I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: RODRIGO Y GABRIELA-“Echoes” (2019).

Rodrigo y Gabriela are amazing guitarists.  Rod plays amazing solos wile Gab plays an astonishing rhythmic counterpoint (both on acoustic).  Although they do play classical and Spanish styles (and so much more) they often mix heavy metal elements into their songs.  I have seen them twice live and they blew me away each time.

They are back with their first album in five years.  And they have just released a cover of Pink Floyd’s “Echoes” an 18 minute song that I just love.

And their version is utterly fascinating.  How do two guitarists plan to cover Pink Floyd?  Well, the beginning of the song is a great, recognizable riff, so they play that and Rod plays the vocal line when that comes around.

The middle of the original gets really trippy and kind of dark, with all kinds of synth sounds.  So what do Rod y Gab do?  They embrace what they do best–with Gab playing an incredible rhythm, Rod takes an opportunity to shuffle around in a solo (there’s certainly some looping overdubbing here).  The middle quiets down to them just scraping strings and pounding the guitar and splaying single echoing notes.  It’s not as dark as the original, but it’s still a weird and somewhat unsettling passage.

The song comes out of the middle darkness with  a rollicking solo and a huge buildup from both guitars.

It resumes the song and finishes much like the original in about 18 minutes.  It’s spectacular.

Learn more about it and watch the video here.

[READ: January 25, 2019] Cucumber Quest 2

It has been a while since I read Cucumber Quest 1, so details were a little fuzzy, but the humor of the book is still awesome (especially the way it undercuts hero tropes.

Cucumber wakes up on an island and as he is calling for his friends, he steps on a cell phone.  As he goes to use it, someone shouts NOOO!

It is a young female bunny creature arguing with a crab.  The crab (and all of the crabs) are crabby.  They doubt that she is Princess Nautilus even if she claims she is.  Cucumber takes out his magic wand and it actually works!   He saves her.  Woah.

She says he can call her Nautilus.  He suggests “How about Nautie for sh–” and then realizes what he said.

As soon as he mentions The Legendary Sword, she realizes he must be a descendant of the legendary hero who defeated the Nightmare Knight.  She has been waiting her whole life to give him the information she has.  She reveals that the scary squid monster who attacked them was Splashmaster one of the Disaster Monsters.  She tells the story of the Nightmare Knights and that he created seven monsters.  “The first was Splashmaster.  The second was um.. um.. I can’t seem to remember.”   Cucumber: “How long did you say you were studying this again?”

It also turns out that Nautilus’ cellphone is not a cell phone.  It is the Royal Instrument of Summoning.  And with it she summons Liquus, a sort of water blob.  Liquus’ first appearance is hilariously floppy.

Back with Splashmaster, Cucumber’s sister Almond and her crew are trapped by the astonishingly stupid squid (who is wearing a Limbo King crown because he smashed the bunny boat).  Almond is hopping mad.

Back with Cucumber, Nautilus has taken them to the beautiful resort of Captain Bubblebeard, a giant crab who is very happy to see her.  He talks a good game about how he would go and fight that Splashmaster, but you know not now because he has settled down and is working at his resort.

One of my favorite jokes is about Chardonnay, servant of the Dream Oracle.  Nautilus gets starry-eyed, imaging what its like to work for the dram oracle  cit to Chardonnay scrubbing a toilet.  But then Chardonnay reveals devastating news.  That the Nightmare Knight has been resurrected not just this one time but once every 5000 years for the last 500,000 years.   That kind of makes their quest seem a little futile.

There’s some wonderful jokes about size and scale–like when Carrot tries to fight Splashmaster.  The close up of him looks amazing, but when we pull back and see just how tiny his spear is compared to Splashmaster, it’s hilarious..  Or when Cucumber demonstrates that he throws like a little baby.

I loved some of the magic in this book as well.  Like when Cucumber says he wishes something would happen just as a shooting star passes. So the wish comes true and the wicked Saturday shows up.  “If I had known that I would have made a good wish.”  Saturday has the The Dream Sword that the heroes need to fight the Nightmare Knight.  But they can’t get it out of the scabbard.

There’s a visit from the wicked Peridot–and a hilarious section later on where the Nightmare Knight pronounces her name wrong and she gets all snippy about it and calls him Mr Nightmare Knit.

And then we meet Nautilus’ father, King Kelp.  He is a delightful character, full of positivity and an expert at magic  or at least The Extremely Specific and Pretty Much Completely Worthless Capsule Spell Machine.  Turn the crank and out comes a plastic capsule.  “This capsule grants you the power to place a comically oversized bathtub drain on any surface.”  The fact that the story brings that spell up later is wonderful.

Nautilus’ is even more useless “This capsule grants you the power to order a pizza from anywhere but only when nobody is in the mood for pizza.”

Eventually Nautilus and Cucumber reach Splashmaster and the first thing she notices is that Splashmaster is wearing her Limbo crown.  She demands a Limbo contest immediately  (and with one push of the Limbo button all of the trappings for Limbo-athon IV appear out of nowhere.  Splashmaster is obviously way too big to compete and his sadness is hilarious.

But then a real battle ensues.  Since there are more books, we know that they must beat Splashmaster.  And with that they must be off to the Melody Kingdom for the second monster.

Then we see Nightmare Knight talking to Cordelia.  He’s not at all surprised that Splashmaster lost “he never has been the most capable of my servants.”

On their way to the Melody Kingdom their train is stopped by a bad guy, Cosmo, who I didn’t remember.  But he’s clearly  badt and he threatens to blow up the train with everyone on it.  He shows them that a bomb will go off in 1 minute and then he takes off.  Hilariously while they are searching for the bomb, Saturday shows up to rob them.  Come on!  Maybe a bomb would come in handy.

The end of the book has some more amusing “reader” questions for all of the characters:

Cucumber: What TV shows do you like?  Carrot: why did you become a knight? Nautilus: how did you meet Liquus?

Then some character cards that show stats for all the new characters.

The final pages are basically an ad for The Ripple Kingdom and all the wonderful things it has to offer   Shame we’re leaving it so soon.  But I can’t wait for Chapter 2 in book 3).

There’s a little tag at the end which shows Cucumber’s dad still in jail–with the jail door unlocked all this time.