I was fortunate to attend the 2009 Ghent Film Festival where Marvin Hamlisch, who died on Monday at the age of 68, was being honored for career achievment at the World Soundtrack Awards. At a morning panel that I moderated on the morning of the ceremony, Mr. Hamlisch pretty much provided the comic relief the proceedings needed, given that film composers can often be a rather sober, serious bunch.

In fact, during one moment when Mr. Hamlisch was talking about the popularity of film music, somebody’s cell phone went off among those in attendance, although I can’t remember precisely what the ringtone was. But without missing a beat, Mr. Hamlisch asked "Is that public domain, by the way, or did we make money? The guy who wrote that, right now -- I swear to God -- is sitting in some fantastic place in the south of France. We’re killing ourselves here for $14,000!"

Here then, are some select Hamlisch nuggets from the press conference.

On the necessity that composers be versatile:

Marvin Hamlisch: "There are composers that can only do this, but can’t do that. They can only do this kind of picture but they can’t do that. No — composers can do any picture. They can do any style. It’s not our style. We become subservient — if we’re really good -- to what the movie is about.

"If you listen to my second film, ‘Bananas’ (1971), and then you put it up against ‘The Way We Were’ (1973), I doubt you would think that the same composer wrote those two things."

On the importance of formal training and working with your God-given gifts:

"The only way I like to write is either if you are granted by God a great title of a film like ‘The Way We Were’ and you go, ‘I can write that.’ Or, you see a film and as you’re walking on the streets of New York, or, God willing, Paris, the beauty is you’re thinking about that film and those things and that’s when all the stuff you’ve learned at school starts to play and you start your language. And I think that’s the glory of film music."

On film composers as a draw for audiences:

"As egotistical as I am, it’s very rare that one zooms to the theater saying, ‘I’ve got to hear this Michel Legrand score.’"

Movie scores as popular entertainment and the lack of written scores:

"I do a lot of conducting of what we call ‘Pops’ orchestras in America and one of the major selling points of a Pops orchestra will be the evening that you call ‘movie music.’ But the biggest problem that we find in doing popular music for orchestra is getting the music... It’s very important that the new composers and new scores find their way to a library.

"There are certain concerts that will always sell out: You say the word ‘Gershwin’ and you will sell out. You say ‘Broadway tunes’ and you will sell out. And you say ‘movie scores’..."

On collaborating with directors:

"There are certain directors who I think give music its due. And there are other directors who basically just think that they’re buying a carpet and if this carpet doesn’t work they’ll just use another carpet. So it’s a very thin line between the people who really respect you and the people who just use you.

Music as dramatic filler:

"You learn very quickly how important music is to a project because try a montage one day and watch it for two and a half minutes without music. It has the qualities of going to the dentist."

On the use of ‘temp’ tracks:

"Temp tracks can be very insidious. Because what happens is, not only has the director heard it 90 times and they’re used to it, but for a composer, it’s not like you’re really starting off with an empty slate because someone has already shown you the direction they wish to go to — or at least the direction that, of all the CDs they have at their disposal, this is the one they found.

"I’ll never forget on ‘The Way We Were,’ the temp track had things like Michel Legrand, Henry Mancini, Georges Delerue; every scene had one of these great composers. And I said, ‘Excuse me, now just a second here, you couldn’t afford this temp track in real life.’"

Joe Jackson’s career has been anything but predictable. After his first two albums, “Look Sharp” and “I’m the Man,” both released in 1979, placed him squarely in the camp of New Wave and drew unfair comparisons to Elvis Costello, Jackson has spent the ensuing three decades refusing to be pigeonholed.

“I’m conscious of trying to avoid cliche,” says Jackson, who will be the subject of a music column in this Friday’s upcoming Variety, “ but I’m not conscious of being a deliberate contrarian or anything like that. (My music is) very intuitive. I don’t have a plan. I don’t know what I’m going to be doing next year.”

If there’s a through-line to Jackson’s music, the connecting dots would consist of supreme song craft, a high level of musicianship and a restlessly shifting aesthetic. He’s dabbled in swing, jump blues, classical, music in the tradition of the Great American Songbook and soundtracks.

His new album, “The Duke,” out June 26 on the Razor & Tie label, stands as a tribute to one of Jackson’s musical heroes, Duke Ellington. The new recording recalls Jackson’s homage to the likes of Cab Calloway and Louis Jordan. But as can be expected, Jackson takes issue with the comparison.

“I think Ellington is a very different kind of figure than someone like Cab Calloway, for instance, even though they both played at the Cotton Club and had big bands,” says Jackson. “But there the similarity ends, really.”

In a departure from the bulk of his oeuvre, Jackson takes a backseat to many of his guest artists on “The Duke,” which includes Sharon Jones of the Dap Kings (which knocked the socks off the crowd at the Playboy Jazz Fest over the weekend), Iranian singer Sussan Deyhim, Brazilian vocalist Lilian Vieira and other cameos by the likes of guitarist Steve Vai and drummer Ahmir ?uestlove Thompson of The Roots.

Jackson also enlisted jazz stalwarts Christian McBride on bass and Regina Carter on violin, the latter of whom will join Jackson on his U.S. tour, which kicks off in Bethesda, Maryland on Sept. 15 and ends at L.A.’s downtown Orpheum Theatre on Oct. 6.

As usual with Jackson, expect to see the bulk of his show devoted to music from the new album. But judging from our phone conversation, he’ll also dip into his catalog with fresh arrangements that best utilize his touring lineup, which includes singer-songwriter-multi-instrumentalist Allison Cornell, whom Jackson refers to as “a very important voice on the album” and “capable of amazing things, vocally.”

“The Duke” incorporates an eclectic hybrid of styles, using a combination of acoustic and synthetic instruments and incorporating exotic strains on such tracks as “Perdido” and “Caravan.”

“I was just interested in using everything I possibly could except for horns,” explains Jackson. “And I wanted the record to not sound retro. I didn’t want to make it sound trendy, either. I wanted it to be kind of timeless. That was something I struggled with for a while — how electronic-sounding it was going to be, or how organic. And it ended up being a kind of mixture, which I’m pretty happy with.”

Like the album, Jackson views Ellington’s music as spanning multiple genres and periods. “Even though Ellington started his recording career in the 1920s, he was still going strong and still coming out with new stuff in the early 1970s — right up to his death in ’74,” says Jackson.

“There’s so many sides to it; it’s not just one thing,” he adds. “There’s a lot to explore. He was very original, very ahead of other people. There’s just a lot there to get your teeth into. Although I will say as I’ve gotten older and wiser I appreciate earlier jazz more. It took me more time to get earlier Ellington, for instance, than late Ellington.”

Jackson was also drawn to the more composed aspect of Ellington’s music as opposed to the spontaneity associated with modern jazz. “I’m very intrigued by the balance between structure and freedom,” he says, “or composition and improvisation. I think Ellington had a particularly brilliant way of doing that.”

In this age of Spotify and iTunes, where individual songs are traded back and forth like baseball cards and artists build recordings around one or two potential hit singles, Jackson remains steadfast in his commitment to albums as thematically unifying statements.

The ambitious 1986 live double album “Big World,” for example, took a sweeping view of global politics from a Western perspective and all the imperialistic consequences of the Reagan and Thatcher eras, while 1989’s “Blaze of Glory” chronicled the exploits of a mythical London rock star and the pitfalls of fame.

 His criticism of the music business has surfaced in some of his music, especially the underrated 1991 LP “Laughter and Lust,” in which the tune “Hit Single” pokes fun at label execs obsessed with topping the charts and “The Old Songs” hints at an unhealthy nostalgia for a bygone era, false expectations and the refusal to embrace artistic change.

But the death of the album as a cohesive, conceptual statement is nothing new for Jackson, who moved to Berlin in 2008 to get away from the rat race of London and New York, his previous residences.

“People have been saying that for quite a while and I can see why they say it,” he says about albums as an endangered species. “I don’t necessarily agree. I mean people have been saying, for instance, that the novel is dead for God knows how long. And my opinion on that is if a novel is something you really feel you have in you, then that’s what you should do.

“I like the idea of an album having a unity to it... being a whole statement and not a bunch of things just thrown together. And I never really thought I was making concept albums but I was looking for ways to give the whole album some kind of identity and make the pieces fit together.

“It seems to suit the way my musical brain works and so I’m going to keep doing it. And if nobody wants it, tough shit, really (laughs). I can’t control the world and the music industry; I can’t un-invent the internet or anything like that.”

For Brit chanteuse Gemma Ray, less is obviously more. The last time this Essex-bred singer-songwriter blew into town and made her L.A. debut at the Hotel Cafe two years ago, she wielded no more than a a vintage Hagstrom guitar and a kitchen knife that she used as a slide bar. At the time, she was performing songs from her haunting album of covers, "It’s a Shame About Gemma Ray," released by Bronze Rat Records.

Last night (May 15) at the Troubadour, she was back with the knife, but the axe was a Gretsch and she was backed by a simple drum kit and a bass player the duo picked up from Long Beach the night before. The result was an intoxicating blend of Ray’s yearningly emotive voice and noirish sound design that served, ironically, to give even greater depth to the more lavishly produced material on her new album, "Island Fire," also on Bronze Rat.

Compelling songs of introversion and heartbreak and a viscous, metallic guitar style that melds Ry Cooder’s swampy Americana with a splash of Dick Dale remain Ray’s signature trademarks, and the big mystery is why she’s not better known outside of her immediate cult following and a few astute critics.

With her mid-sixties bouffant and vintage duds, she cuts a very theatrical silhouette on the bandstand, and could be a music supervisor’s dream for sheer atmosphere alone.

Standout numbers from the show included "Troup De Loup" and "Flood and a Fire" from the new album, and the wonderfully surreal "100 MPH (in 2nd Gear)" from 2009’s "Lights Out Zoltar!" — perhaps her most accomplished LP to date.

The only drawback was the briefness of Ray’s appearance, squeezed as it was between sets by Ane Brun and Elin Ruth Sigvardsson. This artist deserves a much greater opportunity to stretch her wings in front of an audience that’s hopefully not too jaded about wondering who the Next Big Thing is. This gal is It.

By Lisa Engelbrektson

Deer Tick played Saturday night at the El Rey Theater on L.A.’s Miracle Mile as part of their two-and-a-half month tour, their longest to date, to support their new album "Divine Providence." And while the jury’s split on their latest effort — Pitchfork calls it "self-absorbed and even downright hateful," Paste deems it "a celebration of music by a band who likes nothing more than to have a good time," NPR describes the music as "pickled in alcohol" and Rolling Stone gives it three and a half stars out of five — the quartet may have restored some cred’ with their Los Angeles fan-base.

During a meaty set that clocked in at more than an hour, this raucous country hick-rock band from Rhode Island played their top iTunes downloads in near succession. "We don’t make a playlist," commented John McCauley III, front-man of the group. "When you come to a Deer Tick show you know you’re going to get something different."

Different was not what concertgoers got out of this particular Deer Tick show, but none seemed disappointed. Everything was per status quo: the group opened with their song, "The Bump," a ditty about cocaine that opens with a nod to former addict but now recovered Iggy Pop ("I got a lust for life/") and closed the night with a timely and appropriate tribute to Beastie Boy MCA (Adam Yauch), a la an encore performance of "Fight for Your Right (To Party)."

As if on cue — as alcohol-related injuries are a hallmark of their live performances — two thirds of the way through the evening a girl was taken whisked off to the emergency room in an ambulance. "Sometimes shit gets fucked up at our shows," mentioned McCauley. "Sometimes we play really proper and it’s fine. But we’ve had to pay fan’s medical bills before.

"(Management) will happily pay for hospital bills if something like that happens and it’s our fault," he added.

From beginning to end the group seized on tracks from all their albums — "Easy," and "Baltimore Blues No. 1" and "Twenty Miles," to name a few — and played their latest EP, "Tim," in near entirety.

Unlike their most recent previous local performance at the Echoplex, this outing did not reach an abrupt ending with the band’s singer crashing to the floor below and cracking his pelvis.

"I’d like to publically apologize for how drunk I was our last L.A. show," McCauley professed to Variety. Asked before the El Rey gig if he was planning on drinking on Cinco de Mayo, the day of the show, he replied, "maybe not as much."

I had the pleasure of interviewing Carly Simon some weeks back, which had to do with her receiving the Founders Award for career achievement from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, and so naturally I asked her about the process of songwriting.

Perhaps the song most associated with Simon is "You're So Vain," the subject of which, to Simon's credit, has never been revealed but has been most commonly identified as Warren Beatty or Mick Jagger. In Sheila Weller's impressively researched "Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell and the Journey of a Generation," Simon is tied, if briefly, with both lotharios, at a time when Kris Kristofferson and eventual hubble James Taylor were also vying for Simon's attention.

I didn't ask Simon to reveal the subject of the song, knowing her steadfast discretion would not allow it, but I did ask her about its construction.

As it turned out, it took a year or so to put together, and is included on Simon's strongest album, in my opinion, "No Secrets," from 1972.

Here's what Simon had to say:

Simon: "In the case of 'You’re So Vain' I had the chorus: 'You’re so vain/You probably think this song is about you.' I had that written on a piece of paper a year before I got the rest of the song. I thought, 'that’s kind of funny, it’s sort of a nice twist' so I put it down in my notebook. And then about a year later I was at a party at my sister’s apartment and a man walked into the party with a big long scarf and he looked at the mirror, which was right as you entered the front door, and he whisked his scarf around his neck as he saw himself and he tilted his hat slightly to the left. I thought, ‘wow, he’s really vain...’

I then asked Simon about the meaning of gavotte as it applies to the phrase "You had one I in the mirror as you watched yourself gavotte."

Simon: "A gavotte is a French dance. I thought I would use a word that was slightly presumptuous. It rhymed with what I needed it to rhyme with. He’s gavotting because that's what a pretentious, vain man would do. But he’s not at the French court, he’s at my sister’s house.

"A friend of mine who was standing next to me said 'he looks like he’s walking onto a yacht. So I put the two together -- the line that I wrote with this very vain person whom I knew. So I started writing the song about the vain man.

"And it replaced a melody that I was already writing that had nothing to do with 'You’re so Vain. 'It was called "Bless You Ben.'

"It was (Simon starts singing into the phone):

'Bless you Ben/You came in/When nobody else left off

There I was/By myself/Fighting up in my loft

Talking trouble/Took my time/Singing some sad songs

I had some dreams they were clouds in my coffee...'

"That last line was the one that stayed but I liked the melody. So I started replacing the melody with 'You walked into the party...' It went with that phrasing exactly."

Apparently Foo Fighters frontman caught a bit of flak for his Grammy acceptance speech wherein he emphasized the importance of "the human element" of musicmaking, as if he was dissing all those bands out there whose emphasis on production perfection drains the soul out of their music (it does) or anyone who synthetically alters their vocals (take that, Justin Beiber).

Here is the apologia issued by Mr. Grohl in its entirety (and can anyone in their 40s other than a popular Grunge-based rocker get away with "stay frosty"?)

Oh, what a night we had last Sunday at the 54th Annual Grammy Awards. The glitz! The Glamour! SEACREST! Where do I begin?? Chillin' with Lil' Wayne...meeting Cyndi Lauper's adorable mother...the complimentary blinking Coldplay bracelet.....much too much to recap. It's really is still a bit of a blur. But, if there's one thing that I remember VERY clearly, it was accepting the Grammy for Best Rock Performance...and then saying this:

"To me this award means a lot because it shows that the human element of music is what's important. Singing into a microphone and learning to play an instrument and learning to do your craft, that's the most important thing for people to do... It's not about being perfect, it's not about sounding absolutely correct, it's not about what goes on in a computer. It's about what goes on in here [your heart] and what goes on in here [your head]."

Not the Gettysburg Address, but hey......I'm a drummer, remember?

Well, me and my big mouth. Never has a 33 second acceptance rant evoked such caps-lock postboard rage as my lil' ode to analog recording has. OK....maybe Kanye has me on this one, but....Imma let you finish....just wanted to clarify something...

I love music. I love ALL kinds of music. From Kyuss to Kraftwerk, Pinetop Perkins to Prodigy, Dead Kennedys to Deadmau5.....I love music. Electronic or acoustic, it doesn't matter to me. The simple act of creating music is a beautiful gift that ALL human beings are blessed with. And the diversity of one musician's personality to the next is what makes music so exciting and.....human. 

That's exactly what I was referring to. The "human element". That thing that happens when a song speeds up slightly, or a vocal goes a little sharp. That thing that makes people sound like PEOPLE. Somewhere along the line those things became "bad" things, and with the great advances in digital recording technology over the years they became easily "fixed". The end result? I my humble opinion.....a lot of music that sounds perfect, but lacks personality. The one thing that makes music so exciting in the first place.

And, unfortunately,  some of these great advances have taken the focus off of the actual craft of performance. Look, I am not Yngwie Malmsteen. I am not John Bonham. Hell...I'm not even Josh Groban, for that matter. But I try really fucking hard so that I don't have to rely on anything but my hands and my heart to play a song. I do the best that I possibly can within my limitations, and accept that it sounds like me. Because that's what I think is most important. It should be real, right? Everybody wants something real.

I don't know how to do what Skrillex does (though I fucking love it) but I do know that the reason he is so loved is because he sounds like Skrillex, and that's badass. We have a different process and a different set of tools, but the "craft" is equally as important, I'm sure. I mean.....if it were that easy, anyone could do it, right? (See what I did there?)

So, don't give me two Crown Royals and then ask me to make a speech at your wedding, because I might just bust into the advantages of recording to 2 inch tape. 

Now, I think I have to go scream at some kids to get off my lawn. 

Stay frosty.     

Davemau5

By RACHEL ABRAMS

Marking their first live performance, Sucre debuted nine ethereal tunes Monday night at Hollywood’s Hotel Café.

Accompanied by a live four-person string quartet, husband Darren King on drums/piano and Jeremy Larson on piano/strings, lead singer Stacy King performed a half-hour set to a standing crowd. Other guests included Dan Brigham and Vince Schuerman from Canon Blue on guitar and additional percussion.

Sucre, which at times recalls Florence and the Machine and Leona Lewis, just completed their freshman album. Finished over the course of two years, the record was produced, mixed and mastered by Larson, a classically trained musician who layered harp, cello, mandolin, bass and other string instruments to create the group’s celestial sound.

In today's New York Times, Jon Caramanica writes that Sunday night's Grammy telecast "was one of the dullest in recent memory" and I can't help but agree. As my colleague Chris Morris, who covered the ceremony for Variety wrote on Facebook, "the Grammys are about ratings and commercial muscle." True that, which makes for awfully predictable music. 

But that said, I thought the unstated theme for this particular telecast was settling old scores: Katy Perry customized her jab at soon-to-be ex Russell Brand with new lyrics for "Part of Me"; Taylor Swift targeted the haters who criticized her past Grammy performances with "You're So Mean"; Rihanna asserted her independence with "We Found Love" ("in a hopeless place"); Grammy queen Adele cleaned up with what she described as "a breakup album," "21"; and, finally, this Tweet from Chris Brown: "HATE ALL U WANT BECUZ I GOT A GRAMMY."

Talk about high school...

Leave it to Paul McCartney to upstage his own tribute, breaking tradition for a MusiCares honoree on Friday night by opening the show with a rousing rendition of "Magical Mystery Tour," a fitting introduction to the McCartney songbook that would assume new definition with every artist who appeared onstage. Alicia Keys, accompanying herself on piano, turned "Blackbird" into a personal anthem of empowerment; Coldplay performed "We Can Work It Out" as if it were a plea for world peace; and Katy Perry tapped her inner torch singer with a breathy version of "Hey Jude."

The pre-Grammy MusiCares Person of the Year event raised $6.5 million for musicians in need, eclipsing the record $4.7 million established by Barbra Streisand last year, and the adoring throng of showbiz heavyweights who crowded into the West Hall of the L.A. Convention Center were not disappointed. With McCartney laying down the gauntlet, the Foo Fighters flexed some hard-rock muscle on "Jet";  Neil Young and Crazy Horse downshifted to a loping, grungy gate on "I Saw Her Standing There"; and Norah Jones' smokey delivery on "Oh Darling" helped prompt McCartney to comment later about "all these fantastic artists putting nuances on songs that I didn't know were there."

Eddie Izzard, the MC for the evening, proved characteristically irreverent, crafting a fancifully absurdist bio of McCartney that involved the singer-songwriter playing the xylophone "upside down because he was left-handed" and Muhammad Ali as the fifth Beatle. McCartney bookended the marathon evening by closing with material from his latest LP, "Kisses on the Bottom," about which Elvis Costello, in a filmed comment, said "could be the alternative title for this evening's festivities."

Joe Walsh, who most embodies the dissolute lifestyle that his fellow Eagles so often sang about in albums like "Hotel California" and "The Long Run," brought out some heavy hitters to the Troubadour on Wednesday night at private launch party for his upcoming album, "Analog Man."

Among those spotted in the house were Stewart Copeland, Jeff Lynne, Ringo Starr and wife Barbara Bach, and industry power players like Irving Azoff, among many others. But Walsh was clearly the attraction, mixing a live performance of new and classic material with anecdotes about his hard-partying ways, life on the road and a highly amusing deconstruction of his 1978 hit "Life’s Been Good" — perhaps THE definition of art imitating life.

Recalling the time he toured as an opening act for The Who, Walsh shared that "one of the most terrifying things that happened to me was when Keith Moon decided he liked me."

In describing his observations that led to the writing of the new album’s title track, he compared the time when there were three networks that shut down their broadcasts at 10 p.m., and now, when in the wee hours of the morning there’s "500 channels and there’s nothing on, unless you want a Brazilian butt lift or you need a cure for your acne."

But the highlight was seeing Walsh on stage with a crew of crack session players, exhibiting the kind of licks on guitar that served as reminder that he’s one of rock’s unique stylists and showed why the James Gang was one of the first great exponents of jam rock. And his falsetto vocals have lost none of their cracked charm.

The new tune "Wrecking Ball" revealed a debt to Crazy Horse, while vintage tunes like "Turn to Stone" and "Rocky Mountain Way," with Ringo helping out on traps, proved that classic rock never dies; it just needs to be watered now and then.