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The Auteur and the Troubador
Read Rubies in the Orchard: How to Uncover Hidden Gems in Your Business by Lynda Resnick and Francis Wilkinson, Doubleday Business, $24.95
Lynda Resnick plucked sweet, little pomegranates from their deciduous shrubs and cultivated the berries into a worldwide, money-making brand. In Rubies in the Orchard, the marketer gives readers a candid look at how she launched POM Wonderful, revitalized flower delivery service Teleflora and revamped Fiji Water into a higher-caliber brand whose sales soared 300 percent since 2004. And then there was that time Resnick raised her hand amid laughter and criticism to purchase Jackie Kennedy’s fake pearls at an auction for a whopping $211,000—and proceeded to replicate them for $26 million in revenue for the Franklin Mint. Rubies is a can’t-miss for serious marketers who want to learn how to pump up their respective brands. –LD
Listen Roy Orbison, Soul of Rock ‘n’ Roll
Every half-decade, musicians and record geeks fall in love with a new star from the past. In the late ‘90s, it was the Velvet Underground, then the Beach Boys. Lately, Elvis Costello has been the cool rocker to name check in interviews and late-night turntable bull sessions. But mark our words: with the release of Soul of Rock ‘n’ Roll, the latest collection of tunes by Roy Orbison, the torch will soon pass. Contained on this four CD boxed set are all the hits (“Ooby Dooby,” the original “Crying” and a duet version with K.D. Lang, “Only the Lonely”), as well as rarities that promise to give listeners new insight into the mournful troubadour. The penultimate track—a version of “It’s Over” recorded two days before Orbison’s death—is especially affecting. —BH
Listen The Rhino Records New Order Remasters
When Rhino gets its hands on an artist’s catalogue, it stops at nothing to deliver a reissue package guaranteed to make fans salivate. Now the venerable label has set its sights on English synth-pop pioneers New Order, reissuing their seminal first five albums as expanded, double CDs. These new releases are critical in their inclusion of the non-album singles cuts that made New Order radio and nightclub stars. Anyone can listen to the group’s first album, Movement, and hear the artistry that puts New Order at the top of so many critics’ lists. But listen to their debut singles “Ceremony” and “Temptation” on Movement’s expanded second disc and you will hear the propulsive beats and romantic ennui that made the band such a fixture among DJs in the ‘80s club scene. —BH
Watch The Criterion Collection’s Films of Cassavetes
Whatever your take on the iconic American independent filmmaker, Criterion’s recent John Cassavetes editions present America’s rawest auteur in the crispest, purest digital form. Films such as the iconic A Woman Under the Influence, Opening Night and groundbreaking Shadows meet the 16mm phantasm Faces and ambiguous street crime character study The Killing of a Chinese Bookie. In all five films, viewers are treated to Cassavetes’s unique, actor-focused directing style, which abandons traditional pacing in favor of extended takes that search for moments of vulnerability in his desperate characters’ doomed frenzies. —BH
Browse UbuWeb
A clearinghouse for critical-but-obscure avant-garde works of poetry, film, music and more, www.ubu.com is part library, part legitimate file-sharing site and part left bank coffee house. Academic and critical stars such as Samuel Beckett and Chopin rub shoulders with Shaker trance art and shamanic ethnopoetry with titles such as Finnish Cloud-Cake Songs and Related Commentaries. The website also features film and music by Man Ray, Richard Serra and Jean Beaudrillard—but it’s the countless unrecognized names that make UbuWeb such a thrill to explore day after day. It’s the place to find long lost masterpieces and brilliantly failed experiments by some of the world’s most uncompromising artists. —BH
—By Lindsay Downey and Brian Hughes
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