SOUNDTRACK: FANFARLO-Tiny Desk Concert #39 (December 16, 2009).
This is a Christmas-themed Tiny Desk Concert, with a yule log in the TV and everything. I’ve liked most of what I’ve heard from Fanfarlo. I think of the band as synthy, but this version is acoustic guitar and mandolin (and three backing vocalists). The male singer has a unique voice. “Drowning Men” sounds great and they make quite a lot of noise for just the two instruments–when the xylophone solo kicks in, it quite a nice touch.
For song two (“Comets”) they bust out a harpist–she is not part of the band, but is a friend from New York. She plays excellent accompaniment and the melodica is a nice touch as well. Perhaps most interesting was hearing their biographies. The band is based in London, and they have members from Sweden, Belgium, someone who lived in Abu Dabi, Scottish/Samoan, half Polish/half English and half English half Icelandic. Cool.
For the final song it’s a cover of Low’s “Just Like Christmas.” It’s a simple stripped down version with guitar and melodica and it is quite beautiful. And they don’t stop until everyone sings along.
[READ: May 27, 2014] “The Waitress”
In “The Waitress,” Coover takes a fairy tale premise and brings into the contemporary world.
This is a concept that Coover plays with a lot (with different degrees of success) and I found this one to be very good. It is only a page long, which may have had something to do with why I liked it–it didn’t overstay its welcome.
It was also not terribly ambitious. And, as with all stories like this I kind of have to wonder what’s the point. Nevertheless, I enjoyed it.
In this one, a waitress wishes that men would stop checking out her “patoot.” There is a bag lady sitting at the counter and the waitress has just given her some soup for free. The bag lady has magical powers and grants her wish. And as with all wishes it goes slightly askew. So now whenever anyone looks at her, they must turn their head vigorously away. Even if she just jumps in front of someone stark naked, they recoil–no one will see her at all.
As stories like this do, there is one person who doesn’t recoil from her–a blind man (see–all the trappings of a fairy tale).
The end of the story is surprisingly upbeat, with yet another twist. I enjoyed the way this fairy-tale-esque story ended in a kind of mundane way. This is definitely one of my favorite Coover stories.
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