I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: VAMPIRE WEEKEND-KEXP performance & interview (2008)

While trolling around NPR’s Favorite Sessions Pages (an amazing place to look for live music!), I found this Vampire Weekend in-studio session from KEXP in Seattle (whose site features some amazing shows that you can listen to (but I don’t think any are downloadable).  This interview and performance was before the band’s debut album had come out (and they had only been playing live for about six months).

So the set has four songs.  All will appear on the debut album, but they sound a little different.  Perhaps it’s the in-studio sound recording or perhaps they play them a tad bit slower, but you can hear the words more clearly (which is cool) and some of the beats are sustained a bit longer.  It’s a wonderful set.

The interview is also fun.  The interviewer is pretty well gushing all over the band.  But he asks interesting questions–it’s amazing to be reminded just how young the guys are.  The DJ also asks about their influences and that’s kind of an interesting discussion, although thy don’t really admit to any specific influences (rats).

It’s a wonderful (if not too brief) session, and well worth a listen.

[READ: March 27, 2011] “The Man on the Island”

I really enjoyed the way this story was constructed. It went through several different teasers before settling down into what the story would ultimately be about.

It opens with a taxi driving through Bridgetown in Barbardos.  The passenger, a reporter from Canada, asks the driver, Calvin Braithwaite, to drive him all over the island on a special commission.  Braithwaite agrees, and they spend the reporter’s few days in Barbados together.  When the reporter leaves, he asks for Calvin’s email address and phone number, for possible follow-up.

This introduction leads us to assume that the story is about the reporter.  And also that Calvin is “the man on the island.”

The story jumps in the next paragraph to Calvin living in Canada ad creating “original” resumes.  It is many years later, Calvin is now married with three children in Toronto.  He assumed that the reporter would be an excellent contact and a great help for him to get  job.  This has not proven to be the case and so he sits in front of his computer all day writing resumes and hoping to hear the dog bark–the signal he programmed the computer to make when he received an email.

It also turns out  that the titular man on the island is actually a screen saver on his computer.  Every time the man appears, he tries futilely to escape from the island–many many ingenious ways of escape are foiled.  Inevitably, Calvin starts empathizing with the man.  It’s a positive story about a horrible situation in which lies and fantasies are the only things that can keep you going.