FORGOTTEN FILM - CABIN BOY

I think the first time I noticed Chris Elliott was on his short lived FOX sitcom, Get a Life (1990-1992). I'm sure I'd seen him pop up on Letterman's old NBC show here and there before that (he was a writer and regular cast member), but this series put a name to his face and was just weird enough to appeal to me. I started watching it because his character's name was the same as someone I knew, which we all found rather funny, but then the show turned out to be actually rather funny, so I kept watching until it got cancelled.

A couple of years later, I spotted the VHS of his 1994 film, Cabin Boy, for rent when it hit the shelves and the premise seemed interesting enough to take a chance, so home it came. What I wasn't really prepared for was the flat out assault on my sensibilities that I was going to endure for the next 80 minutes. The thing is, this film should have made me very angry, and I know it made some critics feel that way, but despite the continuous intellectual kicks to the head, I found myself turning into a complete masochist for this movie's abuse. The more ridiculous and irritating it got, the more I loved it and I just couldn't get enough. It simply takes absurdity to a level of Zen transcendence and becomes something quite unique unto itself.

Elliott plays Nathanial Mayweather, an entitled, arrogant, foulmouthed finishing school graduate. He's the kind of guy you want to punch the instant you lay eyes on him and that feeling only intensifies when he starts opening his mouth, which he does far more than is necessary or wise. You see, he's one of them "fancy lads", as is so quaintly put by the stuffed monkey selling street hustler played by David Letterman in a classic cameo. After graduating from finishing school, he's on the lookout for his ship to take him on a luxury ocean cruise, only to end up stowing away on a filthy pirate ship. From there, the film becomes an inexplicable homage to Ray Harryhausen films like The 7th Voyages of Sinbad or Clash of the Titans, as Nathan inadvertently embarks on a quest to discover his manhood while encountering all manner of creatures and characters along the way.

This is one of those flicks that really benefits from psychoactive stimulants of the psychedelic variety as the surrealism of each situation escalates towards the film's climax. Elliott manages to perform something of a minor miracle in terms of creating such a reprehensible protagonist while still giving him enough pathos to make him sympathetic enough to follow through his adventures. I'd still punch him in the face if I met him, but I'd do it with a smile. I hate them fancy lads.

INFLUENTIAL ALBUM - AMON TOBIN, BRICOLAGE

For a long time, electronic music was beaten down by the cudgel that it lacked "feeling' and was too "stiff" and "rigid".  This was something that was even embraced by groups like Kraftwerk, who integrated the rigidity of electronics into their aesthetic, to brilliant effect, i might add.  But still, for the first two decades as the technology worked its way from novelty to necessity in the creation of popular music, there were restrictions on its flexibility.  It took time for keyboards to develop sensitivity to velocity and after-touch and rhythmic devices like drum machines and sequencers were generally slavishly tied to quantization. 

It wasn't until the 1990s that the tech began to truly develop the abilities to incorporate more organic feeling attributes into its compositions.  One of the most preeminent pioneers in terms of breaking electronics free from the shackles of perfection and repetition was Amon Tobin, who debuted with his first album, Bricolage, in 1997. 

I recall this album being something of a revelation in my social circles as we'd never heard anything that sounded quite so loose and spontaneous before.  I remember listening to this with fellow musicians who were well up on the latest tools and techniques and being aghast at the fluidity of the percussion and the arrangements.  So much was going on and no two bars of music seemed to be the same.  There were constant shifts and variations happening and it all felt like someone was really playing this stuff, even though we knew it was mostly done by sampling and editing.  We couldn't figure out how the hell he was doing this stuff.

The style of the music also broke free of genre pigeonholes.  Tobin would effortlessly glide from devastating drum & bass to downtempo coolness to jazzy chill without breaking a sweat.  The title, Bricolage, which is an arts term for "the construction or creation of a work from a diverse range of things that happen to be available, or a work constructed using mixed media", fit the contents perfectly as it was a diverse assemblage of sounds and styles that created its own unique vision for both the dance floor and the living room in equal measure.