Promo Artwork for DJ Danger Mouse’s The Grey Album

I bet when DJ Danger Mouse was mixing down John Lennon’s ephemeral finger picking from “Julia” over Jay– Z’s evocative lyrical stylings on “Moment of Clarity”, he never thought a day would come when the two musical behemoths would actually duke it out on the music charts. Alas, that week has come (or gone, really).

A day apart from each other, Jay-Z released his 3^rd Blueprint album (aptly titled The Blueprint 3) while The Beatles entire catalog was re-released in varying forms. Fully remastered over a four year period which you can read (a tiny bit) about here, all 13 studio albums plus the Past Masters Vols. were unleashed separately as well as in mono and stereo box sets. That’s a whole load of familiar albums to compete for listeners dollars. Still depending on how you count, Jay-Z hit the top of the charts by moving 476,000 units in the first week.

Back to that counting thing. If you include everything that Apple Corp. let loose last week, The Beatles moved a whopping 1.1 million units. More than twice as many discs for only 15 times as much content! Because the albums are re-releases, the only items eligible for the music charts were the box sets, which sport brand new SKU#s. Believe it or not, baby boomers and audiophiles shelled out en masse, bringing the stereo set to the 15 spot, selling 26,000 of the gigantic collection. Even the more obscure mono set made it number 40 with 12,000 collectors investing in aural purity.

So what does any of this mean? Well, the boys from Liverpool may be the greatest rock band of all time, but that doesn’t make the longevity of their relevance a given. Youngsters today are growing up with parents who think Bön Jovi is classic rock. An entire generation is growing up without the legend of The Beatles. In other words, the music doesn’t actually sell itself. It needs help from people like Julie Taymor and her “controversial” Across the Universe. Whichever side of the blasphemy aisle you may find yourself on, that film got tweenage girls singing “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” while hanging out by their lockers. Mix that with the prepubescents noodling on Beatles: Rock Band and you see that they can stay relevant as long as the music is allowed to grow with the times.

And then there’s DJ Danger Mouse’s The Grey Album, that genius bit of artistry that set off a flurry of Frankenstein tracks (aka “mashups”) a few years ago. Although the album was a copyright lawyer’s nightmare, so much so that it was never released officially, it proved not only the artistic legitimacy of Jay-Z to raps naysayers, but the resiliency of John, George, Paul, and Ringo’s music in an era when seemingly anyone can be a rock star. As time goes on, we can only imagine what artists will think of next to do with the amazing palette that is the music of The Beatles.

For now, Jay-Z is still the king.

All the data for this article  comes from this Variety article.

The fact that Bradley Beesley’s Sweethearts of the Prison Rodeo is something of a festival darling here in Oklahoma City is not a surprise by any measure. It is a rock solid documentary not only with local interest, but it is rousing people to bring about change, sort of.

The film follows female inmates at the Eddie Warrior Correctional Center in Taft, Oklahoma as they prepare for the second prison rodeo that women have been invited to. The event is a state tradition first instituted in 1940 and has attracted large crowds over the years, but only to watch the men. Mr. Beesley’s film has a lot of potential for volatility. After all, it is the story of hardened criminals being thrown in front of riled up cattle for the enjoyment of the masses. What transpires throughout the runtime of the piece is so counfounding, so disturbing, and so beautiful that one can’t help but be moved by this odd and untold story.

You need some backstory, which the film provides, to understand what makes the film so dog gone wonderful. Oklahoma has more women incarcerated per capita than any other state in the U.S. Approximately 80% of them are mothers and the majority of them are in there for methamphetamine charges. Here in Oklahoma, meth is widely available and probably the biggest social problem Okies have to deal with. When the drug stastistic comes out on screen, the crowd I was with didn’t budge, wasn’t surprised. It is a fact of life out here.

So we get to know some of these women who join the rodeo in an effort to get outside of the gray wals they call home; to be a part of a team and find the personal streghth they need to make it in the world once their sentence ends. It is a moving tale, but Mr. Beesley doesn’t spoon feed us anything. As an audience, we are forced to make certain choices about the characters and the film as a whole which speak volumes about our own personal values. Is it right to watch men and women be gored by animals, or is it alright for the animals? Are we okay to believe that murderers should be given a pulpit in cinema? Can we look the victims’ families in the eyes and say “I think Danny Liles deserves a second chance because I saw a movie about him?” Should we be given the chance?

These questions and more are not present in the world of Sweethearts of the Prison Rodeo, and yet they are inescapable. This is why it is such a successful film. At points, there wasn’t a dry eye in the room watching this movie, and this is among a crowd who has the power to change the bleak state of things in Oklahoma. The social problems in the state (as in any state, don’t get me wrong) could fill a stack of papers a mile high, and female incarceration and meth use are only the result of such problems, not the cause. People need to get organized, get educated, and get together, but more than that they need to get motivated to move the earth here. I believe they can do it, and I believe that Mr. Beesley’s film will help push them.

Today, the candler blog is proud to introduce a new column, Candle Whacks. The purpose of these essays will be to entertain as well as gain a little perspective on current views of media. We hope you enjoy this first installment and would love to hear any ideas you may have future Candle Whacks. Guest contributors are always welcome, just pitch an idea.

Beastie Boys. Beatles. Beck. Ben Folds. Björk. Blur. Bob Dylan. Bob Marley.

Artists whose name begins with the letter “B” represent nearly a quarter of the music loaded on my iPod, which holds a mere sixteen gigabytes of music as it is stuffed inside of my telephone. If Robert Leland’s Cryptographical Mathematics is to be trusted, B is merely the 19^th most popular letter in the English language. While the king of them all, appearing in over 12% of all words, “E”, takes up less than 3% of my trusted music player. Second place “T” is even less, just 19 songs. Even the popular “R” is only about a tenth of my mobile collection.

There is no science to this whatsoever. Letter frequency is measured across words, not just the first letter of names. Still, are my tastes actually geared specifically to the letter B? Am I attracted to its curves; the way it takes two sensuous strokes to form the left-most vertical line and its intersecting bulbs? Perhaps, but I neither speak nor write in a particularly “B” heavy manner. “ Bravo, bitches. Best bargain bins in Binghamton.” I might say. “ Ban burger barns and bawdy balers in the bible belt.” I might protest.

Not so.

The answer is much less interesting then any leftist lexical leaning or lustful letter love interest. I’m just lazy. As the owner of a sensible 45 gigabytes of digital music (B represents 16% of my total library) I have been forced to pare down my collection in order to fit them onto my iPhone. Read on…

The proliferation of documentary cinema over the past decade has given us a nice sized stack of memorable, moving, earth shattering, awareness raising and thought provoking films. With that has come a steaming heap of boring, schmaltzy, formulaic and fetishistic pieces that betray audiences, subjects and filmmakers equally. Anvil! The Story of Anvil isn’t quite the latter, but it certainly steers closer to that end of the spectrum. That being said, as far as docs go these days, it’s a pretty good movie.

Opening like an episode of VH1’s Behind the Music, the film chronicles the ups and downs (mostly downs) of heavy metal rockers Robb Reiner and Steve “Lips” Kudlow, whose promising rise in the early 1980s (playing in Tokyo alongside, Poison and Whitesnake, for example) never materialized into the mega careers of their dreams. No matter. Now into their 50s, the band is still together. Both Robb and Steve sport day-jobs while Anvil trudges on, playing local bars and parties with a small following of faithful fans. Read on…