Sufjan, The Roots, and The Wire.

i originally clicked on the link because of the title- "Sufjan Stevens to Appear on The Roots' New Album." how very Justin Vernon/Kanye West, i thought. but the article was quite a bit more interesting than that:

...in a recent interview with SPIN, Roots drummer ?uestlove mentioned that Sufjan Stevens’ song “Redford” influenced the identity of the album’s main protagonist, Redford Stevens.

“But we named the character after the Sufjan Stevens song ‘Redford’ from his Michigan record. We imagined Redford as being like Avon Barksdale from The Wire. He’s a good guy who could have just gone to college and been a great engineer or something. But he makes a bad decision and pays for it.”

and a longer excerpt from the SPIN article:

How does the story on undun unfold?
It's basically a tale about someone who makes one decision that completely undoes their entire life. And we tell the story backwards, so when you hear the record it starts at the very end of this character's life. We wanted to tell a cautionary tale but didn't want to do the cliché tale of a 'hood kid who does the wrong shit and then just dies.

So who, exactly, is the protagonist Redford Stephens?
...We imagined Redford as being like Avon Barksdale from The Wire. He's a good guy who could have just gone to college and been a great engineer or something. But he makes a bad decision and pays for it. We tell that story in 10 songs, under 44 minutes. Actually, Sufjan makes an appearance on the album, too.

Really?
We've always loved the song "Redford" from Michigan. So we close the new album with a cover of "Redford." We stretched it out into this four-part movement. Part 1 is Sufjan at the piano performing it. And then Part 2 is a string quartet that we had interpret it. Part 3 is myself and D.D. Jackson, who is an avant-garde piano player....The final movement, which ends the record, is essentially the beginning of the story. But it's the last thing you hear. It's a very powerful piece of work.

don't remember the song Redford? me neither, i had to pull out the iPod for a refresher. it's a sparse, 2 minute long instrumental... some might call it a filler song. it's unexpected enough that The Roots are sitting down and giving Michigan a listen, but even more surprising that Redford is the song that they love, so much that they include on their album an extended 4-part closing cover featuring Mr. Stevens himself.

also unexpected is the idea of an Avon Barksdale kind of guy named after Sufjan and his work. the two could not be ANY more disparate.

i've always vaguely liked The Roots. i have one of their albums and i never choose to listen to it, but i'm always happy when one of the songs comes up on my iPod. i think i'll pay a little more attention to this upcoming release.


PS- there is a website where ?uestlove re-counts his many celebrity encounters. it's worth digging around in, there are some real gems in there...

PPS- if you're not familiar with Avon Barksdale, you need to get thee to a video store and rent all 5 seasons of The Wire. we held out for a long time but finally forged ahead and committed to it, even though the first season isn't all that great. the main character is the city of Baltimore, and each season focuses on one aspect of her urban existence- drug wars, the ports, politics, public education, and the media. it is by far the best, most realistic cop show i have ever seen. (although it's not really a cop show) it's a hard watch at times, but so, so worth it.