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Archive for March, 2019

Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter–The Long War (2012) [510 pages; 928 pages total]

Posted in Adventure, Alejandro Escovedo, Alternate Reality, Big Books, Bob Dylan, Death, End of the World, Environmentalism, Evolution, Explorers, Fantasy, MC5, Orphans, Racism, Sci-fi, Science, Stephen Baxter, Supernatural, Terry Pratchett, Tiny Desk Concert, Violence, Warren Zevon on March 31, 2019| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: ALEJANDRO ESCOVEDO-Tiny Desk Concert #834 (March 20, 2019).

I feel like I’ve been hearing Alejandro Escovedo’s name for years, and yet I know very little about him.

I assumed he was a kind of folkie guy.  So I was pretty surprised by the loud sound he brought to the Tiny Desk.  And even more surprised to read

The musician, who once opened for the Sex Pistols … seemed to appreciate the difference between being pelted with spit and debris by punk rock fans and being showered with loving appreciation in the NPR Music office.

Escovedo came  in a leather jacket and a large band.  And even though I thought they were loud, apparently they intended to be louder.  They even started the show with “one for the money, two for the show, three to get ready and four Go Alejandro!”

Escovedo and his backing band known as Don Antonio set up behind the Tiny Desk, their first sounds were blistering loud. That’s when we broke the news: We wouldn’t amplify Alejandro’s voice. We got a slightly sullen look from the band; but despite the toned-down volume, they were all still amped up.

A little research into Escovedo, though shows that he has, indeed, played folkie/alt-country music.  But that his sound has evolved over the years.

Escovedo pulled the three-song set from The Crossing, the most recent chapter in his ongoing odyssey and a typically hard-rocking, literate saga about two teenagers looking for their American Dream of rock and roll and beat poetry.

“Teenage Luggage” opens kind of quiet with one guitar and quiet drums, but soon enough a sax and keyboards are added, then comes some bass and the second saxophone and the roaring lead guitar.  As Escovedo sing/speaks his story.  Then comes the catchy chorus:

You think you know me, you’ll never know me you’re just a bigot with a bad guitar.

By the end, everyone is rocking out with mini solos from Perinelli on saxophone and a raucous guitar solo from Gramentieri

The close quarters of the Tiny Desk allows for a kind of backstage insight into the musical and visual interplay between Escovedo and the veteran Italian band Don Antonio [Antonio Gramentieri: vocals, guitar; Denis Valentini: bass; Matteo Monti: drums; Nicola Peruch: keyboard; Gianni Perinelli: tenor sax; Franz Valtieri: baritone sax]. Lead guitarist Antonio Gramentieri is the perfect foil for Escovedo, who adds a heavy dose of edginess to the sound with his power strumming.

“Something Blue” is slow with a dominant organ sound (reminiscent of Bob Dylan).  It sounds like an old-school rock song and his delivery sounds more than a little like Warren Zevon.

He says that “Sonica USA” goes out to Don since Wayne Kramer from the MC5 played on this.  It has a great raw rock feel with Escovedo’s punky vocals and the chanted chorus of “Sonica USA.”  The soloing section is great with the two saxophones playing on top of Gramentier’s wailing solo.

It’s a really fun garage rocking set.

[READ: Summer 2018] The Long War

I found the first book in this series rather compelling–almost surprisingly so given that it’s not a fast-paced book and, to be honest, not a lot happens.

But it was really well written and the things that do happen are compelling and fascinating.  And I couldn’t wait to read more.

In the first book:

A man creates an invention (The Stepper) which allows one to step into a parallel world that is next to ours.  There are a possibly infinite numbers of parallel worlds in each direction (East or West).  The worlds that are closer to ours are almost identical to our Earth (known as Datum Earth).  The further you go, the greater the differences.  But none of them have experienced humanity before Step Day (aside from earlier hominids).

The main character is Joshua Valienté.  Joshua is a natural “Stepper.”  He doesn’t need the device to Step from one word to the next, nor does he feel the nausea and other side effects that most people feel as they travel.  Most of the book follows his exploits.

The Black corporate has a ship with an entity known as Lobsang who claims that he was a human reincarnated as artificial intelligence.  Joshua is sure that Lobsang is a computer, but Lobsang’s human skills are uncanny.  This ship has managed to Step as an entity, meaning everything in the ship can go with them.  Normally you can only bring what you can carry (aside from metal).

The novel more or less is an exploratory one with Joshua and Lobsang Stepping through millions of Earths.  Not a lot happens, but the novel never grows boring.  The interactions between Joshua and Lobsang are often funny.  And the writers have infused the Earths that they stop in with just enough differences to make each stop strangely compelling (this must be Baxter’s hard science leanings).

At the end of the book, the anti-steppers attempt a massive, deadly protest.

(more…)

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Gruff Rhys–American Interior: The quixotic journey of John Evans, his search for a lost tribe and how, feuled by fantasy and (possibly) booze, he accidentally annexed a third of North America; or Footnotes: a fantastical, musical quest in search of the remains of Don Juan Evans (2014)

Posted in American Interior, Death, Dylan Goch, Funky Web Sites, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Gruff Rhys, History, Huh?, John Evans, Kliph Scurlock, Madoc: The Making of a Myth., Native Americans, Philadelphia, PA, PhilaMOCA, Separado!, Super Furry Animals, Wales on March 30, 2019| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: GRUFF RHYS–American Interior (2013).

Gruff Rhys was (is?) the singer and composer in Super Furry Animals, a fantastic indie-pop band from Wales.   After several years with SFA and several solo albums, Gruff decided to do something a little different.  Actually, everything he does is a little different, as this quote from The Guardian explains:

“The touring musician can feel like the puppet of consumer forces,” he writes, bemoaning the way that “cities have now been renamed ‘markets’ and entire countries downgraded to ‘territories'”. So, over the last five or so years, he has come up with the idea of “investigative touring”: combining the standard one-show-a‑night ritual with creative fieldwork. In 2009, he went to Patagonia to trace the roots of a disgraced relative called Dafydd Jones, and the Welsh diaspora in South America more generally, and played a series of solo concerts, as well as making a film titled Separado!. Now, Rhys has reprised the same approach to tell another story, and poured the results into four creations: an album, another film, an ambitious app, and this book – all titled American Interior, and based on the brief life of John Evans: another far-flung relative of the singer, who left Wales to travel to North America in the early 1790s.

So yes, there’s a film and a book and this CD.  This album is a delightful blend of acoustic and electronic pop and folk.  Rhys’ voice is wonderfully subdued and with his Welsh accent coming in from time to time, it makes everything he sings somehow feel warm and safe (even when it’s not).   Rhys creates songs that sound like they came from the 1970s (but better), but he also explores all kinds of sonic textures–folk songs, rocking songs, dancing song, even songs in Welsh.

“American Exterior” is a 30 second intro with 8-bit sounds and the repeated “American Interior” until the piano and drum-based (from Kliph Scurlock) “American Interior” begins.  It’s a catchy song with the repeated (and harmonized) titular refrain after each line and it’s a great introduction to the vibe of the record.  It’s followed by the super catchy stomping “100 Unread Messages” which just rocks along with a great chorus.  You can see Gruff “composing” the lyrics to this in the book.

“The Whether (Or Not)” introduces some electronic elements to this song.  It’s basically a great pop song with splashes of keys and some cool stabs of acoustic guitar.  “The Last Conquistador” and “The Lost Tribes” are gentler synthy songs, as many of these are.  “Liberty (Is Where We’ll Be)” returns to the acoustic sound with some really beautiful piano.

“Allweddellau Allweddol” (English translation: Key Keyboards) is the only all-Welsh song on the record and it romps and stomps and is as much fun as that title suggests it would be.  There’s even a children’s choir singing on it (maybe?).

“The Swamp” is a simple electronics and drumming pattern which leaps right into “Iolo” one of the most fun songs on the record.  It’s a nod to the Welsh poet who inspired but backed out of Evans’ expedition at the last-minute but also a rollicking good time with the chanted “yoloyoloyoloyolo” and great tribal drums from Kliph.

The end of the album slows things down with “Walk Into the Wilderness” a slow aching ballad and the final two animal-related songs.  “Year of the Dog” is kind of a mellow opus when it is joined by the instrumental coda “Tiger’s Tale.”  Both songs feature goregous pedal steel guitar from Maggie Bjorklund.

Gruff Rhys is an amazing songwriter.  He could write the history of an obscure Welshman and still get great catchy songs out of it.  And that’s exactly what he’s done here.

[READ: December 2018] American Interior

How to explain this book?

I’ll start by saying that I loved it.  I was delighted by Rhys’ experiences and, by the end, I was genuinely disappointed to read that Evans’ trip didn’t pan out (even though I knew it didn’t).  The only compliant I have about the book is that I wish he had given a pronunciation guide for all of the welsh words in there, because I can’t even imagine how you say things like Ieuan Ab Ifan or Gwredog Uchaf or Dafydd Ddu Eryri (which is helpfully translated as Black David of Snowdonia, but not given a pronunciation guide).  But what about the contents?

The subtitle gives a pretty good explanation but barely covers the half of it.

Here’s a summary from The Guardian to whet one’s appetite for Rhys himself and for what he’s on about here:

[John] Evans was a farmhand and weaver from Waunfawr on the edge of Snowdonia, who was in pursuit of something fantastical: a supposed tribe of Welsh-speaking Native Americans said to live at the top of the Missouri river, who were reckoned to owe their existence to the mythical Prince Madog, a native of Gwynedd who folklore claimed had successfully sailed to the New World in 1170. In 1580, this story was hyped up by Elizabeth I’s court mathematician and occultist John Dee (born of Welsh parents), in an attempt to contest the Spanish claim to American territory. Two centuries later, with the opening of new frontiers, talk of a tribe called the Madogwys and “forts deemed to be of Welsh origin” began to swirl anew around Wales and North America, and became tangled up in the revolutionary fervour of the time, along with a radical Welsh spirit partly founded in nonconformist Christianity.

All this was moulded into a proposal made by a self-styled druid named Iolo Morganwg (“a genius”, but “also a fraud of the highest order”, says Rhys), who “called for the Americans, in the light of Madog’s legacy, to present the Welsh with their own tract of land in the new country of the free, so that the Welsh could leave their condemned royalist homeland”. Morganwg stayed put in Cowbridge, near Cardiff (the site of his “radical grocery” shop is now occupied by a branch of Costa Coffee), but Evans was inspired by his visions, and eventually set sail.

Rhys goes on a “journey of verification”, following Evans’s route from Baltimore, through such cities as Pittsburgh and Cincinnati, and then up the Missouri river to the ancestral home of the Mandan tribe of Native Americans, who had been rumoured to be the Welsh-speakers of myth, and among whom Evans lived, in territory argued over by the British and Spanish. Along the way, he does solo performances built around music and a PowerPoint-assisted talk about Evans’s story, keeps appointments with historians, and also tries to glimpse the America that Evans found through the cracks in a landscape of diners, what some people call “campgrounds”, and Native American reservations.

The Guardian’s review also talks about why the book works: (more…)

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Jonathan Evison–Lawn Boy (2018)

Posted in Canadian Music, Funny (ha ha), Jonathan Evison, LGBTQ, Phish, Racism, Rheostatics, The Tragically Hip, The Wizard of Oz, Topiary, tagged on March 29, 2019| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: RHEOSTATICS-Corel Centre, Ottawa, ON (November 29, 1996).

This is the 15th night of the 24 date Canadian Tour opening for The Tragically Hip on their Trouble At The Henhouse Tour.  The site has recently added a DAT version of the show in conjunction with the existing fan-recorded version.

It opens in a very amusing way.  I imagine that Dave and Martin are lying on the stage, because Dave asks, “Martin can you sleep?”
Martin: “No, I can’t sleep.  I’ve smoked about three cigarettes.”
Dave “I had this weird dream we were playing in a giant arena named after a software company, opening for Ringo’s All Stars.  It felt really weird.”
Tim starts playing the bass.
Daev: “Might as well just get up.”
Martin: “That’s either a nightmare or a fantastic dream.”
Then they loop saying “Let’s see what Tim and Don are up to.”

Dave breaks character and says, “The comedy is free tonight.”  Which leads to a rocking “Fat” followed by a nice surprise of “Aliens.”  Martin sings, “they came down in 1996.”

Then comes a grooving “Dope Fiends.”  I love that in these 1996 shows the middle part is a cool jam.  It makes the loud ending even more powerful.  And as the song fades it segues nicely into “Digital Beach.”  They start “Claire” before Martin is done and Martin sings a few more “beautiful things” before they start “Claire” properly.

Dave says that they are the Rheostatics from Etobicoke.  They’ve been around for 17 years and it’s a privilege to share the stage with The Hip and uh… we like you.  We have a new record out called The Blue Hysteria.  Sixteen songs, one of them is secret, so really only 15 and this next song is from that.”

Dave keeps talking about the record–it’s in quad sound while someone starts playing “Bad Time to Be Poor.”

Dave thanks the Green Sprouts who are here tonight–we have an address on the back of our CD and if you write us, we will write you back.  We promise.

Dave asks, Is anybody here form Italy tonight (massive cheers).
Martin: Oh my god, it must be empty over there.
This next song (a rocking “Motorino”)  is about being over there and wanting to be home.  It’s a great version that segues into a terrific “Feed Yourself.”  Boy I hope the next time I See them, they play “Feed Yourself.”

[READ: February 2019] Lawn Boy

Yup, I grabbed this book because of the Phish song/album.

Nope, it has nothing to do with the band at all.

Yup, I still enjoyed it quite a lot.

This is the story of Mike Muñoz.  He is basically stuck.  He absolutely loves landscaping–it is his passion.  He wants to sculpt topiary and be a recognized artist.  But he is stuck doing menial landscaping jobs–ones that often involves picking up dog poo more than beautifying plants.

Mike’s father abandoned him a long time ago, when Mike was 11.  When Mike was five, he took Mike to Disneyland.  Disneyland turned out to be an abandoned building site.  He told Mike “I guess they moved.”

There have been many stepfathers since then, but now his mom is pretty much done with all that. She works double shifts as a waitress in a bar (Mike tries to not go there).  Mike lives at home with her and his mentally handicapped brother.  He basically hasn’t matured past a child and has an impulse control and gets upset very easily.   He is also bigger than Mike–by a lot–so even though Mike does a good job watching him, its not easy. (more…)

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Kristen Iskandrian–Motherest (2017)

Posted in Alanis Morissette, Canadian Music, College, Death, Funny (ha ha), Kristen Iskandrian, Parenting, Pregnancy, Rheostatics, Sex, tagged on March 28, 2019| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: RHEOSTATICS-Corel Centre, Ottawa, ON (November 28, 1996).

This is the 14th night of the 24 date Canadian Tour opening for The Tragically Hip on their Trouble At The Henhouse Tour.  The site has recently added a DAT version of the show in conjunction with the existing fan-recorded version.

The band had played a show earlier in the day at Record Runner.  They sound great and fresh at this show as well–playing 45 minutes instead of 2 and a half hours must be a much more relaxing gig.

After the intro music of “Popcorn” (I wonder if the intro music has any bearing on the rest of the show–setlist, mood of the band, anything), they play “Self-Serve Gas Station.”  Not too many shows open with an older song like this.  Martin sings “What went wrong with Nimrod, is he dumb?”  It sorta segues into Martin playing “California Dreamline.”

“Claire” sounds really nice with a great solo from Martin.

Dave introduces “Fan Letter to Michael Jackson” by saying, this song is about a writing a letter to Alanis Morissette asking to be on her team.  In the middle he whispers “write me back… write me back, in blood!”

A plug for the new record with “Bad Time to be Poor” which is followed by “Motorino.”  I love when thy play this song.  It’s quite peculiar with a cool riff and Martin speaking Italian.

They run through a sweet instrumental jaunt through “Artenings Made of Gold” for 40 seconds before seguing into “All the Same Eyes.”

They end the show with a shout out to “Tim Mech [who] is in the home” as they play a rocking “Horses.”  As the song ends, Dave chants “Fuck the Tories.”

It’s another great opening set.

[READ: March 2018] Motherest

This was a really touching story about Agnes, an 18 year-old going off to college who has lost her mother.  Not that she died… she is just gone, left one day without saying anything.

Set in 1994, Agnes gets through the tribulations of college by writing to her absent mother (a letter at the end of each chapter).

Despite the premise, there’s a lot of funny stuff in this book.  Agnes has a sarcastic outlook on life and her parents, even though she clearly misses her mother.   The humor is evident in her letters to her mother (who will probably never read them) and in the main body of each chapter.  Like that her roommate’s given name is Surprise (which makes for some challenging sentences: “Surprise asked me”).  Also a little challenging is that the boy she fancies is delicate and sensitive so she calls him (and refers to him as) Tea Rose.

Also missing from Agnes’ life is her brother Simon who died three years ago–the three longest shortest years.

So while she is going through her daily life–handing in papers and willing Tea Rose to look at her, she is also writing to her mother: “is ‘leaving” a verb or a personality trait.  Like do you do it because you are it, or are you it because you do it?”

The book does not have her pining for Tea Rose for too long, which is nice.  They speak pretty early in the book–he asks her is she knows Nirvana–not “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” their early stuff.   “How could he know I had an older brother once who knew everything there was to know about music?”  And by the end of the semester they are firmly together. (more…)

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Amos Oz–“Setting the World to Rights” (Harper’s, April 2019)

Posted in Amos Oz, Death, Harper's, Hate, Israel, Nao, Nicholas de Lange, Religion, Short Story, Tiny Desk Concert, Translation on March 27, 2019| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: NAO-Tiny Desk Concert #833 (March 18, 2019).

This was possibly my least favorite Tiny Desk Concert I have seen.  And it was endless.  It kills me when bands I like play short sets (often only three short songs) while shows like this push nearly 20 minutes.

Nao’s voice is a comic book character–underneath that comic book voice there’s a powerful voice, but it’s all wrapped up in this goofy–how can you take it seriously–nasally nonsense–and when she goes deep, it’s even more amusing.  Worse yet, her backing singers sound like bleating goats and sheep in the first two songs–single note: “baaa.”

And yet , clearly I know nothing because the blurb describes “Nao’s sophomore effort and one of 2018’s best albums.”

Just to top it off, the album is about astrology.

In astrology, your Saturn return is the time in life when Saturn goes back to the same spot it was at the time of your birth. As Nao explained during her appearance at NPR’s Tiny Desk, “It’s about leaving adolescence and going into adulthood.” This crossing of the threshold that happens around your late 20s to early 30s is the inspiration for Saturn

Maybe I would like the album more if her voice was drowned out in synths.

While Nao usually performs with synthy, electronic twinkles, her day at the Tiny Desk was stripped down by comparison. At times, her lyrics ring out with just a sparse guitar to carry them. Like a roller coaster of unexpected upheaval, Nao’s distinctive vocal range on this four-song set goes from bellowing and husky to soft and coy, often within the same verse. Be it the breezy, Brazilian funk of “If You Ever,” the hallowed harmony of “Orbit” (complete with prayer hands) or the valiant soul-searching of “Make It Out Alive,” it’s almost as if Nao duets with herself, answering her own questions, settling into her own quirks.

I listened to the show twice to see if I was wrong.  The first song is a bit catchy–I like the guitar lick from Ariel O’Neal.  In fact, focusing on her throughout the show is a highlight.

I also really like the part between the songs when she introduces the band, because she’s not singing–it’s a nice light jam.  I admit that it amuses me that she says “that’s my cousin Samson Jatto on drums–he’s not really my cousin I just wanted to say that.”

If she didn’t do the R&B warble, the opening of “Bad Blood” would be okay.  But the comical vocals just undermine anything serious.  And then the bleating starts.  I’m not sure if only Troi Lauren and Taylor Samuels are making the goat sounds, but it sounds like it’s coming from all around the room.

“Orbit is similarly okay to start with.   “Make It Out Alive” is the fastest song in the show, with some uptempo keys and bass from Joe Price and Henry Guy.

If it were one song on a mixtape, I’d skip it, but 20 minutes was a lot to take.

[READ: March 26, 2019] “Setting the World to Rights”

A powerful opening from this story: “All his life he lived on hatred.  He was a solitary man who hoarded gloom.”

And how about this: “Good people are afraid of hatred, and even tend not to believe in it.  If it appears before their eyes, they generally call it dedication or some such name.”

Those in the kibbutz believed the subject of the story (unnamed) was full of faith and dealt severely with the world–“We invested him with a halo of self-sufficient reticence.”  This halo afforded protection against gossip although the children called him ‘wicked Haman” and pointed fingers at him.

He works with machines and is efficient and hates waste. (more…)

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David Bezmozgis–“Childhood” (The Walrus, April 2019)

Posted in B.T.O., Bachman Turner Overdrive, Brad May, Buffalo Sabres, Canadian Content, Canadian Music, Humiliation, Masturbation, Parenting, Rheostatics, Short Story, Tamara Williamson, The Tragically Hip, The Walrus, The Wizard of Oz, Therapy, tagged on March 26, 2019| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: RHEOSTATICS-Marine Midland Arena, Buffalo, NY (November 26, 1996).

This is the 13th night of the 24 date Canadian Tour opening for The Tragically Hip on their Trouble At The Henhouse Tour.

It’s also only the second Rheostatics show recorded in the United States on the Rheostatics Live website.  There was an earlier recording of this show which was not a soundboard show.  My complaints about the show were mostly about the audience.  And you can’t hear them on this.  The recording is much clearer too.

They opened the show to “Ding Dong the Witch is Dead” from the Wizard of Oz.   There’s no graceful segue into the music, Martin just starts playing “A Midwinter Night’s Dream.”  It sounds perfect.  Everyone is tight and right with the sounds and Martin hits those high note perfectly.  It’s an amazing and bold introduction to the band if you didn’t know them.

“Fat” is next.  It’s more conventional, but there’s some really amazing guitar work from Martin.  And the band is really into it by the end.  It sounds fantastic.  “All the Same Eyes” is up next and it sounds rocking and fluid.

Tim introduces the band in this way:
We’re the Rheostatics from Toronto, Canada.

Then Dave says:
We’re B.T.O. from Red Deer, Alberta.
We’re The Spoons from Burlington, Ontario.
We are every Canadian band that ever was and some that haven’t even been born yet.

The play “Motorino” which is dedicated to Brad May, the Buffalo Sabres player.  It’s a bit chaotic, and Martin sounds a bit unhinged, but I love that he speak/sings in Italian.

Tamara Williamson joins them for “Sweet Rich Beautiful Mine.”  She and Martin sound great together.  I love that she gets a few solo moments.  And when they both hit those incredibly high notes–she goes even higher than him–goosebumps!  Martin breathes very heavily into the mic after the song–it’s so hard to tell if he’s having fun or is really going mental.

Don says “So far all of these songs have been from our brand new record.  And this next one is too.  And I think the only place it’s available in the States is right here in the lobby.”

They play a great “Bad Time to Be Poor” which Dave dedicates to “Chrissy?” “for playing our record.”  I feel like Tim emphasizes the “don’t give a shit no more” line.  He sings the whole song very clearly, which is nice.  Then they move on to a great “Self-Serve Gas Station” with excellent backing vocals from Tim.

Dave says “To all those people in the cheap seats, we can hear your cheers.  We appreciate them.”

The roaring ending segues into the quiet opening of the final song “Fan Letter to Michael Jackson.”  Instead of shouting “Michael” the first time around, Dave shouts “Triumph!”

During the verse, Dave says, “I see two angels with funny lights on their heads in the 11th row.  It’s like some kind of dream or something.”

Martin plays some fun wild soloing including a bit of “Sweet Child of Mine.”  There’s some wildness by the end with them all singing parts and martin soloing but they tack on a quieter ending, with martin noodling about and Dave whispering “big white buffalo”  Tim and martin end it with several falsetto “It feels good to be alive”.

As they leave, they thank The Tragically Hip, the best guys in the land.

[READ: March 23, 2019] “Childhood”

Mark is bringing his son Reuben to a doctor’s appointment.  They stopped at an Indian restaurant which caps off a pretty amazing trip so far since there was so much usual in their routine.  Riding a bus, strange smells.  A year earlier he wouldn’t have set foot in such a strange restaurant.   He was eight now and seemed to be doing better.

He could now read proficiently in English and French and seemed to remember the lyric to every song he heard.  He even got invited to friend’s houses.

Although group dynamics were still awkward.  There were also fits of temper and absent-mindedness.  And general spaciness.  But was all this normal?  What was the margin of error?

School wasn’t always a help–“report cards were composed in a language that bore only a faint resemblance to English.  Parent-teacher conferences had thepolite, anxious feel of second dates.”

Mark wonders about his only childhood, did he have any really distinct memories before he was turned eight?  Or twelve?  Everything felt like a brown haze.

So he and his wife put off the appointment until “it felt too irresponsible an cowardly not to.  And then they put it off some more” (more…)

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Lore Segal–“Dandelion” (New Yorker, March 25, 2019)

Posted in Canadian Music, Grenada, Kaia Kater, Lore Segal, Nature, New Yorker, Nostalgia, Old Age, Short Story, Tiny Desk Concert on March 25, 2019| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: KAIA KATER-Tiny Desk Concert #832 (March 13, 2019).

This Tiny Desk Concert was posted under a different category than the others and so does not appear on the Tiny Desk page (yet).  In order to find it you need this link.

The expectation upon seeing a banjo hanging is one of rollicking rowdiness, but when Kaia Kater began to strum her five-string, the mood in the office turned plaintive and a bit mournful. The Afro-Caribbean-Canadian singer and songwriter, who studied Appalachian music at West Virginia’s Davis & Elkins College, often references the Black Lives Matter movement, within a music form that doesn’t exactly snap to mind as being in dialogue with modern issues.

“Nine Pin” is, indeed, a slow, plaintive song with great lyrics.  After a couple of verses, the band (it wasn’t obvious she had one) adds some very sparse accompaniment–low upright bass notes, gentle guitar chords and brushed drums.

These days, Kaia Kater records for Smithsonian Folkways, and some of the songs she brought to the Tiny Desk come from her recent recording Grenades, a record she worked on while exploring her father’s home country of Grenada.

The song feels old, except for the lyrics.

These clothes you gave me don’t fit right
The belt is loose and the noose is tight

and I love the chorus which seems like it should be sung quickly but in the way she sings it it’s meaningful

I’ll be your nine pin, eight ball, seventh day, six pound, diamond quarter girl

Before she gets to “Canyonland” she introduces her band: Andrew Ryan: bass; Brad Kilpatrick: drums; Daniel Rougeau: electric guitar, lap steel guitar.

She says this is from her new album and begins a much faster, but still quiet, banjo picking.  The bowed bass adds a new kind of tension.  The lap steel guitar brings a different kind of tension, especially when the song speeds up for the second half of the song.  This song is compelling in a different way.

I find it interesting that she seems to have a more Canadian delivery (based on the Canadian country/Americana that I know of) which I rather like.

Before the final song she speaks about Grenada and how it impacted the title of her album Grenades.

It’s a country that has “experienced a lot of political turmoil,” she says. “My father left when he was 16 years old and he came to Canada as a refugee, on his own. It’s a story I ran away from for a long time, where I didn’t want to reconcile with myself being this kind of hyphenated Canadian.”

For this final song she doesn’t play an instrument.  She just sings (in a lovely torch song vocal).  Without the banjo, the entire tone of the song is different.  The guitars, bass and drums make this song far more jazzy than folkie.  But it works well once again with those lyrics in which

Kaiatries to come to terms with that history “Rain heavy like carpet bombs, sweetgrass, and lemonade / Fold the memory into your arms and whisper it away.”

There’s much power in her understated style.

[READ: March 21, 2019] “Dandelion”

I rarely think much about how old an author is.  For the most part it’s not relevant unless the story identifies intensely with someone of a certain age.  So this story begins, in a surprisingly clumsy opening that you need to unpack:

That Henry James, when he got old, rewrote his early work was my excuse for revisiting , at ninety, a story I had written in my twenties.

Segal is 91 so this is not a far-fetched claim, although it is a bit odd to include within the story itself.

The original story (unnamed in this story, if it exists at all) is about a hike that she and her father took up a mountain.  She had wished her mother had come too, but her mother had had a migraine. (more…)

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Clarice Lispector–“The Indirect World” (Harper’s, April 2019)

Posted in Clarice Lispector, Excerpt, Huh?, Johnny Lorenz, Leikeli47, Tiny Desk Concert on March 24, 2019| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK:  LEIKELI47-Tiny Desk Concert #831 (March 11, 2019).

Leikeli47 made such an impression with her recent Tiny Desk Concert that NPR asked her to be part of the Tiny Desk Family Hour as SXSW.  From this Tiny Desk Concert it’s almost enough to see why.

I say almost because I don’t think the live show translated as well on video:

Remember that scene in The Color Purple when Shug Avery was somewhere between the juke joint and her daddy’s church, singing at the top of her lungs, and the Saturday night sinners got all mixed in with the Sunday morning saints, and it was hard to tell if they were praising the high heavens or raising holy hell?  That’s what Leikeli47’s Tiny Desk felt like in the flesh.

The blurb gives a little bit more explanation of the mask

She came masked up, as always, the better to catch a glimpse of her soul. And there was so much soul to bare. Backed by a four-piece band of bruhs dressed as uniformed TSA agents (introduced as “the TSA Band, taking flight with me”), Leikeli47 and her working-class crew proceeded to transform Bob Boilen’s Tiny Desk into something akin to a pulpit or a mid-century parlor room. Portier sat hunched over the upright piano, while Justus West plucked guitar strings, Simba Scott tapped out bass lines and Timmy Manson Jr. kept everything in sync on drums.

They played five songs and apparently

traversed the entirety of black music, translating her hip-hop and afro-electro empowerment anthems to live instruments by jazzing up songs like “Attitude,” from her 2017 Wash & Set major-label debut, and laying down the vamps on “Girl Blunt” from her 2018 LP Acrylic. It wasn’t genre-bending as much as it was a musical remembering of the blues that brought her here — from the hoods of Brooklyn to down-south Virginia and everywhere else she’s called home.

“Attitude” has a very cool bass line and a nice jazzy sound from everyone.  I like her delivery although I don’t need the “bitch I got an attitude” line or the “let me hear you say Kelis is god so is Beyonce.”  That’s just weird.

“Droppin'” is slower and I like her delivery on this one.  “Ciaa” is very mellow–a short song about gangs guns and cocaine.

“Let’s Go Get Stoned (Portier’s Vibe)”  is sung by Portier–a bluesy song after which Leikeli47 asks if they want to get high with her.  Presumably through a “Girl Blunt.”   It’s catchy and I like it but the chorus is so repetitive: “This shit is a girl blunt I only smoke girl blunts.”  But the music is great.   She ends the show, like in the Family Hour with “Money.” It’s a bit more fun here, but again, the lyrics are so blah.

Nevertheless, I agree with the blurb:

In an era when women are no longer the anomaly but rap’s new standard bearers, Leikeli47 deserves all the praise for pushing the genre forward with both feet steeped firmly in tradition.

[READ: March 23, 2019] “The Indirect World”

I feel like back in college, Clarice Lispector was someone I needed to read.  I didn’t, but I couldn’t forget her name.  Now I’ve read a few things by her and I find that I don’t like her style at all.

This was translated from the Portuguese by Johnny Lorenz.

The story starts with a little introduction in which Mateus, on his final business trip, brought his wife to a rented a house on the island.  We never hear about him again (although this is from the novel, The Besieged City, so I’m sure he reappears).  She was still unhappy.

She decided to go for a walk where she ran into Doctor Lucas. (more…)

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Dilly Dally (The Foundry, Philadelphia, PA, March 23, 2019)

Posted in Dilly Dally, Guster, Hole, Philadelphia, PA, Pixies, The Foundry on March 23, 2019| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: March 23, 2019] Dilly Dally

I can’t believe it was actually two and a half years since I last saw Dilly Dally.  I was rather looking forward to seeing them again–their new album is great–an evolution but not a reinvention.

Then our Guster show was cancelled and placed on  this very night.  Coincidentally, in the same building!  Guster was going to play the large venue of the Fillmore while Dilly Dally was scheduled to play upstairs in the Foundry.

The Guster show was great, but since Dilly Dally started an hour later, I thought I’d see if they were still playing as we walked out.  The bouncer guy was rather surprised that I had a ticket for both shows.  But I showed him my ticket and with S’s blessing, I went upstairs to see a song or two (I was bummed and a little surprised they wouldn’t let her up since the show was more or less over).  The bouncer guy said they had the room until 11:15.  It was barely after ten when I went upstairs (S. said she didn’t mind waiting for ten minutes, but understandably, not an hour).

When I walked upstairs I could hear the unmistakable voice and guitar work of Dilly Dally. Dilly Dally are from Toronto and they were described to me as being like the Pixies meets Hole.  I can certainly hear that although they transcend their influences.  They play loud aggressive alternative rock that’s headed by Katie Monks’ snarling singing voice and Liz Bell’s sharp and catchy lead guitar work.  Bassist Jimmy Tony (in a striking silver sparkling short skirt) and drummer Benjamin Reinhartz lay down a low end that keeps the sound grounded. It was a drastic change from Guster.  As was the size of the crowd.  The Guster show was packed uncomfortably tight, but this show was more open and I was able to walk around.

They finished the excellent “Bad Biology” and I wondered how long I could push my luck–how many songs could I make S wait for.  And then Katie Monks told us that the next song was the last song.  Disappointing but very convenient. (more…)

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Guster (The Fillmore, Philadelphia, PA, March 23, 2019)

Posted in Guster, Late Night with Seth Meyers, Philadelphia, PA, Prince, The Fillmore Philadelphia, Van Morrison on March 23, 2019| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: March 23, 2019] Guster [rescheduled from January 17]

Back in January, Guster postponed their Philadelphia concert because they were going to be on Late Night with Seth Myers.  They rescheduled it for mid-March and decided that it would be a 20th Anniversary celebration of their 1999 album Lost and Gone Forever.  So although the date change sucked at the time, the new show promised to be freakin amazing.

And, as it turned out, this was the best and the worst Guster concert that S. and I have seen together (number 7 for both of us).

Why the worst?  The worst because we arrived later than we intended and wound up further back than we wanted to.  Which is not the end of the world.  But, when you’re in the back in the Fillmore, you are near the bar and all the people talking.  A lot.  Even people who claimed to love the band, even people who commented on how good they sounded (they did), even people who would sing along loudly to parts of songs, all of these people also talked through huge swaths of the show.

One woman shouted to her friends during a quiet part and I had to say something.  It was really dreadful.  I though that during the intermission, people would pile out to get drinks and we could move closer, but nope, it was jam packed.

So aside from the worst crowd I’ve ever experienced, the show was great.  The band was in amazing form, they sounded great–and the venue helped them to sound great.  It was definitely one of the best sounding shows I’ve seen from them. (more…)

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