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Getting Normal with Macy, Q, and The Best Jazz Singer in the World by
Ben Fong-Torres - AC Team
Being the stone
patriot that I am, I've been heeding President W. and Mayor Giuliani's But is this normal?: Since late September, on top of my full-time and part-time jobs, I have: conducted two weddings in two weekends, produced a CD of classic disc jockey airchecks to be included in the upcoming paperback version of my book, The Hits Just Keep On Coming: The History of Top 40 Radio; written and delivered a talk at Northwestern, MCd an Elvis event at the Mill Valley Film Festival, and conducted on-stage interviews with two great artists, the music maestro Quincy Jones and the actor William H. Macy.
Boy, is my mouth tired. Jones,
whose career spans six decades and goes, as they say, "from bebop to hip-hop,"
As for Macy, who you may remember from his breakout role in Fargo, I'm happy to present a report from a writer I recently discovered. She's Kimberlye Gold, a rock musician and columnist for a little weekly called the San Francisco Herald. She writes like a rocker: high-energy, let-it-all-hang-out, and take no prisoners. Her column is called "Almost Famous," just like that little movie I've rented once or twice, and includes funny/sad anecdotes of artists and industry types who come onto her by way of expressing interest in her music.
She gives them tapes or CDs of her songs, they promise to listen, and THEY NEVER CALL. Such is life when you're an attractive blonde rocker grrrl. Those bastards. Anyway, after I came onto her, she gave permission for me to reprint part of her report on the Macy interview. For her full, unending-and unendingly entertaining column, go to www.sfherald.com and find her under "columnists." Here she is: Humor, respect for his craft, humility and true star power were dished out with equal measure at the Rafael Theater Tuesday night (Oct. 9) when William H. (stands for "Hall"} Macy took the stage. The wryly witty, well-informed and "so-dry-he-comes-with-an-olive" Ben Fong-Torres, former senior editor of Rolling Stone magazine was a perfect counterpart to Mr. Macy's gung-ho enthusiasm and refreshing lack of pretense. A sold-out audience of movie fans was treated to dozens of movie clips and the stories behind the scenes. Macy has perfected the "imploding Everyman", both comedically and tragically in over 60 films, 50 plays and dozens of TV roles, such as the role of distressed car salesman, Jerry Lundegaard, which put him on the map in Fargo. Macy claimed to have threatened to kill the Coen Brothers' dog if they didn't cast him, and has not had to audition for a role since. When asked why he always plays "losers", Macy said he refuses to refer to his characters as such. "It's the kiss of death to 'characterize the character.' You always find a 'noble point of view', and base it on your own, personal reasons of what you would do." He credits his work with writer/director David Mamet with defining and honing his understated, deadpan style?He pooh-poos acting preparation and technique -- what he refers to as "externals," and says, "It's on the page. If it's not on the page, don't put it in the movie. Just be on time and learn your lines. You'd be amazed how many big actors don't!"? Loving the stage for the "immediacy," loving the screen for "the tiny, skilled moments," William H. Macy just "really, really likes acting." And his legions of fans and admirers are really, really glad he does. Thanks, Kimberlye. Well, that leaves me no room to report on the talk at Northwestern. It's pretty much my same old spiel, spiced, as it were, with video clips from my appearances in Almost Famous, on Wheel of Fortune, Your Big Break, and Evening Magazine (an early interview with Steve Martin). After the talk, which was sponsored by the Chinese Students Association, several students asked about how to get into the music industry, and two gave me CDs of their bands. That, right there, was a good sign: Despite the state of the biz, which is horrible, with young fans having become accustomed to getting (that is, downloading) their music for free, and the ever-tightening industry unable to stop the flood, there's still interest-including Asian-Americans, who've been far too underrepresented in the industry, as either artists or executives. And yes, I did listen to those CDs, and sent comments to the fledgling artists. Whatta guy. Short and Sweet I did get a bit of relaxation in. By coincidence, two sets of friends invited Dianne and me to two events at the San Francisco Jazz Festival: First, Bobby Short at Davies Symphony Hall; then, Mary Stallings at Herbst Theater. Now, I'm no big jazz fan (Sorry, Q), and Dianne likes it even less. But, aside from wanting to go out with our friends, we had reasons to be intrigued by both artists. We'd almost seen Bobby Short at the Caf?Carlyle in New York City years ago.
That is, we'd made it into the room, but it was so packed, we wound up scrunched up against a back wall, closer to a huge speaker than to any human being. If we craned our necks and looked at a mirror, we could, on occasion, see a reflection of Short. So we'd seen him, but we really hadn't. We'd never seen Mary Stallings, period. But she's a San Francisco native who, although not exactly a household name, is considered "perhaps the finest jazz singer singing today." At least that's what the New York Times said recently, and that's good enough for me. I love female vocalists, from Sarah Vaughan and Rosie Clooney to k.d. lang, Emmylou Harris, Sarah McLachlan, Shelby Lynne, Alicia Keyes and Dido. Stallings was superb. She's been around the block-she cut her first record in 1961-but she looked dazzling and quickly won the crowd over with her warm, supple voice and her tasteful repertoire, some of it ("Slow, Hot Wind," "Sunday Kind of Love") from her great new CD, Mary Stallings Live at the Village Vanguard. Turns out that, after a few tours with Billy Eckstine and Count Basie, and a handful of albums, she gave up on the business, emerging again only in late 1999, at the Village Vanguard. Now, she's being rediscovered. Slowly. But, as Barry Singer wrote in the New York Times, "fortunately, there's still time to find out." Bobby Short needs no rediscovering. He's always been there, from vaudeville to the Carlyle, paying tribute to songwriters dating back to the '20s, by song and stories. He's the consummate showman, the first pianist-singer I've ever seen who ends every song by turning away from his piano and beaming broadly at the audience, sometimes standing to do so. Along with a nine-piece orchestra that flew in with him from New York City that day, Short, at age 75, was his usual ball of energy. His raspy voice is nothing special; it's how he sells his music that makes him a standout. He's especially effective on ballads like "I Get Along Without You Very Well," but he swings, too, on numbers like "It Was One of Those Things" and "At Long Last Love." In Short, we've got a national treasure, one of our few bridges, as Dianne put it, to vaudeville and to the early history of American popular music. Almost Finished Watching HBO the other night, I saw myself again-the movie version of me. Almost Famous is showing now, and it's also coming out in a "bootleg DVD," containing scenes director Cameron Crowe couldn't fit into the finished movie. Meantime, from an email from one Richard Chang, I'm told that my exhortation, in the film, to "Get it together, Man!" is a new catch phrase ringing in offices everywhere. Crazy?br> Ben Fong-Torres,
long-time writer, broadcaster and former senior editor at Rolling Stone
magazine, is the author of four books, including his memoirs, The Rice
Room: Growing Up Chinese-American, and his latest, Not Fade Away: A Backstage
Pass to 20 Years of Rock Click to Ben
Fong-Torres Articles Index Related
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