OCR Text |
Show A&EDiversions Page 6 Friday, April 2, 2010 Local artist's album worth the dollar donation What do you get when you combine sider making a donation to this band for four guys from Everett, Wash., soft rock the use of their music. I make the attempt and the letter "B"? to appeal to my reader's desire to support No, you don't get a boat ride on the local talent. puget sound with a six pack of beer and "The Tide" is not crafted as a collection Barbara Streisand music. You get some- of singles and as such. It suffers. The album thing much, much better: Brooksley Born, takes you on a walk through a smooth, soft a local band that started in Everett and has landscape. In my mind, this landscape since come to Logan. is not too unlike the Pacific Brooksley Born's album, Northwest. Cool, dark, full of "The Tide," will* debut to trees, very little sunlight, loads Landon of rain - I think I've made my the world here on USU Hemsley point. I say the album sufcampus at 8 p.m. April 17 in the Lundstrom Student fers because the crafty style Center. The band is throwin which the listener is led through the album will hurt ing a release party to promote its album's release. Brooksley Born's exposure in I was stoked to find local the long run. Young bands Grade $8 talent to review, and, natusimply cannot afford to bury rally, I agreed. Not knowing "The Tide" their best tracks in the middle much about them, I went by Brooksley Born of the album. Large record to the band's Web site, labels that would promote brooksleybornband.com , their music generally want to to find out what I could. hear the good stuff first and Surprisingly, I found the whole album the rest later, but then maybe Brooksley available for free download. Born doesn't care about any of that at all. The fact that the "The Tide" is available Who can say but the artist? The first track is called "Deep Dark for download to anyone that wants it is admirable. Most new full-time recording Depression," which is exactly what I feel artists wouldn't do such a thing unless weighing on my shoulders when I listen to they could be certain that they can genit. Track 1 is a staging track that sets the erate enough cash from touring to cover tone of the album and opens the listener their expenses. Generally, a huge portion to what's coming next. "Depression" is of revenues for young bands comes from only 94 seconds long, and I would just as the sale of CDs to local fans. By releasing soon skip over this track and get to the their album on the site, they at least tell second, "Trevor Graves," because the secme either that Brooksley Born is a band of ond track is a much better starting track. part-time artists who do what they do just "Trevor Graves" is more upbeat, brighter for fun or that Brooksley Born is confident and more fun. The tempo picks up considenough in its music and its adoring public erably, and it is in this song that we first to believe that it can make enough from hear any guitar and bass to accompany the playing local shows for now. keyboard. Or rather, the sun comes out a Certainly, if you met the band at one of bit. After a 30-second instrumental introtheir shows and saw them live, they would duction, the lyrics enter and those lyrics charge you for their CD. Since buying the lead to a good strong chorus. This song has CD is not required to hear the music, the no lyrical hook that is going to stick in your uestion then becomes that of a donation. mind, but it does have a moderately strong q Should the listener donate so Brooksley musical hook. I don't believe anybody is Born can continue to produce music? That going to be walking around whistling this is the question I endeavor to answer. As tune all day, but the music is quality and it such, I will be changing my normal rat- certainly doesn't offend the ear. ing system from a letter grade to a dollar The next track of note is the fourth one, grade. At the end, I'll let you know how "Starts and Stops." Once again I don't hear much entertainment value I think one of any strong hook or anything that is going Brooksley Born's albums has in terms of to stay with me for a long time after I listen dollars. At that point, I would recommend to the music. The lyrics don't inspire me my readers listen for themselves and conin this song. What does inspire me once Tune tikes BROOKSLEY BORN'S ALBUM "The Tide" will debut on USU campus. The band is throwing a release party to promote its album's release. photo courtesy BROOKSLEY BORN again is the guitar line and the instrumentals. Dave Kinkaid's voice works very well with this music because Kinkaid is able to make his voice an equal partner with the guitar, piano, and other instrumental parts. Understand that I do not say that Kinkaid's voice couldn't be in the forefront of this track, but I think if the band tried to highlight Kinkaid's vocals, it would impair the sound they are trying to achieve. In "Starts and Stops," everyone stays in their role well and produces a good ensemble piece. These two tracks, "Trevor Graves" and "Starts and Stops," are my two personal favorites, but there is no significant drop off in quality from one track to the next. Brooksley Born's music is very homogenous. The album is a testament to the fact that Brooksley Born is after a particular sound, and the band works hard through the entire production to effectively produce that sound. If I could classify that sound as something other than simply calling it soft rock, I would call it Seattle coffee shop music. This music is not radio music. You will not be hearing it on any radio stations anytime soon, but that is not to say the music is not quality. I would probably play this music in my home on a chill Saturday afternoon when there is little else to do beside read a book and relax. Now, as for the rating, let us say that $15 is the limit I would be willing to pay for the best album on the face of the planet. If I were to go to a Brooksley Born show, I would donate $8 to them for their music and thank them for a quality product. If this type of music was the kind I liked to listen to regularly, I would pay more. The music does not entirely fit my style, but I still think it's some pretty good stuff. I submit that for the reader's consideration and urge the reader to visit brooksleybornband.com to check the album out. - la.hem@aggiemail.usu.edu Seeing green in 3-D boom By COLIN COVERT Star Tribune It only took a century, but 3-D films have evolved from a curi- FOR THE UTAH CONSERVATION CORPS! www.usu.eduiucc UtahStateUniversity Come live with us! r School Year: $2350-2850 ($200 Deposit) Private Bedrooms Utilities Included Cable TV Internet On-Site Laundry •• •• Forest Gate Pniversity Pines osity to a film world obsession. "In a not-too-distant future," predicts Mark Zoradi, president of Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group, "big releases will be only released in 3-D." "This really is a revolution," proclaims Jeffrey Katzenberg, the head of DreamWorks Animation. Geeky plastic glasses are suddenly Hollywood's coolest accessory, but they may cause a loss of perspective. Instead of triggering a renaissance, 3-D may be the next wave of the effects-driven blockbuster mentality that followed in the wake of "Jaws" and "Star Wars." If Zoradi's "all 3-D all the time" vision arrives, the types of films that benefit most from 3-D - animation, fantasy and horror - could bulldoze grownup fare even further to the sidelines. It may become the new industry standard, but does it deserve to be? Would "The Godfather" or "Sideways" or "All About Eve" really be richer experiences in 3-D? Enthusiasts call 3-D the third technical breakthrough, after sound and color, to fundamentally change the viewing experience. But 3-D mania has been around before - and around and around and around - without revolutionizing cinema. By some counts the current wave is 3-D's seventh revival since "The Power of Love" first required viewers to don red/green glasses in 1922. The format has cropped up sporadically ever since, generally in trashy vehicles like "Bwana Devil," "House of Wax" and "Andy Warhol's Frankenstein." Each time the novelty faded as it did for such fads as Cinerama and Smell-O-Vision. Now the stakes have been raised exponentially. As "Avatar" director James Cameron predicted all along, 3-D has become a game-changer - at least economically, at least for the time being. Despite mixed reviews, Disney's 3-D "Alice in Wonderland" has led the box office three weeks running. DreamWorks/Paramount's 3-D "How to Train Your Dragon," which opened Friday, is likely to dislodge it. With "Shrek Forever After," "Toy Story 3" and "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" on the horizon, 2010 promises to be 3-D's biggest year yet. Films such as "Avatar" and Pixar's "Up" proved that a mature use of 3-D can create a rich, immersive experience, but the stampede to the format is being driven by accounting. While making a movie in 3-D adds about 15 percent to the film's budget, it can be vastly more profitable. The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers calculates that movies released in 3-D generate twice to three times the revenue of the same titles in 2-D - in some cases, as much as six times. Most executives point to 3-D films, which command an extra $3 to $5 per ticket, as the prime contributor to 2009's record ticket sales of $10.6 billion in the United States and Canada. Last year 30 films grossed $100 million or more. Seven were in 3-D, earning $1.6 billion. Factor out the 3-D revenue from that handful of films, and Hollywood's income would have taken a roller coaster plunge. For studios, there's another benefit to releasing 3-D films: The stereo images can't be bootlegged by pirates with video cameras. The boom is causing some headaches, however. As studios pump out more and more films in the fledgling format, they face an acute shortage of 3-D-capable theaters. Counting "Avatar" as a holdover, there will be 22 3-D movies in theaters this year, up from 14 last year. With about 3,500 3-D screens in North America - less than 10 per cent of the total - there are not nearly enough to handle the coming glut. Warner Bros.' "Clash of the Titans" opens Friday, a week after "How to Train Your Dragon." Meanwhile, Disney wants to keep "Alice" in theaters for several more weeks. Now factor in the rising tide of 3-D rock concerts and live sports broadcasts competing for those same scarce screens - next month CBS Sports will present the NCAA Final Four in 3-D in 100 theaters throughout the nation. With millions at stake, film studios are arm-twisting owners to support their respective movies. The clash of Hollywood titans was Topic One among exhibition executives at the recent ShoWest industry convention in Las Vegas. Paramount warned theater owners with a 3-D-capable screen that unless they show "How to Train Your Dragon" in that format, the studio wouldn't provide a standard print to show instead. Following the money, theater owners nationwide have taken out $660 million in loans to double the number of digital 3-D screens to 7,000 by year's end. While studios and exhibitors are betting heavily on 3-D, it is not the Holy Grail of box office success. Just ask 3-D pioneer Robert Zemeckis ("The Polar Express," "Beowulf"). His underperforming 3-D "A Christmas Carol" was not the stocking stuffer Disney expected; earlier this month, the studio pulled the plug on Zemeckis' cost-intensive production company ImageMovers Digital. The cool response to Dickens' classic, a triumph of technology over storytelling that Zemeckis overloaded with thrill-ride effects, may say something about moviegoers' rising expectations. Simply adding 3-D effects to a movie may not be enough to boost its performance. Cameron has been outspokenly critical of such films as "Clash of the Titans" that were made 3-D in postproduction, likening them to cardboard greeting card pop-ups. A 3-D presentation has intrinsic limitations because of the special eyewear required for viewing. The polarized lenses reduce the brightness of the screen image significantly, and many theaters fail to dial up their projectors to compensate, resulting in images that are painfully dark. What's more, wearing the glasses makes the film going experience more isolating. In a standard movie, you can turn your head toward your seatmate without the screen image going out of register. Audiences at 3-D movies tend to sit through films immobile, staring straight ahead, losing the communal satisfaction of being part of an audience. A more pressing question is whether the novelty value of 3-D can be sustained in the face of an ever-expanding supply. In the format's last heyday, a flood of B movies glutted the market and exhausted moviegoers' appetite for the medium. By the time Alfred Hitchcock brought his 3-D "Dial M for Murder" to theaters in 1954, the fad was played out. While Cameron and Tim Burton have had their hits, and Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson are at work on their own 3-D projects, there is plenty of dubious fare in the year ahead. "Saw VII," "Piranha 3-D," "Step Up 3-D," "Friday the 13th Part 2 in 3D" and "Jackass 3-D" are climbing aboard the gravy train. Here's hoping they don't derail it. |