For Those About To Rock

Goodness of HBO’s ‘Girls’ lost in cultural chatter

Lena Dunham is seen as Hannah in HBO's "Girls." (HBO photos)

So much of the discussion surrounding HBO’s dramedy “Girls” involves critics firing back at accusations of privilege, class warfare, favoritism and Lena Dunham’s weight.

There’s not much I can add to those discussions.

Sexism lies at the heart of them all. People are threatened by a 26-year-old woman being successful, so they try to tear her down any way they can.

It’s unfortunate because all of the noise is louder than the discussion we should be having, which is that “Girls” is one of the best shows on the air.

Dunham, who serves as its creator, producer, director, writer and lead actress, made the case even stronger two weeks ago with “One Man’s Trash,” the fifth episode from the ongoing second season.

“Trash” is the finest episode of television I’ve seen since “Mad Men” aired “The Suitcase” in 2010. Both are crazy-good, midseason, character-building strokes of small-screen genius.

I know the episode is special because I don’t want to see it again soon. For many works, that’s a sign it was terrible, but for some, it’s a compliment, a hope to preserve a piece’s mystique and freshness. "Trash" is the latter.

In it, Dunham plays Hannah, who enjoys a dream-like, 48-hour stay in the Brooklyn brownstone of a man she barely knows, Joshua (Patrick Wilson).

During the course of her visit, Hannah learns about herself. One devastating scene burrows into her flaws and deepest beliefs while simultaneously losing Joshua’s interest entirely.

Hannah says too much and acts too selfishly, as her character often does. She shows how little of an effort she makes to get to know her host, dismissing his repeated requests not to be called Josh.

The reason “One Man’s Trash” — a title that has to be taken with a wink and nod given viewers’ love-it-or-hate-it reaction — encapsulates “Girls” is it shows how well-crafted are the characters.

“Girls” has jokes, often stemming from crude and awkward sexual escapades, but that’s not the primary reason it’s worth watching.

Dunham crafts complex characters who have a journey on which to take us.

Dunham’s girls are human, fallible and honest. While “One Man’s Trash” focused exclusively on Hannah, all four of the show’s ladies are flawed.

The show’s creator knows this and pours gas on that fire: “Living the dream one mistake at a time,” says the first-season promotional material (left).

Other shows that give us a whole-person perspective, creating lifelike characters, are lauded as great television.

Viewers face the same decision about the characters as they do people off screen, the choice to accept other humans for their imperfections and their strengths.

We don’t have to want to be Hannah’s friend to enjoy “Girls,” but it is interesting to see her journey and, reflexively, ask questions about ourselves.

For Dunham to have such a grasp on these emotions and what they look like to outsiders is a power few filmmakers have.

“Girls” is funny, raw and challenging. The last of those is what art should aspire to be.

And it should inspire a stronger discussion than whether Dunham’s paunch makes the show unwatchable.

Call it a comeback: Mixed results for artists who make new albums after break up, hiatus

Soundgarden performs Tuesday at the Fox Theater in Oakland.

Earlier this month, My Bloody Valentine resurfaced after more than two decades to issue MBV.

To put that layoff in perspective, the last time the Irish shoegazers released a new album, grunge thundered into the mainstream, George H.W. Bush sat in the White House and San Francisco Giants star Buster Posey was 4 years old.

The comeback album is a tricky party to throw. It's trying to invite people back to the house after the cops show up to shut down the fun. Guests are cautious to return — can it be as much fun as it was before?

Whatever comes next lives in the shadow of the albums that stood before it. Every release is stacked against an artist's pinnacle regardless of release date, but comeback albums face a challenging question: "Why did they bother?"

Not all groups reform or re-emerge from hiatus to record new material. Others revel in the joy of playing together again as The Police did in their 2007-08 reunion run. But many more seek to reignite the creative spark.

In that regard, MBV does the unthinkable. For My Bloody Valentine to follow Loveless, a classic that defines the shoegaze genre, with an album approaching its quality 22 years later is astonishing and unusual.

Long-delayed or comeback albums infrequently live up to the hype. Guns ’N Roses fans who waited 17 years for Chinese Democracy know how that goes.

Long-gestating albums such as Dr. Dre's Detox or D'Angelo's James River — the chatter about the latter seems closer to completion than any time in the past dozen years — feel the burden of years of momentum and expectations behind them.

Artists emerge from dormancy in different fashions, but because of the looming legacy of what made them famous, new records fight to match past efforts.

Sticking to other ’90s groups, some struggle — No Doubt, Ben Folds Five, Smashing Pumpkins — while others flourish — Portishead, Paul McCartney's The Fireman side project or Soundgarden.

Seattle grunge icons Soundgarden are a fresh reminder of the uneven mess of re-emergence. Reformed on New Year's Day in 2010, Soundgarden's 2011 Bay Area gig was a victory lap, a hits-laden gallop down memory lane.

In Tuesday's stop at Oakland's Fox Theater, it was hard not to think of Soundgarden as a nostalgia act, even though the band was supporting November's King Animal, the first album of new material in more than a decade and a half.

It's a slippery slope because while a reunion tour celebrates the familiar with fans who are in the know, reigniting the creative spark is a different gamble. It involves the prospect of removing doubt about a group's talent, a scary gambit for fans as well as performers.

King Animal received a "close enough" consensus from critics, but it's hard to find nuggets as galvanizing and beloved as "Black Hole Sun," "Spoonman" or "Burden in My Hand."

Newer singles such as "Been Away Too Long" and the acrid "Live to Rise" haven't had the chance to mature, but the likelihood of them ever achieving the same level of popularity among fans is small because of their release date.

This is why MBV also demonstrates the struggle. For My Bloody Valentine, Soundgarden or any other artist that returns after a lengthy layoff, the shadow cast by any previous material threatens to darken even the brightest new efforts.

MBV is strong and, though new, seems like a contender for a spot in top-10 lists come December. Yet MBV forever faces comparison to Loveless. King Animal must weigh against grunge greats Superunknown and Badmotorfinger.

Once the new cork is popped and the reunion or re-emergence champagne is flowing, fans are going to drink to the last drop.

The size and shape of the bottle is anyone's guess.

Alternative album Grammy rewards relevance

The Grammy Awards make themselves an easier target for ridicule than Lance Armstrong.

The jokes just write themselves. Like this: The Grammys are so over, they're going to reanimate as zombies on "The Walking Dead."

However, there is one Grammy category which seems to get it relatively right on an annual basis: best alternative music album.

Though not without its flaws, the honor is typically bestowed on artists who are making an impact now.

In the past 20 years, winners of the awards' top prize, album of the year, can largely be lumped into one of two categories: Dated or revived stars getting overdue recognition, such as Herbie Hancock (right), Santana and Tony Bennett, or female pop or country vocalists, such as Taylor Swift, Dixie Chicks and Celine Dion.

The victors of best alternative album feel more fresh, challenging and relevant. Recent winners include New Wave-inspired pop rock musicians Phoenix, neo-soul hip hoppers Gnarls Barkley and blues/garage rockers The Black Keys, who were recently announced as a headliner for Napa's inaugural Bottle Rock Napa Musical Festival in May.

While perhaps more culturally relevant, the winners podium for alternative album is overwhelmingly white and male.

The only nonwhites to earn the honor are Cee-Lo Green and Brian "Danger Mouse" Burton of Gnarls Barkley in 2007.

The award's lone female recipient is Sinead O'Connor, who took the inaugural prize in 1991 for "I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got." In fact, the nominations of Fiona Apple and Björk this year mark the first time a female solo artist has been up for the prize since 2008, when Lily Allen and, again, Björk were in the running.

Also in contention this year are Gotye, M83 and Tom Waits.

If you noticed Björk's name a lot back there, that's no accident. The alternative album category certainly has its favorites.

Every major Radiohead release since 1997's OK Computer has either won or been in the running, including lead singer Thom Yorke's 2007 solo album and Radiohead's Airbag/How Am I Driving? EP (left), which I never thought I'd mention in print almost 15 years after it was released.

Nearly or every album by Arcade Fire, Beck, The White Stripes, Death Cab for Cutie, Björk or Yeah Yeah Yeahs has received a nod in that time period, too.

Additionally, the category needs a rebranding. Alternative doesn't mean much in 2013. The term brings to mind Counting Crows, The Wallflowers, Smashing Pumpkins and others '90s rock staples.

The Grammy site says it's for albums that are "nontraditional" and exist "outside of the mainstream music consciousness."

Translated: We can throw whatever we want in this category.

And they have — 1995 pitted winner Green Day against Tori Amos, Crash Test Dummies, Sarah McLachlan and Nine Inch Nails. So power punk, baroque pop, pop rock, piano rock and industrial were all in one place.

That's why this is a good category for the Grammy Awards. Instead of picking the easy favorite, the alternative album is usually a bit more challenging.

In 2005, when the Grammys went with the sentimental choice and paid tribute to then-recently deceased legend Ray Charles with album of the year for his pitiful career-closing duets collection, Genius Loves Company, Wilco earned the alternative album honor with one of the trailblazing Chicago group's finest efforts in A Ghost is Born.

This year, the Grammy for album of the year won't go to an aging star or a female pop vocalist. The five nominees are all male and under 40, but that's been the exception, not the rule.

While the alternative album category is not all-encompassing enough to represent music in totality — it needs a new name, its winners are almost always white men and it routinely nominates the same artists — it still gets it right where it counts and that's relevancy.

Ultimately, music is so diverse and personal that the Grammys are never going to pick an album-of-the-year winner that satisfies everyone.

But they can stop treating their top award like a baton in a relay race and start rewarding artists who are making meaningful music now instead of giving them an album of the year statue at the end of their careers.

In that sense, alternative album of the year is among the awards ceremony's strongest categories.

The 55th annual Grammy Awards ceremony takes place Sunday. Visit Grammy.com for more information on nominees and the telecast.

Super Bowl halftime show should move offsite

The Super Bowl halftime show is routinely problematic.

Headlines have emerged from the performance itself, including inappropriate gestures, such as M.I.A. throwing up middle fingers during the 2012 performance, or "wardrobe malfunctions" by the performers, like when Justin Timberlake ripped off too much of Janet Jackson's costume in 2004.

A power outage caused a 34-minute delay Sunday during Super Bowl XLVII at New Orleans' Superdome, which came minutes after Beyoncé's halftime extravaganza of lights and sights. Whether her show was the impetus for the blackout remains to be seen. (Her husband, hip hop mogul Jay-Z, tweeted, "Lights out!!! Any questions??")

The issue is that the Super Bowl halftime show has evolved into an oversized beast. It started as a showcase for a collegiate marching band, but has evolved into a brief, star-studded distraction while the two teams take a breather.

Organizers are considering canceling the halftime show next year due to the fact the game is being held in a cold-weather climate in New Jersey, but here's an idea that could solve that issue and others: Have the performance at an alternate site in the same city.

For Super Bowl XLVIII, there are no shortage of offsite options, including the parking lot of the host venue, MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J. While that would offer the NFL and game attendees the best chance to attend the game and the show, it may be impractical for time and occupancy purposes.

But what if the show took place somewhere else in the same area? For next year, both the Prudential Center and Izod Center are possibilities in north Jersey.

Moving the show offsite would provide several advantages. For the sake of the argument, let's blame Sunday's power outage on Beyoncé's performance. That's one problem theoretically eliminated.

Another frequent complaint is the short duration of the performance, especially for the scope of the spectacle involved. Most Super Bowl halftime shows are 10 to 15 minutes long, which, for most concerts, is long enough for the performer to get warmed up.

Having next year's at the Prudential Center or Izod Center would eliminate that. Football fans could watch the first half of the game on video screens and then, when the horn blows at the end of the first half, Fox could cut directly to the alternate venue for the start of the concert.

This show could run longer, maybe 20 to 25 minutes, filling most of the halftime break because stadium crew wouldn't have to rush to assemble and dismantle a temporary stage in a rush. The show could continue after the halftime spot or end so fans could continue watching the game.

This also eliminates post-performance issues such as 2006's show at the domed stadium of Ford Field in Detroit, when smoke from The Rolling Stones' (left: 2005's A Bigger Bang) pyrotechnics filled the stadium early in the second half.

The offsite performance idea is no safeguard for inappropriate gestures or wardrobe malfunctions, but those are functions of the performance itself, not the locale.

For as practical and logical as this idea may be, I don't see it coming to fruition. The NFL could promote it to the host city as part of the Super Bowl hoopla, which involves festivities in the weeks before the game as well, but I'd bet organizers wouldn't go for it because it could drive down the price of tickets.

However, it's not like they're begging people to go. It's Super Bowl, not the World Butter Sculpting finals.

It's not like New York City and north Jersey is a small market either, which means it would be an ideal locale to try this idea for the first time.

Update: Actually, after posting, it occurred to me that the NFL would be involved in selling tickets to both the game and the concert, which could conceivably offset any decline in revenue from Super Bowl ticket sales.