Magnet Magazine
British DJ/producer Ashley Beedle and musical partner Darren Morris are the men behind Mavis, a new project celebrating the music of soul icon Mavis Staples. The album is out March 2 via the !K7 label, with remixes and reinterpretations by artists including Ed Harcourt (download “Puzzles & Riddles”), Kurt Wagner, Edwyn Collins, Candi Staton, Sarah Cracknell and more. Here’s the video for “Gangs Of Rome,” featuring Lambchop frontman Wagner on vocals.
It’s not as much of a journey from religious music to Jerry Lee Lewis and the Die Hard movie franchise as you might think. For someone who began her recording career as a Christian artist, Sam Phillips has had a very secular professional life. Born Leslie Ann Phillips in 1962, she cut her last album of religious music, produced by future husband T Bone Burnett, in 1987. (Phillips and Burnett divorced in 2004.) Phillips then jumped ship to the Virgin label in 1989 and began recording albums of thoughtful-yet-stirring music to document her new life as Sam Phillips. Critics’ fave Fan Dance, her 2001 debut record for Nonesuch Records, featured lovely string arrangements by the legendary Van Dyke Parks. Phillips is currently in the middle of a year-long multimedia project called Long Play and also has a tune placed in Oscar-contending film Crazy Heart with Jeff Bridges. In addition, Phillips will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our Q&A with her.
Phillips: My grandfather had a cabin out near Joshua Tree, Calif., where I spent time when I was a little girl. There were characters out there like George Van Tassel and his wife, who told my grandfather that aliens had given them the plans to build a machine that would give humans eternal youth. They were always asking for donations because the aliens kept updating the design of the machine. Video after the jump.
Check out “Promises,” the first single off Big Echo, the Morning Benders‘ follow-up to 2008’s Talking Through Tin Cans (which iTunes crowned the best indie/alternative album of that year). The California quartet just signed to Rough Trade Records and will release the album, produced in 11 days by singer/guitarist Christopher Chu and Grizzly Bear’s Chris Taylor, on March 9. Download “Promises” below.
“Promises” (download):
https://magnetmagazine.com/audio/Promises.mp3
Every Saturday, we’ll be posting a new illustration by David Lester. The Mecca Normal guitarist is visually documenting people, places and events from his band’s 26-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith.
FADE IN:
EXT. A 1975 BABY-BLUE FORD PICKUP TRUCK IS AT A STOPLIGHT AT A DESERTED INTERSECTION IN A QUIET INDUSTRIAL AREA—NIGHT
The driver of the truck—CHAD, a well-built, 40-year-old man with curly blonde hair sticking out beneath his cowboy hat—reaches in front of VERONICA—an unhappy-looking woman in her 40s with long straight brown hair—and tosses an empty Budweiser beer can out the passenger side window. CHAD impatiently turns left before the light turns green. He pulls up in front of VERONICA’s building, beside an orange-juice factory, slams the truck into park and continues to look straight ahead, engine running.
CLOSEUP OF VERONICA LOOKING AT CHAD.
VERONICA
(tentatively)
It’s late so I’m not going to invite you in.
CLOSEUP OF CHAD LOOKING STRAIGHT AHEAD.
CHAD
(hands gripping the steering wheel tightly)
OK. It’s late. Fine.
CLOSEUP OF VERONICA LOOKING AT CHAD. Two beats. VERONICA opens the truck door, gets out, closes the door and looks at CHAD through the open passenger window.
VERONICA’s POV. CHAD keeps looking straight ahead.
VERONICA
(softly)
Good night.
VERONICA’s POV. CHAD pulls a U-turn, tires chirp.
SHOT OF VERONICA walking across the parking lot. VERONICA stops and turns.
VERONICA’s POV. SHOT OF THE TRUCK SITTING AT THE STOPLIGHT.
CLOSEUP OF VERONICA.
CHAD
(VOICE OVER with echo)|
A gentleman doesn’t just drop a lady off my dear; he walks her to her door.
BACK TO VERONICA’s POV. SHOT OF THE TRUCK GOING DOWN THE STREET AND OUT OF SIGHT.
VERONICA
(under her breath)
What an asshole.
SHOT OF VERONICA walking to the door of her building.
FADE OUT.
If you want to say that you don’t drive a baby-blue truck, that you don’t wear a cowboy hat, that I don’t live in a warehouse district—that it wasn’t like that, that you weren’t irritated when you dropped me off—you would be right, but some tiny part of you dropping me off after the opera on that icy winter night informs this scene. I know you were concerned about driving slippery streets in your sports car, and that you were pre-occupied with getting home—that’s why you didn’t wait to make sure I was safely to my door. You were thinking about getting yourself home safely, but I can twist and turn that incident however I want and make it part of a whole other scope of meaning.
Are you beginning to accept that I can write a screenplay that is not simply a thinly veiled version of me? It is insulting that you persist in assuming that I simply change “I” to “Veronica” and call it fiction.
It’s not as much of a journey from religious music to Jerry Lee Lewis and the Die Hard movie franchise as you might think. For someone who began her recording career as a Christian artist, Sam Phillips has had a very secular professional life. Born Leslie Ann Phillips in 1962, she cut her last album of religious music, produced by future husband T Bone Burnett, in 1987. (Phillips and Burnett divorced in 2004.) Phillips then jumped ship to the Virgin label in 1989 and began recording albums of thoughtful-yet-stirring music to document her new life as Sam Phillips. Critics’ fave Fan Dance, her 2001 debut record for Nonesuch Records, featured lovely string arrangements by the legendary Van Dyke Parks. Phillips is currently in the middle of a year-long multimedia project called Long Play and also has a tune placed in Oscar-contending film Crazy Heart with Jeff Bridges. In addition, Phillips will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our Q&A with her.
Phillips: Takashimaya Tea Box Restaurant is one of the best places to have your cookies and tea. It’s a tea room in the basement of the Japanese store in New York. They also serve one of my favorite sandwiches: thinly sliced chicken with wasabi mayonnaise on toast.