I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: VALERIE JUNE-Tiny Desk Concert #310 (October 12, 2013).

I enjoyed Valerie June’s —I found her voice to be unusual but enjoyable.   But I find her sound here to be kind of flat and disappointing.  Her guitar choice feels too quiet or something and her voice sounds too tinny—almost childlike.  I have a love hate relationship with singers with this kind of voice, and I’m afraid she comes down on the bad side.

But maybe it was something with the location, because the blurb says I’m wrong.

Valerie June is a singular performer with an array of singing styles. Sometimes she’s channeling an old male voice; at other times, she channels a younger woman or even a child. Her music is steeped in tradition. The striking Tennessee singer — on its own, her hair could pass for sculpture — can sing the blues or gospel or country or a blend that sounds like nothing else. She learned how to sing during 18 years of church, but the “old man’s voice” comes from deep inside in unexpected ways. Prepare to be surprised, and to become Valerie June’s newest fan.

During “Workin’ Woman Blues” I couldn’t get the melody of Steely Dan’s Do It Again out my head.  It’s something about her vocal delivery–although clearly the music is very different.  It’s unusual that the first line of “Rain Dance” is the same as Bad Company’s “Feel Like Making Love”—intentional I’m sure.  And the way she sings the lyrics very differently than the original also unexpected.  But the whole presentation of her voice and guitar sounds like an old timey black and white cartoon–Popeye or the like.

She’s very chatty before the final song.  She talks about love and then says there’s a lot of cute babies here today.  This is my cute baby: a tiny banjo made in Memphis.  It is a very tiny banjo.

Of the three, “Somebody To Love” is my favorite song, although she does get a little crazy on the chorus.  I’m most intrigued by the electric foot pedal that appears to simply be an electronic drum stomping thing.

[READ: August 15, 2016] Agatha

In high school I had to read And Then There Were None.  I really liked it, but I never read anything else by Agatha Christie.  I’m a snob who doesn’t read mysteries, true.

But I’ve always been intrigued by Christie.  So I was thrilled that I found this graphic novel biography at work.

As many of these graphic novels tend to be, this one was French and recently translated to English (by Edward Gauvin).  I was fairly certain that I had seen the work of the artist in a previous comic, but Alexandre Franc is new to me.  As are the writers Anne Martinetti and Guillaume Lebeau.

This is a great biography–it is told with flair and excitement and throws in a lot of details about the creation of her most famous novels (without spoiling any of them). And, in a very clever conceit she “talks” to Hercule Poirot throughout the book–allowing her to narrate things without it seeming strange or flat.  And, even better, Poirot is a jerk to her–perpetually jealous and unhappy with her.  It’s a great technique.

I also loved that it begins with her disappearance in 1926.  She had learned that her husband was unfaithful and so she staged her own disappearance (she was “missing” for 11 days and presumed dead).  I love that a mystery writer staged her own mystery (she was 36 at the time).

The story flashes back to her childhood and how her mother felt she should read before she was 8 for fear that it would strain her eyes and her brain.  Her parents loved Sherlock Holmes, and she was inspired by him as well.

So that in 1908 while she was ill she started writing what would become her first novel.  Her name was Agatha Miller at the time.  She didn’t like her name for a mystery writer but until she married Archibald Christie, she had no formal reason to alter it for books.

Agatha traveled a lot–the extents of her travels are frankly amazing and they informed a great deal about her books as well.  She also did a lot of things that young women simply didn’t do then.  She took a brief flight in 1911 at a fairground (and loved it).  And she served as a nurse for many years during the first world war–which his where she learned a lot about death.

Soon after meeting Archibald she quickly fell in love and they had a fast wedding ceremony.

In 1919, soon after the birth of her only child Rosalind, her first book The Mysterious Affair at Styles (featuring Hercule Poirot) was published.

There’s a fascination sequence that says how she and her husband left on a whirlwind tour of the world for ten months–leaving their daughter with her mother.  She went to South Africa, Zambezi, New Zealand, and Hawaii (where she is believed to have been the first English woman to have surfed.

After her divorce, she took a trip along on the Orient Express.

In 1930 she married Max Mallowan, an archaeologist.  She went on many digs with him and felt that archaeologists are the detectives of antiquity.

She worked as nurse during World War two.  And there was some concern that she had “hacked” some information about the cryptographers in Bletchley Park when she named a character Bletchey.  But the name came about because she was stuck there on a train and wanted to get revenge on the town by naming one of her characters after it.

In 1956 she made it to the Grand Canyon and then went to Hollywood to see the production of one of her films.  All this time she was writing one or two novels a year.

She knew that her husband was betraying her (in 1961) but said she didst mind.  When her daughter asked why men betray her, she said “Because I don’t really need them.”

She eventual y started slowing down to just one book a year–her Christie Christmas novels.  She eventually met the queen (a childhood dream).

The Mousetrap eventually went on to be the longest running English language play ever.

The conceit that she was always talking with and fighting with Poirot makes for a great technique (she eventually killed him and the NY Times ran an obituary).  She died in 1976 being astonishingly successful.

And now I absolutely must read some of her books.