All of the song titles form the structure \u201c(person\/thing) at (setting)\u201d: these are songs as portraiture. The barbershop quartet-like title track (with exotic violin-and-chanting-and-soldier-drums break) salutes and sadly outlines the life of Federico Fellini\u2019s actress wife: \u201cCrying for her man and the recognition, no pension plans \u2026 played the part of a prostitute\/ who would not lose her heart, let men lie and loot \u2026 1 baby dead, 3 gravesites, 2 artists wed\u2026 8 and 1\/2\u2033.\u00a0Neil Young at the Junos<\/i>, expansive and piano-driven like Elton John\u2019s\u00a0Goodbye Yellow Brick Road<\/i>era, honors Young\u2019s annual benefits for the Bridge School (for severely handicapped children), his willingness to pick political fights, and, why not?, his model train collection, even while being about the texture of a life where \u201cPeople want their pictures taken with you, secretly afraid their hairstyle will be wrong\u201d and \u201cYou lay down your head in some overpriced fancy hotel bed\u201d.Mothface@yahoo.com<\/i>, a jaunty yet awkward Broadway tune on brass and drums, is for a deceased performance-artist\/ actress ex-girlfriend, but centers on how much he liked a speech at her funeral by someone he\u2019d never expected to empathize with about anything.<\/span><\/p>\n Many of the portraits on\u00a0Giulietta Masina at the Oscars Crying<\/i><\/b>\u00a0also double as fierce critiques of the world they occur in.\u00a0Robert Dziekanski at the Vancouver Airport<\/i>, driven by percussive piano, tells us the too-easily-forgotten newspaper story of a Polish immigrant murdered by police in a Canadian airport: \u201cPeople tried to tell them I didn\u2019t speak English\/ People tried to tell them I wasn\u2019t stoned\/ People tried to tell them I was unarmed and alone.\/ Took them almost five seconds to decide in their expert opinion to fire.\/They found themselves not guilty \u2026 surprise!\u201dRuby Bates at Grad School<\/i>\u00a0is about the Scottsboro Boys case \u2014 nine black boys jailed for decades on false charges of rape \u2014 but focuses, with respect, on one of their two accusers, the The music on\u00a0Giulietta Masina\u00a0<\/i><\/b>is striking for how weirdly hard-to-describe it is, when it\u2019s built from mainstream elements. The ultra-danceable\u00a0Reform Party at Burning Man<\/i>\u00a0has funk, circa-1970 Rolling Stones, jazz piano, James Brown, and\u00a0Lovely Rita Meter Maid<\/i>\u00a0all influencing it somewhere.\u00a0Lobbyists at Parliament<\/i>, just as danceable, has Motown, Bo Diddly, exceptionally busy percussion, and a strange little drift that leads into a treble organ solo.\u00a0Ruby Bates at Grad School<\/i>\u00a0is piano ballad and ghostly march, with a distinctive little violin piece, slide guitar, and female torch singing in the background.\u00a0Portrait of Phil at Various Times in the Closet<\/i>\u00a0has the elements of 1970s The Band\/ Eagles\/ Warren Zevon\/ Fleetwood Mac mainstream pop, but it shambles and wobbles and lurches and chants, and builds something memorable and softly dramatic.<\/span><\/p>\n It all supports a set of lyrics determined to look at, and learn from, as much of his hemisphere as he can. The villains in\u00a0Bob Wiseman<\/b>\u2018s songs are the people (the many, many people) who use power to shut down protests, arrest inconveniently-elected officials, or just torment anyone who\u2019s too different. He fights them using, not just stories, but variety, the tunes of every low culture he can find. Makes sense to me.<\/span><\/p>\n \n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"![\"bob_wiseman_giulietta\"](\"http:\/\/poprocknation.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/bobwiseman_giulietta.jpg\" "\\"bob_wiseman_giulietta\\"")
<\/span><\/a>Prince\u2019s lawyers were extremely aggressive in shutting him down, but I was charmed by Wiseman\u2019s nerve, and picked up his compilation album\u00a0In By Of<\/i><\/b>. I found it full of quirky, minimalist, lo-fi arrangement ideas and odd-yet-earnest lyrics, and kept the album around. I also found his high, reedy voice incredibly tuneless and incompetent, so I virtually never *listened* to it. But when I read an extremely enthusiastic PopMatters review of his 2013 album\u00a0Giulietta Masina at the Oscars Crying<\/i><\/b>, I figured \u201cHey, maybe he\u2019s learned to sing in the last two decades; what the heck\u201d. He had indeed \u2014 his voice is still reedy and a bit imprecise, but tunefully gliding and expressive \u2014 while he\u2019s also strengthened his arranging skills and lyric-writing, which were his strengths to begin with. And now I\u2019m ready to be enthusiastic about him in my own right, for you.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/span><\/a>one who later recanted her charges and devoted much of her life to civil rights in general and to unsuccessfully trying to free the people she\u2019d doomed.\u00a0Aristide at the Press Conference<\/i>summarizes 200 years of Haiti\u2019s history and honors its would-be president: \u201cDemocratically inspected, three times re-elected \u2026 the puppet turned around and faced the puppeteer:\/ \u2018You owe me lost wages, am I being clear?\u2019 \u2026 Now shocked and afraid, the French and USA, and even their Canadian friends. He\u2019s removed from power, it\u2019s kidnapping hour, because he said \u2018This extortion must end\u2019\u201d. It\u2019s not the tale as the New York Times told it \u2014 I know this because at the time I would read their foreign policy coverage and assume its general accuracy \u2014 and it\u2019s also not particularly subtle. But on its side it has warped and energetic acoustic blues guitar, rousing female backup singers (part gospel, part blues, part playground), sneaky electric solos, and righteousness. I like\u00a0Bob Wiseman<\/b>\u2018s weapons.<\/span><\/p>\n