I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: HAZARD TO YA BOOTY-“Movers and Shakers” (Tiny Desk Contest Runner-Up 2016).

Last week, a Tiny Desk Contest winner was announced. This week, All Songs Considered posted ten runners up that they especially liked.  I want to draw attention to a couple of them.

Hazard to Your Booty, in addition to having a great name, have the most fun with the Tiny Desk setup.  They begin with two members, singer Dr Music and bassist Professor Funk chatting as if it were a talk show.  They have a fun intro and once the song starts, the scene behind them lights up and the full band appears-two sax, a trombone, a funky guitarist and a drummer.

Professor Funk plays an awesome bass and it’s clear why he is up front—he really holds the song together.  He’s got a great, clear sound (with some amazing low notes) and the whole band plays a cool riff at the end of each section—fast and complicated.

I love how committed they are to the Tiny Desk with Dr Music even using note cards and drinking from a coffee mug.

And what about the song?  It rocks, it’s funky, it’s a lot of fun.  And I’ve listened to it a bunch of time, risking my booty each time.

[READ: January 4, 2013] “Tremendous Machine”

Scibona continues to surprise me as a writer.  His last story was set in Iceland and this one is set in Poland.  And just to make things different, the main character is a Danish model name Fjóla Neergaard.

We learn a bit about Fjóla.  Her modelling career has more or less abated, although she continues to starve herself.  And she has more or less fled to Poland to get away from it all.  Why Poland?  Because her wealthy parents bought a plot of land there (the house was something of liability) once they saw how cheaply land could be gotten in the once communist country.

The house is basically a box, but Fjóla decides to buy a couch so she has something to lounge on in front of the fire.  She drove into town to a warehouse that might sell her a couch.

Her Polish is poor and after talking with a man for several minutes she winds up buying a piano instead.  She can’t play the piano–she knows nothing about the instrument in fact.  The warehouse man sells her a piano and then gives her the name of an instructor–Mrs Kloc.

The next day the piano is delivered by a hulking man and his father.  The hulk is carrying the piano on his back.  He has a tattoo on his arm of the skeleton under his skin–which she finds fascinating.

Mrs Kloc tells her to practice a lot before the first lesson and Fjóla does.  But when Mrs Kloc hears her she says “you will not succeed.  The body is not the right body.  The biceps, forearm, are lank.  Spirit requires, to express itself, the appropriate vehicle.”

But Fjóla continues to practice seven or eight hours a day.  She becomes obsessed.  And Mrs Kloc continues to come out and continues to find flaws with her.

One night Fjóla goes to the local pub where she could drink and be anonymous.  While there she sees the hulking man who delivered her piano.  His name, it turns out is Marek.  He doesn’t exactly recognize hr, but then he is pretty drunk.  They dance, they drink and she invites him back home.  When they get to her place, he recognizes it immediately and says, “You are Fjóla The Danish girl!”

And soon they are dating.  She continues to play and they continue to see each other. Then one day Marek lets slip something about Mrs Kloc that changes her attitude about the piano–but not her desire to play it.

The story took an unexpected turn when in the last few sections, Fjóla’s parents tell her that they are selling the parcel of land.  This completely upends her future ideas.  And as the story ends, Fjóla find her self more powerful than she ever imagined.

I really enjoyed this story for its exoticism and for the strange paths it took.

For ease of searching, I include: Fjola