So, whereas High Fidelity the film boasts a soundtrack—albeit a smart and powerful one—High Fidelity the novel features a full score. It’s an intelligent investigation of what happens when your life is “scored” by rock & roll—how its narratives are incorporated into the deep structure of a rock fan’s life. A soundtrack is nothing more [...]
The best example of Dick’s missionary zeal in the film is the brief lesson he gives his girlfriend-to-be, Anaugh (pronounced Anna), on the musical genealogy of Green Day. In Dick’s humble opinion, they’re a piquant mix of the Clash and Stiff Little Fingers. Dick’s not without male condescension, and he shares the characteristic young man’s [...]
[Gentle Readers, 1 more week of classes! Mountains of papers to grade! You'll forgive me, please, if I fall back on a piece of older writing for this week's Mystery Science Auditorium---a piece that will take us through the weekend, in fact, on the film version of Nick Hornby's High Fidelity. I hope you'll enjoy [...]
More significant, perhaps, is the fact that much of the communal activity of rock-music consumption has been driven underground. Given the copyright maximalism of legislation like the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act and the hyperactive enforcement regime of the Recording Industry Association of America—whose prosecutorial zeal against college students since January 2003 has been [...]
So, no big wind-up this time. Track 7, “My Body Is a Cage.” Few—none?—have ever accused The Arcade Fire of being insufficiently portentous. “My Body Is a Cave,” in this respect, is vintage AF: the big church organ just gets bigger and bigger as the song moves inexorably on; if you like this kind of [...]