Beholder in real life, I’m sure, but as long as they’re in a guidebook, they’re real somewhere, right? 

Movies I Have Never Seen #24: The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951)

What is it? The plot is simple: A peaceful alien arrives on Earth to deliver an important message, but is immediately met by fear and hatred. It’s an idea that’s been revisited countless times everywhere from E.T. to Starman to Arrival, but seldom with quite as much cool style as in 1951’s The Day The Earth Stood Still. Michael Rennie plays Klaatu, a seemingly human alien who arrives on Earth with an ominous robot sidekick, Gort, and who attempts to understand humanity. Klaatu grows close to an Earth boy and his mother, but fears that Earth’s warring nuclear powers threaten the rest of the universe’s stability. 

Why I never saw it: Some movies seep into the collective unconsciousness so much, you think you have seen them. Any somewhat movie-literate person recognises the image of Gort emerging from Klaatu’s spaceship. Yet when I was a teenager discovering all those old ‘50s sci-fi classics, this one wasn’t on the afternoon TV movie rotations. Somehow, the movie itself had slipped through my watchlist over the years but because it is so familiar, watching it felt a bit like rediscovering an old book you read and loved long ago. 

Does it measure up to its rep?  From the creepy theremin soundtrack to the bold and simple iconic designs of Klaatu’s flying saucer and Gort’s lurking menace, Day The Earth Stood Still is a template for what we think of when we think of smart science fiction. Don’t overlook Rennie’s quietly charismatic performance as Klaatu, one of the first of many cinematic “strangers in a strange land” to ponder the mysteries of us earthlings. Rennie anchors the movie when it threatens to dissolve into kitsch or sentiment (Keanu Reeves played the role in a widely ignored 2008 remake, which I haven’t seen). Sure, Klaatu’s relationship with naive little Earth child Bobby is a plot device that is a bit saccharine, but Patricia Neal’s thoroughly humane performance as his mother works very well, especially as she comes into her own in the final act. 

The 1950s were an absolute golden age for science fiction movies. Sure, they had existed before that and SF’s roots date back at least to the Victorian work of Jules Verne, but in the devastated aftermath of World War II, SF became a way for us to work out our feelings about the brave new world of atomic energy, mass death and the cosmic unknown.

Anyone who calls themselves a science fiction fan has at least a few ‘50s movies they love, from the original Godzilla to the creepy creatures of The Blob, The Thing and Them to the more thoughtful, contemplative vibe of classics like Forbidden Planet, The Incredible Shrinking Man and War Of The Worlds. The Day The Earth Stood Still stands firmly in that company, as science fiction that asks questions and makes us question our own beliefs. It’s ahead of its time and thoroughly of its time all at once. 

Worth seeing? Absolutely, because while the cold war paranoia that coursed through the bloodstream of so much 1950s science fiction has eased a bit, the movie’s message hasn’t lost relevance. We humans are still self-destructive, often brutish creatures determined to sabotage our world’s possibilities, as the last few years have so thoroughly reminded us. When Klaatu says at the end, “the decision rests with you,” that’s a message that resounds still 70 years on. Hopefully eventually we’ll listen.

Meanwhile, elsewhere on the internet…

I’m running around getting ready for a holiday and juggling deadlines like they were howler monkeys escaped from the zoo, but here’s a quick look at some other things by me elsewhere on the internets:

It’s just about time for Whānau Mārama New Zealand International Film Festival, the bestest time of the year if you love movies, and I have already bought far too many tickets. You can read my preview of all the film fest action right here at Radio New Zealand, and it also doubles as a bit of a tribute to film festivals in general, which we all know are the best-ivals.

How To Live Your Best Life at the New Zealand International Film Festival

Meanwhile, I’m also keeping up an occasional book reviewing side hustle over at NZ’s best weekly current affairs magazine, The Listener, which after a few pandemic-plagued years without a web presence has recently launched a bigger digital footprint.

You can read my latest book review of David Grann’s excellent historical page-turner The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder right now in the latest issue at good newsstands everywhere in New Zealand, and the review is also online right here (paywalled):

David Grann’s rip-roaring account of an 18th century mission gone wrong

The triumph of Stephen Root, or, The Raven spreads his wings

I love a good character actor, and one of the best in the business is Stephen Root, who’s been kicking around for ages but really took his work to the next level with the recently completed pitch-black comedy Barry. 

For a glorious episode or two, the supporting character actually became more interesting than the show’s star. 

Root is a key “hey, I know that guy!” actor. In his career he’s racked up nearly 300 acting credits, and in many of them, he’s outright stolen the show from bigger stars. 

I first became a Root fanboy with his hilarious work on the classic ‘90s sitcom NewsRadio as arrogant, distracted millionaire station owner Jimmy James. Root was surrounded by terrific talent like Dave Foley and the late, sorely missed Phil Hartman (and another guy who obnoxiously became the most famous member of the show’s cast by hosting reactionary podcasts, but forget about him). 

Root’s James was a great comic creation, a kind of easy caricature of rich bluster animated by quirky little moments, and provided many of NewsRadio’s best scenes. I can never quite make it without laughing through the bit where Jimmy James hosts a reading from his memoirs, which were accidentally translated into Japanese and then back into English again, somewhat mangling the text:

Just listen to the perfect cadence Root gives lines like, “But Jimmy has fancy plans – and pants to match!”  

In the 1999 cult classic comedy Office Space, Root plays the opposite of Jimmy, the mumbling office drone Milton, obsessed with his red stapler, turning a pathetic geek into something indelible. 

Root has the knack for standing out even in the smallest roles, whether he’s popping up as a creepy blind predator in Get Out, on TV on Succession, Justified, The Book of Boba Fett or in one of his many Coen brothers movie roles. 

But he’s never quite been the star of the show, like most character actors. That’s why I loved so much what we saw in the final few episodes of Barry, where he played the shady mentor and handler of Bill Hader’s disturbed assassin Barry Berkman. 

In the series, Fuches is another one of Root’s great cowardly losers, always looking like he just rolled out of bed and constantly nearly getting killed. He’s a boastful manipulator who never quite rises out of the gutter, until toward the end of the series when he’s jailed and the series jumps forward in time several years.

When Fuches is thrown in prison, he demands other prisoners call him the “Raven,” another one of his bombastic fantasy projections of himself. He’s promptly beaten nearly to death, and that’s the last we see of him until the story picks up years on. 

In that time, Fuches has actually transformed himself into The Raven, a tattooed mob boss terror with his own gang of cutthroats. Released into the world, The Raven is suddenly a real threat instead of the bumbling poser Fuches was. The small, dumpy guy everyone has underestimated is now the most dangerous man in the room.

Barry was a fascinating series – sometimes its reach exceeded its grasp, I felt – but the few episodes where Root flies as the Raven are among the series’ peaks. Everything about The Raven is different from Fuches – his body language, his swaggering self-assurance, the murderous glint in his eye. 

After years of side roles and small parts, it’s a damned pleasure to see Stephen Root suddenly take the centre stage. It’s kind of like watching a wallflower turn into the life of the party, to see the skill he’s built up as a character actor over the years turned outwards. 

The Raven felt like the apotheosis of Stephen Root to date, a high point in a career filled with vivid sketches and gags. Take a moment to appreciate the little guy, the battler who in the end takes control of his own story. You never know when they might spread their wings … or stick a knife in your back.