I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: TEDESCHI TRUCKS BAND-Tiny Desk Concert #516 (March 25, 2016).

As I write this, there is no band I am more tired of than Tedeschi Trucks Band.  It seems like they are everywhere.  Coming home from somewhere the other night, there was a whole hour of a radio show devoted to them.  Gah.

When I first heard about them I was interested.  Their story was fairly compelling–husband and wife join forces to make some music.  And then I heard the song they played and I though, huh, Bonnie Raitt and a blues bar band.  That’s fine.

I’ve grown sick of th eone song they’ve been playing a lot, but I enjoyed this Tiny Desk.

Their music is certainly fun–a lot more so in this live setting than on record.  And it’s very cool in “Just as Strange” to watch Derek Trucks play solos while using that slide on his finger.

“Don’t Know What It Is” fares better–the horns add a nice touch and the song gets treated more like a jam than a song.  I love watching Tedeschi play the bitchin wah wah solo.  There’s a lot of toe tapping in this song.  And after the hand clapping section, the song really takes off–the sax solo is tremendous.

The song segues into the one I’ve been hearing on the radio a lot–the one I assumed was Bonnie Raitt.  The problem for me with this song is that the verses are the exact same melody as Radiohead’s “High and Dry” and I keep waiting for the song to turn into that–which it doesn’t.  I don’t love the chorus so much but I really like the horn riffs at the end of the song and the guitar solo is wicked (I don’t think the end is as good on the studio version).

So after watching this I have grown to like them better.  Their musicianship is pretty stellar.

[READ: January 21, 2016] “The Trusted Traveler”

This was a fascinating story in that I loved some parts of it, didn’t like other parts of it and was amazed at how the main crisis developed and then was basically abandoned.

As the story begins we learn that the narrator and his wife Chris have received an annual visit–right after tax season–from Jack Bail, a CPA who is a former student of the narrator.  The narrator loathes this annual visit.  And I loved the reason why: “For some reason, almost anything that has to do with Jack Bail is beyond my grasp, I can’t even remember having taught anybody named Jack Bail.”

He feels worse for his wife Chris, because Chris actually remembers things about Jack and his life.

I also loved this little paragraph too in which we learn Jack’s wife name is also Chris:

“Of course–Jack Bail’s wife, like my Chris, is a Chris by way of Christine.  Which is irritating, and I want to say a little eerie.”

He has tried to evade these annual visits, mostly by simply ignoring the emails, but Jack Bail gets more and more persistent and it really upsets the narrator, so he gives in.

Well, this year he figures he’s had an out–they moved from Manhattan to Nova Scoitia. But instead of being deterred?  Jack’s email was, “Nova Scotia?  Canada’s Ocean Playground?  I’m there.”

They are going to be having a party with their new neighbors (who brought them a housewarming present), so they decided to have it as the same time as Jack and Chris’ visit–taking some of the burden off of themselves).

We also get to see a bit of this lovely landscape and we get to hear of all of the amazing things that they will write about in their fabulous memoirs.  Except that they have never gone anywhere and all of their memoirs are fictitious.  They just like coming up with great titles for these pretend memoirs like, “The Salty Rose for the Lunenberg walking episode or The Hammocks of Chilmark about our summer on Martha’s Vineyard.”

And there are some bad signs, like the leg-bugs (which I knew to be deer ticks even before he figured it out and told us–leg bug is exactly what a deer tick is boyo).

And then the party begins.  And things are going pretty well until we learn that Jack and Chris have separated.  They tried to do IVF and now there’s a problem with the storage facility asking for money and holy cow he takes over the whole conversation.  But he is so pathetic that it’s hard to be mad at him.

And I really enjoyed the way this transition occurred

Jack Bail spend the night on our sofa. In the morning when Chris and I go down there is a thank-you note.  Then a year passes…

The end of the story looks at the couple once again in their house, perhaps settling in.