SOUNDTRACK: TOM BROSSEAU-“Will Henry” NPR Lullaby SXSW (March 17, 2015).
From March 17-March 21, the SXSW festival raged on. And my friends at NPR Music were there so I didn’t have to be. In past years they have had a nightly recap of their favorite shows of the day. This year they upped the ante by inviting a musician to sing a lullaby. Most of these lullabies occurred in some unexpected outdoor location at 2 or so A.M. after a long day of music.
Tom Brosseau was the first up. He has a long history with All Songs Considered, and he was game to play a song he has never recorded–a murder ballad about Will Henry.
Brosseau has a delicate voice. And with just him and his acoustic guitar (and the sounds of bird and traffic, this is a delightful lullaby. Even if the words are a murder ballad.
The song is pretty consistent in its simple musical pattern, so that at around 3 minutes when he runs a riff, it’s quite stimulating.
Check it out here.
[READ: March 23, 2015] “Beeper World”
This issue of Harper’s featured five essays (well four essays and one short story) about “Growing Up: five coming of age stories.” Since I knew a few of these authors already, it seemed like a good time to devote an entire week to growing up. There are two introductions, one by Christine Smallwood (who talks about Bob Seger) and one by Joshua Cohen who talks about the coming of age narrative.
Russell’s essay is all about growing up in the age of beepers in Florida. For her 14th birthday she received a Motorola beeper. She says the beeper was an evolutionary adaption for teenagers. [I for one am not that much older than Russell, but I missed the whole beeper phenomenon and found them incredibly silly]. Before she turned 14 she was a solitary person but the beeper was a way to get hee out and mingling with people
She says that at the time, beepers meant a huge line at phone booths as you waited sometimes for hours with bated breath as you planned to call back whoever beeped you (with cryptic messages that are not unlike tweets).
They had developed a code in Miami: 123 I Miss You; 143 I Love You; 303 Stop Playing; 345987 I’m horny. [I had no idea, and have to wonder if teens in other areas did this too). And each person had a personal code as well (hers was 22). So she could type 423 123 22 Call me I miss you Karen.
It’s a fascinating look at a life that I never experienced–with people responding to beeps “with the same efficiency as the surgeons at Baptist Hospital.”
This was like a look at an alien world–somehow weirdly futuristic but strangely past tense.
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