SOUNDTRACK: ALLEN STONE-“Sleep” (Field Recordings, November 1, 2012).
I read this performer’s name as Alien Stone and was kind of excited. Far more than when I realized his name was just Allen Stone.
This [Allen Stone: A Rollicking Moment, Performed On The Wind] is the final Field Recording set backstage at the Sasquatch Festival.
It amused me as the song started that they start singing “Danger Zone” And the opening moment where:
“I feel like Zeus,” Allen Stone announces with a laugh as gusts of wind whip his long hair in dramatic fashion. With a mountainous vista behind him, he’s found himself in the kind of majestic rock ‘n’ roll moment that requires a callout to Kenny Loggins’ “Danger Zone.”
I was thinking that Stone sounded a bit like Stevie Wonder as he sang (which the blurb agrees with), but I also sensed a bit of Jamiroquai.
I thought the song was kind of dull, but maybe that’s because it is normally much bigger.
Usually, Stone performs his bluesy soul with the aid of a crack band, but here, we got the 25-year-old belter to perform his single “Sleep” — usually a big, rollicking rave-up — with just a guitarist (Trevor Larkin, performing unplugged) to supplement Stone’s voice. Channeling Stevie Wonder in all but appearance, Stone demonstrates here that his sound can withstand just about anything, even as it’s stripped down to its skeleton and performed on the wind.
I’ve not heard of him since this, so I don’t know what happened to him, but I’m not really that curious to find out.
[READ: January 11, 2017] “The Hanging of the Schoolmarm”
This is a short, simple story in which the title pretty much tells the whole thing.
But Coover has some fun as it gets there.
The story opens with the schoolmarm playing poker in the town saloon. At stake is the saloon itself. The men are awed by her refined and lofty character–they cuss a lot, but never around her.
The schoolmarm wins the saloon and converts it into a school /church. She preaches temperance and manners. She makes them learn spelling and counting. She even raps their heads when they disobey.
And for that the men find her guilty and condemn her to hanging.
The end of the story sees the schoolmarm and the sheriff discussing justice. He is about as vulgar as the rest but has a bit more thoughts about him than the others.
As with a lot of Coover stories, I don’t really understand what the point was, because it feels like there was more going on. But I just don’t see it.
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