On the 100th anniversary of her birth, we revisit a 1948 performance by Billie Holiday (pictured) at the Shrine Auditorium; the band Night Terrors of 1927 is a Coachella Music Festival newbie; writer/director Alex Garland explores artificial intelligence in the new film, "Ex Machina."
Coachella 2015: Night Terrors of 1927 leave their old bands behind and start fresh
The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival kicks off this weekend with more than 190 artists and tens of thousands of people invading the desert city of Indio. Our Coachella coverage starts with a band playing the festival for the first time.
Night Terrors of 1927 is an electro-rock band from L.A. that’s comprised of veteran indie-rocker Blake Sennett and singer Jarrod Gorbel. Sennett played Coachella with his former band, Rilo Kiley. But Gorbel — former frontman of the band the Honorary Title — is making his Coachella debut.
Gorbel and Sennett joined The Frame to talk about starting a new band after breaking up with one, how they work together and playing Coachella with their new project:
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS
Blake, so you took a sabbatical from music and picked up drywalling and other recreational activities. What made you decide to get back into the game?
Blake: I think when Rilo Kiley ended, I think I sort of took a look at myself and I realized I didn't have any skills except for playing music. I don't know if I would have kids or not but I thought of my future child looking at me and being like, "Wow dad. You're, like, pretty worthless. You can only do music." So I think I wanted to put myself through "man-training" and I learned to scuba-dive and I learned to work on motorcycles. I took karate classes. Yeah, I think I wanted to do a little "man-rehab."
How does "man-rehab" lead you back to music?
Blake: I think I started to become a secret hobbyist with music. I sort of told myself I was putting music behind me, but then I would sneak into my studio at 10 at night and work. Then, as fate would have it, my friend Jarrod here called me up and said, "Hey man, I just moved to L.A. Would you like to tinker around and write a couple songs with no particular goal in mind. I don't really know anyone here in L.A.," and I didn't have much going on. And I said sure. and he's kind of a guy who doesn't say, "OK, I'll see you on Thursday!" He's like, "Cool, I'll be there in 20 minutes."
Jarrod, your former band the Honorary Title broke up. I'm curious to know if you find starting a band attractive?
Jarrod: Yeah, I didn't think doing a band thing was very attractive or seductive at all. Even when I contacted Blake, it was for the art of songwriting. I kind of let go of the concept of a band. Plus, after the band thing, I did a solo thing and it was so easy. So I think I was trying to get into the craft more of songwriting.
Your new collaboration doesn't sound anything like your previous musical style. Did that come organically from working together?
Blake: I think the cool thing about collaboration is sometimes your collaborative partner could see what you want to be better than you can. I think Jarrod was being good at like, "Whoa, that's really cool what you're doing, but what about this?" And the same would go for his vocal and his take on things. It felt like it wanted to be more epic and bigger than probably the Honorary Title or Rilo Kiley had ever been.
Jarrod, this will be your first time playing Coachella but this won't be the first time for you, Blake. What do you tell Jarrod about the experience?
Blake: Oh, I don't know what year I played it, but whatever year it was, it wasn't the Glastonbury double weekend experience that it is now. It was huge, but it wasn't this level of huge. We haven't sat down yet and I haven't given him the talk.
You could do it right now.
Blake: Jarrod, I want you to be ready for this.
Jarrod: I'm scared, Blake. What's it gonna be like in the desert?
Blake: Jarrod, it's hot, but there's a lot of body paints and there's a lot of Burning Man integrated structures.
Jarrod: Do I have to take acid and ecstasy?
Blake: No, that's not for you! In fact, you're not allowed.
Jarrod: It's too late.
[laughs]
Blake: He's on acid. I can't help.
Jarrod: We've played a bunch of festivals as Night Terrors of 1927, but Coachella is — reputation-wise — and I've attended Coachella so I kind of know what to expect.
Blake, isn't Jenny Lewis going to be playing there as well? Will there be a Rilo Kiley reunion?
Blake: I don't know. I'm definitely gonna see her. I'm gonna watch her set and hang out. We've already been texting. She's still a close friend, but yeah.
Night Terrors of 1927 will be playing Coachella on Sunday, April 12 & 19.
100 years of Billie Holiday: Her Los Angeles legacy
Jazz icon Billie Holiday was born 100 years ago Tuesday. And while she's an artist primarily associated with New York City, Holiday often performed in Los Angeles.
She first came to L.A. in 1940 to do one recording for the newly-formed Capitol Records. But Holiday became a more frequent performer in Southern California when her New York City cabaret card — which was required in order to work in the city's clubs — was revoked after a stint at a federal reformatory on a narcotics conviction.
No longer allowed to perform in most New York establishments, Holiday looked for other performance venues — and Los Angeles was quick to welcome her. She did several concerts in the city between 1948 and 1957.
Gene Norman was a DJ at L.A.'s KFWB radio station at the time, and a big jazz supporter. He presented many of Holiday's shows, including one at the Shrine Auditorium in Dec. 1948.
A rare recording of the entire Shrine show is now part of a two-CD set, “Billie Holiday: Banned From New York City, Live 1948-1957.” Arts journalist Kirk Silsbee wrote an essay for the liner notes for that double CD, and he spoke with The Frame's John Horn about what makes the Shrine recording special.
"What's great about this recording is not only the fidelity; it's a good recording for a live recording of the period," said Silsbee. "But she is in top shape. It's not always the case in her live recordings."
"But in this case, she sounds just sharp as a tack. She's very tuned in to the musicians, and they to her. And so she's able to do a lot of ad-libbing and sharp, inside musical things with the rhythm and the phrasing," he said.
“Billie Holiday: Banned From New York City, Live 1948-1957” is available through UptownRecords.net.
The former location of Billy Berg's, an L.A. club where Billie Holiday was famously involved in a brawl on New Year's Eve 1949. The location is now a restaurant.
'Ex Machina' director Alex Garland says tech giants are 'like NASA in the 1960s'
In the new film "Ex Machina," Oscar Isaac plays Nathan, the wealthy founder of a massive tech company. In his remote compound, Nathan has been experimenting with artificial intelligence, and he has built a machine that looks, thinks, talks — and may even feels — a lot like a real woman.
To test whether or not he has designed a creature that could pass for a human, Nathan invites one of his employees — played by Domhnall Gleeson — to spend some time with this A.I., Ava.
"Ex Machina" marks Alex Garland’s directorial debut. He is a novelist who has written screenplays for "28 Days Later," "The Beach" and "Sunshine," all directed by Danny Boyle.
Alex Garland talks about how the Turing Test factors into "Ex Machina," what he learned about filmmaking from working alongside Danny Boyle and how a comic book artist helped him design his A.I. character, Ava.
Interview Highlights:
This is your directorial debut, but of course you've been working in film for years now. You've collaborated with Danny Boyle on a few of your screenplays. What did you learn about directing through your experience working with Danny Boyle?
One of the things about Danny was that he wasn't intimidated by writers and I think, to be blunt, some directors are intimidated by writers. Danny wanted me, as a writer, to be in rehearsals, and I'd be there on the soundstage or I'd be on location. In a way, from my point of view, even more importantly in the edit. So I got a terrific training with a guy who was un-neurotic about writers. I think maybe that's because Danny's background is theater. I didn't see any reason to change that when I stopped working with Danny.
There's an idea or a conceit at the center of this story and that is the Turing Test (after famed mathematician Alan Turing). Explain what the Turing Test is and how it factors into the genesis of this story:
Without wanting to be pedantic about it the Turing Test is one of those things that has gotten a bit misrepresented. Essentially it is a human doing a blind test with a machine, so they can't see the machine in the proper terms of the test, and if the machine acts convincingly that the human will be tricked into thinking they're not interacting with a machine, they're interacting with a human. Then the test is deemed to have been passed.
It's a very, very difficult test and it has never been passed...it is sometimes offered up as a test for artificial intelligence for sentience, but it actually isn't. What it really is, the Turing Test, is a test to see whether you can pass the Turing Test. And it may or may not imply sentience. This film deliberately acknowledges that and tries to say what the next step of that test process might be.
In your film, a company called Bluebook has taken over, seemingly Google's place as the top search engine. What kind of company is Bluebook, and as you're thinking about either people in technology or the kinds of companies that influence your depiction of that company, what are you thinking about?
There was nothing in him (Oscar Isaac's character) that was targeted at any CEO of any one of those companies, like Mark Zuckerberg...there was a little bit that was targeted at the tech companies themselves. So what this character does is he talks in this kind of bro speak, he uses a lot of "dude" and "bro" and this familiarity thing that I sometimes feel that tech companies do to make you feel like they're your buddy. But they're not your buddy — they are massive, incredibly powerful corporations.
I just want to be clear — I'm ambivalent about them, that kind of stuff creeps me out a little bit, just to be honest about it, I find it weird. But I also think that in this day and age they're like NASA in the 1960s, they're the guys who are doing the most things, they're the guys who are trying to get to the Moon. My fear about this is not necessarily to do with what they actually are doing, it's just that they are so powerful that it seems prudent to have some kind of oversight over them because of what they might do.
How did you go about the design of Ava in the film and what were the attributes that you thought were important in her look?
The first person that was brought on the film outside of the producers was a guy called Jock, who's a comic book artist. The two of us swapped sketches and developed the look of Ava. The issues were that film has many robots in its history, and the first time Ava walks onto the screen I didn't want the audience to be thinking about another movie and to be taken out of this one.
It was very interesting — a metal breastplate immediately made you think about "Metropolis. It's even stranger because very few people have actually seen Metropolis, but the images are so iconic that it doesn't matter ... A bit of gold was C-3PO, a bit of white plastic was "I, Robot" or a Bjork video directed by Chris Cunningham. So initially it was about avoiding stuff and then once we figured out what to avoid we could start figuring out what she could be. That was just about in this sort of post-iPod Apple world, about design that is machine-like, but also sensual in some way.