I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: BIG BOI-Tiny Desk Concert #793 (October 9, 2018).

Like everyone is America, I loved OutKast’s “Hey Ya” when it came out (still do).  And that album was pretty great (if a little long).  And then they kind of imploded.

I was always more of a fan of Andre 3000’s trippy side than Big Boi’s pop side.  And yet for this Tiny Desk, Big Boi is  aton of fun and the songs are really catchy.

These guys helped redefine the sound and style of hip-hop in the ’90s, incorporating funk and psychedelia while transcending genre boundaries. As half of OutKast — still the only rap group ever to take home Album of the Year at the Grammys —

The energy in the room was buoyant and vibrant from the moment they walked in the door. OutKast star Big Boi, Sleepy Brown of the prolific Atlanta production collective Organized Noize, and their eight-member backing band have been working together for 20-plus years, and their chemistry is instantaneous and undeniable.

And Big Boi is hilarious from the get go:

We have come from the planet of Stankonia to give y’all three big songs behind a tiny-ass desk.

The set starts with OutKast’s: “So Fresh, So Clean.”  It sounds as good as it did in 2000, and possibly a little better live.  Big Boi’s voice instantly sounds like it does on the record (the way he echoes clean).  The bass (Preston Crump) sound great running through the song and the gently echoing guitar (David Brown) sounds great.

The backing vocals (Keisha Williams and Terrance “Scar” Smith) are spot on.  Perhaps the biggest surprise comes from the trumpets (Jason Freeman and Jerry Freeman).  It didn’t occur to me that he’d use them, but they really make the track.

After the track, he cracks up the room by saying “the Tiny Desk needs a Tiny fan” (of course they are all wearing matching hoodies that say TRAP HOUSE (in the style of WAFFLE HOUSE).

Big Boi continues to thrive as a solo act, riding the charts with last year’s Boomiverse and its hit single “All Night.”

He describes the song as a “current pop smash hit with L.A. Reid–the first hit to launch that label.”  It opens with a super catchy and fun piano riff (very old-school sounding). The piano is a sample which DJ Cutmaster Swift plays on his Mac and then scratches it on the turntable.

Holy cow is that song catchy.  I love at the end when Big Boi and his rapping partner Sleepy Brown mime the piano part perfectly.

The final song is “The Way You Move” from 2003’s Speakerboxxx/The Love Below.  He describes it in a hilariously casual way as “one of the biggest things we’ve ever done.”  It opens with some great scratching and the snappy drums from Omar Phillips.  This is a song that was a little too poppy for me on the record, but man it’s an undeniable track.

It’s a terrific set and one that I wish was ten minutes longer.

[READ: October 14, 2018] “The Coast of Leitrim”

This story seems like a simple case of a loser-ish guy trying desperately to woo a woman.

Seamus Ferris is thirty-five.  He lives alone in an inherited house and he has fallen hard for a Polish woman who works in a cafe down in Carrick.  He has no mortgage, which is a plus, but he’s not especially exciting, generally speaking.

He feels that the situation is like a vast love affair, although he has never spoken to her–more than ordering anyway.  But he knew that she was sensitive, with a “dreamy distracted air” and she was “at a remove from the other mullockers who worked in the cafe.”  She was pretty but no supermodel–Seamus admitted he himself was not hideous.

Using some sly detective work–he peeked at the work schedule while using the toilet, he learned her name and then did some research on Instagram.  Her full name Katharine Zeileinski was unique enough for him to be able to narrow down the account quickly.  She didn’t post much, but what she did suggested she was single. That’s all he wanted.

Finally, he got up the nerve and asked if she would like to go out sometime.

“That will be fine,” she said. When is this happening?”

They visit the coast of Leitrim and he is an encyclopedia of information  They have a nice time and see eye to eye on a lot.  Like they both look down their noses at the drunken girls on a weekend hen party wearing Mohill Pussy Posse shirts.

She told him about where she was from Stalowa Wola, a small city in South Poland. And how she never wanted to go back there.  It wasn’t the work situation that kept her away, more like the family situation.  Families were…

“Close?” she tried.
“Clammy,” Seamus said.
“Clammy?”
“Like a warm feeling, but not in a good way.  Sweat on your palm sand at the base of your neck.  A nervous type feel.”
“You’re funny,” “she said.
“Thanks be to fuck for that,” he said.”
“But yes,” she said, “Clammy.”

They talk some more and then she asks to see the cottage where he lives. And soon enough they are an item.

As comfort settled in–he was very happy–so did the nitpicking. There was one thing he didn’t like about her and he couldn’t get past it.  As he got mad at himself for thinking about it, he started to beat himself up, and he started to doubt his own worth.

And so he did what any insecure eejit would do–he became suspicious of her.

And that was that.

It’s then that he realized what a mistake he had made.  But what if she has done the unthinkable–returned home?

At first I thought I wasn’t going to like this.  I thought it was set up as a cheer-on-the-old-sad-sack guy as he screws himself.  But it was not done in a creepy way. The story has a lot of humor in it, especially the lengths he goes to do try to find her again.  And in the agency it gives her.