I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: ADELE-Tiny Desk Concert #112 (February 17, 2011).

Adele is one of the few pop superstars who I not only like but who I like quite a lot.  21 is a really great album.  And what this Tiny Desk Concert proves is that, whatever she is marketed as, she is not just a pop singer.

Adele sings three songs here (and she has a cold or something).  She does the biggie, “Someone Like You” which sounds even more naked and unprotected in this version, because the piano is mixed quite low.  Next is “Chasing Pavements,” a song I knew from when it was first released two years ago.  It’s got a straightforward adult alternative vibe and sounds great here.

The final track is “Rolling in the Deep” which is one of my favorite songs lately, even if I don’t quite understand what the lyrics mean.  But this is where you know that Adele’s voice is amazing.  She belts this song out like she’s in a massive concert hall, not a tiny office.  And she sounds incredible.  It’s a wonderful version of the song.

The funniest thing about this Tiny Desk Concert is hearing Adele talk.  I don’t know a thing about her.  And I had no idea that her speaking voice was so heavily accented. She sounds like some crazy teen from a British sitcom.  Especially when she cackles.  To hear her prattling on about something and then shift in a second to that amazing singing voice is a moment of mystery to behold.

Check it out here.

[READ: January 13, 2012] “A Brief Encounter with the Enemy”

Saïd Sayrafiezadeh has written some very cool stories (and some cool pieces for Five Dials).  But I have to admit I was a little concerned when I saw that this was going to be a military story.

Lately I’ve been reading outside of my comfort zone quite a bit.  And this is another one.  I just don’t like military stories.  I’m not a war guy, I don’t really like guns, and in my limited experience, military stories are about little more than degradation, death and violence, glorious violence.

But as I said, I’ve enjoyed Sayrafiezadeh’s varied stories quite a lot, so I wondered what his take on the issue would be.  And I was pleasantly surprised by the story.  Even though, really, the story (the bulk of it anyway) is kind of a downer. 

The story is about one man and how his whole platoon spends most of their time in Iraq building a bridge.  Their sergeant has told them that at the other side of the bridge is a hill and then a valley, and in that valley is the enemy waiting to kill them.  So they build their bridge, very very slowly and rather clumsily (the joke about the blowtorch is quite funny) trying to stave off their inevitable sojourn to meet the enemy.

The logical person in me says, but if the enemy is just over the hill in the valley, why doesn’t the enemy come and get them.  It’s not like building a bridge is quiet work and it takes them months to build.  But then, that’s not army thinking apparently.  Of course, when they get over the bridge and into the valley they see that there are, indeed, no enemies.  It’ just a nice, peaceful valley.

And since there are no enemies there and the real war is far across the other side of the country, the soldiers just sit around.  They train, they exercise, but mostly they eat and watch movies.  Now, as any fiction reader knows, if there’s a gun mentioned in the first act, it will go off by the end of the story.  And that’s true here.  The story suddenly grows very very dark.

I found it heartbreaking.

This is a great story with and ending that really upset me.

For ease of searching, I include: Said Sayrafiezadeh