Ask The A.V. Club - June 20, 2008
Mind Your Ps
And Cues
Okay,
this might have a really obvious answer, but it's something that's been bugging
me for years. A lot of times when a DJ is introducing a song on the radio,
they'll keep talking straight through the instrumental part right up until the
vocals kick in. For example, if some classic-rock station is playing AC/DC's
"Highway To Hell," the guitar will start and the DJ will continue like "And
coming up, we've got the call-in for the WXYZ Vacation Giveaway! But first, how
about a little ride down the highway to hell?" cutting off right as Bon Scott's
vocals begin. The thing is, I've never heard a DJ mess up and talk over the
lyrics. It's just so perfectly timed. And while a classic song like that one
might be easy, some lesser-known songs would be tougher. So my question is, how
do they time it? Is every DJ in the world just so familiar with all the songs
ever written that they can get it perfect every time, or do they have something
else going on? And as a follow-up question, don't they realize it's fucking
annoying to listen to them blabber over the beginnings of songs?
Jonathan W.
Bershad
Radio brat Noel Murray will be
taking you all the way up to the top of the hour:
Jonathan, my father was a disc
jockey for many years, and we often had old radio-station copies of LPs around
the house, with stickers affixed that listed the instrumental intro time for
the songs the labels considered "focus tracks." The last time I was at a radio
station, in the mid-'90s, I noted that a lot of those singles and key album
tracks were being sent on individual CDs, again with the timing of the
instrumental intro noted on the label. I'm sure that even now, in the
computerized age, DJ booths are well-supplied with digital clocks and helpful
notations about how long they can talk before they start stepping on a song's
vocals.
Call me hopelessly nostalgic, but
I like it when DJs jabber away over the
songs. More often than not these days, local radio sounds like it's being
beamed in from a featureless cube, untouched by human hands. The radio I grew
up with—especially the kind my Dad was involved with for more than a
decade—was all about local personalities talking about local events, in a
voice that lent excitement to even the most mediocre Loverboy song. I still
have a few homemade cassettes of songs I taped off the radio, and I'm holding
onto them more for the brief snippets of DJ voices than for the songs, most of
which I've long-since picked up on CD. You can hear your favorite song any time
you want. Those DJ intros are here for 17 seconds, then gone forever.
Early Life With David Letterman
So here's my deal: The Daily Show now has an online archive of every post-Kilborn
episode, and this just makes me pleased as punch. My question is why other talk
shows are slower to offer up their years of top-notch entertainment. Why is it
that NBC thinks there is a market for the Wings
Season Six DVD set, and yet they withhold any episodes of Late
Night With David Letterman? I was born in 1982 but have brothers 10 years
my senior, so for much of the 1980s, I spent my afternoons with them watching
the previous night's taped Letterman episode, then in the early '90s, watching
reruns on A&E.; So why can't I get these episodes now? There are clips here
and there on YouTube, but I would suck a hobo's dick to just get a full episode
of Letterman in his 1980s glory.
It makes me so sad to watch current episodes of the
show, as he is clearly bored with the very format of a talk show. What's a brother
got to do to get some old-school Late Night? Is it being withheld because NBC is reluctant to pay
Letterman anything after his messy split with the network? That theory doesn't
really make sense, since I am sure the board at NBC has changed over many times
since 1993, and personal grudges are long departed. I just feel like Letterman
did so much to shape my snarky, smartass personality that I should at least
have something to show people to explain why I am this way.
By the way: I think Nathan Rabin is just the
shit. If the Year In Flops feature could return twice weekly, I would be ever
so grateful. I only just noticed that it was him reviewing classic SNL, so I'm
so glad I have all of those to delve into.
Brendan Cassidy
Your idol Nathan Rabin responds:
Thanks for the kind words. Just yesterday, me and
Scott Tobias were giggling girlishly about the unspeakable awesomeness of
Letterman's brutally funny comic takedown of The Hills jackass Spencer Pratt (sample question: "Are you a
dope in real life, too?) and commenting on how neat it would be if Letterman
released a compilation of Late Night
interviews with guests he clearly feels are beneath his contempt, like Paris
Hilton.
I think a big part of the reason old-school
Letterman is so hard to find these days is that talk shows are ephemeral by
design. Hosts begin with a monologue referencing current events and celebrity
happenings that are quickly lost to the ages, then interview stars of the
moment plugging projects that, more often than not, will quickly be forgotten.
Is the world really hungering to see, say, Bobcat Goldthwait (whom I happen to
think is enormously talented) plug Hot To Trot on The Tonight Show 20 years
after the fact? Or Donna Mills jabber on insipidly about whatever the hell it
is Donna Mills was once mildly famous for?
Indeed, recent DVD sets from talk-show legends like
Tom Snyder and Dick Cavett are often as notable for their time-capsule
properties as their entertainment value. Talk-show hosts like Cavett, Snyder,
Conan O'Brien, Jon Stewart, and Stephen Colbert have all put DVDs on the market,
but they're invariably greatest-hits compilations or theme DVDs grouped around
appearances by rock icons, The Beatles, or snarling punk-rock provocateurs.
Where a sitcom can get away with putting out six
neat, DVD-friendly episodes in a season, guys like Letterman tape hundreds of
shows a year, so a 60-DVD set compiling the entire 1988 season of Late Night
With David Letterman is probably not going
to happen any time soon. As you suggested, it's also possible that the bad
blood between NBC and Letterman, as well as the late-night fixture's legendary
prickliness, could play a role in ensuring that the Late Night vaults will not be opened and released to the general
public, though I'd dig that as well.
It's also entirely likely that music rights factor
into the equation. I suspect that one of the reasons The Daily Show is able to post their entire post-Kilborn archive
online is because it almost never featured musical guests. The rights to
popular songs can be complicated to untangle and prohibitively expensive, and
they've certainly delayed the DVD release of pop-culture staples like SCTV and Saturday Night Live. So there are numerous reasons why Letterman's old
shows probably won't be popping up on DVD or online in a legal form anytime
soon. That's a shame, but it's also eminently understandable.
I Want My DTV
When
I was about 5 or so, I had this videotape I would always watch. It was Disney,
and it involved old clips from Disney cartoons and movies being played
alongside songs not in the original cartoon. I remember one segment had a clip
from Dumbo being played with (what I think was) "Baby
Love" by The Supremes. Also, there would be interludes that involved Disney
toys in stop-motion animation. My sister remembers this as well, so I'm
probably not making it up. Any ideas?
Taylor
Collins
Noel Murray scoured the VHS
bins at the local thrift store:
You had one of the "DTV" series
of videotapes (and laserdiscs) that Disney released in the late '80s,
collecting the music videos that The Disney Channel sometimes aired to fill
space between shows. (They also aired a few all-video specials on The Disney
Channel and on NBC, which was partnered with Disney in the days before Disney
owned ABC.) In some ways, projects like DTV are typical of the changing Disney
philosophy during the era in which Michael Eisner was CEO of the company. When
Walt Disney was alive, the studio was known for blazing trails; by the '80s,
they were scrambling to keep up with the trends. If the kids like MTV, then why
wouldn't they like Chip 'N' Dale cavorting about in old cartoon footage, newly
set to a Hall & Oates hit?
If you still have a VCR, those
DTV tapes can be found fairly cheaply online, and also at neighborhood garage
sales, kids' consignment shops, and the like. But they're not on DVD, and
probably never will be. Given that shows like The Wonder Years and WKRP In Cincinnati can't retain their original music because of
exorbitant licensing fees, it's unlikely that even a company with pockets as
deep as Disney's will pony up for this kind of pop ephemera. So give thanks yet
again for YouTube:
A Matter Of Character
I've noticed that the film
reviews for The A.V. Club almost
always refer to actors and not characters. That is, you'll write "While
planning his latest hit, Cusack falls for a hard-hitting reporter (Marisa
Tomei) who dismisses him as another greedy corporate opportunist. Meanwhile,
Hilary Duff flounces around as a Middle Eastern Britney Spears," rather
than using the names of the characters. Sometimes it makes sense to refer to
the character when an actor is playing a real person, as in Nathan Rabin's
review of Postal, which refers to
Osama bin Laden rather than Larry Thomas. The other actors are listed by their
real names, though, leading to a perhaps unintentionally (though probably
intentionally) hilarious description of a clash between bin Laden and Dave
Foley. Is there any reason you guys went with this system instead of the usual
character followed by actor in parenthesis? Also, in your Sex And The City review, why does Sarah
Jessica Parker get to be "Carrie?" I suppose because it's a
pre-existing character and people know who you're talking about, but where's
the cutoff? At what point does a character get to be recognized on his/her own
terms? For example, I noticed that Keith's review of Batman Begins only references Christian
Bale in its plot summary, and not, you know, Batman. Part of me feels dumb for
even asking, since I'm sure your response will be that I am way overthinking
this. But I also know you guys love overthinking stuff like this too, so I'd
like to get your take on it.
Zach
Tasha Robinson is so over
thinking about this:
People ask this a lot, Zach, to
the point where we occasionally wonder if we under-thought our style convention. And we've debated
changing it, because it really seems to anger and/or confuse some people. As
the site reaches more and more new readers, we keep getting snitty comments to
the effect of "Your reviewer did no research on Grosse Pointe Blank at all! The hitman is not named John Cusack, he is
played by an actor named John Cusack! He is a very famous actor and you should
have heard of him by now!"
Basically, compare these two
versions:
— Hitman John Cusack angsts
about killing people in Grosse Pointe Blank.
— In Grosse Pointe Blank, hitman Martin Q. Blank (played by John Cusack)
angsts about killing people.
What's the least important part
of the latter sentence? The character's name, which doesn't tell you anything
of note about the movie, what it's about, and whether you want to see it. So
why waste the space? When we're trying to write telegraphically, summing up an
entire movie in roughly 400 words, we want to waste as few of those words as
possible.
But just to make sure I wasn't
missing any deeper philosophy, I checked in with A.V. Club founder and former editor-in-chief Stephen Thompson,
who now edits the NPR Music website and occasionally pops up on Morning
Edition. He had this to say: "I'm pretty sure that predated me, that the previous
editors of movie reviews (which have been in The Onion since
its creation) thought it was stupid to pretend that anyone cared about the name
of the wedding planner in The Wedding Planner. More to the point, it makes reviews sound too much like
press releases—it feels weirdly promotional to write 'Jennifer Lopez
plays Sally, a wedding planner…' It was sort of an unwritten rule in the
beginning, and I quickly decided to enforce it with an iron fist, because it is
an awesome rule that (I think) subtly makes every review sound smarter."
As you noted, our preferred style
gets a little hairier when dealing with people playing historical characters,
and it also doesn't work well with animation. (It's a little harder to make the
leap from "John Cusack is a hitman in Grosse Pointe Blank" to "David Cross is a martial artist crane in Kung
Fu Panda. Cross kicks Jack Black's butt,"
since the actors aren't actually there onscreen.) So we stand by the rule of
using character names in animated movies and anything involving historical
figures. Situations like Sex And The City are hairier still, and we don't really draw the line so much as
nudge at it thoughtfully with our toes and then go with whatever we feel works
best in the context of a character's pop-culture fame. With Batman
Begins, for instance, I'd argue that Batman
isn't even a "character" per se; he's a persona Bruce Wayne is putting on, and
Bruce Wayne is a character Christian Bale is putting on, and most people know
this already, so we don't need to waste more words explaining it. We don't
actually have "Assume our readers are smart and don't want us to talk down to
them" painted on our walls here, but it's kind of a ongoing guiding philosophy.
You're smart people. You'll figure it all out.
Next time: The A.V. Club, pot, and another round
of Stumped! Send your questions to [email protected].