I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: SAM AMIDON & BILL FRISELL-Tiny Desk Concert #408 (December 1, 2014).

The first time I listened to this Tiny Desk Concert, I didn’t like Sam Amidon’s voice at all–he sings with a strangely flat delivery–almost monotone–but never actually off pitch.  It’s rather unusual sounding.

But the second time I listened I found it kind of interesting–compelling in an unexpected way.  I was also able to really hear what Bill Frisell was adding to the songs.

“Blue Mountains” is a folk story-song.  It is played with a very simple acoustic guitar piece and then, of course, Frisell’s interesting leads and chords that dd more and more texture as the song progresses.  The whole things is grounded by Shahzad Ismaily’s delicate drumming.

After the song, Amidon says, “Good morning, welcome to Washington DC.”  For “Pat Do This, Pat Do That,” a song about he banjo, Amidon switches to banjo.  This was my favorite of the three songs.  He plays the banjo very high on his chest (without a strap) and he plays quite fast.  It’s hard to decide to listen to Frisell’s interesting chords or to Amidon’s great banjo playing  For this song Ismaily switches to bass, which gives it lovely low end.

For the final song, Amidon gives a very long introduction about falling asleep on a pillow but dreaming that it is a little fuzzy donkey.  It’s a very strange introduction that doesn’t really end satisfactorily.  The final song is him on guitar, Frissell on electric and Ismaily on bass for a time and the switching over to drums.  Midway through Amidon switches to violin and plays a wild solo that he accentuates with a screeching voice.

It’s a most unusual and somewhat unsettling Tiny Desk Concert.  And I know I won’t be seeking out any more music by Amidon.

[READ: March 26, 2015] The Fall of  the House of West

This book follows The Rise of Aurora West with that cast involved.  I really enjoyed the resolution of the mystery of Aurora’s mom’s death, but otherwise I was kind of unimpressed by this book.

As with the previous book, I hate the way Rubin draws faces, especially Aurora’s–there’s too much face and not enough expression (conversely, his profiles are lovely).

Much of this story is fairly simple.  Aurora believes that she knows who killed her mother and she intends to get revenge.  But her father, the superhero Haggard West doesn’t want her to investigate on her own.  And her bodyguard/teacher is not going to let her do the work on her own, either.

Most of the book is Aurora sneaking out and getting pieces of the puzzle.  And then getting in trouble.  It’s more than a little frustrating.  Especially since Aurora is constantly acting bratty.  And, there’s the perpetual bugbear of stories like this–no one is telling anyone else the truth–so noting can ever move forward.

We see some decent flashbacks to when Aurora was a child and some other flashbacks that try to piece together exactly what happened on the night her mother was killed.  And these were pretty interesting.

As with the other books in the series, the bad guys are bizarre–they have a kind of sack over their heads and all look pretty much the same.  One of them is supposed to be the leader, but it’s very hard to tell.

There’s quite a bit of death in this story–Aurora doesn’t seems to abide by any good guy code about killing bad guys.

Despite all my quibbling, the revelation about how Aurora’s mother died is great and for the last quarter of the story I was totally hooked.

The book implies another sequel, so we’ll see.

I’m also still not sure of the timeline of when this will connect to the original battling boys story.  And at this point I think it’s pretty weird that we get at least two books of this backstory that has nothing directly to do with Battling Boy himself.

Of all of the first Second books, this is my least favorite series.