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Archive for September, 2009

Douglas Coupland–Generation A–Where is it?

Posted in Canadian Content, Douglas Coupland, Funky Web Sites on September 19, 2009| 1 Comment »

gen AI am very excited about Douglas Coupland’s new book Generation A.  It’s a sequel to his first book, Generation X, which I loved, and reviews have been quite positive.

I’ve been a fan of Coupland’s basically since Gen X, having read all of his books, including his weird Canada-only nonfiction pieces.

So, imagine how excited I was to see Generation A available now from amazon.ca.  And amazon.co.uk has not only the regular edition but also a Special Slipcased Edition.   And all of these books came out around September 1st.

So why does Amazon.com list the American edition as being released on NOVEMBER 10th?

Coupland’s star may not be as bright as it once was, and I’m sure his last few books didn’t fly off American shelves like Gen X did, but COME ON.  A two month wait? (more…)

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David Foster Wallace–[Week 13] Infinite Jest (1996)

Posted in Adventure, Big Books, Boredom, Canadian Content, Consumerism, Corporate skewering, David Foster Wallace, Death, Demons, Dreams, Drinking, Drugs, Edith Wharton, Eschaton, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Humiliation, Infinite Summer, Marriage Trouble, Meta, Morality, Neurotics, Oddities, Postmoderism, Racism, Set at School, Smarty Pants, Sports, Supernatural, Technology, Tennis, The Future, Threats, Universities, Violence on September 18, 2009| 2 Comments »

ijestSOUNDTRACK: SONIC YOUTH-Sonic Nurse (2004).

nurse

After the glorious Murray Street, SY return with an even better disc: Sonic Nurse.  This is probably their most overtly catchy (and therefore in my opinion wonderful) record since the Goo/Dirty period of 1991.  (Can it really be 13 years between these discs?).

This disc features Jim O’Rourke as well.  I’m led to believe that he has been playing bass with the band in order to free Kim up to do other things.  Although what she is doing I can’t really imagine.

“Pattern Recognition” opens with the most catchy guitar line in Sonic Youth memory.  Such a great and easy guitar riff.  Kim’s voice is sultry and wondrous.  And Steve Shelly really gets a chance to shine with some fun drum parts.  And, as is typical lately, the catchy songs get some lengthy end treatments, so this song ends with a 2-minute noise fest.  But it’s a good one.  “Unmade Bed” is one of Thurston’s special mellow-singing songs but the guitar solo is weird and wonderful.

“Kim Gordon and the Arthur Doyle Hand Cream” was originally called “Mariah Carey and the…” (and I have no idea if the original was different).  Is one of those noisy Kim-sung jams that SY are known for. But it also features a “Hey hey baby” sing along chorus too.

“Stones” continues this midtempo catchiness with another amazing guitar riff that runs throughout the song.  While “Dude Ranch Nurse” is another mellow Kim piece that has a great riff and wonderfully noisy bridges.  And of course, Lee is awesome on “Paper Cup Exit,” yet another fatastic song.  The cool breakdown in the song is a nice unexpected twist.

“I Love You Golden Blue” may be the most beautiful song the band has ever done.  Kim’s voice is delicate and delightful as she whisper/sings over a gorgeous guitar line.  The final song is another of Thurston’s beauties: “Peace Attack” a slow builder, complete with verse ending guitar solos.

Sonic Nurse is a beuaty.

[READ: Week of September 14, 2009] Infinite Jest (to page 949)

Flying in the face of potential spoilers, I was looking for any evidence of there ever being a “unedited Director’s Cut” version of Infinite Jest.  There is, supposedly, one copy of the full text floating around, and I’m actually quite surprised no one has tried to capitalize on DFW’s death by releasing it (I’d rather see that than another “This is Water” type publication).

But while looking around, I got this pleasant surprise from the Howling Fantods–these are comments on a first draft of IJ (without too much unpublished work shown).  But there’s also this disturbing (to me) item:

(N.B.: Wallace made numerous corrections for the paperback edition of 1997, so that edition is the one scholars should use. Put a Mylar cover on the pretty hardback and leave it on the shelf.)

Great. So I read the wrong copy?  Twice??

ijdot1
I haven’t said very much in any of these posts regarding DFW himself.  I don’t feel it is my place to comment on the man or his situation.   However, through a nice shout out to me, I found this really cool site: The Joy of Sox.  It’s primarily about the Red Sox but it has a delightful side venue in DFW information.  There’s not a ton, and he quotes extensively from others who have done more research than he–he’s a fan of DFW, but this is a sports blog after all.  But it is a delightful collection of miscellanea.  And he pointed me to this article, “Democracy and Commerce at the U.S. Open“, which I had never read (so thank you!).   So, do check out the site, he’s not doing Infinite Summer, but he’s likely going to read IJ again in the fall.

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As this almost-final week opens, the book is flying downhill like an AFR wheelchair, paralleling Gately’s literal inability to talk with Hal’s metaphorical? literal? we’ll see? one.  But it really is the Gately show.  We learn more and more about him, and his back story makes him more and more likable.  Who ever would have guessed? (more…)

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Jonathan Lethem–“The Dreaming Jaw, The Salivating Ear” (Harper’s, October 2009)

Posted in Books about writers, Boredom, Death, Harper's, Jonathan Lethem, Meta, Mystery, Smarty Pants, Sonic Youth, Violence on September 17, 2009| 2 Comments »

harperoctSOUNDTRACK: SONIC YOUTH-Murray Street (2002).

murray stAfter NYC Ghosts and Flowers, I put off getting this disc.  I was getting a little bored by the meandering, somewhat glacial pace of the last two discs, and figured that was the trend they’d be continuing (especially since there are only seven songs on here!).

And yet when my friend Lar told me I absolutely had to pick it up, I consented, as he’s rarely wrong.  And he was not wrong here either.  Murray Street continues in a vein  similar to the last few discs, but it includes what the others were missing: amazing melodies!

It opens with “The Empty Page,” a reasonably upbeat sounding song with some wild choruses.  “Disconnection Notice” is one of their slower pieces, also cooly catchy, which doesn’t meander as it gets to where it’s going.

“Karen Revisited” is an eleven minute piece from Lee.  It begins, typically, as a beautiful Lee song.  However, the last six or so minutes are taken up with a deconstructing noise mess.  (There’s cheering at the end of the song leading me to suspect it was recorded live).  I don’t so much mind the noisy end part, but it’s so disparate from the first part that I wish they were two separate songs.

“Radical Adult Lick Godhead Style” is an absurd free form piece of lyrical nonsense which rocks tightly.  “Plastic Sun” stands out for being sung by Kim, by being very dissonant, and by being only two minutes long.

The album closer, “Sympathy for the Strawberry” is another long, slow, expansive piece, and yet the melody grabs you right from the start and won’t let you go.  Fantastic.

This reigning in of styles forecasts good things ahead on their next few discs as well.

[READ: September 13, 2009] “The Dreaming Jaw, The Salivating Ear”

This short story is quite short and quite surreal.  And I am amazed at how much time I spent with it.

As it opens, there is a weird an unsettling scene about a man who has killed someone in his blog.  I felt that the story was trying to be deliberately surreal by having this person get killed online, and yet that doesn’t seem to be the case.  The story remains weird and deliberately confusing until you get about 2/3 of the way through.  Then it all becomes clear and warrants a second read through. (more…)

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David Foster Wallace–“Democracy and Commerce at the U.S. Open” (Tennis, September 1996)

Posted in Chronicles of Narnia, Consumerism, David Foster Wallace, Essays, Funny (ha ha), Infinite Summer, NPR/PRI/PBS, Sports, Tennis, Tennis Magazine on September 16, 2009| 4 Comments »

usopenSOUNDTRACK: REGINA SPEKTOR-Far (2009).

spektorRegina Spektor has reaffirmed my faith in female singers.  Back in the 1990s, during the height of Lilith Fair craze, there was an embarrassment of cool, hip, interesting women singers releasing discs.   Since then some have sold out (Liz Phair), some have gone away (Shirley Manson), and some have just, well, matured (Tori Amos).  Maturation is a fine thing, but when you are known for doing interesting things, by the time you get to doing standard piano ballads, well, yes, we all mature, but we don’t all lose our quirkiness, right?

And Regina Spektor has quirkiness in spades.  Her songs are primarily piano based, and yet rather than sounding like the grown up piano of many of her contemporaries, she rocks the piano like Ben Folds (with whom she did a duet on his last single).  Each of the first half dozen songs or so have an interesting or unusual part that totals sells the song for me.

The disc opens with the bouncey “The Calculation” with a lyrical melody line that betrays the boppy piano.  “Eet” had another of her fascinating vocal lines in which she sounds ethereal and mechanical at the same time.  “Blue Lips” has fantastic bass piano to accentuate the cool guitar effects.  “Folding Chair” is one of the quirkier songs on the disc what with her singing dolphin sounds at one point, and yet it still remains irresistably catchy.

“Hooked Into Machine” channels Laurie Anderson vocally, although once again, the melody is fantastic. “Laughing With” I actually heard on NPR this morning, used very nicely as a segue instrumental about people fearing getting swine flu in church.  It also features one of the few times a singer sings/says Ha Ha and it doesn’t sound affected.  “Two Birds” has an awesome tuba (!) run.

“Dance Anthem of the ’80s” is as weird as one might think from the title. It’s all mechanical sounds and strange trilling voices (Spektor somehow sounds mechanical and angelic simultaneously).  “One More Time with Feeling” which I like to think of as a shout out to Buffy, although I doubt it really is, is, as the title suggests, almost musicalhall in its tempo and yet again, she pulls it off amazingly.

The disc ends with “Man of a Tousand Faces” one of the most normal songs on the disc.  It immeiately lends itself to hitting start once again.

Reviews of this disc has said they found it lacking compared to her previous releases.  I haven’t heard any of her other recordings so I can’t say.  But if her other discs are even better than this one, then I’m going to be pretty happy getting her back catalog.

Oh, and in another nod to synchronicity, Regina has the final song that plays over the credits of Chronicles of Narnia, Prince Caspian which I know is over a year old, but we just watched it the other night.

[READ: September 15, 2009] “Democracy and Commerce at the U.S. Open”

Since I’m nearly finished Infinite Jest, I am trolling around for spoiler-free things to read by and about DFW (gee, imagine that I’d get hooked again to DFW’s ouvre).  I thought I had read just about all of DFWs nonfiction, but I was reading The Joy of Sox blog, and he pointed out this article that I had not yet read, and I couldn’t wait to print it.

The folks at Tennis.com are presently running the article in all of its color glory here.

And so this piece covers DFW’s press day at the 1995 US Open.  He spends the beginning of the article talking about tennis (Pete Sampras especially), and the rest of the article wandering the grounds, musing about commerce, concessions and New Yorkers.  It’s actually surprising how little space he spends on tennis (especially since it was written for Tennis magazine).  But rather, you get a complete awareness of the sights, smells, rip-offs and crowd that are present at a US Open event.  It’s fantastic! (more…)

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Maile Meloy–Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It (2009)

Posted in Ben Folds, Demons, Drinking, Infinite Summer, Maile Meloy, Marriage Trouble, Missoula, MT, Pregnancy, Sex, Short Story, Threats, Work, Yuck! on September 15, 2009| Leave a Comment »

maileSOUNDTRACK: BEN FOLDS-Stems and Seeds (2009).

benI enjoyed Way to Normal, although not as much as previous Ben Folds CDs.  I was listening to Pandora Radio at work and I heard a version of one of the songs from Way to Normal, but it listed it as coming from Stems and Seeds, which I hadn’t heard of.

Stems and Seeds is a sort of fan club release of Way to Normal.  That whole album is remixed, remastered and in a different track order.  It also features B-sides and the “original leaked versions” (ie. not real versions at all) of several of these tracks.

The second disc (actually the first disc) is a collection of audio files that you can upload to the GarageBand program where you can manipulate the files yourself.  I have not even popped the disc in the computer to look at this yet, and I don’t foresee myself doing it any time soon.

But onto the music.

The differences are not vast in the remixes and yet I like them better.  Some excessive bits are lopped off (the “Japanese doctor” voice before “The Bitch Went Nuts” is thankfully gone) as well as a few bits that dragged out “Free Coffee”).   I don’t think of myself as a massive audiophile, but in a side by side comparison the new songs (which are apparently uncompressed like radio-ready songs are) sound cleaner, brighter and just better.  (Which again, is weird since Way to Normal was released just months before this.  Why bother releasing that version at all, I have to wonder.)

There’s also something about the new track order that I like better.  It just flows more smoothly somehow.

And the bonus tracks are also fun.  There’s a live version of “You Don’t Know Me” from a pre-show at Conan.  They practice it without the curse in the lyrics, but they all get a hearty curse-laden shout out at the end.  The “leaked” tracks are also fascinating. Even though they are lyrically not quite up to snuff, they’re not that far removed from Ben’s sillier songs.  But it’s the idea that he wrote these entire songs just to jam the leakers is fascinating to me.  He wrote new melodies and recorded entirely new songs that aren’t real.  And yet now he’s officially released them and they are real. Trippy.

So, if you haven’t yet, skip Way to Normal and get Stems and Seeds. If you already have Way to Normal and didn’t like it, try a track or two from this one, it may turn you around.

[READ: September 13, 2009] Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It

In his Infinite Summer post Colin Meloy plugged the new book that his sister had just written. I wasn’t aware of the book coming out so I was pretty excited to hear about it.  I picked up a copy and finished it in like 2 days.

This is Meloy’s 2nd collection of short stories.

The characters in almost all of the stories are failures. Not losers, mind you, but failures. They have failed at jobs or love or with their family, and the storylines show them coping with the aftermath of their failures.  And note that the failures are never because of inaction, they are because the characters are stuck between two impossible choices or literally insurmountable problems. (more…)

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Periodical: The Week

Posted in Airlines, Art, Authors, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Books about music, Books about writers, Boredom, Canadian Content, Children's Books, Comedians, Comic Strips, Consumerism, Contests, Death, Esquire, Essays, Film & TV, Free Speech, History, LGBTQ, Marriage (Happy), Marriage Trouble, Military, Morality, Music, Natural Disasters, Neurotics, New Yorker, Oddities, Outer Space, Political Humor, Prison, Racism, Radar, Religion, Research, Robots, Russia, Salon.com, Sex, Sports Illustrated, Suicide, Technology, The Week, Violence, Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me, War, WMDs on September 14, 2009| Leave a Comment »

weekI’m not sure how I first learned about The Week. I think I received a trial issue in the mail. But after just one or two issues we were hooked.  The Week is a comprehensive newsweekly, although it offers virtually no original reporting.  It collates news stories and offers opinions from a variety of sources: newspapers, online magazines, political journals etc. And it provides opinions from across the political spectrum.

Each issue has the same set up (although they recently had an image makeover: a new cover design and some unexpected font changes in a few sections, which I suppose does lend to an easier read).

Each issue starts with The main stories… …and how they were covered. The first article is a look at whatever major story captivated the editorials that week.  (The growing gloom in Afghanistan).  And in a general sense of what you get for long articles (the long articles are about 3/4 of a page) You get WHAT HAPPENED, WHAT THE EDITORIALS SAID, and WHAT THE COLUMNISTS SAID.  The What Happened section is a paragraph or two summary of the story.  The editorials offer a one or two sentence summary from sources like USA Today, L.A. Times and The Financial Times, while The Columnists are from The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and Time.com, for example. (more…)

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David Foster Wallace–[Week 12] Infinite Jest (1996)

Posted in Bewitched, Big Books, Boredom, Canadian Content, Cheers!, Consumerism, David Foster Wallace, Death, Demons, Dreams, Drinking, Drugs, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Infinite Summer, M*A*S*H, Marriage Trouble, Meta, Neurotics, Postmoderism, Ren & Stimpy, Seinfeld, Set at School, Short Films, Suicide, Supernatural, Technology, Tennis, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Violence on September 12, 2009| Leave a Comment »

ijSOUNDTRACK: THE MIGHTY MIGHTY BOSSTONES-Don’t Know How to Party (1993).

mmbI’ve always had a thing for ska (although even I got sick of it when No Doubt took over the airwaves, thanks Gwen).  When ska gets added to blistering metal, well, it’s hard to resist.  And so we get Boston’s own Mighty Mighty Bosstones.

This was the first Bosstones’ record I’d heard and I fell for it immediately.  I also really appreciated the aggressively green plaid that the band sported at the time (although they have since denounced the look).

A horn section can be a tricky thing in a rock band, with many using it to very poor effect. But the Bosstones used it wonderfully, complementing the heaviness and adding a cool skanking sound to the metal chops. And the songs are fantastic and fun.  “Someday I Suppose” is just one of the great rocking anthems from the 90s.  “Illegal Left” is wonderfully catchy and funny.  And “Issachar” is just blistering punk.  These three songs show the rocking and skanking range on the disc.  All of this is wrapped around Dicky Barrett’s rough, growling, heavily-smoker-sounding voice.

The Bosstones would go on to write some hugely popular tunes after this disc (with each disc getting progressively more recognition and sales) but for me, this is what ska is all about.

[READ: Week of September 7, 2009] Infinite Jest (to page 876)

Infinite Tasks drew my attention to a new comment regarding the Joelle timeline that we’ve been concerned about.  Greg Carlisle responded to it at Infinite Summer. And so Infinite Tasks updated an older post here.  I’m willing to accept Carlisle’s word as he did write Elegant Complexity after all.

And yet there’s another interesting time line issue that I bring up below about a chapter heading and an electronic calendar that Hal looks at.

ijdot1I’ve also decided that, since the story is steamrolling to an end, and since so many of the end days are coming along, I’m going to update my own calendar (but just the November info).  I’m putting it at the end of the post to include this week’s information.

In general, I’m a little bummed to see so many people have completed the book early, tempting as it is to do so (although obviously that’s better than not finishing at all, right?).  I’m nevertheless enjoying my routine and I think I’ll actually miss it when it’s over.

ijdot1

elizThis week’s reading is almost entirely focused on Gately in St Elizabeth’s Trauma Wing.  He is stuck staring at the ceiling which is breathing at him.  It reminds him of a holiday in Beverly, Ma in which the beach house that they rented had a hole in the roof. The hole was covered by a plastic sheet which flapped and pulsed with the wind.  His crib was placed under the hole and it freaked him out (although what is a 4 year old doing in a crib?  Well, Gately’s mom is clearly not the best parent.) (more…)

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Mark Binelli–Sacco & Vanzetti Must Die (2006)

Posted in Death, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Gangsters, Great Northern, History, Mark Binelli, Meta, Nada Surf, Racism, The Anniversary, The Believer, Threats, Twin Peaks, Veruca Salt, Violence on September 11, 2009| Leave a Comment »

saccoSOUNDTRACK: GREAT NORTHERN-Trading Twilight for Daylight (2007).

grewatA patron donated this disc to our library.  I had never heard of Great Northern, but I gave it a listen, in part because I hoped that the band name came from Twin Peaks (no idea if it does). And wow, I was blown away by this disc.

This is like the great unheralded indie rocker band (although having looked them up apparently the are quite heralded).  Their songs sound like an inviting combination of The Anniversary (the GN song “The Middle” always puts me in mind of The Anniversary’s “The Siren Sings”), Veruca Salt, Nada Surf and any number of supremely catchy bands.  The vocals are split between a make and female voice which makes the diversity even more appealing.

There’s not a bad song on the disc, and I find myself playing it quite often. The music is first rate, with great textural setups and drop offs, and the choruses, oh the choruses.  It’s hard to even pick a favorite song.

I’m somewhat surprised I’d never heard of this band before (they have a new album out this year that I haven’t heard), but then they are on a label I’ve never heard of either (Eenie Meenie).  I will totally get their new disc, as well as their Sleepy Eepie EP.  I’m really that impressed.

[READ: January 2007] Sacco & Vanzetti Must Die

I read this book over two years ago (I’m cleaning up the final books that I haven’t posted about), and I’m afraid I’m a little shaky on the details.  But I just remembered that I read about it in The Believer.

The premise of the book is that Sacco & Vanzetti are actually a comedy team, not anarchists.  Well, they are anarchic, but in the realm of comedy, not bombs.  They are a sort of Laurel & Hardy with Sacco as the fat troublemaker (and yes the name fits) and Vanzetti as the straight man, the ideologue.  As they progress from slapstick routines to film, their comedy gets more specific, and their schtick concerns “knife grinders/throwers.”  The knife angle is explained as a family trademark or maybe it’s a stolen gimmick.

Inevitably, their careers begin to wain, and their lives take a turn for the worst.  And when things get bad, they get really bad, leading them to trial, with possible execution. (more…)

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Jessica Anthony–The Convalescent (2009)

Posted in Anachronisms, History, Jem Cohen, Jessica Anthony, Marriage Trouble, McSweeney's, Neurotics, Short Films, Silver Mt. Zion, Sonic Youth, Threats, Violence, Wikipedia on September 10, 2009| Leave a Comment »

convSOUNDTRACK: SONIC YOUTH-SYR 6 Koncertas Stan Brakhage Prisiminimui (2005).

syr6This CD sees Sonic Youth playing an instrumental background to three silent films from Stan Brakhage.  It reminds me of the Jem Cohen DVD in which A Silver Mt Zion play the music for the silent Cohen film.

Now obviously, we don’t see the films on the CD.  In fact, as far as I can tell it doesn’t even say which films they are (the credits are in Lithuanian).  So, it’s impossible to tell if the pieces are contextually good.

As for the songs themselves, there are three short pieces.  The first is about 25 minutes, the second about 14 and the last about 27 (even though the disc itself lists one piece at about 65 minutes).  The pieces are leisurely and very abstract.  There’s very little in the way of Sonic Youth in evidence: minimal distorted guitars (or much of any guitars).  Rather, there are effects, percussion and occasional vocals from Kim.  There are no hooks of any kind.  But then what would you expect from soundtrack work?

Unlike the other SYR discs which were all about improvisation, this one feels more like a composition: abstract, strange and a little disorienting, but a composition nonetheless.   I imagine that the films are dark and mysterious.

This disc falls in line with the style of SYR 4 Goodbye 20th Century.  If you’re not really sure about SY, but you like abstract soundscapes, this is a good disc to check out.

[READ: August 30, 2009] The Convalescent

I had read a sample of the book about a month ago and was very intrigued.  When the book came in the mail I was pretty excited to read it all.

But how to explain this peculiar book?  Rovar Pfliegman is a mute, crippled man who lives in a broken down bus on the side of the road–out of which he sells meat.  His meat is the cheapest and freshest in town so even though he sells it out of  a bus on the side of the road, he has many clients.

Pfliegman is Hungarian, specifically, he comes from one of the eleven tribes who migrated over the Ural Mountains.  (History records only ten tribes, and the word Hungarian stems from the word onogur, which means ten arrows.)  This eleventh tribe, the Pliegmans tripped over their own feet, growled at strangers, stole other peoples food and were generally outcasts even amongst outcasts.  As an example of the sort of tribe the Pfliegmans are, Rovar’s father after receiving a VCR in 1984 spent four minutes examining the buttons and one minute examining the manual before bashing it in the face. (more…)

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Lydia Davis–Samuel Johnson is Indignant (2005)

Posted in Black Sabbath, Death, Demons, Essays, Flash Fiction, Funny (strange), History, Lydia Davis, Marriage Trouble, McSweeney's, Merzbow, Research, Short Books, Short Story, Sonic Youth on September 9, 2009| 1 Comment »

lydiaSOUNDTRACK: SONIC YOUTH-SYR8: Andre Sider Af Sonic Youth (2008).

syr8This final (so far) SYR release is another live recording and it sees the bands joined by saxophonist Mats Gustaffson and electronic wunderkind Merzbow.  This EP comes from the 2005 Roskilde Festival in Denmark (and the language is all written in Danish).  According to the SY website, the day before this, they had performed a set in support of Sonic Nurse. However, this set, “The Other Side of Sonic Youth” is an hour or so improvisation. It is basically broken down into 5 minute intervals:

1 min.  Kim (guitar) & Steve (drums) start
5 min. Thurston (guitar) joins
10 min. Lee (more guitar) joins
15 min. Jim O’ Rourke (bass/synth?) joins
20 min. Mats Gustaffson (saxophone) joins
25 min. Merzbow (laptop) joins
30 min. Kim & Steve leave
35 min. Thurston leaves
40 min. Lee leaves
45 min. Mats leaves
50 min. Merzbow finishes

All times are approximate, and even listening to the disc it’s not entirely clear when the new players come on (or when they leave). For the most part, the set is varying levels of noise and dissonance.  But it’s not just a wall of chaos. It starts fairly simply with the guitar and drums (although when Kim and Steve play it’s never really simple).  By the time Jim comes out, the band has morphed into all manner of sound scapes.

When Mats comes in and that saxophone starts squealing, it’s a whole new ballgame. I don’t find Merzbow’s entrance to be all that noteworthy, but by the end, when it’s just him and Mats (or him by himself) he’s doing some pretty amazing stuff.

It’s hard to imagine what the Roskilde people thought of this (although crowd noise seems to be positive).  This set was followed by Black Sabbath, which in and of itself is pretty funny.  Especially since the SY set seems far more dissonant.

[READ: September 6, 2009] Samuel Johnson is Indignant

This collection of Davis’ work contains fifty-six of stories.  The stories range from one sentence (!) to some twenty pages.

The book is disconcerting in that it opens with several of the one to two page stories, leading you to suspect that they will all be that length. Then, when you actually get to the longer pieces it kind of throws you.

Those first stories are I guess what you’d call flash fiction.  Except that for the most part, it’s hard to tell whether the pieces are even meant to be fiction.  They are aphoristic, often.  Talking about neighbors and friends, uncomfortable moments, and mostly, lots of thinking about everyday activities.  Some of them are funny.  Some of them are thought-provoking.  Some of them are just weird.  And some of them make you wonder why they were written at all, or more to the point, why she would name this collection Samuel Johnson is Indignant, when this story,consists of this:

“Samuel Johnson is Indignant: that Scotland has so few trees.” (more…)

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