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Archive for August, 2008

William H. Gass–The Tunnel (1995)

Posted in Big Books, Books about writers, Consumerism, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Marriage Trouble, Pixies, Starlight Mints, William H. Gass on August 6, 2008| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: STARLIGHT MINTS-Built on Squares (2003).

The Pixies were a weird band….  They wrote fantastically catchy alterna-rock, and yet, deep down, they were pretty weird, with shouty parts and quiet parts and bizarro lyrics about slicing up eyeballs and monkeys going to heaven.  Well, imagine if their music was REALLY weird, going beyond guitar/bass/drums to incorporate cellos, triangles and samples.  That approximates the Starlight Mints.  I first heard them on a sampler.  Their track “Submarine #3” blew me away.  It was under 2 minutes long and was weird and wonderful.  I can’t recommend that song highly enough.  Their debut album was solidly weird too.

This is the follow up, several years in the making.  And, all the parts are in place. The orchestration is a bit bigger, and yet it is still a somewhat unsettling listen.  Just as you think you get the pace of a song, they’ll throw in an unusual cello riff, or some unexpected sample.  This is not to say that the songs aren’t catchy, you just have to listen carefully for the catchiness.  And, since the songs are all under 3 minutes or so, you have to listen quickly.

I mentioned the Pixies because the second half of the album (and most of their first one) really sounds like a Pixies record.  In fact, there are parts of the songs (surf guitar, sparse solos, and Alan Vest’s voice which at times is an uncanny match for Black Francis’) might make you think you found a long lost Pixies track.  Then, of course, they throw in a trumpet, and you say, nope, not the Pixies.  So, if you like the Pixies, but wish they were just a bit more odd, definitely check out the CDs by these guys.

They released one other album after this one.  I’ve no idea what they’re up to now.  They have a MySpace page, but there’s not much on it except for a couple of songs.

[READ: June 2008] The Tunnel

I bought this book when it came out way back in 1995.  (more…)

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Julie Hecht–Do the Windows Open? (1998)

Posted in Consumerism, Frank Zappa, Funny (ha ha), John Zorn, Julie Hecht, Neurotics, New Yorker, NPR/PRI/PBS, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, Ornette Coleman, Short Story, The Mars Volta, Unlikable main character, Unreliable narrator on August 6, 2008| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: MARS VOLTA-The Bedlam in Goliath (2008).

I’ve liked Mars Volta more in theory than in actuality for their first few albums. I enjoyed them, but they didn’t make me want to listen all the time. I had heard good things about this new one, so I gave it a shot and WOW. The Bedlam in Goliath is off the charts in its craziness and its masterfulness.

Bedlam has most of the same components of a Mars Volta disc: chaos, noise, fantastic instrumentation, bizarre lyrics, jazz-like elements and metal, sweet metal. But for some reason, Bedlam seems to cohere into a masterful project. I haven’t listened to the first two discs in a while (but I’m sure going to check them out again), and I never got the third one, so I can’t really compare them. This one just seems to have something special to it.

The overall sound makes me think of someone tuning in a radio. Some parts are (deliberately) fuzzy, some are crystal clear. As the sound of one segment fades out a new, entirely different section blares in. Anyone who channel surfs can appreciate the sound of this.

All of the literature about this record talks about their use of a Ouija board during their tour and while recording. They bought it in Jerusalem and they say it had a horrible impact on the recording process. (Check out this NPR story…yeah, that’s right, I said NPR.) And, in many respects, rather than a radio, you could think of the album as the voices and sounds from the Ouija board coming through. Some are crystal clear and other are mechanized and ghostly. Spooky, eh?

But what of the music? It is fast, fast, fast. Cedric Bixler-Zavala’s voice is a powerhouse of high-pitched, operatic notes. And the music keeps pace. And yet, despite the speed the album isn’t thrash metal or speed metal necessarily. It doesn’t all have that heaviness, it just has a lot of speed. It lets up once in a while, but for the most part in every song something is going fast: drums, bass, voice, something.

One of the perplexing things about the record is how each song seems to have multiple parts that are unrelated to each other…some songs even have longer breaks within the track than between them. For instance, tracks one and two, the nearly 6 minute “Abernikula” and the over 8 minute “Metatron” blend seamlessly into one long track. However, midway through “Metatron” the song stops for a good second or two and then begins with a brand new, wonderfully catchy riff, which runs through the rest of the song. Truly masterful, and yet impossible to know what track you’re on, half the time.

The album is about an hour long, and it’s such a roller coaster of rocking guitars and high speed chases.  And yet it doesn’t wear out it’s welcome, because the catchy bits are so incredibly catchy. I was amused to see that there is a “single” on the record called “Wax Simulacra.”  It’s the shortest song, possibly that MV has ever done at under 3 minutes, which makes it an ideal single.  Except that the last twenty or thirty seconds are taken up with a mind blowing saxophone solo that could be lifted from Ornette Coleman or John Zorn (and this is a single?).  In fact, the horns come into play a lot on the record.  There’s one or two motifs that sound like they could be taken from a Zappa piece (the Zappa song “Sofa” kept popping into my head during this record. And you can’t ask more from a record than to make you enjoy it while it makes you think of other great music too.

[READ: July 20, 2008] Do the Windows Open?

I read an interview with Julie Hecht in The Believer (some of which is available here). And boy did she come across as an unlikable person. (more…)

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What I learned… (21) Guest Posts & Book Clubs & Sarah

Posted in Digression, Funky Web Sites on August 5, 2008| Leave a Comment »

Sarah was invited to write a guest post for Books on the Brain.  She writes a great piece about the book club she started in which…aw heck, I won’t bother summarizing, just go check it out!

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Lawrence Watt-Evans–The Turtle Moves! Discworld’s Story Unauthorized (2008)

Posted in Books about writers, Carlos Santana, Dip-in Books, Discworld, Frank Zappa, Funny (ha ha), Jimi Hendrix, Laurence Watt-Evans, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Smarty Pants, Technology, Terry Pratchett, The Mars Volta, Time Travel, Universities on August 2, 2008| 1 Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: OMAR RODRIGUEZ-LOPEZ-Calibration (is Pushing Luck and Key Too Far) (2008).

Typically a solo album means indulgence. But how can you be more indulgent than Mars Volta? They have fifteen minute songs with twenty-seven sections and operatic vocals and lyrics that are bizarre at best (they’re fantastic, don’t get me wrong, they’re just…out there!). So, if you’re the guitarist in a freak flag waving band, how do you let your freak flag fly on your own?

This solo album actually does prove to be more out there than Mars Volta. Primarily because whereas Volta stays more or less within the realm of their prog metal, this record sets no limits. There’s ambient noodling, there’s chaotic noise, and there’s beautiful extended pieces.

Omar (I’m not on a first name basis, his name is just long) plays a bunch of instruments on the record (he gets help from a bunch of folks throughout as well), but primarily he plays guitar. And I can’t help but think that Omar doesn’t understand how to play the guitar–he knows how to play, and frankly, he’s pretty amazing at it, but I’m not sure he understands it. His melodies are bizarre, he sense of what should come next is totally askew, it’s as if he learned how to play guitar by listening to vinyl records that were a little warped. It’s pretty fantastic.

In one song he sounds like Jimi Hendrix–not so much like a Jimi Hendrix song, but that he achieves the same sonic freakout sound that Jimi achieved in his live recordings–squalling feedback and amazing density. There’s another track where he channels Carlos Santana. (This track features John Frusciante of the Red Hot Chili Peppers on vocals. It is singularly bizarre because it cuts out right in the middle of a line–freaks me out every time!) The next song “Sidewalk Fins” ends with some of the noisiest, loudest, most crushing sounds. It sounds like an amplifier getting smashed by a giant microphone–feedback and thuds–repeated about 4 times before it’s over.

And yet the first few songs are amazingly restrained for Omar. They are short, ambient and, if not a little weird, then certainly quite pretty. But as the album moves along and the songs get longer, his freak flag comes out (see “Lick the Tilting Poppies”). And yet, the disc ends with a beautiful 11 minute instrumental song. it’s beautifully arranged, with intertwining guitar melodies. If there was any doubt about Omar’s skills, this track will knock down all questions. It’s also pretty clear that Omar respects Zappa, if not for his guitar skills, then certainly for his compositions.

This definitely isn’t for everyone–there’s a lot of weirdness afoot–but if you’re looking for something interesting or different, and you’re not afraid of something out there, this is a good disc to check out. Oh, and you don’t need to like or have even heard of Mars Volta to appreciate this record.

[READ: June 27: 2008] The Turtle Moves!

When I saw this book on Amazon, it never occurred to me that it was an “unauthorized” account. It seems that whenever someone or something gets popular someone else tries to make a buck off of it with an “unauthorized” publication. I never know how accurate they are, if they have dirt that the subject doesn’t want out or if “unauthorized” is just written there to sell copy. (more…)

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