I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: PHISH-Undermind (2004).

As I understand it, Phish fans didn’t like Undermind that much and yet I really liked it and still do.  Indeed, “Undermind” is one of my favorite new Phish songs, it’s clever and boppy and just really catchy.  The album has very Beatles vibe to it—a kind of echoey feel on all the songs.  And I have recently read that people interpret the cover design to be a nod to Let It Be (there are other connections made but I’m not going to go too deeply into that).

“Scents and Subtle Sounds” opens the album.  This is a brief intro–the full songs, which sounds different appears later on the disc (it’s 97 second here)).  It leads into “Undermind” which has a loose, slightly funky sound—one of their more fun songs on recent albums.  The album version has some big fat organ sounds on it which make it even cooler.

“The Connection” is another great poppy song—gorgeous harmonies and wonderful melody, and indeed it was their first real hit.  “A Song I Heard the Ocean Sing” is another great song, great backing vocals, an excellent melody and great alternating verse vocals from Mike.  It also has a great middle guitar section—it’s long and wild and reminiscent of Jimi Hendrix’ solos.  “Army of One” is sung by Page.  It is a big soaring song and it’s got a very upbeat sound.  “Crowd Control” is a very Beatleseque song.

“Maggie’s Revenge” is a noisy instrumental, with Trey’s guitars making all kind of squealing noise.  It’s weird and quite refreshing from Phish’s more recent fair.  “Nothing” picks up with the open and poppy sounds of earlier records and has more great harmonies.  It seems to fade out in the middle though—a song that could have been longer!  “Two Versions of Me” is another mid tempo song with great harmonies and  great chorus.  “Access Me” is a brief poppy song that feels a bit like filler, although it has a cool and interesting coda.  “Scents and Subtle Sounds” resumes

“Tomorrow’s Song” has a very African feel to it.  It is a simple repetitive rhythm that lasts for about 3 minutes before it fades out just like it faded in.  “Secret Smile” is a very pretty piano ballad.  It’s a little heavy handed with the strings, and at nearly 7 minutes it’s too long (especially the long coda), but the melody is certainly nice.  The album ends with “Grind,” a barbershop quartet track which shows just what kind of great harmonies they cool do.

Although it’s a mature sound, there’s enough weird stuff to let them show their funky side too.  The CD comes with a DVD called “Specimens of Beauty.”

[READ: October 8, 2013] C

I received a prepub version of this book back in 2010.  The cover and title were weird and I thought I’d like to read it.  And it sat on my shelf for two years.

And then Borders closed (bummer, their chai tea was the best!) and I saw a hardcover copy of the book for $1 so I bought it (I’m enough of a geek to want to see how prepubs and final copies are different.  In this case, the books appear identical except that in the last two dozen or so pages, there’s a section with ellipses.  In the prepub, they are single spaced but in the final book they are double spaced which throws off the line spacing.  So by the end of the book, the lines are about three lines different.  Fascinating huh?).

Anyhow, what on earth is a book called C about?

Well, it is a Bildungsroman or coming-of-age story.  By definition these stories focus on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood.  Our protagonist is Serge Carrefax, even though he is not the first person we meet.  That would be a doctor delivering materials to Serge’s father, Mr. Simeon Carrefax.  Mr Carrefax runs a school for the deaf in which he tells children to stop using sign language and to start speaking properly.  And he has had considerable success with the children, each of whom acting in a play every year.  (The book, by the way, is set in the late 1800s).  His mother is a silkworm farmer, and much of their money comes from this job.

But the main person in Serge’s life is his sister Sophie.  Sophie is a deviously clever girl who is alternately mean to Serge (as only older sisters can be) and then encouraging him to play with her.  She is mad for science and is constantly experimenting with her chemistry set (leading to more than one explosion in the house).  The early sections of the book show Sophie and Serge’s education.  And when Sophie goes off to school, Serge is lost, especially when she returns from school but keeps telling him to leave her alone.  And then one day, Serge discovers her dead in her “lab” and experiment in progress.

After the funeral Serge is sent to Kloděbrady to the Baths there (as with much of this story, the history of the Baths are utterly fascinating  in their details, even if there’s no point in talking about that here).  He is sent to the Baths because he blood is too dark.  Eventually he meets a woman named Lucia whose blood is too light. They hit it off and he enjoys talking with her.  And while Lucia seems interested in him, Serge has his sights set on Tania, a crook-backed masseuse who massages him daily (but never in any way to indicate she is interested in him).  He tries to woo her even though she seems well beyond anything like that.  Indeed he asks her out a few times and she accepts but then doesn’t show.  The third time (when he promises champagne) she meets him.  And they have sex outside, and the manner in which they do it will inform his sexual decisions from then on.

And that’s all part one (named Caul).  Part Two is named Chute. In Part Two we see Serge complete school and join the military.  This entire section is largely him and a friend flying military planes.  As they get better in the air, they do more daring things (including having “accidental” landings in a ball field of an all girl’s school, where the girls are as excited to see them as they are to see the girls).  Serge eventually is made an observer and we see the change in airplanes so that he is now seated backwards.  Serge has always had a problem with perspective—he could never draw a three dimensional looking object.  And this suits his position as observer perfectly–everything is flat and he able to detail things perfectly.  He comes highly regarded as the War starts.   But when he wants to be more precise, the soldiers tell him to try cocaine.  First by—rubbing it on his eyes!  And eventually by injecting it.

After many successful runs, Serge’s planes goes down.  His pilot is killed and he is taken prisoner. But the prison is very low security (the details of his imprisonment are entertaining and almost farcical, but I enjoyed them a lot).  And just as things look very dire for Serge, the war ends.

Part Three is called Crash (see the C theme?).  Serge returns home to study architecture.  And he meets up with an actress named Audrey.  She proves to be a lot of fun and introduces him to the theater crowd.  This, of course, involves drinking and more drugs—uppers and downers. Eventually she offers to take him to a spiritualist meeting (these were real and were artfully dismissed by Houdini in real life).  But in this book it is Serge who shows up the spiritualist (the whole sequence is very lengthy but really really enjoyable).  As this section ends, Serge is being called to Egypt.

Part four (Call) sees Serge arrive in Egypt where he gets a job essentially writing memos to no one. Eventually he meets a woman named Laura who is initially unimpressed by Serge, although perhaps it is because Laura’s father is on site.  Laura is helping with the excavation of graves.  She disapproves of previous explorers’ methods (grab what you can) and is interested in preservation and thorough cataloging of materials found.  She shows him some secret burial sites.  And then she and Serge crawl through several where eros overtakes thanatos (some Greek there).

It’s on page 292 where we get another C reference in a joke about Carbon “The C: the C is everywhere. What’s C carbon: basic element of life” (292).

But Serge received some kind of infection in the tomb (not transmitted sexually) on his ankle and its with the delirium of his infection that the end of the story lost me somewhat.

I enjoyed this book quite a lot although I have to say that I enjoyed the specifics much more than the overall story.  I would often get totally wrapped up in a scene and then 40 pages later be a little bummed when it just moved on to the next thing.  And I really didn’t get a real sense of the “purpose” of the book a a whole.  But every time I thought that I wasn’t really enjoying the story, another fantastic sequence would come out and I would be hooked again.

For ease of searching, I include: Klodebrady