Just back from a week in Chicago, where the timetable was roughly work, eat, sleep - so really didn't read much or listen to much, and about the only TV I watched was college basketball (although I did watch Fox News for an hour one night, just to see how angry I got). Probably the first trip there where I've not bought any music at all, in spite of a strong pound and a Virgin megastore next to the hotel. Not much that enthused me to be honest. The new Son Volt had a so-so review in the A.V. Club - though maybe I should have picked up Neil Young Live at Massey Hall.
Watched a couple of really good films on the way home overnight. Emilio Estevez's take on the last day of Bobby Kennedy was very enjoyable. There seemed to be a tangible hope for change in 1968 that was blown away with the assasinations of RFK and Martin Luther King, which I find all the more fascinating given that it was the year I was born. Maybe the world would have been a better place with a second Kennedy in the White House, who knows. I tend to think that their assasinations have sanctified the Kennedys - JFK was President for the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis - the closest we have come to all out nuclear war. But the film has some excellent performances from a very strong cast. Maybe it was the victim of too many biopics, too many ensemble films. But Sharon Stone would have been worthy of at least a best supporting actress oscar nomination.
Possibly even better though was Shut Up And Sing - the Dixie Chicks documentary. Now Dixie Chicks aren't my sort of country - always way too mainstream country music radio for me - although I'd already picked up on Travelin' Soldier being a great anti war song - in the tradition of Penny Evans - before all the controversy. But this was a fascinating documentary. I'm convinced that they weren't looking for notoriety as a cynical career move; if they did it went pretty dramatically wrong. And you really have to question what sort of new republic is being desired where free speech deserves the death sentence in some people's eyes. Probably the best music documentary I've seen since No Direction Home.
