Author: rakemag

Mexico’s most prominent photographer turned 100 this year. Sadly, he died just a few weeks ago, before he could join us; the Walker was already bringing to town a Getty Museum retrospective of 100 of Alvarez Bravo’s works covering the many phases of his long career. Born into a family of painters and photographers, Alvarez Bravo came of age during Mexico’s post-revolutionary 1920s renaissance, when dozens of artists from around the world flooded into the country. While working as an accountant, he refined his art and distilled ideas from the creative ferment around him, even briefly working as Sergei Eisenstein’s cinematographer. In the process he became the first Mexican photographer to move past formal realism, using his finely tuned compositional eye to capture meanings more intangible than just the literal images his camera collected. His style was equally hard to pin down. Though he often made use of surreal imagery, he didn’t consider himself a surrealist. Nor was he as overtly political as his peers, although one of his most compelling images shows an assassinated labor agitator lying in a pool of his own blood. His work is deceptively ordinary, largely trained on the everyday events of his Mexico City environs, and yet confidently evokes an array of modernist styles, from crisp formalism to obliquely erotic dream imagery. If he preferred not to confine himself to a single method, it may be because he saw the image itself as his overriding artistic concern. As he put it in an often-repeated motto, “Shoot what you see, not what you think.” Walker Art Center, (612) 375-7622, www.walkerart.org

Eugene Larkin has been a fixture of local printmaking for more than 30 years, a denizen of both MCAD and the University’s art department. Larkin’s work has a reassuring quality to it—never indulging in gimmicks or trends, but hewing to old-fashioned media and traditional values in composition, tone, and texture. In terms of subject matter, he sticks to the artistic equivalent of comfort food, too: formal nudes, still lifes, and landscapes make up much of his oeuvre. But that doesn’t make it any less appealing. Quite the contrary. Here, the artist shows off his skill with a notoriously difficult medium—woodcut—in such difficult but time-tested territory as myth and scripture. And no, he did not get the game-winning hit in game 7 of the 1991 World Series. That’s a different—though equally beloved—Eugene Larkin.

Though he still tours constantly, Bobby Z.’s attention lately has been taken up more and more by the movies. Perhaps inspired by the Oscar netted by “Things Have Changed,” Dylan’s developed a thing for releasing his new songs on soundtracks. His newest, “Waitin’ For You” was in Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, so you’re forgiven if it flew under your radar. Hopefully he’ll have better luck with “Crossing Over the Green Mountain,” debuting in the forthcoming Civil War drama Gods and Generals . He’s also going in front of the lens to star as a has-been singer named Jack Fate in next year’s post-apocalyptic fable Masked and Anonymous, which has become one of those buzz-heavy projects that Hollywood’s glitterati take huge pay cuts to get a part in. The past few years have been good to Bob, and that new vitality has carried over into his live act as well. His last two shows in Minnesota have found him in fine form, offering up splendid reinterpretations of both classics and new songs, his voice aged into an expressive, rough snarl like bootleg whisky in an oaken cask. And while he’s famous for radically changing his set lists from one show to the next, he’s been fairly consistent of late in covering the Rolling Stones’ “Brown Sugar” and lots of Warren Zevon, sometimes as many as three songs a night. Xcel Energy Centre, (651) 265-4800, xcelenergycenter.com

By now, you should have given Aimee Mann’s new album, Lost in Space , a few thousand listenings—not because you don’t get it, but because you do. “Humpty Dumpty” was on local playlists for a while, but Mann is the kind of artist who still makes albums you want to listen to, from beginning to end. She’s terrific live, too—casual and comfortable, but a little shy. Like any good cabaret performer, she waits in earnest for the audience to do its part. A nicer, more genuine rock star you’re not likely to see. We just love her, even if she is married to the guy who wrote that insufferable lyric, “What if I were Romeo in black jeans?” (To which we answer, “What if we were Juliet with an oak axe-handle?” Kidding. We’re kidding.) O’Shaughnessy Auditorium, (651) 690-6700

In recent years, there’s been a real expansion in our awareness of great rock ’n’ roll coming from non-English speaking countries—and we’re not just talking about all the cool ABBA tribute bands. Maybe it’s just the natural consequence of having successfully overwhelmed the rest of the world with our brand of pop music. Are we really that surprised that Swedish teenagers can now pick up the guitar and play garage rock even better than we can? On the other hand, there are examples of bands that are making great music on their own terms and in their own languages. In the case of Iceland’s Sigur Ros, that’s literally true. Jonsi Birgisson, their ultra-androgynous singer, makes up his own language (not like we’d know the difference between Jonsic and Icelandic, but it makes us seem smart to say so.) Atmospheric dirges, soaring and symphonic studies in feedback, like Cocteau Twins run over by the Mannheim Steamroller—it’s all far too artsy-fartsy for mainstream American consumption. And yet, somehow these Bjorkish boys colonized a place in the hearts of every English-speaking critic west of Robert Christgau, not to mention a spot on the superhip soundtrack to FOX-TV’s thriller, 24 .

You know, there just aren’t very many pop recording artists these days who are making what we’d call “art” in the high-brow sense of the word. And any time we start making a list (you know how we love lists around here!), the little elfish one from Iceland lands right on top, every time. Her whole recording career has been marked by a quirky-spirited quest into what it’s possible to get away with, while still calling her compositions pop music. This is a more complex and interesting paradox than it might seem. Bjork has proven many times—think “Army of Me” and “Hyperballad” for starters—that you can push the envelope lyrically and musically, while at the same time attracting sustainable commercial interest. There is the possibility, of course, that her successes were an accident of the time—that she thrived in the brief moment in the 90s when alt-rock radio created so many unlikely rock stars. Privately, we feel half her success can be chalked up to incredible car-audio systems that stand up to the audio gymnastics of which she’s capable. But that’s a conversation we’ll save for the coffeeshop, after we’ve had a chance to sign up for this chartered omnibus back in time.

If anyone has earned the right to use such an inclusive title for a series of records as “American Recordings,” it’s Johnny Cash. He connects with an amazingly broad set of audiences, from collegiate hipsters to presidents Nixon and Reagan, and is equally able to impress pious churchgoers and (as Merle Haggard once observed) “to take five thousand convicts and steal the show away from a bunch of strippers.” For the past decade, Cash has been collaborating with producer Rick Rubin, who’s kept his profile high among Xers and post-grungers with smart covers of songs by people like Beck and Soundgarden. Despite multiple Grammys, the American records certainly aren’t a blockbuster popular crossover in the O Brother sense (mainstream country radio won’t touch a Nine Inch Nails cover, for one thing). Neither are they trend-chasing put-ons like that buffoonish Pat Boone metal album of a few years back. If the O Brother phenomenon is about today’s performers reaching back to affirm the past, the Man in Black’s venerable integrity makes his recent work a living bridge in the opposite direction. On The Man Comes Down the choice of material is often inspired, including Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus,” a duet with Nick Cave on the Hank Williams tune “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” and for a closing number, “We’ll Meet Again,” best known as the nuclear-armageddon serenade in Dr. Strangelove . Given the 70-year-old Cash’s ongoing health problems, it could very well be his own personal touch of dark humor.

Since the odds of you being attacked by a shark are about the same as being marooned on a desert island with Jennifer Lopez or Russell Crowe, New York Times writer John Tierney has written The Best Case Scenario Handbook, a parody of those successful worst-case handbooks. If you are going to learn how to survive an elevator free-fall, why not also learn how to act when Santa Claus actually shows up (“Santa knows the difference between ‘good’ scotch and ‘bad’ scotch”)? Or how to receive a divine visitation (“Be accommodating, but not slavish”)? Or how to respond when an ATM just keeps on spitting money at you? (Duh.) Tierney, who co-wrote the self-help spoof God Is My Broker: A Monk-Tycoon Reveals the 7 1/2 Laws of Spiritual and Financial Growth , has crafted a witty, often hilarious book that lives up to the expectations laid out in Christopher Buckley’s laughing and touching introduction. (To wit: the conceit is funny, sure. But it wouldn’t stay funny for 125 pages if Tierney couldn’t keep the laughs coming.) By the way, step number three for surviving on a desert island with Jennifer Lopez? Discreetly avoid rescue.

Many people don’t understand that “May you live in interesting times” is a curse. It is certainly one that befell Cicero, who was indeed Rome’s greatest politician, in the sense both of statesman and opportunist. Marcus Tullius Cicero was a contemporary of Julius Caesar, Pompey, Mark Antony, and Augustus, the figures that did most to shape Rome into the empire we know. But Cicero was not an aristocrat, but a man who rose by virtue of oratorical skill to be the most powerful Roman who didn’t command an army. The Rome of the first century B.C. was in chaos. Its system of government, with interminable layers of checks and balances (which served as the primary model for the writers of our constitution) was paralyzed. Only consensus could make law, and consensus was virtually impossible to achieve. Dissidents had only two courses: they could argue loudly for reform and usually end up assassinated for their trouble, or they could raise an army and impose reform. During this time, Cicero, who was not even a native Roman, achieved the rank of Senator and Consul through pure force of intellect. Luckily, the evidence of his intellect, with all his human foibles, is preserved—in his speeches as a lawyer and senator, his philosophical treatises, and in 900 letters to friends and rivals. Everitt has done a marvelous job of synthesizing this material, as well as all the other evidence, to create a readable biography not just of the man who walked a delicate line defending the Roman republic during its slide into dictatorship, but of that interesting time itself.

When our associate editor’s sister writes a book, we can’t help but think you should buy it. Especially if that book was the successful and superhip result of a Ph.D. dissertation on the unlikely subject of contemporary television programming and viewing. In Viewers Like You?, Laurie Ouellette finally explains why, despite knowing better, we vegged out in front of white-bread shows like The Price is Right and Love Boat instead of the plentiful whole wheat “educational programming” just a channel away on PBS. Viewers Like You? traces the history of public broadcasting in the U.S., and argues that public TV’s rejection of popular culture has cut the legs off its capacity to appeal to the public it purports to serve. Ouellette explores history and cultural theory to reveal that PBS programmers consistently miss the mark on the needs and interests of the public, mostly because they rely on pat cultural assumptions steeped in the politics of class, gender, and race. Ouellette is an assistant professor of media studies at Queens College, and is currently working on an anthology about reality TV.