I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: SHAKEY GRAVES-Live at Newport Folk Festival (July 28, 2018).

I really only know Shakey Graves (Alejandro Rose-Garcia) from NPR Music.  I enjoyed his Tiny Desk and have thought he’d be a fun folk rocker to see live.  He’s got a raspy voice and is not afraid to go loud as needed.  He says that with this show, he has now played all four stages at Newport.

He’s going to “Kick this off with a waltz that I wrote years ago that has sadly become more relevant every year I’ve played it.  It’s about not listening to people and listening to people at the same time.  What?  How’s that possible?  It’s called ‘Word of Mouth.'”

This song is just him on his guitar with a kick drum and tambourine (not sure if he’s doing the percussion, but I assume he is).  Midway through, he kicks in the distortion for a loud middle section.  The song is long, about 7 minutes, and in the middle, he says, “And if you can’t handle shit here in the United States you better get the fuck out.  That’s terrible advice, honestly.  You gotta stand your ground and hear yourself out.”

The ending feedback segues into “Foot of Your Bed.”  A full band has evidently joined him as there is now a pedal steel guitar, drums, and a harp (?!).  It’s a quiet song which they segue into the much louder “Cops and Robbers.”

“The Perfect Parts” opens with a complex drum part and then a stomping clap-along with a big dah dah dah dah chorus (that he gets everyone to sing along with).

“Big Bad Wolf” opens with some cool guitar sounds before turning into a song that builds nicely.  “Mansion Door” is my favorite song of the set.  It builds wonderfully with Graves’ rough voice totally soaring. It’s followed by “Can’t Wake Up” which he says is about a “sleepy person, oh so sleepy.  No, it’s about changing things that you’re capable of changing even if they bring you distress.”

“Dining Alone” is the theme song of this fake person Garth Nazarth (all of his songs are about this fictional guy).  Garth hates his job, but all he does is fantasize instead of changing any aspect of it.”  Continuing with the downer aspect is “Counting Sheep.”  He says that the whole new album is about suicide “oh my gosh, not that.”  He says he was never suicidal, but he has gotten letters from people who have mentioned some intense feelings.  So he encoded “don’t die” messages throughout the record.  “Counting Sheep” is “a straightforward ‘don’t die’ song.  If you need a hug, come find me, I’ll give you a hug.”

The band leaves after the rocking “Excuses.”  It’s another great song from this show.

The final two songs are solo renditions of “Bully’s Lament” and “Roll the Bones.”  There’s some great rocking guitar on “Roll the Bones.”  I feel like the energy that Graves creates is what really makes his live shows special.  I hope he plays the Festival this year.

SET LIST:

• “Word Of Mouth”
• “Foot Of Your Bed”
• “Cops And Robbers”
• “The Perfect Parts”
• “Big Bad Wolf”
• “Mansion Door”
• “Dining Alone”
• “Counting Sheep”
• “Excuses”
• “Bully’s Lament”
• “Roll The Bones”.

[READ: January 19, 2019] “Do Not Stop”

For some reason I thought that Salvator Scibona was an author I really liked and I was puzzled that I didn’t like this story very much.  Then I figured out that Scibona is not who I was thinking of at all, and that the last story I read by him I didn’t really enjoy that much either.

The first sentence sums up the story pretty well: “Okinawa was a fever dream of mosquitoes and Falstaff beer.”

The whole story, which is a Vietnam war story, is also a confusing fever dream that seems endless.

Vollie is getting shitfaced, but the Marine Corp rule was that they couldn’t put Vollie on the plane to deploy if he was too drunk to walk unassisted.  As he leaves the bar he is assaulted by people selling things, and advertising jingles just compound the alcohol in his head.

When they get to the next bar the waitress says “Your job is to die,” but of course what she really said was “You want to buy?”  He has been drinking so much he’s not sure if he’s in a bar or a market stall.  Then there’s an announcement that he will be landing in Vietnam.  The whole country seemed to be on fire and there were whole villages made of pleated Coke cans.

Within a week of arriving, he was picking shards of the head of a lance corporal of his shirt.  You’d recognize people who you saw a lot and then a month later they were dead.

So he developed a mantra: it don’t mean nothing.  The simple mantra fit with the convoy order; keep going.  Do Not Stop.  If a truck breaks down you push it off the road and keep going.   “Two minutes to stop on a mountain road was plenty long enough for a convoy to get sighted and blown to hell from incoming.”

I enjoyed reading about the soldiers throwing bags onto the trucks as they passed with request for supplies–chicken soup or orange juice–we all got colds, razor blade, rations, bullets, soap, beer (but Vollie could never find any beer).

And then a bomb detonated n front of them blowing up the truck ahead of them.  The soldiers on board who weren’t killed ran to Vollie’s truck and the convoy pressed on.

Then he found some beer  “if marines never stole from the Army and the Navy we could never win a war.  A marine is a thief by training, tradition, and necessity.”  They stole beer from the Navy and soon enough Vollie was seeing a marine floating in the air–a miracle.  “A marine with invisible wings.”   But as they got closer they could see the “spike that had been introduced through his ass and into his torso.”  It was a dead Vietnamese solider dressed in the shreds of Marine fatigues with a sign around his neck saying which battalion it was the work of.

Then they are attacked.  Again.  And Vollie was sure he was hit–he felt the splatter which was soft and warm.  He was paralyzed.  It was dark.  Then he realized he was fine.  This whole experience took about as long as it takes “to butter a piece of toast.” Then he was firing back.

So a typical fever dream about the Vietnam War, with some interesting specifics.