“A future soundtrack to a documentary about early-twenty-first-century malaise,” (Rolling Stone 2008) seems little more than another way of saying that Radiohead is the only fix to fill the cathedral craters one’s left with on a suicide Tuesday, if you know what I mean. If the last decade was a cultural and musical comedown from the British-lead chemically fueled love-fest of the 1990s, it looks like the comedown will outlast the peak, as is often the case this side of the analogy anyway.

The King of Limbs, released online February 18th, is the band’s eighth album and a follow-up to 2008’s In Rainbows. Most reviews note first and foremost, that The King of Limbs was not released like In Rainbows, which the band made available on their website as a pay-whatever-you-think-its-worth download. Unlike the ordinary payment method this time around, the video for “Lotus Flower,” probably the most mainstream-sounding track on
The King of Limbs, is a pretty blatant critique of the Industry from which Radiohead claimed their independence in 2004. The video, released with the downloadable versions (.mp3, or .wav for $5 more), ahead of the physical album (CD in stores March 28th , “Newspaper Package” including two clear vinyls May 9th), features lead vocalist and front man Thom Yorke dancing frantically in a bowler to a song that recalls Kid A’s How To Disappear Completely with the lines “I was thinking I would disappear, I would slip into your groove and cut me off” and “Just to feed your fast ballooning head/ listen to your heart.” The video, which concludes with an obvious “© Radiohead,” and Yorke’s mime-like movements remind us again in 2011 of our enduring need for Radiohead.
The album is only 37 minutes long simply because none of the band was in the mood to put out another full-length studio album. Yorke told The Believer in the summer of 2009, “None of us want to go into that creative hoo-ha of a long-play record again.” Their ever-evolving sound, now accompanied by an evolving form—that of the shorter album—is all at once subtler, smarter and funkier than ever before.

The album’s strongest track is the raw, haunting “Give Up the Ghost,” in which, I find, the lines “I think I should give up the ghost, into your arms,” recall the “haunted outtakes” in which “True Love Waits” (2001). On the funky, controlled “Separator,” Colin Greenwood’s sultry bass-line and Phil Selway’s spicy beat carry home the resounding message that Radiohead is here to stay: “Everyone, wake me up/ if you think this is over, then you’re wrong.”

Radiohead continues to fill important, otherwise unreachable spaces in the modern lives of those of us who listen. And these spaces are all at once more sensitive, more cultivated, and more impervious to what’s good, and what’s not, than they were when they were new. The King of Limbs confirms what we already knew about Radiohead, that they’re one of the extremely few—maybe the only—consistently good and already enduring post-pop groups on earth. The world needs Radiohead. And luckily, they’re not going anywhere.

“A future soundtrack to a documentary about early-twenty-first-century malaise,” (Rolling Stone 2008) seems little more than another way of saying that Radiohead is the only fix to fill the cathedral craters one’s left with on a suicide Tuesday, if you know what I mean. If the last decade was a cultural and musical comedown from the British-lead chemically fueled love-fest of the 1990s, it looks like the comedown will outlast the peak, as is often the case this side of the analogy anyway.

The King of Limbs, released online February 18th, is the band’s eighth album and a follow-up to 2008’s In Rainbows. Most reviews note first and foremost, that The King of Limbs was not released like In Rainbows, which the band made available on their website as a pay-whatever-you-think-its-worth download. Unlike the ordinary payment method this time around, the video for “Lotus Flower,” probably the most mainstream-sounding track on The King of Limbs, is a pretty blatant critique of the Industry from which Radiohead claimed their independence in 2004. The video, released with the downloadable versions (.mp3, or .wav for $5 more), ahead of the physical album (CD in stores March 28th , “Newspaper Package” including two clear vinyls May 9th), features lead vocalist and front man Thom Yorke dancing frantically in a bowler to a song that recalls Kid A’s How To Disappear Completely with the lines “I was thinking I would disappear, I would slip into your groove and cut me off” and “Just to feed your fast ballooning head/ listen to your heart.” The video, which concludes with an obvious “© Radiohead,” and Yorke’s mime-like movements remind us again in 2011 of our enduring need for Radiohead.

The album is only 37 minutes long simply because none of the band was in the mood to put out another full-length studio album. Yorke told The Believer in the summer of 2009, “None of us want to go into that creative hoo-ha of a long-play record again.” Their ever-evolving sound, now accompanied by an evolving form—that of the shorter album—is all at once subtler, smarter and funkier than ever before.

The album’s strongest track is the raw, haunting “Give Up the Ghost,” in which, I find, the lines “I think I should give up the ghost, into your arms,” recall the “haunted outtakes” in which “True Love Waits” (2001). On the funky, controlled “Separator,” Colin Greenwood’s sultry bass-line and Phil Selway’s spicy beat carry home the resounding message that Radiohead is here to stay: “Everyone, wake me up/ if you think this is over, then you’re wrong.”

The Molotov cocktail is a surprisingly incendiary explosive considering its humble origins and ingredients. First developed by the Spanish nationalist movement, it was used against the Soviet supported Spanish Republicans during the Spanish Civil War of the 1930’s. The Spanish made the cocktail with glass jars and heavy blanket material, along with its main ingredient of common petrol. Ever since its first appearance, it has been used in nationalist and revolutionary movements across the globe. The Finns gave the cocktail its contemporary title, derived from the name of Soviet administrator Vyacheslave Molotov. The IRA also adapted the Molotov using their own geographically-distinct ingredient, soaked peat, as the gasoline “canister.”

More recently, Egyptians brandished these homemade weapons as a part of their massive protests aimed at ridding the country of incumbent President Hosni Mubarak. A symbol of Mubarak’s political power, the National Democratic Party building, located downtown conveniently near Tahrir Square, stood burning for days. It fell victim to the humble cocktail.

Perhaps one of these guilty Molotov cocktails was assembled by Mona Shawki, a long-time Cairo resident, who assembled twenty in her living room using glass coke bottles and strips of rag. Meanwhile, her son Omar Shawki broke the glass coffee table into long shards for makeshift defensive weapons–the citizens’ weapon.

Shawki had no Internet or cell phone service during the last weekend of January, and so was forced to relay the exciting news of protests and rebellious cocktails to her daughter in London via a patchy land line. Her daughter, a friend of mine from the International Cairo High School, informed me of Mrs. Shawki’s newly developed weapon-making skills via Skype. The weapons used in Egypt ranged from the low-tech Molotov cocktail, relying on simple chemical processes, to the satellites and fiber-optic cables connecting the stories of Egypt’s protests to the rest of the world.

In this modern age, massive transfer of information is one of the best weapons–at least, we would like to think so. Often journalists think of investigative journalism as the Holy Grail of reporting because it reveals the truth, which will ostensibly create change for the better. Anderson Cooper and Christiane Amanpour both reported from the ground in Cairo during the protests and were even involved in physical altercations with “pro-Mubarak protesters” (a thinly veiled cover for security forces and hired thugs). Viewers watching the action from outside of Egypt were outraged at the blatant disregard for journalistic rights, and world leaders soon called for the Egyptian government to halt attacks on members of the media, professional and “i-reporters” both. Al-Jazeera’s Cairo news hub was ordered to close under the government’s accusation of igniting violence and unrest through their reporting of the protests. It was clear that someone did not want the news leaving the country.

Despite our tendency to credit the role of media in this uprising, especially in the new Internet age of sites like Facebook and Twitter, we should not exaggerate media dependency and subsequent outside pressure for the protesters’ success. It was rather the pure physical presence of millions of protesters filling the nation’s streets that finally forced Mubarak to step down on February 11.

Of course the Egyptian government understood the potential danger of information dispersion. In its haste to evade the international spotlight, Internet and cell phone service were shut off on January 28 for a five day blackout. Despite their efforts, thousands of photos, videos and status messages made their way out of Egypt and onto sites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. Internationally, millions of people joined the effort as they changed their Facebook profile pictures to the Egyptian flag in a mass showing of support.

Although media has been disruptive to governments since the inception of the printing press–holding the power to question and investigate political leaders and occasionally bringing regimes to their knees–we should not be so fast to assume that this is what happened in Egypt. In fact, the Egyptian government may have overestimated this also; they were hasty and efficient in cutting off communication and media lines, but had no way of effectively controlling protesters or enforcing curfew. For thirty years they had perfected the art of preemptive repression of protest, but once confronted with its physical manifestation, were largely powerless.

The police forces and “pro-Mubarak protesters” made a crucial mistake–they made it clear that there would be no differentiation on their part between violent protesters, non-violent protesters, or non-protesters. Looting began as the police mysteriously disappeared from the streets, and in many instances, the groups of “thugs” terrorizing Cairo were reported to be members of the same security forces. The ensuing anarchy during the night was aimless as they lashed out with no selectivity, and civilians took it upon themselves to protect their neighborhoods. As another one of my school friend’s mother distributed her household’s collection of golf clubs and baseball bats to her neighbors in the Cairo suburb of Ma’adi, Omar Shawki brandished his coffee-table weapon.

Civilians were now forced to go on the offensive. After this, the number of protesters was inevitably set to reach a critical mass. By January 31, the number in Tahrir Square alone was revised to estimates upward of 250,000. By this time, it did not matter whether Twitter or Facebook informed the population of the protest planned for Tuesday, February 1, the so-called “Million Man March”. The place to be was Tahrir Square, and there was no stopping millions of people from pouring into the large, haphazard, and usually traffic-filled space. The incentive for citizens to remain passive was now all but erased; instead, Egyptians’ survival was dependent on their ability to act, and therefore 80 million people–a large portion of whom had never known life in Egypt beyond Mubarak’s rule–became protesters.

His interview with Amanpour made this clear when he blamed the Muslim Brotherhood for inciting violence, an obviously false statement. “I don’t care what people say about me. Right now I care about my country, I care about Egypt,” Mubarak told the world.

Our President stays in power for four, possibly eight, years, and his power is severely limited by the people’s elected representatives and ultimately the threat of impeachment. It is hard to relate to Egyptians’ political discontent after a thirty year presidential entrenchment. It is also hard to understand the “pharaoh complex” that thirty years of power bred in Mubarak–despite millions of Egyptians calling for his resignation for days on end, he stood his ground, defiantly holed up in his Heliopolis presidential palace.

The glass Coke bottles sat on Mrs. Shawki’s floor on that January weekend, filled with an amber liquid and twinkling with promise. They stood representative of the Egyptian spirit during the protests–resourceful, quick spreading, and with no need for a satellite to incite the change wanted. The way we play this game in the U.S. is very different, and perhaps that’s why social media’s influence in the Egyptian protests has been inflated. Yes, the Internet and its information dispersion helped those outside of Tahrir keep abreast of the action for the eighteen days of protests, but my profile picture did not topple Mubarak. It was only the Egyptians themselves who could bring about change, and they rose to the occasion, rather majestically, after thirty years.

Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere tells the fragile story of successful actor and estranged father Johnny Marco’s (Stephen Dorff) fatefully bonding with his eleven-year-old daughter Cleo (Elle Fanning) at the Chateau Marmont, in Milan for an awards show and in Vegas for an impromptu vacation. Somewhere, Coppola’s fourth feature, is a quiet, aloof movie and yet is at no risk of being underrated. It won the Golden Lion, Best Picture, at the Venice International Film Festival in early September and was welcomed stateside in late December by a tellingly polarized mix of thoughtful, enthusiastic reviews and predictable chastisements for depicting the spiritual hardships of the over-privileged.

Somewhere opens with an extended uniform shot of Johnny Marco alone in the desert, circling a track in his black Ferrari again and again, building a malaise that the audience rides out intimately and numbly with him through scenes of his hard partying at the Chateau, until the introduction of Cleo. It might be easy to peg this film a superbly shot picture of a mature preteen mothering her spoiled, immature Hollywood father. Johnny Marco, however, needs no mothering and is not necessarily immature. It is true that he betrays his lower tastes in certain hilarious scenes—scenes that satirically mirror the tacky ways and means of Hollywood—and he lives more by instinct than agenda. Nonetheless, he is actually a good father, and the ingrained stalwart whimsy, the grown-up childishness which blooms in him naturally in the presence of his precocious, suddenly more or less motherless daughter, helps him become a better one.

Cleo’s self-possession and self-confidence are consistently believable and increasingly impressive as it becomes clearer that her mother may be gone for a very long time, if not, as she fears, for good. There is also something artistic in Cleo’s devoted observation of her father’s life, suggesting the level of detached watchfulness with which young Sofia Coppola went along with her own father, Francis Ford Coppola (an executive producer on all four of her films, for what it’s worth), to Milan for the same over-the-top Italian awards show to which Cleo accompanies Johnny. Referring to the Milan hotel where they shot the film, Sofia Coppola said to Anne Thompson of Indiewire, “We stayed there, we went to the Telegatto awards; that’s how I know about that, and this hotel suite with a swimming pool, which was something I’d never seen before…we stayed in that actual room one time, my whole family, my mom, my brother.”

Elle Fanning carries Cleo beautifully. From ice-staking for her dad to Gwen Stefani’s “Cool” in one of their first scenes together to ad libbing with Chris Pontius of the Jack-Ass gang, who plays an old friend of Johnny Marco’s, in their suite at the Chateau, Cleo’s every moment is a natural wonder. “It wasn’t even like filming a movie. It was like going to the Chateau. The Chateau became our home,” Elle Fanning told Interview Magazine. Fanning’s unobtrusive playfulness and quick onscreen grace keep her character far from seeming obnoxiously advanced for her age. In fact, every item in Somewhere that might otherwise border on the obnoxious well rights itself. For one, it is clear that Cleo’s mother disappears catalytically because she is lost in her own self-centered Hollywood drama and not at all intentionally because her ex-husband “needs to grow.” Also, Johnny’s debauchery is offset by such silence and sensitivity that it comes across not as critical waywardness but as yet another factor contributing to and resulting from the stagnant state of his existence. While he is often unkempt enough to remind anyone with “I’m Still Here” unfortunately still fresh in their brain of a “rock-bottom” Joaquin Phoenix, the awkward association is remedied by Johnny’s professional competence and the health of his outward life. (While playing Guitar Hero with Cleo, Johnny even jokes “Another actor’s failed transition into music,” perhaps in reference to J.P.) His livelihood as an actor thrives on the surface, where he is simultaneously promoting one finished movie (shooting photos for promotional posters, giving press conferences and accepting awards) and working on another (we see him have a plaster cast made of his head by a special effects crew). Meanwhile, he languishes privately underneath.

Somewhere begins and ends with similar scenes of squalid, lonely tension. After Johnny and Cleo have left their “Mom’s-really-gone-for-a-while-I-guess-let’s-go-to-Vegas” vacation in a helicopter so Cleo could catch her ride to summer camp, Johnny returns alone to the Chateau and breaks down. “I’m not even a person,” Johnny, having realized how little time he has devoted to getting know his daughter, the only real thing in his life, laments on the phone to his ex-wife. She responds, damningly distant, “Why don’t you try volunteering or something?” Of course, he is a person. Somewhere in Johnny Marco is a person who at least once had a wife and now has a daughter who needs him in her life. In the last scene, we see Johnny where we first saw him: alone in the desert. The only difference is that now he is walking down the road, away from the Ferrari, headed who knows where…

The one substantial problem with Somewhere is that in answer to the inevitable question, “Why should we care about Johnny Marco?” one can say either that we shouldn’t care or that I for one couldn’t help caring and can’t tell you why except that he’s sad and it’s catching. If you do seek out this movie and find him truly unsympathetic throughout, marvel instead at Cleo and her nuanced responses to him in the precarious worlds they share, and you might find something remarkable in that the heart of their relationship is the only solid ground either of them has on earth.

David Hilliard is the current Artist in Residence here at Dartmouth, creating photographic polyptychs: multi-paneled art praising ordinary life. Hilliard grew up in rural Massachusetts, and now creates photographs that are detached and isolated, much like the landscape of New England, from which he draws inspiration. This week, I got the chance to sit down with Hilliard and ask him a few questions about his recent exhibition, Highway of Thought, which was on display in the Hop a couple of weeks ago.

DFP: So your exhibition is called Highway of Thought, which I found it to be an aptly named collection. How did you come up with the concept of Highway of Thought, and how did you end up naming it that?

DH: Well it’s named after one of the pieces in the show, which is a portrait of my father’s—I call it his journal, but it’s not really his journal—it’s a book of quotations that he keeps. My father’s a kind of atheistic historian, so there are different quotes and Highway of Thought came from one particular quote in that journal. The photograph is my father’s book open with this beautiful penmanship. He has this incredible handwriting that he tries to perfect. And then on either side—it’s a four-panel photograph—on either side are just his big hands, which are working class hands. My father was a factory worker, never went to college, but is enlightened and self-taught, so I was interested in this kind of juxtaposition of those hands that seemingly couldn’t have written those words. I like that disconnect between the two, and that’s where the title came from.

But in general, the exhibition, which I think is 15 photographs, is a kind of overview. It was an opportunity coming here to Dartmouth for me to look back at my work and choose a series of pictures that show different ways in which I create pictures formally, that touch upon different themes in my work.

But Highway of Thought seemed like an apt title because it was like an overarching theme—if this were a show in New York or at a gallery, it’d be work made within the past year and it would be much more thematically cohesive. This is a bit of a stretch; I like to think the show is comprised of various portraits of people engaged in a search—a kind of journey, a spiritual journey, a sexual journey, a search for identity, people longing to forge their way in the world. And I know that’s a big net to throw around work, but that’s a portrait of free thinkers. The pictures range from my mother sitting on the beach in southwest Florida reading the Bible, two men together in a Connecticut cabin reading art books, a couple engaged in a kiss on a bed, a pregnant teenager with her boyfriend. It’s all a journey that everybody’s trying to figure out as it goes along. It’s a little touchy feely, but I like it; it seemed cohesive in that way for me.

DFP: How do you explore the diptych or triptych form, which a lot of your work features. Do you ever branch off from that or do you like the way you’re able to talk about space and time?

DH: Although I studied cubism, really my roots are in performance theatre and film. And I love narrative and I love narrative writing and fiction. But for me it’s like storytelling and it’s a way to link photographs together with shifting focus that allowed me to kind of move through a space. So it is very much about cinema. Although I love the triptych form, it’s really just about gathering pictures. You could say, “Why can’t you do that in a single photograph?” Maybe, but I don’t think you could point in quite the same way. It’s a combination of photography meets cinema: the still image meets the moving image.

DFP: Are you influenced by a certain geographic area or some other kind of space?

DH: I’m interested in this thing. The official term is environmental portraiture, which is quite simply the figure of a space, and the figure informing the space and the space informing the figure, so the two are in dialogue with on another. I’m definitely interested in the New England landscape. I’m from New England. I love the kind of gentle nature of the New England landscape. It’s not particularly grand; there’s a lot of subtlety. It’s softer; the weather isn’t particularly dramatic for the most part. But its subtlety— I like that.

DFP: I noticed that many of your photographs feature raw sexuality. Part of what appeals to me about your work is its discussion of being gay, especially in Daybooks, where there’ s this physical and emotional distance between two men. Could you tell me more about that?

DH: In that same exhibition, on the other side, there’s a picture from way earlier (in 1994) where you have a blatant kind of sexual moment where one man is bending down kissing the other man. And there’s also nudity, there’re testicles, there’s kissing. So it’s not just sex, it’s also love. And I made that a while ago. And that was a different time. Not that I was an angrier artist, but I was, as far as my politics, maybe pushing a little bit harder to be in-your-face about it. And that photograph is totally voyeuristic. You’re in a doorway looking at something. So depending on your politics or your point of view you’ll either walk by that door, close that door, so it implicates the viewer.

And then years later, quite recently, I make Daybooks, which is still about love between two men. There’s a physical distance between them, maybe an emotional distance, but I like the idea that they’re two men, they’re both undressed, they’re in the same room by the fire so it’s highly unlikely that they’re arguing. They’re just in their own space. They’re together but they’re not together and that’s another beautiful part about being in a relationship. It’s not just about the sex and the kissing; it’s also about being together but in your own space.

And it’s not just that I identify myself as a gay man. Yes, I make queer art. I’m politically active. And you know, it’s funny that you talk about Daybooks. One person who came into the gallery said, albeit nicely, that I was perpetuating stereotypes. And I said, “Well, you know, I’m sorry you feel that way, but I would just say that for me it’s quite political. I’m just standing up and being counted. These moments happen.”

There’s something very political about making this fireside, almost Edwardian, photograph of two men together. I don’t see a many pictures like that. As a graduate student, I set out to make work righting that wrong. I want to make beautiful photographs of men together languishing in landscapes and kissing and holding and I want to fill all those voids that exist in the history of art where [gay men] were shamed and avoided. At the same time, I make other work. I don’t put the pressure on myself to address every major topic, but I think being a gay man and standing up and showing normal sides of a lifestyle is very political. And if someone sees that as perpetuating a stereotype, then that’s unfortunate.

DFP: But it’s interesting how, in Daybooks, the image of two men involved romantically is not just sexualized, but seems to be going something beyond that to something more taboo.

DH: Yeah, maybe it’s taboo. Well you’re a smart guy; you’re at Dartmouth. I’m going say something you probably already know: the reason it’s interesting for me to have the picture of two men kissing, and across from it is Hot Coffee, Soft Porn. It’s two photographs that represent two men each engaged in something that is decidedly personal, private, like two men in a bedroom kissing, making love, and then the other photograph—it’s two brothers eating crappy food and watching porn together. One isn’t better than the other. It’s a personal choice. At the end of the day, it’s the choices that we make and I could keep going. Many of my photographs dealt with that.

I had a whole body of work about that (and some of the pictures are in the show). I was making pictures down in Florida with my mother, who’s a born-again Christian, and she has her crazy lifestyle. It makes her happy, it keeps her going everyday. She gets out of bed and reads the Bible, I get out of bed and I do something else, and you get out of bed and you do something else. I love the idea, that in that picture, in those two photographs are men engaged in their own kind of personal choice and moment. Sometimes it’s funny to see who takes issue during First-Year Family Weekend; it’s funny to see who wouldn’t look at what, who got a chuckle. There are issues of taste in that show that are brought up.

DFP: It is very homoerotic. When I saw that picture, I thought about the possibility of this pseudo-incestuous relationship going on.

DH: Oh you mean the homoerotic between the two brothers? Wow (laughs), I love that.

DFP: It’s not quite like they’re together but then it is.

DH: That’s a very interesting read. It is intimate because it’s not a bunch of men. It’s two men watching porn and they’re sitting on a couch together. Whether it’s homoerotic or not, it’s definitely an intimate photograph; it’s more intimate than a lot of men would get with one another.

DFP: And I guess a lot of it goes back to defining masculinity, because I know much of your work also does that.

DH: There are definitely rites of passage. Of course, I’m a man; I’m a gay man. My world was decidedly masculine. I address the feminine in my work, but it’s very different, it’s somewhat distanced in a way. But men fascinate me. Straight, gay, old, young, boys becoming older boys, becoming teenagers, becoming young men, becoming middle-aged men, becoming old men. All of those phases of your life have their complications. You’re 20-something and I’m 40-something. At 19, I had very different issues than I have now and I love that.

There was a time, when I was 19, that I wasn’t making my artwork—but it was a time like the Kiss photograph. That’s me in that picture. I was young, that moment was real. And now in some of my photographs, it’s more like an older man looking back and remembering. It’s funny getting older as an artist. I make work in real time about being 40. And this is to answer your question about the rites of passage: the evolution of men is great. I love that there’s a subtext to my work on masculinity.

The basement scene has everything you might expect on a normal Friday night: rowdy behavior, loud music, kegs. However, this isn’t the basement of a house on Webster Ave, it’s the basement of Collis.

While it is often lamented that fraternities dominate Dartmouth’s social scene, many successful alternative events have emerged on campus. Usually something considered an “alternative” social space was considered lame and not fun. Previously, the presence of alcohol separated all “fun” and the “boring” social events. But now many events held in Collis serve different alcoholic beverages.

Friday Night Rock, a student group that showcases emerging rock bands, features live concerts on campus. The selection of artists, which has included Of Montreal and Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, reflects with surprising accuracy new and buzz-worthy artists. Many of the groups have appeared on Pitchfork.com’s annual “best-of” list, while others have played at large music festivals like South By Southwest (SXSW), the highly-popular Austin, TX music festival. Best Coast, a California band that visited Friday Night Rock in April, was featured on MTV2’s Subterranean two weeks after playing at Dartmouth.

The group, which charges no admission for its shows and supplies free alcohol to students over 21, has also held showcases for Dartmouth-based student bands. However, despite its ability to bring quality bands to campus, Friday Night Rock remains a relatively low-key venue. This status is probably due to the collective music taste of the Dartmouth community, which isn’t known for being geared towards indie rock music.

Meanwhile, Programming Board, another student-run group, has made attempts to provide alternative nightlife events at Collis with alcohol and flashing lights. On May 8th, Super Mash Bros, a mashup group that describes themselves as “Girl Talk’s hot cousin,” played a show that had the crowd flowing from the basement to the help desk. The event, promoted as “Klub Kollis,” featured two other campus DJs, DJ Hollisto and DJ Janski.

Although frat-hopping will probably still be preferred to cool concerts like these, I definitely welcome Friday Night Rock and Programming Board’s alternative social spaces. Let’s hope they keep these spaces open with awesome, jamming music.

It’s finally spring break, so you and your friends decide to pay a visit to warm, sunny Florida. But on the plane, you all decide to get the party started right then and there—and what better way to do that than to order some mile-high cocktails? The flight attendant comes and hands you that cute little shot in a bottle and ice in a plastic cup. But you also thirst for a Diet Coke—a chaser. Add a can of Coke and another plastic cup of ice in front of you. During this long flight your eco-friendly Dartmouth Nalgene idly awaits in your dorm room—couldn’t fit into the back pocket of your mini skirt—so you order several little plastic cups of water to stave off the formation of an arrival-ruining hangover. As the flight attendant comes around to prepare everyone for landing, you hand him all the plastic cups stacked in front of you, four in all. Your friends do the same, as do everyone on the flight, and everyone on every flight in the U.S. every day. All in all, this adds up to a whopping four million plastic cups in airport trash—every single day.

Four million is a big number. Forty million, the number of paper cups we use every day, is even bigger. I’d never seen four million of anything before—that is, until I heard about the photographer Chris Jordan.

Chris Jordan uses his art to help viewers visualize America’s consumer-addicted culture. In an interview with Bill Moyers he explained, “All of my work is meant to evoke a whole bunch of different layers of discord between the attraction and repulsion that we feel toward our consumer habits and our consumer lives. It’s like there’s this tremendous power in our culture that has a dark side to it that has surfaced lately. And that’s kind of what I’m working with.”

With Plastic Cups, 2008, Jordan enables us to visualize one million plastic cups—six hours’ worth in the American airline industry—as part of his Running the Numbers: An American Self-Portrait project. In this collection, he reconstructs a Charlie Brown comic using pictures of 10,000 collars—the number of unwanted dogs and cats euthanized in the U.S. every day. In Skull With Cigarette, 2007, Jordan uses 200,000 cigarette cartons (the number of people in the U.S. who die from smoking every 6 months) to recreate Van Gogh’s famous painting by the same name. Paper Bags, 2007 depicts the 1.14 million brown paper bags that Americans use every hour. And Ben Franklin, 2007 uses 125,000 one-hundred dollar bills (the amount spent in Iraq every hour of the war) to create an image of our founding father.

The images on this page are from Barbie Dolls, 2008. The full image is that of a woman’s chest. Zoomed in, we see an intricate floral pattern. And looking eve more closely, we see that each ‘flower’ is actually a circle of 24 Barbie dolls. In total, the photo uses 32,000 Barbie dolls, the number of women who undergo elective breast augmentation surgery each month in the United States (for a total of 384,000 women a year). The photo is beautiful; the message is haunting. Chris Jordan explains this intention: “I [use] beauty as a seduction, to draw the viewer in to sit through the piece long enough that the underlying message might seep in.”

And seep in they do, beginning with the moment you read the statistic attached to each of Chris Jordan’s photos. I, for one, will be packing my Nalgene this spring break.

The true potential of music cannot be realized until its beauty has been shared. As a violinist in the Dartmouth Symphony Orchestra, I rediscovered this seemingly obvious statement through the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2 on Saturday, February 27th, with Philip Back ’10 performing the virtuosic piano solo.

In a sense, hearing the Rachmaninoff piano concerto is a remarkably personal experience. You realize that the soloist has invited you in to share the profound passion and commitment he himself feels for the music. When you first meet Philip, you get a sense that he’s extremely reserved, as though mysterious barriers have been constructed around him. This may compel you to maintain your distance, not wanting to disturb or impose upon the reputedly impenetrable Philip Back.

But when he plays the piano, you hear the rapturous melodies of the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2, and you cannot help but become inextricably drawn into the thrill and intensity of the music, his music.

For any musician, one of the most gratifying elements of a performance is the ability to share it with others. While this satisfaction makes any concert worthwhile, it made Saturday’s concert even more so—because that night, our orchestra not only performed musical masterpieces, but we also saw one of our peers, Philip Back, share his own music and passion with a public audience in Spaulding. And as fellow musicians, we could all relate with and respect the commitment it takes to perform the Rachmaninoff concerto.
After the concert, a piano instructor Phil and I both share told me that he once asked Phil: “Out of everything you could have performed, why did you choose the Rachmaninoff?” Philip answered that he’d heard the piece when he was young, and fell in love with the music. With that early fascination, Philip (a philosophy and music major, soon-to-be 2nd lieutenant in the US Army) committed himself to realizing those dreams at Dartmouth. And for anyone listening, to experience the culmination of that dedicated passion inspires an even greater appreciation for the music itself.

The Rachmaninoff piano concerto ended in a powerful, dizzying climax, immersing the entire orchestra with tangible energy and emotional connection. As I heard the audience explode, surging into a standing ovation, I felt the unexpected and uncharacteristic traces of moisture on my own cheeks, and at that moment, I realized that sharing music is not a one-way street. Because ultimately, the music Philip offered was for the audience, for our orchestra, and for himself. After that concert, no one could doubt that the true potential of music is meant to be shared.

The true potential of music cannot be realized until its beauty has been shared. As a violinist in the Dartmouth Symphony Orchestra, I rediscovered this seemingly obvious statement through the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2 on Saturday, February 27th, with Philip Back ’10 performing the virtuosic piano solo.

In a sense, hearing the Rachmaninoff piano concerto is a remarkably personal experience. You realize that the soloist has invited you in to share the profound passion and commitment he himself feels for the music. When you first meet Philip, you get a sense that he’s extremely reserved, as though mysterious barriers have been constructed around him. This may compel you to maintain your distance, not wanting to disturb or impose upon the reputedly impenetrable Philip Back.

But when he plays the piano, you hear the rapturous melodies of the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2, and you cannot help but become inextricably drawn into the thrill and intensity of the music, his music.

For any musician, one of the most gratifying elements of a performance is the ability to share it with others. While this satisfaction makes any concert worthwhile, it made Saturday’s concert even more so—because that night, our orchestra not only performed musical masterpieces, but we also saw one of our peers, Philip Back, share his own music and passion with a public audience in Spaulding. And as fellow musicians, we could all relate with and respect the commitment it takes to perform the Rachmaninoff concerto.

After the concert, a piano instructor Phil and I both share told me that he once asked Phil: “Out of everything you could have performed, why did you choose the Rachmaninoff?” Philip answered that he’d heard the piece when he was young, and fell in love with the music. With that early fascination, Philip (a philosophy and music major, soon-to-be 2nd lieutenant in the US Army) committed himself to realizing those dreams at Dartmouth. And for anyone listening, to experience the culmination of that dedicated passion inspires an even greater appreciation for the music itself.

The Rachmaninoff piano concerto ended in a powerful, dizzying climax, immersing the entire orchestra with tangible energy and emotional connection. As I heard the audience explode, surging into a standing ovation, I felt the unexpected and uncharacteristic traces of moisture on my own cheeks, and at that moment, I realized that sharing music is not a one-way street. Because ultimately, the music Philip offered was for the audience, for our orchestra, and for himself. After that concert, no one could doubt that the true potential of music is meant to be shared.

As far as most Dartmouth students know, the only thing that African and Asian music have in common is that they are foreign and “not Western.”
There is little understanding of the polyrhythm beats of African music or the multi-tonal cacophony of traditional Asian music. Given how little of this type of music we hear around New England, this state of unawareness is unsurprising.

On February 19th, the World Music Percussion Ensemble sought to remedy that. That night Spaulding Auditorium was filled with the drumming of djembe and pipa—along with a variety of other drums and keyboard. The program of the night included Iya Ni Wura, Dounobah, as well as offerings such as Written on the Wind and Blue Pipa.

The entire ensemble performed well, but the stars of the night were the featured guests on the pipa, Min Xiao-Fen and Si Jie Loo ‘12 who has studied the drums for years. Min Xiao-Fen was amazingly dexterous on the pipa, filling the entire room with multiple lines of melodies that sounded more like an entire Asian symphony of zithers.

Amusingly, she cried out some unintelligible word over and over for “My Friend” which she later explained was her dog.

One of the odder performances of the night was a solo by Ms. Min where her performance was backed by a “kinetic painting” by Norman Perryman. Although the music was interesting, the kinetic painting itself seemed like a child playing on an old overhead projector, leaving the audience confused about the purpose of the song and the significance of the painting.

Less abstractly, Si Jie Loo was incredibly energetic, moving between different drums and acting as the driving force behind many of the night’s pieces. Matsuri and Mukala-Mukala were especially impressive. Matsuri, a Japanese “Shinto temple song” was introduced by Hafiz Shabazz (the ensemble director) as a piece that Si Jie personally brought to the group. Both pieces were filled with energy and made the audience move to the powerful beat of African drums.

Overall, it is difficult to say how much appreciation the performance brought to African and Asian music.

The audience was certainly entertained, but the turnout was somewhat disappointing, with only about half of Spaulding filled.

However, one cannot fault the performers given their energy and expertise. The music was enjoyable, and the Upper Valley experienced the strings and drums of Asia and Africa in one evening—a rare occurrence indeed.

Last Saturday at the Hop, I watched A Serious Man—the sixth movie I’ve watched out of the ten nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture.

It was a good movie, simply said. I enjoyed the movie even more than Up in the Air—another dark comedy—which was well-written, but unfortunately plagued with obvious moral judgments of its protagonist’s lifestyle. The acting in A Serious Man was definitely the best of all the Best Picture nominees I’ve seen so far.

A Serious Man is full of dark, almost absurd humor told on a subtle, even keel. You’ll find the plot quite familiar if you are familiar with the story of Job in the Bible. Larry, the protagonist, is a good, normal, serious man who’s suddenly plagued with troubles at home and at work.

Some seemingly strange bits are directly tied to Job and other Bible stories. Larry’s monitoring of a beautiful naked woman from his rooftop echoes the story of David and Bathsheba; a random tornado at the end of the film mirrors God’s final answer to Job’s laments over his fate.

Not only did I appreciate these Biblical references, but I also appreciated being immersed in the Jewish-American landscape of the 1960s. It was a rare depiction that was done well—artfully, eloquently and certainly not stereotypically. The landscape felt real, updating an old parable and bringing Job into the twentieth century.

Like Job in the Bible, Larry wonders why Hashem seems to be punishing him unfairly. But the story was also a nice touch on a very human theme that anyone with a notion of a god or morality could understand: why do bad things happen to good people?

The award-winning directors Joel and Ethan Coen have done it again. I’ll be disappointed if this movie doesn’t win Best Picture. I heartily recommend A Serious Man.