I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: BAHAMAS-Live at Massey Hall (February 5, 2016).

Afie Jurvanen is Bahamas, an indie folk act.  For this set he is joined by Jason Tait, Felicity Williams, Christine Bougie, and Darcy Yates in various roles.

This set opens with “Like a Wind.”  Jurvanen’s voice is rough and scratchy  and quite nice. But its his backing vocalist (not sure which one) that really launches this song into the ether.  She sounds amazing.  There’s a nice touch a of a slide guitar and the rumbling drums are a great addition as well.

It was some time around “Southern drawl” that I realized he sounds a bit like Tom Petty.  It’s a pretty poppy song–perfect for summer.

“Caught me Thinking” is another poppy song with a rocking 1-2-3-4 rhythm for the verses and “I Got You, Babe” has a wonderful pop riff (but is not a cover).

“Alone” is a new song that he says he’s been working on.  It’s just him and the staccato guitar plucking is quite arresting.  I love the lyric

“men and women equal, but we’re not the same.”

It’s a great song–shame it gets interrupted by his interview.

The final two songs are “All the Time” which has a great solo at the end and “Never Again.”

[READ: February 5, 2016] “The Glow Light Blues”

This story started off doing one thing and then quickly went in a direction I did not expect.

As the story opens, Carl Hirsch is going to a party.  He rarely goes to parties, especially work holiday parties.  And when he shows up, the host greets him with alarm.

There’s some weird things mentioned in the opening paragraphs too. He compares going to the party to going to a dog house where you have to sniff ass and compliment the host.  He hopes there’s food: “even if he was only permitted to sniff…because of his feeding regimen.”

What the heck is going on?

In the second section, Carl takes a photo of his balls and emails it to everyone in the office.  But when he gets to work, rather than being offended, everyone assumes it is some kind of skin condition he has caught from working at Mayflower.

Again, what the heck is going on?

Well, it turns out that Carl has indeed been working at Mayflower.   Mayflower tries to make money off the next inevitable trend. Their current things was Jug, a “drink” that contained all the nutrients you needed.  But the CEO, Kipler, shouts “enough with the Jug.  Enough with food. Let’s do away with it all.”

And so his new idea is to have people get all the nutrients they can from light.  He assumes that people spend all their time in front of computer screens, so why not have vitamins pumped into them via the screen–photosynthesize, if you were.

Because of Carl’s terrible diet, he is picked as the first subject. He is cleaned out and then not permitted to eat anything–all his nourishment will come from the lights.

It goes predictably wrong–I would think that he could sue very easily, frankly).  His skin is burned, he starts going crazy, he is perpetually hungry.  His skin is basically a mask of scar tissue.  And that’s why he photographed his balls.

The end of the story sees Carl leaving the job for something less stressful.  I found the last few paragraphs to be an unsettling epilogue–one n which things aren’t what they seem and I’m not sure f the happy ending is even all that happy.

I tend to like Marcus’ stories, although I didn’t enjoy this one as much as some of his others.