Music to smash atoms by

A couple weeks back, I had the pleasure of attending the premier of The Atom Smashers at Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry. (I had this pleasure because my friend Clayton Brown is one of the directors.) The Atom Smashers documents three years in the lives of a group of physicists at the DOE's Fermi National Accelerator Lab (or Fermilab) in Batavia, IL, as they search for the Higgs boson, an elusive and for the moment purely theoretical sub-atomic particle (sometimes referred to as the God Particle), which promises to unlock the origins of the universe.

Clayton and his co-director Monica Ross turn what could easily be a geeked-out, yo-Poindexter snoozefest into a compelling and moving story by focusing on the people behind the search. Their search takes place against a backdrop of increasing cuts in US spending on basic science research as well as the prospect of the opening of an even larger particle accelerator at CERN in Switzerland.

One aspect of the The Atom Smashers that works especially well is the score by Kate Simko. I bring it up in this ostensibly (some would say allegedly) musical venue to direct you to a pair of illuminating posts on the subject. Simko's short essay about composing the score appeared on the blog Modyfier (coincidentally on the same day as the premier). This prompted a post by Clayton on the Atom Smashers blog about how creating the score fit into the overall four-year-plus process of putting the entire film together.

The Tevatron (Fermilab's 40-year old particle accelerator) was a beautiful, ugly, advanced and primitive machine with percolating valves, hi-tech computers, rusting bolts, dirty concrete, gleaming surfaces, and a devious personality. What's more, it was located smack in the middle of a prairie, with native grasses and buffalo wandering around. We knew that somehow we needed music to reflect this crazy combination of unfathomable technology and raw nature. A tall order.

In the end, they nail it (and I was pleased to find that Simko had used an accordion, albeit "highly-effected" samples from one to achieve many of the effects). But don't take my word for it. A slightly abridged version of The Atom Smashers will air in November as a part of the PBS series Independent Lens. Check your local listings, dammit. Smashers is also being screened at festivals including the Vancouver International Film Festival last weekend and, later this month, the Bergen International Film Festival in Norway (try the herring).

And someday soon, you'll be able to buy yourself a copy. Stay tuned. In the meantime, congrats to Clayton and the crew at 137 Films. [UPDATE: Here's the link to buy a copy and support 137 Films in the process.]

(Image above pilfered from 137 Films.)

Viddie: Bag's Groove

For your Friday, an YouTube oddity. The great Milt Jackson rehearsing his eponymous tune in 1994 with a Hungarian Dixieland band. Even in a rehearsal room Bags is pure genius. (Stick around until the end and tell me whether it seems like Bags doesn't exactly appreciate taking direction from the helpful Hungarian.)

Groove on.

New to the TNLD Blogroll: The Jazz Session

Pardon the dust around these parts. I promise I haven't forgotten about the three of you.

This is long overdue, but I feel the need to plug The Jazz Session, a fine jazz blog with a great jazz podcast to boot. If I were ever to do a jazz podcast, I'd hope it could be half as good as the podcast that host Jason Crane does every week. Crane brings both knowledge and a genuine enthusiasm to the proceedings and generally keeps the conversation from degrading into arcane shop talk for experts. I'm still working my way through the archives, but recent interviews with Aaron Parks and Eddie Daniels have both been a treat.

Better git it in your feed reader.

A last taste of summer

That's right, another post about watermelon.

Going the extra mile, radio style

In my radio days, I've managed to keep my on-air composure while other people were making faces, mooning me, talking about lingerie and a host of other distractions. But my hat is off to the Greek dude in the video above. Still waiting for a translation of the parting remarks.

Via

Oh, Bob...

A couple weeks back I downloaded the song "Dreaming of You" from Bob Dylan's webdongle (and for a while yet you can, too). It's an unreleased track from 1997 (and will soon be part of Tell Tale Signs, Volume 8 in Dylan's "bootleg" series). The song is all you could hope for from a genius at what from this angle appears to be the onset of his winter years. And may it be a long, healthy and productive winter.

Now word reaches these parts that Amazon has "an exclusive video" of the song. My advice: stick with the download. Sure, it was put together by the label to pimp the album, but who would have predicted that something that features both Bob Dylan and Harry Dean Stanton could feel like such an obvious tool?

Of course, any Dylan video is going to have trouble clearing the long shadow of this:


Failing that I'd even prefer a baldfaced knockoff:

Man on the Street

Try as you may, there's no way to escape it. Believe me, I've tried. But last Friday morning the endlessly hollow coverage of the longest presidential campaign in human history caught up with me while I was walking the dog.

As we strolled past the entrance to Loyola's North Shore campus a reporter from the Chicago Fox affiliate called me over. I'm an involuntarily polite Midwesterner, so I stopped.

And since she is a television reporter in a major market, her hair and makeup were flawless, which meant that she'd probably been up for hours at that point. Her camera operator, as so often happens in television, was scraggly and could have passed for homeless, although he too had probably been up untangling cables and checking batteries for hours. At this point, I'd been awake all of 20 minutes and had only spoken briefly to the dog, who for all his good points isn't much of conversationalist.

The ravishing reporter asked if I had watched John McCain's acceptance speech the night before and I told her no, but that I'd heard some of the news coverage. That was good enough for her. Would I mind talking about it on camera? Uh, I guess so. Ravishing and Scruffy leaned in, she with her microphone and him with his camera, and posed a question, something along the lines of "What did you think of the Republican convention?"

Gore Vidal once famously quipped that a person should never turn down an opportunity to have sex or be on television, but this was back in the days before HIV, AIDS, CNN, MSNBC and other dire acronyms. And of course it also assumes that you're able to organize your thoughts into a coherent arrangement of subjects and verbs and predicates, which Vidal always seems able to do. Problem is that even on a good day I'm no Gore Vidal, but especially not at 6:45 AM, unshowered, uncaffeinated, and holding a bag of dogshit.

Up until the question was asked, time seemed to be clicking along more or less at its usual pace. But as a random assortment of words began to make their way out of my mouth, my voice took on the quality of Charlie Brown's teacher. I rattled on for what seemed an eternity, but what a stopwatch would have clocked at a minute, tops. Unfortunately, it was all rattle, baby, and no hum and made about as much sense as the preceding simile. The term farrago comes to mind. In the middle of my blather a bus roared past. The dog tugged politely at the end of the leash.

Having been on the other side of the microphone I could tell that Ravishing and Scruffy were already mentally moving on to the next person on the street, next vox of the populi, hoping for something they could actually use. And I can't blame them one bit.

I kept thinking about it as the dog and I made our way home. After a couple blocks, I had a finally come up with a pithy statement: "I miss the old McCain." You know the one, the actual maverick, not the Stepford/podperson McCain I've been hearing for months now.

As so often happens these days, the fake news folks have the truest take on this.

I don't know that I would have voted for the pre-2006 McCain although it's certainly possible. That guy at least had a soul. And for what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?

Well, Jesus, just ask Dick Cheney.

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See also: My friend Fred has an astute point and cinematic comparison to make about the Palin nomination.