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Susie Bright
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Recently in Salon Media

Alt
Wine, it's the other red fluid
Wine X's attempts at hipsterism evoke the not so subtle smell of oak barrel-aged fish. Plus: Geeks, freaks, fashion weeks and conspiracy theorists.
By Jenn Shreve
[10/01/99]

Media
Bright lights, big titties
As the lad mags in the U.K. wither, their American counterparts try to give the formula one more squeeze.
By Sean Elder
[10/01/99]

Media
How they got the Korean War atrocity story
With a year's worth of digging, a team of stolid AP investigators searched records and interviewed survivors to piece together a horrifying story.
By Sean Elder
[09/30/99]

Media
Death of a journalist
Reporter Sander Thoenes was touring a neighborhood in Dili, the capital of East Timor. Then soldiers opened fire.
By Eve Pell
[09/30/99]

Brand X
Why is Madison Avenue gripped by insanity?
After pondering the "cultural meat values" of Peparami, the only question remaining is: What are these guys smoking?
By Ruth Shalit
[09/29/99]

Complete archives for Media

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1. Fred Eaglesmith "50-Odd Dollars" (Razor & Tie)

Opening with a backwoods ballad drunk on Led Zeppelin's "When the Levee Breaks," a stolid-looking man says he knows his country when he sees it, especially in old cars. Listen to "Georgia Overdrive" and try to convince yourself that for two minutes you don't want to be in the driver's seat more than you want anything else.

2. Jay Mohr as Peter Dragon in "Action" (Fox, Sept. 16)

Desperate, the producer runs to the house of his whore/script consultant, where he finds her with a client, who is down on his knees and cleaning her floor. Despite the bustier and black mask the guy is wearing, Dragon recognizes him as a Disney executive; "My name is André," the man insists. Dragon looks him in the eye: "My name is Luka," he says. "I live on the second floor ..." You can't tell if the vicious glee in his face comes from having a rival where he wants him, or finally finding a use for the stupid lines that have been bouncing around in his head for more than 10 years.

3. Michael Ochs "1000 Record Covers" (Taschen)

At 7 inches by 5 inches and 768 pages, this dense object is not a typical album-cover-art book, where designs supposedly fashioned according to vision or genre are presented for your admiration. Opening with Hen Gates and His Gaters' 1957 "Let's Go Dancing to Rock and Roll" (happy white kids in red convertible, balding dad-like person at the wheel) and closing with Oasis' 1994 "Definitely Maybe," this is stuff -- the sort of stuff you'd find flipping LPs in a vinyl emporium, sleeves warped, images scratched or faded or gleaming with an eagerness hiding the truth that the people you're looking at are probably dead. Not looking at all dead, however, is the dead girlfriend on the cover of J. Frank Wilson and the Cavaliers' 1964 "Last Kiss." There's been a car crash, but while her eyes are closed, her hair isn't even mussed. "Rumor has it that first printings of this cover actually had blood dripping from the girl's face but [it] was airbrushed out," Ochs says -- but that would have only made the fact that the girl's arm resting on her skirt is plainly held there by still-functioning muscles even more weird. The boyfriend, in perfectly pomaded ducktail and gray business suit, looks at the girl's face as if he can't figure out why she's playing dead. But he's supposed to be about to bestow "our last kiss" -- to act out the most convincing moment in the song. In 1964 and this year, with Pearl Jam's stoic, anguished, unteenage version, the words are rushed -- "I kissed her our last kiss." It's as if the singer can barely stand to remember what happened, and it catches you up. The burr in Eddie Vedder's voice, the labor you can feel from gestures you can't see, makes the quickness of the moment even more dramatic, almost secretly dramatic, than it was 35 years ago: You feel the moment, but you don't necessarily register it. The sour guitar note that closes the record says both you and the band know this dumb old song is a joke, but nobody told the singer, and that's why it's a hit. As for the cover of the album Pearl Jam's "Last Kiss" is on -- "No Boundaries: A Benefit for the Kosovar Refugees" (Epic) -- it shows a young man bent over, his hands gripping his neck, his whole body in a posture of despair. He's already learned about last kisses -- the kind there's no time to give.

Greil Marcus Greil's column appears every other Monday in Salon Media + Archives

4. Tori Amos "To Venus and Back" (Atlantic)

Or rather the Twilight Zone. She walks through a deserted mansion, and there are mirrors everywhere: Everywhere, she sees her own reflection. And then she sees it even when there aren't any mirrors.

5. Gino Washington "Out of This World" (Norton)

Detroit, early '60s, a time when only grunge and ridiculousness (the Flares' "Foot Stomping -- Part 1," Jimmy Soul's "If You Wanna Be Happy") made the radio bearable. Now a black teenager with a white band steps up to the mike for his song "Out of This World." There's a dull little "All right, now" business, and then the music leaps and it never comes down. Mediocrity is all over this collection: Life is hidden in the female backing singers, who sound like they were recruited out of the audience; in the way Washington loves his girl so much he actually doesn't care how he looks; in the twist of "Romeo": "Juliet was my first love / She won't be my last." And I'm not even mentioning what makes the set priceless.

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