I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: THE DAVE DOUGLAS BRASS ECSTASY-Tiny Desk Concert #22 (July 20, 2009).

This is the first jazz Tiny Desk Concert.  I imagine it was very loud in there!

So the Brass Ecstasy is a five piece band with trumpet, tuba, french horn and trombone (and drums).  They play three songs: “Spirit Moves” and “Twilight of the Dogs” two compositions by Douglas (who plays trumpet) and “This Love Affair” a Rufus Wainwright song!

The originals are jazzy and fun with a kind of old school feel.  And “Twilight of the Dogs” is even political (and yet instrumental).  I don’t know the Rufus Wainwright song, so i don’t know how well they do it, but i never would have guessed it was one of his.

The blurb says that the trombonist left the contents of his spit valve under Bob’s desk.  Ew.

To see everything (but the spit valve) click here.

[READ: January 18, 2014] “Greener Grass”

This is a story about Canadian hippie parents, which I rather liked.

The daughter of the story is named Shell.  Shell and her parents are house hunting–they currently live in a rental and want to get a proper house–for one where they can have an art studio and a garden.  So when they see an interesting house, they stop the Dodge Dart and decide to investigate the place.

They knock on the door and a boy answers.  He is drinking Mountain Dew and has a harelip.  He calls out “Gare” and a man who Shell calls “Shark Nose” appears. Shark Nose tells them that the house is solid and shows Shell’s dad around.  He talks about all the good things in the house and the sad fact that the basement is always damp (the foster kids all have asthma, so they can’t really stay down there).  [Interestingly, between this and Douglas Coupland’s Eleanor Rigby, that’s two stories that are critical of the Canadian foster system in the 1970s].

Even though the dad is a hippie (big of beard and seeking places to garden), he is no fool.  And he climbs up on the roof.  He also gets all of the dogs (who suddenly start barking) to silence with a shrill whistle.  But the story really focuses on Shell and the little boy.The boy tells her that there is all kinds of junk buried in the back yard.  And as if to prove it, he chucks his glass Mountain Dew bottle into the yard.  Shell’s dad sees it and yells at the boy to pick it up and not to litter.  Shark Nose, no fool himself, tells the boy to go on and pick it up.  When they drive away later, the boy may or may not throw the bottle at their car (Shell ducks out of fear).

Her parents decide to buy the house.  But Shell is still wondering about the junk in the yard.  And when she goes outside barefoot to fetch her dad, she steps on a glass bottle that cuts open her foot.  It is a green bottle–just like the Mountain Dew–and she imagines that boy planting it in the grass for her.

But later, her father explains that the glass is very old–that a long time ago, people used to bury their old broken things.  Shell wonders then if they live on a dump, but her father says that it is a midden and that many people had them [my current house has one, which fascinates my kids].

The story doesn’t really have a proper conclusion per se, it more or less ends with Shell missing her house, with stitches in her foot, thinking about how quiet it is.

I really enjoy the visceral nature of this story–you could really feel and smell the old house.  And when she steps on the glass, the pain was immediate.  This was the first story I’ve read by Bozak and I hope to read more.