MEDIA ROOTS – This is a beautiful jazz ensemble all recorded live with no cuts by the Collin Shook Trio. Inspired by the Occupy Wall Street Movement, the jazz musicians decided to make an EP dedicated to OWS activism and the spirit of revolution. It’s an amazing and especially inspiring EP considering the intent and the meaning behind each song. Please take a listen and consider supporting musicians who choose to use their incredible talents to reflect the spirit of the time.
Abby
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CS: This tune was born in November of 2011. I had written a 2 movement piece called #Occupy after perusing #OccupyTucson for a few days. Only then did I finally put this one down to paper. I named it Derivatives, partly because they are a major part of the economic recession which stemmed the #Occupy Movement.
CS: Prelude To Occupation is a tune we composed as a part of a 3-Piece Suite that expresses a sense of wandering, stirring energy. With a repetitive theme, it explains the building energy of the same-old same-old things happening over and over again, just like the elite continually taking profits off the top of all commerce in the US and pocketing it, leaving the working class unable to stay ahead.
CS: #Occupy: Movement 1 is a ballad that embodies the lull and complacency that takes place before a public reaction. It’s the gathering energy and whispers in the dark that stir up the masses and spread information. From the prelude to Movement 1, it shows the dissipation of action and is the quiet before the storm.
#Occupy: Movement 2 is the current embodiment of the uprising. The bass solo at the top of the song is in alignment with the slow start to the movement. Once the band drops in, the pushing 3 chord, break-beat feel creates momentum.
Each change to the bridge is riding the wave of little pockets of demonstrations springing up all over, then returning to the constant motion of the A section. Each B section gets more and more dissonant and finally ends with an unresolved tonality, expressing the unfinished motives of the #occupy Movement.
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This is a live recording from Skybar in Tucson AZ on April 2nd, 2012.
From #Occupy EP, released 12 April 2012 Collin Shook – Composer and Keyboards Dylan DeRobertis – Bass Matt Pirc – Drums Recorded With 2 Mics and Reaper DAW
While you wait for Breaking Bad to come back on the air, you try to fill the ‘TV-show void’ with things like Enlightened, The Walking Dead, Californication, or even Dexter (this is one I’m embarrassed to say I did). In modern TV show canon, Breaking Bad is unparalleled in its caliber of acting, characters, and writing. Dare we say it, perhaps the greatest TV show ever (besides The Wire)? The genius behind Breaking Bad is Vince Gilligan. Vince grew up in Richmond, Virginia, bringing his southern charm to the medium. He tells dark tales that remind one of the Coen brothers (Fargo, No Country for Old Men) and Joe Dante (Gremlins, The ‘Burbs), effortlessly mixing together comedy, horror, and thriller while not seeming like a trite mixture of the three.
A perfect example of these sensibilities is when in Episode 2 of Breaking Bad, Jesse and Walt have to dispose of a body. Walt suggests using acid that eats through flesh and bone but not a particular kind of plastic barrel, he sends Jesse to the store, but Jesse gives up after a cursory search for said barrel. While in the midst of a meth bender, Jesse decides to use the upstairs aluminum bathtub instead; and you can probably guess the rest. Before Breaking Bad, Vince Gilligan was responsible for some of the more strange, gory, and borderline-funny episodes of The X-Files, which if you look closely contain some of the kernels that would later be used as the groundwork for Bad.
Vince Gilligan’s X-Files Work
Pusher Season 3’s “Pusher” pitted Mulder and Scully against a ‘mentalist’ who could convince another person to commit suicide simply by whispering in his ear. This killer is tracked down via a classified advertisement he places in a mercenary magazine offering his services. Gilligan showed his affinity here for the expert criminal mastermind ‘hiding in plain sight,’ much like Gus in Breaking Bad. One notable scene involves a SWAT team going after the Pusher, only to find one SWAT member returning covered in gasoline and holding a lighter, mumbling incomprehensibly before setting himself ablaze.
Leonard Betts Even before ‘Bad you can see that Gilligan was interested in pushing the censorship boundaries. Season 4’s ‘Leonard Betts’ that singlehandedly pushed the limits of what you could show on network television. The episode opens up with a pair of paramedics on an ambulance helping a man who’s dying of an unknown illness (Leonard knows simply by touching the man that he has cancer). The ambulance crashes in a high speed collision. At the scene of the accident you see Leonard’s severed head lying on the street. Later you find out that he can ‘grow’ another head (which they show you with no cut away) because you see he is part Lizard, oh and eats cancer to survive.
Bad Blood “Bad Blood” from Season 5 (where Vince Gilligan and the show itself really hit it’s stride), follows the team to a remote trailer park in the south where a vampire is drugging people unconscious and sucking their blood. The episode starts with Mulder using a piece of a broken wooden chair to kill what appears to be a child; Mulder in fervor thinks he just killed a vampire. He pulls out of the kids mouth a pair of fake sharpened vampire teeth and exclaims, ‘Oh, … Shiii’ interrupted by the X-files theme. Again, the hiding in plain sight theme is present with vampires sleeping in coffins inside their RVs. Could this scenario have been inspired by Vince’s affinity for the trailer park meth underworld?
Folie A Deux Using the background of a cold call in center for an employee going postal, but not because he’s depressed, but because his boss is a insect hybrid who creates human zombies out of his own employees by injecting them through the neck with poison fangs. In the episode, Mulder finds the clue ‘hiding in the light’ linking back to an old case about a shape-shifter who appears normal until seen in the dark. We don’t want to be redundant, but Vince seems to really like this theme.
Hungry Alan Moore likes to deconstruct and flip upside-down super-hero tropes with Watchmen, where super heroes are portrayed as flawed destructive human beings. Vince takes the X-files trope of ‘monster of the week’ and shows us the inverse effect. What if you were a cannibal mutant working at a shitty fast food restaurant but were also a nice guy? The entire episode revolves around the monster this time instead of Mulder and Scully.
Other Notable Gilligan Episodes “Field Trip,” Season 6 “Dreamland,” Season 6
Vince Gilligan’s Film Work
Vince Gilligan has also taken a stab at full length movies, not just writing scripts, but also directing his own material. His first film was Wilder Napalm that he wrote, but not directed—a very uneven first theatrical film attempt starring Dennis Quaid about two life-long best friends with supernatural powers to manifest fire. Mixing a love triangle romantic comedy with some really dark and strange subject matter, the movie never quite coheres. Some parts work, like the idea of portraying grown men who have god-like powers in shitty jobs like a circus clown. The full movie is viewable on YouTube.
Home Fries, the first film Gilligan directed. The marketing for this film was completely wrong, giving the impression it was a throw-away romantic comedy when, in fact, it was a movie about a very dysfunctional family whose matriarchal mother, through passive-aggressive behavior and coercion, gets her two grown military sons to commit murder for her. In the opening scene Luke Wilson plays opposite Jake Busey who chases down a man leaving a fast food drive-thru with an attack helicopter. They fire at him when he tries to surrender. They just wanted to ‘scare him’ by using blanks, but the man has a heart attack.
It turns out this man was their stepfather who was caught cheating by their mother.
The mother won’t let it end there, however, and sends her boys out on a scouting mission to find out who the woman is. Luke Wilson’s character quickly discovers it’s a totally innocent fast-food employee played by Drew Barrymore. The rest of the movie involves him trying to misdirect Busey’s character into getting closer to assassinating her. It has its flaws but the plot and acting is top tier and there aren’t very many if any movies like it. Catherine O’Hara as the psychotic mother should have garnered an Oscar nomination. Home Fries may be viewed in it’s entirety on YouTube.
Hancock, a more recent film starring Will Smith as a drunk, abusive, and destructive super hero was by all accounts a misfire. Directed not by Gilligan, but by Peter Berg (who can’t direct his way out of a paper bag) and based on a script by Gilligan. Some decent ideas thrown into the mix but has a third act, which completely ruins the entire film.
So, while you have your Gilligan withdrawals try some of those in the meantime (and go here if you need even more). After all Breaking Bad’s 5th will be its final season. In many interviews, Gilligan has said that his goal from the very beginning was to turn ‘Mr Chips into Scarface,’ in reference to Walt. If you have watched Breaking Bad up until its most recent conclusion, and you are familiar with Scarface, short of trying his own product and shooting a family member dead, Walt has pretty much surpassed Scarface. I, for one, am excited to see where this man’s mind takes us next; maybe somebody will see his value as a filmmaker, similar to how studios plucked J.J. Abrams from TV. Let’s hope, for his next project, he’s not as prescient as he was in The Lone Gunman pilot.
MEDIA ROOTS- PJ Harvey has made videos for every song on her new album Let England Shake with photojournalist Séamus Murphy. The video for the beautiful and moving “The Words That Maketh Murder” alternates shots of Harvey playing her autoharp with ominous imagery: lights through a windshield, elderly people dancing, dead bodies. The song is incredibly powerful and the lyrics have never more relevant.
PJ Harvey- The Words That Maketh Murder
I’ve seen and done things I want to forget;
I’ve seen soldiers fall like lumps of meat,
Blown and shot out beyond belief.
Arms and legs were in the trees.
I’ve seen and done things I want to forget;
coming from an unearthly place,
Longing to see a woman’s face,
Instead of the words that gather pace,
The words that maketh murder.
These, these, these are the words-
The words that maketh murder.
These, these, these are the words-
The words that maketh murder.
These, these, these are the words-
Murder…
These, these, these are the words-
The words that maketh murder.
I’ve seen and done things I want to forget;
I’ve seen a corporal whose nerves were shot
Climbing behind the fierce, gone sun,
I’ve seen flies swarming everyone,
Soldiers fell like lumps of meat.
These are the words, the words are these.
death lingering, stunk,
Flies swarming everyone,
Over the whole summit peak,
Flesh quivering in the heat.
This was something else again.
I fear it cannot be explained.
The words that make, the words that make
Murder.
suppose you were to know, all those lies you’ve been told. then maybe this shock, this latest disaster, might break your dis belief.
i came across an editorial photo capturing a woman, hand to cheek, eyes venetian, at the scene of some unfortunate event. she was unable to believe that the horror before her was real. but her eyes partially covered ensured that her eyes were witness to the events unfolding.
i then thought of all the truth and reality we experience on a daily basis and the lack of disbelief at what is happening in front of us. i wanted to know where the anger, frustration, shock and sense of justice was in my fellow americans.
i’m still looking for that disbelief, that critical thinking combined with the collective consciousness to bring us beyond the current paradigm of exploitation, division and atomization.
MEDIA ROOTS – This is a beautiful jazz ensemble all recorded live with no cuts by the Collin Shook Trio. Inspired by the Occupy Wall Street Movement, the jazz musicians decided to make an EP dedicated to OWS activism and the spirit of revolution. It’s an amazing and especially inspiring EP considering the intent and the meaning behind each song. Please take a listen and consider supporting musicians who choose to use their incredible talents to reflect the spirit of the time..jpg)
While you wait for 
