I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: THE HADEN TRIPLETS-Tiny Desk Concert #345 (March 31, 2014).

The Haden Triplets are the daughters of Charlie Haden.  Individually, they are Petra (from That Dog and a cool solo reproduction of The Who Sell Out), Rachel (from The Rentals and other projects) and Tanya Haden (from Let’s Go Sailing).

Here they eschew all of their alt leaning and focus on straightforward old-school country.  Their harmonies are gorgeous, and when accompanied by the upright bass and simple drums and Rachel’s (I think) violin, they create an impressively full sound.

I don’t have too much more to say about it.  It’s just very solid old school female harmonized country songs.  I didn’t know any of the songs, but they do four: “Single Girl, Married Girl,” “Voice From On High,” “Slowly,” and “Tiny Broken Heart.”  And they seem genuinely delighted to be playing there.  I imagine that Sarah would like this very much.

I only wish they had told us who was who.  And that this wasn’t edited so much.  I don’t know how long these performances are in total, but sometimes it feels like they edit too much out of these shows (do they have bandwidth problems?).

[READ: June 25, 2014] Fleep

A pile of interesting graphic novels came to my desk this week.  And the first one I felt compelled to read was Fleep.

As you can see by the cover, it promised to be a pretty stark book.  And indeed it was.

The story opens with a young man entering a phone book.  The drawing style very simple–some subtle shadings that belie the simplicity of the over all look (the main guy has a round head and round eyes, but doesn’t look “childish” and almost all of the book takes place in the same location from the same angle).

The next page is all dark but for his eyeballs as the guy (unnamed for much of the story), tries to figure out what happened to him. He soon realizes that he is in the phone booth and the phone booth is surrounded by concrete on all sides.  He picks up the phone and there is a dial tone, but he can’t seem to call anyone.  The phone book is in gibberish and the phone booth now says FLEEP where it once said PHONE.  He rifles through his pockets and finds some strange coins, a Russian phrasebook, a pen and a piece of paper with Russian writing (that he can’t read) on one side and numbers on the other. 

The character is quite intelligent.  He makes an origami balloon to determine how much air he has left in the booth, and is also able to figure out how many cubic spans there are in the booth (along with lots more math).  he figures he can survive for two days.

Eventually, he dials one of the numbers on the paper but as he starts speaking, an aftershock rumbles through and the line goes dead.

He uses the phrase book to figure out his location (using a pendulum and disparity of his watch and body time (!)).  And he slowly discerns that that rumble wasn’t an aftershock, but most likely a bomb.

Slowly, over the course of the book he realizes just what is happening.  And he also learns his explicit (and not just complicit) role in the proceedings.  And is that Russian writing actually in his own handwriting?

This story which seemed so intriguing in the beginning certainly stayed intriguing but man did it get very dark very fast.  It was a really cool idea.