I got the following message from Michael Penn last week. He wanted me to send it to those that expressed condolences.
I want to thank you all so very very much for your thoughts and prayers over the last week.
I loved my brother very much. I will miss him terribly. It’s a very sad time for us all.
Again, thank you for the outpouring of love you have given me and knowthat it has truly meant a lot.
Actor Chris Penn died tonight at the very young age of 43. Every news story will describe Chris Penn in reference to a famous brother and that’s a shame. He was a fine actor and the loss will be felt by his family, friends, and fans.
Condolences to his mother Eileen and his brothers Michael and Sean.
Much too young.
Please post your thoughts and condolences. I will pass this link onto Michael.
This is a video from last August (8/4/05).
The song is “On Automatic” and can be found on Mr. Hollywood Jr. 1947
Update: Video removed by Youtube because NBC sucks
What better reason to have a blog than to create 2005 Best of Lists? Note Coldplay’s X&Y is left off because they refuse to get better. It’s not that the CD isn’t a good CD – it is. It’s that there are too many bands doing what they do and doing it better. I’ve included 4 of them on my list below.
My top 6 are essentially interchangeable as far as my rankings go, but this was my best stab.
Note – The Sufjan Stevens, The New Pornographers, Aimee Mann, Spoon, David Mead, Arcade Fire, The Decemberists, Adam Richman, Bloc Party, and Sundayrunners albums are all available on eMusic.
Michael Penn played the World Cafe Live in Philadelphia this past Monday, October 3rd. Here are a few pics from the night…
Michael on stage
Buddy Judge on stage
Michael singing an autograph
Michael, me and my girlfriend Kristen after the show
It’s been a five year wait, but it has been worth it. Michael Penn’s new cd Mr. Hollywood Jr., 1947 has been released and is now sitting at a store near you. May I recommend that you scoot over to Borders where the purchase comes with a bonus disc of Michael’s soundtrack work.
The bonus disc is entitled Cinemascope — A Sampler of Incidental Music Recorded for the Screen in Stereo.
1. Down By The Riverside
2. Infidelity
3. Girls Go
4. Harry Called
5. Pool Ballet
6. Theme
7. Alex
8. Nice Turkey
9. Arcade
10. Phyrogiants
Tracks 1,6, and 9 from the film “The Comedians of Comedy”
Tracks 2,3,7,8, and 10 from th film “Melvin Goes to Dinner”
Tracks 4 and 5 from the film “The Anniversary Party”
Here’s a link to the review of Mr. Hollywood Jr., 1947 (subscription required)
Michael Penn’s light, heavy rock
By Scott Galupo
August 2, 2005Michael Penn
Mr. Hollywood Jr., 1947
Mimeograph/spinART RecordsThe first scene in “Mr. Hollywood Jr., 1947,” Michael Penn’s sketch of a concept album, is of a G.I. returning home from World War II, weary, defeated and dislocated: “I’m the walking wounded/I’d say it to your face/but I can’t find my place,” Mr. Penn sings in “Walter Reed,” named for the famous Army hospital (soon to go on the chopping block in the next round of military base closures).
The soldier’s lament might as well be Mr. Penn’s, though to a far less life-threatening extent. The singer-songwriter is both a one-hit wonder (“No Myth,” from 1989′s “March”) and, for a small but devoted following, a continual favorite and an industry veteran. Yet this brother of a famous actor (Sean) and husband of a more successful singer-songwriter (Aimee Mann) has had trouble staying on his feet in the music business, trading blows with a major label that, he said, refused to free him from a contract while also prohibiting him from putting out new music.
Taking a page out of Miss Mann’s do-it-yourself playbook, Mr. Penn formed his own imprint, Mimeograph Records, for the release of “Mr. Hollywood,” his first LP in five years. It’s a typically crafty and modestly successful work from Mr. Penn, who continues in the vein of Beatles pop-rock and Dylan-style intellectualism.
Don’t let the “concept album” bugaboo scare you: Most of the songs here are personal meditations or story-song narratives; politics and history are kept abstractly on the margins. For instance, it takes some effort to trace the steps of the song “18 September,” a minute-and-a-half of aquatic noise and engine hum. A scan of Mr. Penn’s breezy liner notes and a Google search reveals Sept. 18 as the date of the passage of the National Security Act and the formation of the Central Intelligence Agency in 1947. That task having been completed, it takes a left-leaning disposition to take this for something ominous.
Mr. Penn sees 1947 as a very important year for all sorts of cultural-historical reasons, some of them sinister. There’s the partitioning of Palestine, the double-super-secret mind-control experiments of Project Paperclip and the Hollywood blacklist, which ensnared Mr. Penn’s father, the actor-director Leo Penn.
On a lighter note, Mr. Penn pays tribute to the invention of the transistor radio in another brief instrumental, “The Transistor,” a bright, tense piece of string music that Mr. Penn may have pocketed from one of his movie scores. The final concept-y interlude, “The Television Set Waltz,” heralds the arrival of TV broadcasting on the West Coast.
Basically, the Smithsonian stuff has nothing to do with the meat of the album — yearning, literate folk-pop tunes such as “Pretending,” “A Bad Sign,” “O.K.” and “(P.S.) Millionaire” and thumping, mid-tempo rock fare such as “Room 712, the Apache” and “On Automatic,” on which the customarily distressed Mr. Penn allows that “things are looking up in the meantime.”
The latter song is a sweet reward to the listener, who, if he’s a fan of Mr. Penn’s, has had to wait half a decade for 10 proper pop songs littered loosely inside a schema that tries to blend popular history with conspiratorial gravity.“Mr. Hollywood” is either the most subtly intelligent work of 2005 or the sign of a singer-songwriter with too much time on his hands.