I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: GOGOL BORDELLO-Super Taranta! (2007).

I’ve heard a lot of live music from Gogol Bordello (from NPR and on Live at Axis Mundi).  And quite a lot of those songs come from this album (they had a few years of down time between this record and their release from 2010).  It’s always fun to hear an album for the first time when you know live versions of the songs pretty well.    And of course, it’s always weird to hear the songs that you don’t know  (I guess they weren’t popular?)

But even if I didn’t know most of the songs already, this is a great album and a great introduction to the manic energy that is Gogol Bordello.  While it’s true that they are best represented live, this album is very well produced and mixed and really showcases the kind of insanity that Eugene and crew can get up to.

And there’s not a bum song on the record.

When I first played this in the house, Sarah  found it way to hyper, and I can appreciate that.  Gogol Bordello literally never stop.  Their songs are full of a combination of punk and gypsy–a ton  of energy.  And mostly, it is directed at fun and overcoming difficulties.  Eugene Hütz is not very angry although he certainly has things to complain about.  But mostly he is  singing for justice (and alcohol).

The album opens with Hütz singing a somewhat quiet intro before HA! and the punk comes rumbling  in.  There’s a prominent violin, fast acoustic guitars, and accordion and some really intense drums.  I never noticed the drums as much as I did on this record.  In a couple of tracks the drums seem to never stop, even as the melody slows down–and it still sound s good.

There’s some screaming elements, some gypsy keening  and a tribute to “Alcohol.”  In most  live versions of “Alcohol,” I find the ace too slow, but it sounds great here.   Some other highlights are “American Wedding,” “Wonderlust King,”  “Harem in Tuscany” (which has some great gypsy stylings).  And for a change of pace (as if there weren’t enough interesting things on this record), “Dub the  Frequencies of Love” introduces some reggae into the mix.

Hütz  is a great front man.      He is full of energy and excitement and his accented singing style is really great–passionate if not very conventional.

Oh, and the cover shows the band’s backing vocalists with fire buckets on their feet because he plays them live.  A tuneful racket indeed.

[READ: April 13, 2012] Hot Pink

I have yet to read Adam Levin’s The Instructions (it’s over 1,000 pages, so I’ve been putting it off).  But I was glad to get this collection fo short stories so I could see what his writing is all about.

Hot Pink is a collection of ten short stories.  I really enjoyed a couple of them.  I was a little confused by a couple of them and one or two I had a hard time getting through.

“Frankenwittgenstein” reminded me a lot of a George Saunders story although it goes in a very different direction.  In the story the narrator’s dad sees a special on bulimia and decides to build a doll. Bonnie: The Beautiful Body-Action Doll for the Self-Body Image-Enhancement of Toddling and Preadolescent Girls at Risk.  The dad is quite clever and makes a digestive system that actually works!  And so he markets the doll to a toy company.

They want changes made.  Over and over.  For years.  And the dad makes them and goes slowly insane.  It’s funny but not crazy funny (like George Saunders), and the conclusion is fairly satisfying.

“Considering the Bittersweet End of Susan Falls”
I’m most intrigued by the chapter names of this story: It opens with Chapter 130,020 (which I assume means it’s starting long after the beginning of her life?).  Anyhow, Susan is a girl in a wheelchair.  She was abandoned on the floor of a jungle as a baby and leopards ate her legs. Or perhaps she was hit by a car last year.  It depends on which version Susan tells us.

Susan is a prodigy who is in college at fifteen.  And with all else going on in her life she becomes obsessed with Carla Ribisi’s ass, which is always covered by ski pants.  She wants to know if the ass is big (since snow pants make all asses look big) or not.

There’s an amusing set piece in a classroom involving Susan’s wheelchair, and then a lengthy scene in which Susan gets to find out if Carla’s ass is big.    And then there’s a surprise (or not really, given the title) ending.

This was one of my favorite stories in the book, as there were some fun twists played with type and style.  And the mathematical syllogism of Carla’s ass was wonderful.

“The Extra Mile”
This was like a kind of Borscht belt comedy.  And I really liked it.  There were a lot of funny lines, and of course the entire premise, of four old Jewish men (well, three and The Goy) talking about their wives and going, you know, the extra mile for them, was quite entertaining. This was also a favorite story.

“Finch”
This was the first story in the book that really let us in to Levin’s dark side.  True there was some darkness in the other stories but this one goes pretty dark.  The titular Finch is a kind of shadowy mafia guy who is a legend in their neighborhood–spoken of in hushed tones.  And all the boys wish that Finch was their dad.

But the two characters in this story are not related to Finch.  Rather, they sit in the basement and huff cans of cleaner.  There’s a culminating scene that is very drug induced which ends up with the kids in a police station.

The writing in this story was quite good.  And even though I didn’t like any of the characters, I enjoyed the story as a whole.

“Relating” is a series of seven unrelated flash fiction pieces.  Some are more effective than others.
They are:

• Mixed Messages
• Two Conversations
• Billy
• A Professor and a Lover
• The End of Friendships
• Cred
• Important Men

Many of them have been published individually.

“Jane Tell”
This is a bizarre story in which a woman named Jane Tell insinuates herself into the narrator’s life (after a group therapy meeting).  There’s some very funny sequences in the story (with the therapist getting mad at Ben and taking sides with other people in the group.  Like when Ben says to Jake, “That’s pretty fucken ridiculous,” the therapist uses it as an impromptu examination for anger management.

But the key drama of the story comes from Jane Tell’s need for, desire for, getting hit.  The violence turns her on.  And the sex is incredible. Ben would never hit her, so she goes out, in search of “Ricks” to do the deed.  This strange subculture she has created about Ricks and, in an early part she says to Ben, “Don’t be such a Steve,” which Levin just presumes we will catch up on.  There’s a subplot in which Ben slowly grows terrified of driving a car, but since Jane and Ben are living together, she is able to transport him as needed.  Their relationship, despite all of the craziness, grows serious.  And then the end changes everything.

“RSVP”
This is a short story with a lot going on.  It opens with a tragic story about missed romantic opportunity.  This becomes the basis of the narrator’s own romantic life.  And the mistakes he makes.  There’s also the opportunity to invent a new religion.  This story was very short and would have been less effective if it were longer.

“Scientific American”
This is another peculiar story in which a crack in a bedroom wall begins to ooze gel.  In the way of sitcoms, they never take the gel to be analyzed.  Rather, they do all manner of different things with it.  The story about the gel and all of its details and permutations is pretty fascinating and quiet interesting and, had the story been set in pre-scientific times, would have been really cool.  But I kept thinking, why don’t you just bring this to be analyzed somewhere? Despite that complaint I rather enjoyed the story and the descent into madness–especially when the simple explanation is given.  But by then it’s too late.

“How to Play The Guy”
This story isn’t so much a story as a series of instructions.  It also ties back, unexpectedly to “Jane Tell.”  The stories aren’t connected literally, but the strange world that Jane created about Rick and Steve gets full explication here.  It was a little long, but I admired its thoroughness.

“Hot Pink”
This story reminded me of the crazy sequences of a Curious George book.  How in the beginning, George is flying a kite and then suddenly he’s on a truck and then in a the hospital sliding down a bannister.  In this one, two young thugs intimidate a guy into giving them his grapefruits (the narrator feels badly about this later).  Then they go to a female friend’s house.  The narrator likes the girl, but her father thinks of the narrator as a friend and KNOWS nothing will happen there. The kids go out to a party but the streets are crowded because it’s furniture day in Chicago.  They get into a lengthy (and moving) discussion of why there is a balloon tied to the grill of a garbage truck.  Some of the answers are quite surprising given who were are dealing with.  Eventually they go to a party at Sensei Mike’s, only to realize after they have drunk some beers, that this is the wrong party. And the hosts–yuppie tight-asses–aren’t too happy to have them there,

There’s some very funny sequences in here.  I especially enjoyed the joke about shibboleths and the details of the party in general.  This was another of my favorite stories in the bunch and scenes of it have remained with me for quite some time.

Indeed, many of the characters and scenes have stayed with me, and that’ a pretty good sign for a book.  There were a couple of clunkers but overall, it was great stuff.

I also enjoyed that there was a kind of theme of aggressive/misunderstood adolescence in the book.  It was interesting to see that played out in some many different ways.  And yes, this does make me want to bust out The Instructions.  Maybe I need another massive book to read.