Today's eating event: Gin and Meat

The folksinger Cindy Lee Berryhill is married to the rock-and-roll writer Paul Williams, a fact that has taken on a new dimension in recent years as Williams—the founder of the seminal magazine Crawdaddy!, a noted Dylanologist, and the former literary executor for Philip K. Dick—started to suffer from early-onset dementia, probably as the result of a bicycle injury suffered in 1995. Williams is now in a nursing home, and Berryhill has devoted herself to his care, attempting to raise money through a foundation and now telling and re-telling his story. She has just begun a series of short biographical writings called “Paul Williams: The Bio-Pic” on a new blog, Beloved Stranger (also the name of Berryhill’s most recent record), which is subtitled “Adventures with a brain injured spouse, musical musings and whatever else comes to mind…”

There are many heartfelt, funny, eccentric stories of her husband, from a scene of Williams’s parents falling in love at Los Alamos (both were employed by the Manhattan Project) to one of Williams himself, at the age of three, teaching himself to read so that he could pronounce the names on the labels of 78 rpm records. The entire enterprise is especially moving as it centers on issues of memory and mind—precisely the things that Williams’s dementia has taken from him.

One section has particular relevance to us. When Paul was five, he left a note for his mother explaining why he was was out of the house. Berryhill picks up the story from there:

She sends it to the New Yorker where he has his first piece of writing published in the Talk of the Town column under the title “Logician.”

Here’s the item, which appeared in the September 17, 1955 issue of the magazine:

Yet another note has come our way from one of the writing small fry. This one was attached to a screen door in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and it reads:

DEAR MOTHER,
I have gone over to Harold’s, but don’t be surprised if I’m here because Harold may be out.

I met Alexander McQueen at The New Yorker Festival, in 2000. He and his friend Stella McCartney were joining the writer Anne Hollander and the designer Andrée Putman on a fashion panel that I was moderating. When we got to the stage, the house was full, and I was so nervous that I have forgotten what we talked about. In the green room, McQueen and McCartney had been, at first, a bit surly and standoffish. They stuck together like two kids at an old ladies’ tea party, defying the smoking ban, planning a visit, after the panel, to a tattoo parlor, and making snarky jokes. But maybe they were as intimidated as I was. My first question struck McCartney as too pretentious, and she she rebuffed it curtly: “Hey, we’re only designers,” she said, or words to that effect, “not intellectuals; what do you want from us?” As the discussion warmed up, however, McQueen was eloquent, and he revealed an aspect of his character that is sometimes forgotten in accounts of his famous pugnacity. Like any true master, he was a deep, humble, and passionate student of his art.

McQueen learned that art on Savile Row. His supreme gifts as a tailor—a sober British virtuosity—are sometimes downplayed in accounts of his runway shows, which were inevitably theatrical extravaganzas: Rites of Spring (but also of fall, winter, summer, and resort.) There was joy and melancholy in his work, splendor and barbarity, reverence and vandalism. He was born and lived in gray London, but in some respects he was one of those lonely magicians of film and fiction who are exiled to a desert island. I sometimes thought he was Ariel, Caliban, and Prospero in one person. His muse was a Miranda, but, unlike the dutiful daughter of “The Tempest,” she had grown up wild, among brutes, mourning a dead mother, and she was wounded and defiant.

Like the ingenious castaway he resembled, McQueen could fashion a masterpiece of couture from the skins of creatures who had died or moulted on his beach; from the the leaves, plumage, reeds, fungus, and fur that he scavenged in his jungle; and from dreams of a lost world. His senses were attuned both to the beauty and the menace around him. A dress, he proved, can be a talisman of sex and death; a paradox of confinement and escape; a hybrid of nature and artifice; or the sheath for the body of a mutant species.

In his last and perhaps most sumptuous show—presented yesterday in Paris—McQueen seemed to have been dreaming of the court that Prospero left behind. He was quoting from the poetry of Renaissance fashion, and working from its sample book of brocades and embroideries, but using twenty-first-century technology—and postmodern irony—to subvert its faith in order and hierarchy. The collection was nearly finished, and sixteen pieces were shown, to the classical music McQueen had been listening to as he worked. They included cavalier thigh boots in black leather, Medici collars, an embroidered tippet, and ornately jewelled bibs. Look carefully at the molded bodice of the short dress with a black satin skirt shaped like a male courtier’s “Venetian” (a poufy pantaloon). Using digital silk-screening technology, he reproduced an apocalyptic masterpiece painted in the sixteenth century by Breughel the Elder. Had he not ended his own life, on the eve of his mother’s funeral, on February 11th, one might have missed the tragic message in its title: “The Fall of the Rebel Angels.”

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Everyone’s talking about the Rolling Stones’ reissue of “Exile On Main Street,” which has a disc full of bonus tracks, all previously unreleased, some previously unheard, one an old instrumental with a new vocal by Mick Jagger. But there’s another deluxe reissue that’s almost as important for fans of seventies rock: the April release of a “Raw Power” box set. The new version of the Stooges’s most popular release has nothing on “Funhouse,” which got a seven-disc set that included every single moment from the studio sessions. This is much more concise: the original album, an album of outtakes from the same era, and a live album. Everything sounds great, since it’s “Raw Power,” and the original one at that—the David Bowie mix, which was thrown over for a 1997 mix by Iggy Pop, is back—but the most revelatory part of the set is the live disc. Following the release of the record, the band hit the road to play the material, augmenting their lineup with a piano player (Bob Sheff and then Scott Thurston).

To say that the piano made a difference is an understatement: the concert on the set, which documents an October, 1973, date at Richards, in Atlanta, is dominated by it, and the songs come off as some unholy mix between seventies hard rock and early Jerry Lee Lewis. It’s a whole new way to hear the record, particularly songs like “Search and Destroy” and “I Need Somebody.”

Here is a muddier version of “Search and Destroy” from around the same time, from Detroit’s Michigan Palace. You can hear Thurston’s piano asserting itself from around the two-and-a-half minute mark.

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A few years ago, an indie-rock supergroup that dubbed itself the Baseball Project—Peter Buck, Scott McCaughey, Linda Pitmon, and Steve Wynn—released an album of original songs about America’s pastime. The release, “Volume 1: Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails,” was a hit, and an EP followed as a sequel. This year, the Baseball Project is doing things a little differently—the group is releasing an original song each month that incorporates current baseball events. The first song, “All Future and No Past” (available for free download), looks at the clubs that have been poor in recent years and speculates/fantasizes about what will happen if their fortunes rebound. A selection of the lyrics:

The swinging A’s will be overachieving
K.C. could be a Royal pain
The O’s recent woes, so deceiving
The Tribe could end up drenched in champagne
Every April brings a new slate
So under the circumstance
Just remember the Rays of 2008
At this point everybody has a chance

T-Bone Burnett, fresh from helping Ryan Bingham win an Oscar, is taking on another fascinating challenge—returning Elton John to rock-and-roll legitimacy. Burnett is currently producing what is described as an “album of collaborations” for John that may or may not have been entirely co-written with Leon Russell and Bernie Taupin but which certainly involves collaborations with Russell, Neil Young, and others. Taupin, John’s longtime songwriting partner, announced on his Web site that the results are different from what fans have come to expect from John:

The trio has cut fifteen songs ranging from Stones like rockers, Country tinged ballads, Gospel and even a Sinatra like weepy similar to something torn from the grooves of “In the Wee Small Hours.” As reported before it’s varied in scope and drenched in a rich tapestry of atmospherics. Don’t expect to hear the old EJ/BT sound; this is organic recording unlike anything you’ve heard from our duo before.

Duo or trio? Confusing. What’s not confusing is John’s link to Leon Russell; as far back as 1971, he was singing Russell’s praises, calling him his “idol.” Russell, who has battled health issues in recent years, is the ultimate rock-and-roll insider, a producer, arranger, and session player with creative ties to everyone from the Beatles to the Rolling Stones to George Harrison. Below, a bearded and bespectacled Russell takes on the Rolling Stones’ “Jumping Jack Flash,” just as he did during George Harrison’s concert for Bangladesh. Willie Nelson is on guitar.

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Back in 2002, Randy Newman won an Oscar for “If I Didn’t Have You,” a jaunty soundtrack song from Pixar’s “Monsters Inc.” His win ended a more impressive streak—at that time, he held the record for Most Oscar Nominations Without a Win, having earned fifteen nods for his composing and songwriting work in films such as “Ragtime,” “The Natural,” “James and the Giant Peach,” “Pleasantville,” and a clutch of Pixar films. Newman acknowledged his status as the king of futility with a typically sardonic speech, in which he opened by telling the crowd, “I don’t want your pity.” Newman may have thought that award would reverse his fortunes and propel him to Edith Head-like domination. It didn’t. He picked up another nomination for “Our Town,” from “Cars,” in 2008, and last night had two mentions in the Original Song category: “Almost There” and “Down in New Orleans,” both from Disney’s “The Princess and the Frog.”

The fact that he had two nominations, of course, meant that he was almost certain to lose as a result of split votes and the groundswell of support behind T-Bone Burnett and Ryan Bingham’s “The Weary Kind,” and he lost, bringing his total record to 1-18: the same as Frank Bates of the 1899 Cleveland Spiders. Congratulations, Randy! Below, the young Newman, in 1983, when he had only two nominations to his credit, performs “My Life Is Good” at New York’s Odeon nightclub.

1. Age Inappropriate: Kristen Stewart in a dowager’s twilight-navy satin strapless number. Please, honey—you are twenty. Have some fun.


2. Sarah Jessica Parker: If the Chanel fits, wear it. Otherwise, buy a push-up bra.


3. J. Lo: Was that bubble wrap?


4. Meryl: Lovely-enough white goddess dress, but in a white dress, YOU HAVE TO HIDE THE SHOULDER PADS. The devil is in the details.


5. Best dress awards: Elie Saab had two of them: Rachel McAdams’s bruise-colored chiffon, and Anna Kendrick’s blush-colored chiffon. He had flesh on his mind, I guess.
   
   Other standouts: Maggie Gyllenhaal’s tie-dyish Dries Van Noten; Kate Winslet’s sublimely chic YSL; Diane Kruger’s patisserie confection from Chanel; the Avatar blue gown that James Cameron’s wife Suzy Amis was wearing, and, may I add, her unsurgically enhanced, if ultra-skinny, weathered loveliness. Men don’t count, as one knows, but I liked Woody Harrelson’s “all-hemp” suit and Robert Downey, Jr.,’s bow-wow tie.


6. Themes of the night: Big Arms (and I am not referring to “Inglorious Basterds”); magenta lipstick (tough to get away with in High Def); spray tans (see above); fishtails—enough!; scarlet women (literally); and thigh-high slit skirts.


7. Sandy Powell presumably designed her own Art Deco dress and jaunty, sequinned beret. Very nice and bohemian. The hair color, however, is what a young Italian friend of mine calls “menopausal red.” (I will get killed for saying that.) But she was gracious in acknowledging the undersung designers of non-costume pictures.


8. Best jewelry of the evening: Susan Bridges’s turquoise earrings; Kate Winslet’s Art Deco diamond lavalliere.


9. Miley: STAND UP STRAIGHT, for goodness sake!!!


10. Shopping advice for next year: Rick Owens, Isabel Toledo, Comme des Garçons, Lanvin, and Balenciaga, anyone? But maybe they don’t give freebies.

Read Thurman’s live chat on the Oscars, with Richard Brody and Tad Friend.

The pride of Stockton, California, the indie-rock band Pavement, has a career-spanning greatest-hits album out this week. It’s titled “Quarantine the Past,” which is a snippet from the lyrics of “Gold Soundz,” the first song on the collection and the second single from Pavement’s proper sophomore LP, “Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain,” in 1994. “Gold Soundz” is more central to the band’s career than it might first seem; it was the song that ended Pavement’s very brief reign as a top-ten act (“Cut Your Hair,” its predecessor, charted), and helped cement the band’s reputation as a brainy, digressive, prolific outfit interested more in using Stephen Malkmus’s knotty, literate songs to create a private rock-and-roll mythology than in following any predictable masterplot.

To date, Pavement has been the beneficiary of an extensive re-release campaign that has given its albums deluxe reissues with bonus discs stuffed full of B-sides and outtakes, but this is the first attempt to sum up the band’s career, and it’s as gleefully eccentric in its selection and sequencing as you might expect, opening with relative rarities and saving some of the band’s best-known and most immediate material for later on. Perhaps predictably, indie-rock sites around the Web are treating “Quarantine the Past” as a kind of Holy Grail. Here are some highlights: