I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: GIRAFFES? GIRAFFES!-“Fucking Ants Man! Where They Coming From? (Let’s Hang The Carroll Footnoteitsists)” (2005).

I just learned that there is a band named Giraffes? Giraffes!, which is the name of a silly book published by McSweeney’s.  I was so delighted to find out about this band, that I immediately went to their band camp site, where I was further delighted to find out that they are an instrumental post-rock kind of band with some great tunes.  And, of course, when your songs are instrumental, you get to make up the best titles.  Like this one.

There’s only two guys in the band which must mean overdubs (I hope so, otherwise they defy physics).  This song starts out with a riff in what I think is 5/4 time which discombobulates for a while until it becomes a wild guitar riff (and the drums come more to the fore).  While that speedy riff is going on, another more pleasant solo plays over the top.  Then the song plays some really fast drums with chords that sound like mid 70s Who, which is followed by another pretty guitar solo.  The end resorts back to some mild chaos and fun until it ends very prettily.

If you like post rock, give Giraffes? Giraffes! a try.

This song comes from their debut album, Superbass!!!! (Black Death Greatest Hits Vol. 1).  Which you can hear here.

[READ May 5, 2013] Places, Strange and Quiet

This is a book of photographs by Wim Wenders, filmmaker extraordinaire.  What I fouond very interesting about this book is that it is not a book of art (as far as I define it).  It is rather a book of documentation.  These pictures are not beautiful, they are not artistically arranged, they are not profound.  Rather, it is the combination of picture and text that really makes the story.  In some ways this becomes a book of stills from a never-to-be-made film.  And as such, it’s very cool.

The first one is a picture of a family in front of a dinosaur (which looks like it is from the 1970s—huh turns out to be 1983).  It is under-lit and not very impressive.  Until you read the sidebar: “A picture is defined twice.  When you see the whole at first glance: “A dinosaur!  A family!” And then when you find a detail that changes everything…Mom reading in the backseat.  He’s absolutely right.

I loved “Sun Bather” with a crazy scene of polka dotted sun benches in Palermo.  Wender’s text: “Nothing exists without its opposite…But what could the opposite of this be?”  To me the most profound pictures are the series Ferris Wheel from two different angles. His comment “Sometimes only the reverse angle tells the truth” is really powerful, because from one angle the Ferris Wheel shows one scene and yet from the other the background is entirely different.

I loved the wall with sink and the Armenian alphabet—although the Armenian cemetery was even more impressive.  And the gorgeous gorgeous (this one is art) pictures of the islands off of Japan is simply beautiful.

Back in Germany, Wenders has a series of pictures that are very powerful—like the bulletholes in the Old Jewish Quarter (which have since been repaired) and the very interesting inscription of a building in Berlin Mitte which reads “This house once stood in another country.”  You can say that about any house in the former GDR, Wenders notes.  Wenders even has some pictures from an underground cave in Brazil (Wenders has been everywhere).

The final three shots are fascinating not because of what they are but because of where they’ve been.  The three shots are underexposed pictures of roads in Fukushima Japan (where the recent nuclear meltdown happened).  He talks about the huge spike in radiation levels in the area (The Geiger counter jumped from a normal under 0.1 to a staggering 8.19 microsievert per hour).  The area looks absolutely normal and yet it is completely uninhabitable.  Each picture has a sine wave across it.  It’s not until the final picture that Wenders reveals “the negatives from Fukushima were destroyed and in decay.  They all showed the same sine curve: on the celluloid the invisible radiation has become visible after all.

In the final brief essay, Wenders talks about how he loves using film rather than digital.  He uses digital for his movies—the technology is great there, but for his photos he likes the old fashioned method.  He says that digital is too easy to delete to not allow for imperfections.

This was a cool book.  Even though there were only 44 pictures it was still an interesting look into where he’s been and what he’s seen.