White Belt Yellow Tag is part of BMI Showcase Wednesday night at Bar Matchless (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
BMI SHOWCASE
Bar Matchless
557 Manhattan Ave.
Wednesday, October 20, $5, 6:00
www.cmj2010.com
www.barmatchless.com
Broadcast Music Inc., which collects and distributes licensing fees for musicians, composers, and publishers, is sponsoring several showcases during CMJ. Our favorite is scheduled for Wednesday night at Bar Matchless, with Atlanta’s Debutaunts getting things going at 7:00, followed by Nashville band Lesands at 7:45, Newcastle’s White Belt Yellow Tag at 8:30, Nashville group Heypenny at 9:15, Toronto’s Whale Tooth at 10:00, L.A.’s Vanaprasta at 10:45, and Brooklyn’s own Deluka anchoring the evening at midnight.
Also
French Miami, Union Pool, 7:00
Terrible Things, Gramercy Theatre, 7:00
Elon James White, Fat Baby, 8:30
Sherlock’s Daughter, Bell House, 9:15
Howlies, Trash Bar, 12 midnight
After being chosen for the Berlin and Hong Kong International Film Festivals, Hou Chi-Jan’s debut feature, ONE DAY, makes its U.S. premiere Thursday night as the centerpiece selection of the CMJ Music Marathon and Film Festival. On a military boat heading out to Kinmen, an island off Taipei, a young woman who works on the ship, Singing (Nikki Hsin-Ying Hsieh), sees a young soldier, Tsung (Bryan Shu-Hao Chang), looking at a compass, an item that has special meaning for her. Soon the two are huddled in a tiny space together, hiding from a hatchet-wielding crazy man on an otherwise suddenly empty ship. “We’re not in the real world,” Tsung tells Singing. ONE DAY is a fantastical love story that jumps between dreams and reality, often in confusing ways, but its innate charm overcomes its sci-fi problems. Beautifully shot by cinematographer Mahua Hsin-Hua Feng, the film’s dreamlike pace works well with the story as Singing and Tsung go from the past to the present to the future in constantly shifting states of mind, even if you might need your own compass to figure out just where the story is at any given moment. ONE DAY, from executive producer Hou Hsiao Hsien, is screening at CMJ on Thursday night at 7:50 and will be followed by a Q&A with the director.
After the breakout success of BORN TO RUN in 1975, Bruce Springsteen became embroiled in a lawsuit over control of his music that prevented him from going into the studio to make the highly anticipated follow-up. Springsteen found himself at a crossroads; “You didn’t know if this would be the last record you’d ever make,” he says in the revealing behind-the-scenes documentary THE PROMISE: THE MAKING OF DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN. Combining archival footage of the DARKNESS sessions shot by Barry Rebo with new interviews with all the members of the E Street Band in addition to producers Jimmy Iovine, Jon Landau, and others, editor and director Thom Zimny melds Bruce’s past with the present, delving deep into Springsteen’s complex, infuriating, and fiercely dedicated creative process. “I had to disregard my own mutation,” Springsteen says at one point, regarding his battle to avoid getting caught up in the hype that came with BORN TO RUN, so he decided that his next album would be “a meditation on where are you going to stand.” Rebo captures Springsteen and the E Street Band — from a bare-chested Bruce to a bandanna-less Steve Van Zandt — rehearsing and recording alternate takes of familiar songs as well as tunes that would later wind up on such albums as THE RIVER and TRACKS, opening up Bruce’s famous notebooks and examining his intense creative process, which included throwing away dozens and dozens of songs that he believed just didn’t fit within his vision of what DARKNESS should be. Two of the most fascinating parts of the THE PROMISE, a recent hit at the Toronto Film Festival, involve Patti Smith discussing “Because the Night,” which is about her waiting for her boyfriend at the time, Fred “Sonic” Smith, to call her, and Toby Scott talking about mixing the DARKNESS record to get the sound pictures in Bruce’s head onto vinyl. THE PROMISE: THE MAKING OF DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN is screening Wednesday night at the CMJ Film Festival (and will be followed by a Q&A with Zimny moderated by Q04.3 deejay Jonathan Clarke), which opens Tuesday with CIRCUS MAXIMUS (Thomas J. La Sorsa, 2010) and also includes such films as GAINSBOURG AND HIS GIRLS (Pascal Forneri, 2010), PASSENGER SIDE (Matt Bissonnette, 2010), FIREWALL OF SOUND (Devin DiMattia, 2010), and THE CHILD PRODIGY (Luc Dionne, 2010); select showings will feature introductions or postscreening Q&As with the filmmakers, performers, and others.