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Archive for April, 2013

Kelly Davio–Burn This House (2013)

Posted in José González, Kelly Davio, New Yorker, Poetry, Poets, Sasha Frere-Jones, Short Books, Swedish Music, The Knife on April 30, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Burn-This-House-175x250SOUNDTRACK: THE KNIFE-“Heartbeats” (2002).

knifeheart

I learned of this song from the José González cover that was featured in the (very cool) Sony video with the bouncing balls.  The song turned me on to González, but not necessarily the song itself.  I knew The Knife did the original  and I remember when I first heard it, I didn’t like it nearly as much as the González version.

It’s been a few years and there’s a new The Knife album out and in the New Yorker review of it Sasha Frere-Jones mentioned this song again.  So I wanted to listen to it without the cover so prominent.  And indeed, the González cover is quite straightforward (acoustic guitar rather than mega synth, but otherwise pretty spot on). The Knife’s version is very retro synth-sounding .  It reminds me of a wacky 80s song.  Or perhaps a 2000’s Europop song.

The vocals are high-pitched and a wee bit over the top, but all in all it’s very catchy.  Frere-Jones said that The Knife version was very popular but evidently I didn’t travel in those circles because I don’t recognize it as being huge.

And I still like José’s version better.

I know it’s not really cool to show the video of the cover version when I’m talking about the original, and it’s really not that cool to use a commercial as a video, but it is still very fun to watch.

[READ: April 30, 2013] Burn This House

For the last day of April, the last day of poetry month, I read a new book of poetry that came across my desk today.  This is Kelly Davio’s first collection.  She is an MFA and quite an accomplished poet (managing editor and Pushcart nominee).  I also thought that I would see if she was a “modern, weird” poet or a more traditional one (I secretly hoped for more traditional as I’d burnt out on wacky ones).  For the most part she is more traditional and I liked most of her poems quite a lot.

The book was divided into five sections.  And I have to admit that the final few sections contained poems which seems a little forced to me (more on that later).  For it was in the early pages that I thought the poetry was most magnificent.

Although when I first started reading I was afraid that the poetry was going to be ponderous without enough concrete detail.  Like in “auguries” which showed a series of potential omens (Davio seems to have a thing with birds crashing into windows) which were effective, but I didn’t like the ending: “To what /significance such eroded things?” It seemed too vague to be powerful.

But the poems that came right after were just wonderful with detail like in “The First Lines” which had this description of a scarecrow: (more…)

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Five Dials Number 27B: Pedagogic Poems (27 April 2013)

Posted in Advice, Babies, Books about writers, Death, Emily Berry, Five Dials, Hannah Bagshaw, Heather Phillipson, Huh?, James Brookes, Joe Prendergast, Kyle Platts, Luke Kennard, Nathan Hamilton, Oli Hazzard, Olly Todd, Poetry, Poets, Record Labels, Sam Buchan-Watts, Sophia Augusta, Tim Cockburn on April 29, 2013| Leave a Comment »

fivedials_no27b

SOUNDTRACK:  FREEGAL MUSIC (2013).

freegalNot only am I a librarian, I’m also a patron of libraries (we currently use four!).  I’m also a huge advocate of library usage.  Everyone knows you can get free books at the library.  And many people know (but many people don’t) that you can get free CDs and DVDs from the library.  Well, I’m advocating a new service that many libraries have implemented (both the library where I worked and my local library have it).

It’s called Freegal and it allows you to download (and keep) three songs a week.  The selection is quite impressive, as they have made agreements with 10,000 record labels.  That’s 10,000 LABELS, not artists, so huge numbers of songs are available. I did a few random searches and was delighted by how much was there.

Even their genre divisions are impressive.  Just check out this sample selection from the B’s: BeBop Big Band Black Metal Bluegrass Blues Bolero Bollywood Brasil Soul Brazilian Breakbeat BritPop Broadway.

So check out to see if your library subscribes.   You get three free songs every Monday morning!  Not bad for the price of a free library card.

[READ: July 3, 3011] Five Dials Number 27B

I haven’t posted about a Five Dials in a couple of issues, primarily because I find writing about anthologies is very time consuming (I have recently read three McSweeney’s which I haven’t had the time to edit together into posts).  The good news is that I have only missed two issues, but I know that at least one of them is pretty large.  I was a little bummed to see another new one already, but then I saw that this issue was not only short, it was full of poetry.  And, since this is my poetry month, why not end the month with a little more poetry.

I enjoyed the offputting cartoon on the cover of this issue which is creepy and funny at the same time.  (Illustrations are by Sophia Augusta, Hannah Bagshaw, Kyle Platts, Tom Rees and Joe Prendergast.  I assume Augusta did the cover).

There was no letter from the editor or any of the usual suspects in this issue.  Rather this issue opens with a Letter from the Poetry Editor.  It is shaped like a poem but isn’t one.

SAM BUCHAN-WATTS-On Parenting Poems
Mentioning a 1954 parenting guide (from Elizabeth Longfellow), Buchan-Watts says that they asked eight young poets to choose a chapter heading from Longfellow’s book Points for Parents, and to make a poem starting from that title.

And it’s now that I admit that these poems have set me back terribly in my appreciation of poetry which I have been nurturing all month.  If ever there was a collection of seemingly random words, it is these. (more…)

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Andrew Clements–Frindle (1996) [audiobook 2009–Keith Nobbs,]

Posted in Andrew Clements, Audiobooks, Children's Books, Dictionary, Funny (ha ha), Keith Nobbs, Set at School on April 28, 2013| Leave a Comment »

[LISTENED TO: April 2013] Frindle

frindleI went to the Princeton Public Library looking for audio books for the kids (we’ve exhausted most of our town library’s books).  There was a nice new selection of audio books at PPL, and this was one of them.  I wasn’t familiar with the story but Sarah knew it already.

So in Frindle, (which was Clements’ first chapter book after several picture books), Nick Allen is upset to find out that he has Mrs Granger as his English teacher this year.  You see, Nick is beloved by his classmates for his ability to ask the perfect and perfectly timed question that will distract the teacher so he or she forgets to give homework.  He has even sidetracked teachers so that they barely taught any lessons at all.  But Mrs Granger has been around and has a reputation as being a really really tough teacher.

One the first day, Nick comes up with the perfect question.  He learns that Mrs Granger loves dictionaries–she has one propped up on a lectern in the front of the class–so he waits until there’s about six minutes left and he asks her how all those words got in the dictionary.  It was genius, it was brilliant.  It didn’t work.  She turned it around on him and asked him to give do research and give a report about the question.  Tomorrow.  Ack!

Nick is distraught.  But then he decides to get really into it.  And the next day he gives a presentation that lasts over thirty minutes. Mrs Granger knows what he’s up to but she is impressed by his tenacity.  They have a kind of friendly stand off.  But she makes a small comment that sets the rest of the book in motion.  She tells Nick that it is him, and really everyone, who decides what words mean.  If everyone agrees that a word means something, then it does.

And a light goes off in Nick’s head. (more…)

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MOMIX: Botanica (McCartre Theater, Princeton, NJ, April 25, 2013)

Posted in Dance, McCarter Theatre, Momix, Moses Pendelton, Princeton, NJ, Set in New Jersey! on April 27, 2013| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: April 25, 2013] MOMIX Botancia

momixb

I didn’t realize that we attended a Momix show almost exactly one year ago.  But that’s when it was.  That show was called Remix, and it was a collection of great bits from Momix shows.  This year’s show, Botanica, is an older show and there were bits of it in Remix.  This gave me the most unique (for me) experience of seeing a dance troupe perform things that I had already seen!  What was fun was that the dancers were (I believe) different and, it felt like perhaps the pieces were performed a little bit differently too.

One of the fun things about the show was how the pieces segued into one another–most routines didn’t end so much as meld into the next one (and you can see how picking pieces out for a Greatest Hits might require some restructuring).

We saw this show at the McCarter Theatre, where, once again we had the $20 seats (knocked down to $18 with a AAA discount!).  For this show the seats were a bit of a hindrance because Momix is definitely about spectacle, and there were a few pieces where the spectacle was lost from our angle (which was a little below the stage and off to the right).  On the plus side, being able to see the dancers up close (we were literally three rows from the stage) brought a new level of experience to the show that you don’t get when the performers are interchangeable (hey, that’s the sweaty guy, that’s the blonde lady, that’s the guy with the amazing muscles).

The show opened with a waving sheet which looked like snow.  As the sheet began rippling dancers revealed themselves underneath and starting popping up, like flowers or dolphins or gravity defying skiers.  It was very cool.   Then a giant flower-like item came out on stage and women danced around it.  There followed a wonderful sequence with black light paint as three performers with neon arms and legs made wonderful shapes–animals, faces, bodies–using their limbs.  Our cheap seats hindered this piece somewhat. (more…)

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Enrique Vila-Matas–Bartleby & Co. (2000) [translated 2004]

Posted in All Songs Considered, Biography, Books about writers, Death, Enrique Vila-Matas, Frank Zappa, Herman Melville, Jonathan Dunne, Mike Patton, Mr. Bungle, Os Mutantes, Roberto Bolaño on April 26, 2013| Leave a Comment »

bartelbySOUNDTRACK: OS MUTANTES-” Picadilly Willie” (2013).

Iosmut enjoyed this album so much (thanks NPR for the stream) that I had to talk about this song and how radically different it was from yesterday’s track.  “Picadilly Willie” is this wonderful old-sounding rock song.  It’s got a very classic rock riff, but there’s something slightly off-kilter which makes it sounds more like Frank Zappa classic than radio classic.  And when the vocals come in (with a sinister laugh) it sounds more like Mr Bungle than anything else (I wouldn’t be surprised if Mike Patton was a fan of Os Mutantes).

The song ends with what sounds to me like Middle Eastern sitar music and echoed chants of “Bra-zil!”

And these are just two of the styles of music on this wonderfully wild and diverse CD.  I can’t wait for its release.

[READ: April 22, 2013] Bartelby & Co.

I read about this book in the Bolaño interview book.  Vila-Matas was one of many authors that Bolaño highly recommended–this book in particular.  And, it was one of the few books on that extensive list that has been translated into English.

This book follows in the rich tradition of books that are more or less lists about people and not really novels at all. (This seems like a peculiarly Latin American pastime, at least in my experience, as there are nearly a half dozen books that seem to do this, including several by Bolaño).

The key to this book is in the title: Bartelby.  The narrator is a hunchbacked loner, and he decides to catalog all of the instances of writers who have in the grand tradition of Herman Melville’s Bartelby the Scrivener said “no, I would prefer not to” write anymore.  And so this book becomes a series of notes without a text.  The glorious list includes many famous and not so famous writers (the most famous being Salinger) who whether famous or not, decided to write no more.  And thus we have 86 “sections” in which the narrator writes about writers who stopped writing.  For most of the he gives their reason for no longer writing, for others he simply likes talking about how they stopped writing or what their circumstances were before they stopped. (more…)

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Roberto Bolaño–The Last Interview & Other Conversations (2009)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Biography, Bomb, Book Reviews, Books about writers, Capital, Carlos Fuentes, Carmen Boullosa, Eliseo Alvarez, Funny (ha ha), Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Gogol Bordello, Hector Soto, Jorge Luis Borges, Kurt Vonnegut, Marcela Valdes, Margaret Carson, Mario Vargas Llosa, Matias Bravo, Monica Maristain, Octavio Paz, Os Mutantes, Pablo Neruda, Playboy, Roberto Bolaño, The Nation, Tom Waits, Turia on April 25, 2013| Leave a Comment »

bolano

SOUNDTRACK: OS MUTANTES-“Fool Metal Jack” (2013).

Iosmut have known about Os Mutantes for years.  I never knew anything about them (and never really understood their name–although now that I have been working with Brazilian books at work I realize that their name is Portuguese for The Mutants (it was the Os that always threw me off).  I had no idea that a) they’d been around since the 60s and were part of the psychedelic scene or b) that they were still around (after some breakups and with a largely new lineup) or c) that they sang in English (which they do on several songs on this album) or d) that their new album kicked so much ass.

The album is called Fool Metal Jack and it is a fantastic mixture of fast heavy rock, Brazilian traditional sounds, what I assume are Native Brazilian chants and a heavy dose of weirdness.  All wrapped up in an anti-war stance, like on this track “Fool Metal Jack.”

A creepy, distorted  bassline introduces this song which sounds like the guy from Gogol Bordello singing a Tom Waits march.  It’s about a soldier in the middle of a war.  The bridge means more voices come in, bringing in an even more disorienting sound.  And the chorus chanted “Yes.  No More War” completes the song.  By the time the wailing guitar solo comes in the chants of “This is the war of hell” have even more impact.

This stomping song was a great introduction to this band who I now need to explore further.

[READ: April 18. 2013] The Last Interview

I enjoyed Kurt Vonnegut’s “Last Interview” and since I had always intended to read Bolaño’s I was delighted to see that our library had it.  Bolaño is a fascinating interview subject because you never really know what he is going to say.  There are even serious questions about the veracity of his life story which many people believe he fabricated for more dramatic effect.

But the one thing that is absolutely consistent about Bolaño is that he always praises writers whom he respects (and will trash those he doesn’t, although that seems to come more from the interviewer’s  instigation (not that he needs a lot).    So the last interview that he did is the one from Mexican Playboy which has been collected in Between Parentheses.  But the other three are earlier and, it seems, a little more “truthful” or at least less naughty-seeming.

What’s fascinating about this book is that the introduction by Marcela Valdes (“Alone Among the Ghosts”) is over 30 pages long!  The article originally appeared in The Nation on Dec 8, 2008 (read it here).  As such it’s not an introduction to this book, it’s introduction for English readers to Bolaño circa 2666.  And it’s a great read.  It is primarily about 2666, which Valdes has read many times.  She goes into interesting depth about the story but mostly she relates it to Bolaño’s own experiences while writing the book.  It focuses especially on his research about the real murders.  His interest was genuine and he sought help from a reporter who was doing genuinely decent work (ie. not accepting the word of the state about what was going on).

Bolaño has said he wished he was a detective rather than a writer, which explains The Savage Detectives and Woes of the True Policeman.  But Valdes also points out how almost all of his shorter novels have some kind of detective work involved–seeking someone who is lost or hiding.  The article was really great and is worth a read for anyone interested in Bolaño, whether you have read him or not. (more…)

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Jonathan Fetter-Vorm–Trinity: A Graphic History of the First Atomic Bomb (2012)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Dead Can Dance, Death, End of the World, Graphic Novel, History, Jonathan Fetter-Vorm, KCRW 89.9 FM--Santa Monica, CA, Scientists, Smarty Pants, Violence, War on April 24, 2013| Leave a Comment »

vormSOUNDTRACK: DEAD CAN DANCE-“Children of the Sun” (Live at KCRW, April 24, 2013).

deadcandanceDead Can Dance are timeless.  Their music sounds ancient and modern at the same time.  And Brendan Perry’s voice has an unearthly majesty to it that never seems to age.

I’ve known the band for decades (during which time they have broken up and reunited and broken up and reunited).  And in all that time, while their sound has changed in subtle ways, the band is instantly recognizable.  I’ve never really thought of them as a live entity–they just seem like such a creation of the studio that it would be impossible to do justice to their wash of music live.  Of course that was truer three decades ago before it was easy to fit an entire orchestra on an iPod.

You can watch this song on NPR.  It’s fun to watch a band with two keyboardists (and Lisa Gerrard on…autoharp?) and see all of them making very different sounds.  The only disappointing thing about watching this is that they have so many cool instruments strewn about which do not get used on this song (you can see the whole show here and watch him bust out that bouzouki).

This song is a new one and it doesn’t have quite the ponderous nature as their older material.  Which is a bit of a shame, as they were so over the top it was fabulous, but maybe they’re just settling into New Old Age.

[READ: April 20, 2013] Trinity

Sarah brought this book home because it was on YALSA Hub Reading Challenge for 2013. I’m unlikely to do the challenge as I have so many other books to read, but I have already read 5 of the required 25.  Not too bad, although since the challenge is from Feb to June and I read a couple last year, I don’t even qualify for some of the ones I DID read.  Anyhow, she told me I’d like this and she was right (as usual).

Trinity is the story of the development of the atomic bomb done as a graphic novel.

It outlines how we came to develop and test the bomb and of course, the aftermath of its use.  What I liked about the story is that leading up to the detonation of the bomb, the quest for its discovery is presented in a fairly neutral way.  Essentially, once it was discovered that we could split the atom, it was deemed inevitable that someone would make a bomb out of it.  It stood to reason that if Hitler or the Japanese figured it out before us they would use it on us (since we were at war with them).  The intention was that America would be decent and not use it with impunity (which is not to say we wouldn’t use it at all).  The book presents that American can do spirit that the forties seem to be all about–a sort of gee whiz, let’s figure this out mentality.

I knew some of the history of the bomb, but there was a lot here that I didn’t know: that thousands of people moved to New Mexico to work on the bomb—housing was put up and families moved in, some 80,000 people in all.  And most of the people had no idea what they were working on.  It’s hard to fathom that there were thousands of people whose work helped to create a nuclear bomb and yet they can feel neither pride nor shame because they had no idea that’s what they were doing.  Weird. (more…)

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Dan Chelotti–X (2013)

Posted in Dan Chelotti, Huh?, Melting Hopefuls, Peter Gabriel, Poetry, Poets on April 23, 2013| Leave a Comment »

chelotti SOUNDTRACK: PETER GABRIEL-“The Book of Love” (2010).

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This is a cover of the Magnetic Fields’ song (not the fifties song).  I have this strange relationship with the Magnetic Fields.  I love the songs that Stephin Merritt writes.  His melodies are simple but timeless.  And his lyrics are usually wonderful.  Like from this song:

The book of love has music in it
In fact that’s where music comes from
Some of it is just transcendental
Some of it is just really dumb

And then there’s Merritt’s voice.  It is deep.  Almost comically deep, especially when he sings slowly, it brings on a strange profundity to these words.  And it works pretty well.  Although sometimes I want the songs to be…more.  And that’s where the covers seem to come in.

Gabriel’s cover doesn’t change the song really at all.  But it has Gabriel’s voice, which soars and it has Gabriel’s sense of instrumentation, which also soars.  Perhaps it’s that Merritt’s songs deserve bigger and lusher treatments–they practically scream for Broadway.    And while Gabriel’s version is nowhere near Broadway over-the-topness, it fleshes things out nicely.

Of course, it may very well be that Merritt’s understatement (and oftentimes, just one instrument) provide a successful counterpoint to the spectacle that the song could be.  And maybe that’s why they are so successful.

But Gabriel’s version is really great, too.

[READ: April 20, 2013] X

One more book of poetry for April, this one by Dan Chelotti.  It is Chelotti’s debut, and Chelotti’s poetry is wild and weird and often quite funny.  It is also unapologetically modern.  As you can see from the first poem “Ball Lightning”

I am looking out over
one of the first real gray
days of autumn listening
to a podcast in which
these two men are talking about
the phenomenon of ball lightning.

Or, more sadly in “ Grieving in the Modern World” in which he compares the way people’s grief in the old days was so public, but now it seems so small and insignificant, oh and besides:

…the microwave is
almost finished heating
my dinner , and the newshour
is about to begin. (more…)

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Bill Cotter–“The Tandoor” (Lucky Peach, No 6: Before and After the Apocalypse: Winter 2013)

Posted in Bill Cotter, Boredom, Dave Grohl, Drinking, End of the World, Foo Fighters, Food, Lucky Peach, Marriage Trouble, McSweeney's, Rush, Short Story on April 22, 2013| Leave a Comment »

peach6SOUNDTRACK: FOO FIGHTERS “Overture” (Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, 2013).

ffhofOn April 19th, Rush was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  I don’t particularly care about the Hall of Fame, but I love to see Rush celebrated.

And I love to see Dave Grohl celebrate with people.  So, as only Dave and co. can do, they donned white kimonos and wigs and set out to rock the HoF with a great cover of 2112’s “Overture.”  They didn’t get into “Temples of Syrinx” (I was curious to see if Dave would try that falsetto), but they were joined by the original trio for the end of the song with Geddy stating that the meek shall inherit the earth.

FF do a great job, they sound heavy and they got all of those odd time signatures down right.  Dave does an admirable job with Alex’s challenging solos.  All in all, it was a pleasure to see.  Evidently this will be broadcast officially on May 18, but for now there’s a shaky cam version floating around the web.  I found it on Stereogum.  You can also see Dave Grohl’s very cool induction speech there too (although the picture no longer seems to be on cameltoe.org).

And check out the commitment (even with Tyler’s moustache) and the real set behind him.

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[READ: April 21, 2013] “The Tandoor”

An unexpected title for this story in which the tandoor plays a very small role.  The story felt like there could have been a lot more to it, for while there was a lot of backstory and the story did feel complete, I could have read a lot more (which I think is a great complement).  It starts out in a rather mundane fashion with a girl in the backseat of a car being belligerent because her mother took away the iPad (so she could do Sudoku).  The family is driving to Texas to see the Hole.  Before we learn what the Hole is, we learn more about the family.

The husband and wife are fighting (as usual).  The daughter has taken the father’s side because he’s the underdog.

It turns out that the father has opened another restaurant (this is the fifth one, the other four have failed).  It is also not doing very well and the wife resents not only the failing business but also the fact that he has been given money to try five businesses.   She also resents the woman that he husband admitted he lusts after (at least he admitted it in his sleep).  And she seems to have taken that as an invitation to sleep with someone else as well.  (There’s a lot more to it and the details are wonderful). (more…)

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Chris Adrian and John Crowley–“Last Supper” (Lucky Peach, No 6: Before and After the Apocalypse: Winter 2013)

Posted in Bob Mould, Boredom, Chris Adrian, End of the World, Funny (strange), Hüsker Dü, John Crowley, Lucky Peach, McSweeney's, Religion, The Pope on April 21, 2013| Leave a Comment »

peach6SOUNDTRACK: BOB MOULD-Workbook (1989).

workbI actually wrote this while reading Bob Mould’s book, I assumed I attached it to something and then wrote about Mould’s second disc Black Sheets of Rain.  And now I see that I never attached this to anything.

This is Mould’s solo debut, an album that I think of as being a mellow acoustic album.  And it is, kind of, at least if you go by the opening song, “Sunspots” a  beautiful little acoustic guitar instrumental.  And the rest of the instrumentation on the record includes strings, which are prominent on “Wishing Well.”  Although the song rocks a lot harder than I remember–especially the rollicking solo which has some real screaming guitars and angst in it. It sticks out a bit in the album because most of the album is more along the lines of “Heartbreak a Stranger”–opening with a gentle pretty acoustic guitar and Bob’s emotional voice (and really nice harmonies).

And then comes “See a Little Light” Mould’s first solo hit (and a big one at that).  It’s bright and has great harmonies.  There’s strings which really accentuate the song and a few moments which even now all these years later give me chills. “Poison Years” has more of that acoustic vibe but it brings in a big chorus (oh his harmonies!) and a harsh guitar solo (and a chilling final note)–a great song all around.

“Sinners and Their Repentances” is a minor key masterpiece in which Mould’s voice seems like the main instrument.  “Brasilia Crossed with Trenton” is a six and a half-minute song.  (This album is full of long songs actually–which comes as something of a surprise given Mould’s past success with three-minute pop songs–three of these are over 5 minutes and two are over 6!).  “Compositions for the Young and Old” is a great song all around.  “Lonely Afternoon” has some Hüsker Dü elements.   “Dreaming I Am” has a great mid-song riff (which sounds like a mandolin) and there’s something so great about the chorus.

“Whichever Way the Wind Blows’ ends the disc with a loud abrasive guitar sound. And his singing is practically inaudible shouting.   It sounds angry and has a rough riff and loud guitars.  At nearly 7 minutes it’s quite the cathartic ending.  It’s a strange ending to such a gentle disc, but maybe Mould wanted to show that he hadn’t gone entirely soft.  It’s an amazing debut and an auspicious start to his solo career.

[READ: April 21, 2013] “Last Supper”

As I mentioned, this issue of Lucky Peach is about the apocalypse.  So it’s only fitting that one of the two stories be about a Last Supper.  The story is a series of letters from Adrian to Crowley.

Adrian invites Crowley over for a special meal that his mother is making in honor of the Pope and his Last Tweets of the Apocalypse.  Adrian explains that her mother is a huge fan of Crowley’s work and would love it if he could come to this meal.  There is an enclosed (grotesque) picture of a pig which Adrian says they will be serving and, although it looks like pig, it is not made of pig at all.

Crowley demurs this invitation–he is extremely reticent to eat anything that is not what it purports to be (he had a bad experience once).  But he wishes them well. (more…)

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