The great guitarist Garry Shider, a close collaborator with George Clinton for decades, has died at age 56. Recognized visually onstage as part of the Parliafunkadelicment Thang for his penchant for wearing a diaper, Shider had brain and lung cancer.
Shider was a key contributor to P-Funk touchstones such as “One Nation Under A Groove” and the earth-shaking “Cosmic Slop.” Here’s a bit of footage prominently including Shider that appeared on Belgium television:
Shider was a marvelous vocalist as well as an innovative guitar player. Listen to his croon on Mills’ blog item as Shider sings “Sexy Ways.”
He’ll be missed immensely, but his grooves survive forever.
The show may be called Work of Art: The Next Great Artist, but during last night’s second episode, it found the Next Great Nap-Taker. That would be Miles, the self-described installation artist who, puffy-eyed from lack of sleep, installed himself on the bed he’d made as part of the night’s art project and dozed quietly while the judges and a crowd of gallery-attendees strolled around him.
The task this week was to make art out of an “appliance graveyard” — contestants chose from mounds of discarded old TVs, computer monitors and keyboards, wooden boxes, wiring, and such. This was as different from last week’s challenge (painting a portrait) as possible, and promised to show the range of the contestants. Miles, who’d won last week’s competition, decided to use his insomnia as inspiration, fashioning a bed flanked on either side by what he called “two concrete a–holes,” and he wasn’t talking about getting a pair of BP oil executives to join him.
Far too many of the Work of Art folks glommed onto discarded television sets to make what Nicole so inelegantly said were “like, references [to] American culture.” Proving the age-old notion that artists should avoid trying to make art with a message and just concentrate on the art-making, we got a lot of installations or sculptures that tried to show the banality of TV culture: yawn. Trong, who’d been positioned as the New York art-world insider with the show’s coolest haircut, went remarkably limp in the creativity department. He slathered four TVs with white paint, wrote trite phrases on them such as “I Hate Reality TV!” and presented it to the judges as “television having a conversation with itself.” Oh, puh-leeze; as judge Jerry Saltz said, this was “self-referentiality up the wazoo.”
The guest judge was artist Jon Kessler, introduced by one of the contestants as “the man” when it comes to installation art and kinetic sculpture. Let’s look at a bit of his work, shall we?:
In the end, Miles and his gray a–holes won (second week in a row for the pleasingly eccentric Miles), and Trong got the boot. I’d say it was difficult to pick the worst. Certainly Jaime Lynn, with her prettily bright-colored painted vacuum that looked like a department-store window display, was a close second for banality. I guess it was Trong’s pretentiousness combined with his banality that was the determining damnation.
A few things are already becoming clear:
• Clearly, this show needs to be better edited. The biggest moment of drama was allowed to slip by almost unnoticed. During the judging, Miles inserted his own opinion of Trong’s piece among the judges’: “This piece is distractingly boring,” Miles moaned to Trong. Say what? When was the last time you saw a reality-show competitor condemn another’s work during the judges’ comments? Yet except for a few raised eyebrows, this moment went unremarked.
• Judge Saltz proved again this week he has the brains and the gumption to state his praise and his reservations in the clearest of language. Looking Jamie Lynn straight in her baby-blues, he said, “I actually think that you’re not creating art here.” And he was, of course, correct.
• “Mentor” Simon de Purey is no Tim Gunn, so far. He walked from artist to artist as they crafted their pieces and said, “What are you trying to do here?” Given the inevitably vague answer, he smiled and said some variation on, “You’ve got a lot of work to do!” or “Most fascinating!” If any bunch of reality show competitors needs to be told, “You’ve got to clarify your idea!” and “I don’t think that works at all,” it’s this group. Let’s put more meat in the mentoring, shall we, Simon?
What did you think of the second week of Work of Art?
Hot in Cleveland shouldn’t have been tucked away at 10 p.m. to make its premiere: This playfully naughty throwback starring Valerie Bertinelli, Jane Leeves, Wendie Malick, and Betty White is the kind of thing a network would program at 8 p.m. nowadays. That is, if networks had any use for women stars over the age of 40. Which was the point of this show, debuting on the home of fond dreams, cable’s TV Land, after a slew of Everybody Loves Raymond reruns.
If you bought the premise — three Los Angeles gals stranded in Cleveland find that they READ FULL STORY »
Betty White is out promoting her new sitcom Hot In Cleveland. Last night, she was on The Daily Show, where Jon Stewart said he watched Golden Girls reruns and admired her “exquisite” timing — nice to see a young man respecting his elders. He also mentioned a Facebook campaign to make White the next READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Everett CollectionJimmy Dean, who died at age 81 on Sunday, had one gigantic hit single, “Big Bad John,” in 1961. It was a hypnotic story-song that made the most of Dean’s rumbling Texas drawl.
But Dean achieved equal fame via television, as the host of The Jimmy Dean Show, which aired on ABC in the mid-1960s. Pre-Hee-Haw and before The Johnny Cash Show, Dean’s variety hour (he’d had an earlier, less successful CBS show) was the best nationwide showcase for country music. It gave exposure to great country artists such as Roger Miller, Jim Reeves, and Ray Price.
Dean had an utterly beguiling, easygoing style, and unlike a lot of singing hosts of the era, he was able to duet with a guest in a way that didn’t call undue attention to himself. Just look at this charming performance with guest Buck Owens: READ FULL STORY »
It’s not often that Breaking Bad does flashbacks, so when it does — particularly as one of its always-crucial pre-credits sequences — we’d best pay close attention. Thus when last night’s season finale, entitled “Full Measure,” commenced with a scene of younger Walt and a pregnant-with-Walter-Jr. Skyler walking with a real-estate agent through the house-with-a-pool that would become their home-with-nightmares, fresh insight into these characters was gleaned. We saw that, even before he was diagnosed with cancer and started making meth to pay his future bills, Walter White was something of a dreamer, a suppressed risk-taker. Skyler loved the three-bedroom house, but Walt thought READ FULL STORY »
True Blood‘s revved-up, slam-bang premiere picked up precisely where it left off last season, as Anna Paquin’s Sookie emerged from the ladies’ room only to find Stephen Moyers’ Bill gone, kidnapped… taken, it turned out, byREAD FULL STORY »
Well, it’s the one we’ve been both waiting for and dreading: The third-season finale of Breaking Bad. After the gasping conclusion of last week’s hour — Bryan Cranston’s Walter White ramming into two drug dealers with his car and then shooting READ FULL STORY »
Wow, what an energy-rush this week’s Friday Night Lights was. I know what many of you meant when you wrote in the Comments section that last week featured an Emmy-worthy performance by Zach Gilford as a grieving son; I agree. But I also thought this week’s romantic scenes between Taylor Kitsch and Minka Kelly were extraordinary; Kitsch in particular gave a tremendously subtle performance.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
How about that incorrigible little minx Julie, blithely ignoring Tami’s orders and traipsing off to Austin with Matt for a music festival featuring acts such as the Heartless Bastards and Hem? (Kudos to the Heartless B’s for putting in a fine cameo.) Julie has been more good-natured around the house lately, but it made sense that she’d pull out a little rebellion along about this time in the series, when she’s feeling the pressure of a fragile relationship with Matt.
Even better was the return home later in the hour, one of the few times Aimee Teagarden was really able to match the kind of emotional power Connie Britton can let with at will. Julie’s wracked sobs and guilt and grief matched Tami’s choked anger and fear and maternal relief.
As for Tim Riggins and Lyla Garrity — this was a terrific way to bring her character back, to reestablish how much she cares for Tim, but also how much she’s out-grown him. (Her line, “What do you want?,” met by his plaintive, “You,” was a total heart-crusher.) And the writers have made Tim a classic anti-hero: he’s now the charismatic rule-breaker who’s discovering that breaking the rules doesn’t get you very far in love, in work, or in life over the long haul. The scenes in which Tim and Lyla were enjoying each other’s company (whether in a bar, as pictured here, or alone in his grotty trailer) were sexy and poignant; very delicately played and moving, I thought. Nonetheless, On the bus you go: Bye-bye, Lyla Garrity/Minka Kelly!
The football this week was convincingly brutal — it’s true to FNL‘s realism that East Dillon lost; pulling out a feel-good victory would have felt like a drama-cheat. But I am getting a bit tired of coach Stan being all fidgety and shooting his mouth off at the wrong time. Comic relief is something FNL doesn’t much need. Then again, I trust the producers that they know what they’re doing with this character, and that Stan’s annoying behavior is going to pay off in some way further into the season.
And about that final scene: Do you think Matt is driving off into the sunset for good? (I know one person who isn’t going to miss him — that obnoxious artist whose subplot wasn’t really working out.)
Royal Pains continued its cheerful, warm-weather ways last night. Somehow it doesn’t even matter that Mark Feuerstein’s Hank was still deeply resentful at the fact that his dad, Henry Winkler’s Eddie R., left the family when Hank’s mom was dying 20 years ago. Some let-it-go philosophy from little brother Evan (“People can change”), a little twinkle from the eyes of Winkler, and a READ FULL STORY »
