I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: THE MOUNTAIN GOATS-Tiny Desk Concert #41 (January 3, 2010).

I have talked about Tiny Desk Concerts off an on (more than 100, if I’m counting right), but I never really made a concerted effort to do them all.  So now I’ve decided to make the effort.  My plan is to post two old concerts a week and also mention new ones when they pop up.  Since there are nearly 450 concerts, this will take ages and ages.  But I’ve been really enjoying the bands I like and it’s been fun listening to the bands I didn’t know.  And two a week seems reasonable enough.

I know the Mountain Goats, although I don’t know them all that well–I keep meaning to listen to them more.  So this is a good place to start.  It’s just John Darnielle and his guitar.

These four songs are simple enough and yet they have s much passion and inventiveness.  Darnielle is known primarily for his lyrics, but he throws a good melody over his songs too.

He plays two (then) new songs, the quiet “Hebrews 11:40” and the loud “Pslams 40:2.”  His voice is instantly recognizable in either song–it more or less just sounds like him singing louder, and yet there’s something slightly different in his rollicking singing voice–a bigger intensity, perhaps.

He also plays two old songs.  The slow “Color in Your Cheeks” and the rollicking “Going to Georgia” (which he starts and then interrupts and then starts again).

While his lyrics are serious, his between song banter is charming and funny (“I am permanently a young man, no matter how old I get”).  I just saw that the Mountain Goats were on Seth Meyers’s show, I’ll have to check that out too.

Watch the Tiny Desk Concert here.

[READ: April 21, 2015] “Learning to Fly Part 1”

I was going to let my Popular Mechanics subscription lapse.  I enjoy it a bit, but don’t really read it all that much.  But this issue has some good articles and the start of this four part essay by an author I really like.  Who knew that authors wrote for such unlikely places?

I suspect that Popular Mechanics readers probably aren’t used to long form essays, because this first part, called “Takeoff” is only four pages long–this is not a Harper’s essay we’re looking at, here.  But the writing is still really good.

Ferris talks about the two things that contributed to his decision to take flying lessons.  The first was the death of his father and the second was his absolute fear of flying.

Like most of us, he enjoyed flying as a kid–getting the little wings, the sheer coolness of flying–yup that’s my memory of flying as a kid too.  I sure doubt that my kids’ memories will have as much awesomeness attached.  But as he grew older and wiser, he became more nervous about flying.  And then one day he had a fateful flight in which the cabin filled with smoke.  The landing was fine (the reason wasn’t that serious, believe it or not).  And since then–he’s been terrified.  So he decided to fight his fear.

This topic seems like it was more suited for Esquire or Outside, but whatever, perhaps learning to fly keeps it in the PM scope.

He talks about the plane he is learning on.  It was built-in 1966 (holy crap!).  He talks about his instructor–a calm and terse man.  When Joshua sums up the number of ways he nearly got them killed, he must have the patience of a saint–no matter what Ferris paid, it can’t have been enough.

And then they walk through the starting procedure–inspecting the plane for flaws and faults (inspecting the engine for animals…yes animals). He says the engine is not much bigger than a lawn mower engine. He is thrilled at how analog the whole process is.

Then he thinks back about his father teaching him to drive–he was nervous and hit the brakes a lot on until his father shouted “Just drive the damn thing.”  And while he is nervous as all hell about flying this plane he listens to his fathers words “just fly the damn thing” and off they go.  Unless I’m mistaken, on his first lesson, he was airborne (the instructor is in the seat next to him with full controls, like in a student car, but still!).

Bringing it home to me is that he was flying out of Caldwell airport–meaning he could have flown over my house at some point.  I’m looking forward to the rest of the story.