Because he’s written so many great tunes for other performers, some people might get the wrong idea about Marshall Crenshaw. He’s also a fine singer. No matter how many celebrity vocalists have tackled his stuff, nobody puts more into a Marshall Crenshaw song than the man himself. If you somehow have overlooked the music of this 55-year-old Detroit native, you should immediately dive into the pond with the 2006 double-CD of his early stuff, Marshall Crenshaw: The Definitive Pop Collection (Rhino), then fast-forward to his new one, Jaggedland (429). Naturally, the voice sounds a little more lived-in almost 30 years later, but the songs are every bit as finely crafted. Crenshaw is guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our Q&A with him.
Crenshaw: My favorite cable channel is Turner Classic Movies. I think it’s just too good; in fact, I keep waiting for it to be tragically altered or taken off the air, but hopefully, my fears are off base. Of course it’s a channel that shows (mostly) old movies, but I love how they present the stuff not as brain candy or nostalgia, but as Art—and in an always entertaining way. The look of the channel itself is really classy and artistic; no hackwork whatsoever. My favorite thing on it is “Silent Sunday Nights.” Silent film is a long-lost art, but in a way, it’s a more innovative approach to storytelling than sound films. These movies are souvenirs of a lost world, otherworldly, but they still tell us about the human experience. If you want to see a good one check out The Crowd (pictured) or the two-and-a-half version of Greed. (The “expanded” version is terrible.)
One reply on “Marshall Crenshaw’s Usual Things: Turner Classic Movies”
It’s very true. TCM is one of the last reliable mainstays of what used to be the glory days of cable TV, when you had AMC showing mostly only great, classic movies (like the name of the channel would have you expect, instead of some of the worst movies ever made (!) as is now the case) and Bravo, which actually used to show indie films, before it became some kind of clearing house for crap-ass reality shows.
I second Mr. Crenshaw’s concerns about TCM’s ultimate fate–it’s almost too good to believe it’s still around in its original incarnation (and still without commercials during the movies!–hard to believe these days). Hopefully as long as Ted Turner is alive and has any say in the matter, things won’t change for a while.