I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: ROGER McGUINN with THE ROCK BOTTOM REMAINDERS-Tiny Desk Concert #62 (June 1, 2010).

There are many unusual Tiny Desk Concerts, but this may be the strangest.  Ostensibly, the show is from The Rock Bottom Remainders, an informal and revolving assortment of good-natured authors who masquerade as a rock band for charity.  In this incarnation, they are Dave Barry, Ridley Pearson, Scott Turow, Amy Tan, Roy Blount Jr., Kathy Kamen Goldmark and Sam Barry, none of whom brought any instruments.  But leading them is Roger McGuinn, who brought his guitar and the chords to two songs.

The authors (mostly Dave Barry) are funny and self-deprecating, “We’re gonna attempt a song involving actual singing now,”

So McGuinn leads them in a rendition of “Sloop John B.” which they and the audience sing in a fun, campfire sorta way.  On the second song “May The Road Rise To Meet You” the backing singers mostly just sit and watch McGuinn.  And McGuinn seems fine with that.

He of course has a lovely voice.  And at the end, he does  neat little guitar solo.  And they all applaud.

[READ: July 29, 2015] Chloë Sevigny

I saw this book at work and decided to flip through it.  It has an introduction by Kim Gordon and an Afterword by Natasha Lyonne, so that seemed interesting enough.  The rest of the book is photos of Sevigny.  And nothing else.  Although Gordon says that “this book allows us a peek into her teenage bedroom and evokes the visceral thrill of getting dressed.”

I don’t really have an opinion of Sevigny.  Although I noticed that she tends to appear in things that I like–she’s like the cool guest star that appears on fun shows (like Portlandia).  But I don’t really know anything about her.

And I still don’t.

Well, that’s not true. I know a few things that Lyonne said about her.  I know that she interned at Sassy magazine and the magazine thought her style was so good that they put her in the magazine instead.  I learned that she was in the video for Sonic Youth’s “Sugar Kane.”  Gordon says that:

Chloë was the reason for the reinvention of the horrible term “it girl” (as she was labeled after the movie Kids came out), her beguiling charisma refusing to be reduced to “sexy” or “pretty” or “cute” or any of the other tags that the world uses to tell girls what they are.  [I love Kim Gordon, she’s awesome].

The Afterword is a lot more personal because Natasha and Chloë are friends.  And after talking about how much they need to keep in touch with each other, she says “Chloë is an aesthetic genius, a master of forms. …she would have been the best at whatever she had decided to do.”

And, in more amusing note: “With the Sevignys I always felt like the degenerate frizzy-haired, Jewish little sister that somehow got adopted by this wonderful Aryan-looking Catholic family from Connecticut.”

Lyonne also writes that being near Chloë doesn’t make you Chloë: “Nobody has tried to Single White Female Chloë more than I have.  And let me yell you, it’s a fucking disaster.”

So the photos are many and varied: from childhood snapshots to model shots to stills from movie and videos. The one thing that comes consistently through in her photos is her stare.  Obviously people in photos are looking at the camera, at the viewer, but her gaze is penetrating–you know that she is focused on you.  And it’s disconcerting as well as very cool.  And I’m sure that is what has made her such a popular model/actress.  I enjoyed looking at these photos, and I’m going to have to pay attention to where I see her next.