I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: GUSTER-Parachute Live from Brooklyn Bowl (2013).

In 2014, Guster released three CDs of them playing their early CDs live in their entirety (excluding for some reason their second disc Goldfly).  So this is a recording of their first album ‘Parachute’ performed and recorded live in concert at Brooklyn Bowl on December 1, 2013.

This album sounds quite different from the other Guster albums.  I don’t really understand what the difference is.  It sounds like Guster, but not exactly.  Is it that they both sing in harmony through most of the songs?  Is it that Ryan sings “better?”  Are the songs just more folkie?

Whatever the case, even after several albums that don’t sound like this album and nearly twenty years, the band jumps right back into it (the harmonies on “Window” are perfect, for example).

They aren’t the same three-piece they were back in 1994 (they have drums now for instance), but it all works very well.  They also aren’t terribly funny between songs.  Usually Ryan is pretty silly in a show, but they seemed to take it more or less seriously.

After “Dissolve” Ryan says, “we’re playing in a bowling alley I just realized.  Cool.”  You can hear someone in the crowd shout “steeerike.”

I know the guys have made jokes about their song “Happy Frappy” a few times when I’ve seen them, so it’s no surprise that before the song, Ryan shouts, “Alright its ‘Happy Frappy’ time, stoners.”  Although I have no idea what the song is actually about.

When the disc is over Ryan shouts, “Parachute the album–19 and a half years old!”

I think it sounds even better than the original.

[READ: June 2, 2018] “Orange World”

I love when a title gives you an idea but it is totally not the idea of what  the story means–and the new idea is even better than what you had imagined.

“Orange World” conjured up many things to me, but not the devil, not a woman nursing the devil and not a woman nursing the devil every night because the evil saved her baby’s life.

When Rae was pregnant she was worried about a lot of things: ABNORMAL RESULT, HIGH RISK, CLINICAL OUTCOME UNKNOWN.  When the third test came back, she started begging for anything to save her baby from the unknown.

Between 4 and 5 A.M. one night something answered and it promised the baby would be okay.

So what does this have to do worth orange world?  Well, “Orange World is where most of us live.”  It is a nest of tangled electric cords and open drawers filled with steak knives.  It’s a used crib  It’s compromises that could hurt the safety of your baby.  You take a shower with your baby and suddenly….

“Green World” is a fantasy realm of soft corners and infinite attention. The Educator say that Green World is ideal but Orange World is the reality.  Next week’s class is “Red World” and Rae doesn’t want to think about it.

Rae takes the baby doll.  Its head falls off and she steps on the blanket.  Sneaker bacteria: Orange World; decapitation: Red World.  The educator encourages her to go to new moms group.

Her unborn child did survive and the devil expected payment.  That first night she limped across the road, lay down in the gutter and waited for the devil to feed from her.  Three months later it was still going on.  A nightly feeding for her baby and a bigger feeding for the devil.

Rae goes to the new moms group.  The women are exhausted, internet educated : “breast milk is made from our blood.”  Another woman says she herself is wearing a diaper right now and that she pisses blood when she sneezes.  Another says the baby wakes every 20 minutes.  A third says she had a C-section and “feels like a library where they mis-shelved all the books.”

Every compliant she hears, Rae wants to say So What?  Finally when the meeting is over, Rae tells the group leader , Yvette, that every night since “I got home from the hospital I’ve been feeding the devil.”

I loved the audacity of this story.  Especially when Yvette says “that fucking thing, Its been coming south of Powell?”

Awesome.

Yvette had been bothered by the devil two winters ago.  But she wasn’t interested in what it had to offer. This make Rae feel ashamed. Especially when Yvette says, “Rookie mistake.”

Then Yvette says that that thing is not the devil.  It is a devil, but it has no real power.  It can’t add a minute to your child’s life and it can’t take a minute away.  She says its time for to go cold turkey with that thing.

But Rae is afraid of what it can do to her and her baby. She can’t stop   And one night she is even spotted lying in the gutter!

Finally Yvette has organized a group of women who have dealt with this devil.  They tell her all of things that the devil has promised them (it’s quite a list).   Rae cant commit, even though they tell her the devil can’t do shit to her.  So they hatch a plan.

In addition to the great story itself, I enjoyed the interesting way it tied Rae to her own mother who is half way around the world nursing her mother who is in hospice.