I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: TORI AMOS-Live from the Artist’s Den (2010).

I think my relationship with Tori Amos has come to an end.  I haven’t enjoyed her more recent albums all that much lately, but I was excited to see that this live and intimate set was on PBS.  After all, it was just her with a piano and what turned out to be a really cheesy organ.

I was pretty thrilled by the setlist, which goes all the way back to her debut album (with “Girl” and “China”).  I was even more excited to hear “Bells for Her” one of my favorite songs by her and even “Concertina” one of her more mellow tracks that worked well for this show which was primarily mellow songs.

There were a lot of newer songs which I don’t know that well, and a few newer songs which I know okay.   I don’t love her newer stuff, but I was even disappointed with the presentation of her older songs.  She has definitely taken on a new technique where she reeeeeaaaaaalllllllllyyyyy streeeeeeeeeeeetches the songs out. And, as I’ve complained on other recent posts, she mis-pronounces or mis-enunciates words that she used to say perfectly fine.  I find it maddening.

It took me two days to watch this 50 minute show because I kept falling asleep.  Gadzooks.

Now I totally respect an artist’s desire to change her songs.  Indeed, there are some live versions of her songs that I have enjoyed more than the originals.  But there’s something about the way these are drawn out that it feels like the life has been sucked from them.  The melody of “Ruby Through the Looking Glass” loses its impact when it is slowed down so much.

I’m also really disappointed with the synth that she chose.  Synthesizers can make any sound in the world, so why did they program this keyboard to play utterly anemic strings?  The conclusion of “Girl” which is so dramatic on record actually sounds worse with the thin washes than it would if it were played on just piano.

And as for the way she sings words now…  “Bells for Her” to give just one example, has her mangling the word “you” so that when she sings “not even you” we get something like “not even yaow” which I don’t understand.  I mean, listen to the awesome live version on To Venus and Back–she didn’t used to do that.  So wha happa?

I used to think that I liked her solo better.  I always enjoyed the little quiet time section of the concerts when she would play a song or two by herself.  But I feel like now, when she’s by herself, she loses any sense of editing.  The band seemed to keep her on pace.  And it’s a shame to see her drift so much.

Because Tori was an important part of my music youth, I’ll give her one more chance–she has a new album due out reasonably soon, but I’m not holding out much hope for it.   I think we may just be on very different planes of existence anymore.

[READ: July 19, 2011] Five Dials Number 17

The brevity of the Christmas issue is followed up by the somewhat longer Five Dials Number 17.  (This issue also has 7 pages of photos at the end of the issue).  I admit I didn’t know where Jaipur was (it’s sort of north west-ish in India, not terribly far from New Delhi).

This is also the first issue of 2011 (I’m nearly caught up!).  So the issue opens with New Year’s Resolutions.  The letter is also from editors, plural, for a change.

CRAIG TAYLOR & SIMON PROSSER-Letter from the Editors
The letter opens with some enjoyably self-deprecating comments about resolutions (and how they made theirs now, instead of at the end of the year).  But what I enjoyed most was the collective list of resolutions that the entire staff made.  They are listed as one person, which makes for wonderfully contradictory resolutions.  I was particularly pleased by: “stop making that face when my brother makes a suggestion.”

KAMILA SHAMSIE-But First… Returning to Karachi
This is an interesting story about superstitions in Karachi.  A young woman is sitting at a park bench when she is thwacked in the face.  The person sitting next to her says it was an eagle. That there have been many eagle swoops on people in the park.  Indeed, there have been many such strange attacks in Pakistan, each with its own rumor of horror and foreboding (like the rumor that miscreants were injecting people who were waiting online to see Titanic with a syringe filled with AIDS virus.)  The eagle attack is easily explained (it was a kite) .

PATRICK FRENCH-A Single Song: Beat It
French interviews a man, an internet sensation who sings (godawful) renditions of songs.  His most famous cover is of “Beat It“.  Dr K, as he is known, is unabashed in his pride for his singing, even if people are mean to him online.  ‘I am known across the globe for multiple diverse activities. If one becomes a total flop, I have others to boast of.’

FAIZA SULTAN KHAN-Currentish Events: Trouble at Sheikh Villa
This essay began a bit nebulously, but it quickly settled into a fascinating story about how fashion, and sometimes just the embrace of fashion can get people to jump the caste system in Karachi.  Sheikh Amer Hassan had ingratiated himself into the fashion pages of the Pakistani papers.  He kept showing up in the background.  Then he began throwing his own parties and real A-list people came (even though he was–as one person called him–“a nobody”).  And so Hassan kept on, throwing parties, having people over, until one day he was killed.  And the rest of the article is shocking if not surprising.

NAMITA DEVIDAYAL-Memoir: The House of Fairies
This is a fascinating look at a Namita’s family and her father’s family.  Her father was born in Amristar at The House of Fairies, which got its name from the alabaster angels that were mounted on the wall, even though the house was hardly fairy-like–with bulls living downstairs and no drains.  He moved away to Bombay where he raised his family.  And Namita is amazed at how far from her roots she has come, especially when she returns to her father’s home town.

ROMA TEARNE-Fiction: Paradise Feathers and Chicken Legs
I didn’t like this story initially because it dealt with a kind of island magical realism (chicken legs used in a curse).  But as the story focused in on both the protagonist, a painter from “a magical, tempestuous, paradise island floating in the Indian Ocean. (No prizes for guessing the name of the place. This is a story, not a competition)” and his rival (another painter from paradise) it grew very interesting.  And I wound up enjoying it quite a bit.

What I especially liked were the little asides, like in the quote in parentheses above.  Or “Angelina Petipa, (Christ, what sort of name is that?)”

TISHANI DOSHI-Two Poems
Interestingly they both have dogs barking,.

JAMES KELMAN-Fiction: Untethered
This was another of Kelman’s stream of consciousness stories.

MANJU KAPUR-Memoir: The Man Who Loved Beautiful Things
I really enjoyed this memoir.  The tale concerns Kapur’s father who was a dandy and who enjoyed the finer things in life, especially literature.  Of all of his children, Manju was the only one  who liked to read and she felt a great responsibility to carry on his love of literature. The worst fight she had with him was when he caught her reading a trashy romance novel.

Manju returns to her father’s upbringing, wondering how a man could be so unlike the rest of his family.  He was the only one to go to college and even as an adult he still sent money to his parents to pay back the money they gave him for school (which was long paid off).  His brother even lied about his birthday to get him into school (he calimed to be older than her was–which had consequences later in life!).

As the essay ends, we see that Kapur has written a novel in which a fictionalized version of her father appears.  One of his students finds her and complains that she has not done him justice.

ABHA DAWESAR-Dispatch: On Myrmecology and the Mahabharata
This was my least favorite piece.  I just could not get into it. The Mahabharata is a Sanskrit epic which Dawesar explains at the outset.  The focus switches to ants and their pheromone-driven understanding of each other.  It felt far longer than one an a quarter pages.

LEILA ABOUELA-Fiction: The Aromatherapist’s Husband
I really enjoyed this short story about the dissolution of a marriage.  But I wondered who the author imagined we would be sympathetic towards.  I felt for the husband, because the wife seemed so flaky. But I wonder if we were supposed to believe that she was actually right, that her spirituality was more valid than his worldliness.

M.K. GANDHI-From the Archive: ‘Marriage is no simple matter’
Yes, this is from Gandhi.  He describes his marriage as a young man. And how he (and the two relatives who were married with him in the same ceremony) enjoyed the spectacle.  But how now, as an adult he find the whole thing to be wasteful and foolish.

HENNING MANKELL-Finally: Sofia (Translated by Robert Johnsson)
This is a very moving story about a young girl from Mozambique named Sofia, who stepped on a land mine as a girl.  The mine killed her sister and destroyed her legs.   She survived and has since become a spokesperson for landmine removal.  This was quite inspirational.

DAYANITA SINGH-Adventures of a Photographer
This eight page photo essay includes text.  And it is a fascinating if not a little vague story.  The pictures are cool though.

Here’s the information about the launch of the issue.  And here’s a very cool poster.