I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: BAS-Tiny Desk Concert #875 (August 5, 2019).

I’ve never heard of Bas, but he performs a surprisingly upbeat-sounding set of songs for lyrics with so many curses.

Bas, the Paris-born, Queens-bred MC delivered an energetic and comical set.  Just like his lyrically impressive and sometimes dance-inducing Tiny Desk — peep his headbanging and seated sambas throughout — Bas always balances his bravado with a relatable sense of humility.

The four songs are from his third studio album, Milky Way.

“Barack Obama Special” starts with this fascinating lyric:
This one is dedicated to
My bitch ass neighbors, haha, yeah
‘Cause I’m living better now, better now
Bitch I’m living better now
Yeah
I had to move ’cause neighbors so racist

But he makes sure to clarify

“My new neighbor’s mad cool. So shout out to Peggy.  Peggy be picking up my mail when I’m on tour.  I don’t want her to watch and be like I thought you was such a nice young man.”

The song segued into “Purge” which starts with a simple but cool sounding guitar riff from Nathan Foley.  Sweet keys are sprinkled over the top.  Mereba and Justin Jackson provide gentle backing vocals.  Ron Gilmore adds some very cool bass lines from the keys throughout all the songs.

“Designer” has some cool off tempo synth lines and ends with a ripping distorted Prince-like guitar solo.

The song finishes with a bouncy instrumental section and Bas says, “I feel like I just won the whole circuit in Mario Kart.  Where’d you get that music from?  Don’t get me sued.  Nintendo coming for us.”

Ron Gilmore then plays a fun little circus music riff and Bas says, “Nintendo cut the check!”

Throughout the set, Johnathon Lee Lucas on drums is a lot of fun to watch as he’s got a whole array of drums and pads to play.

They are having so much fun they almost forget to play the last song “Tribe.”  This one ends with another nice instrumental jam which Bas says went on for much longer than they rehearsed–that was cool.

[READ: August 1, 2019] This Bridge Will Not Be Gray

Dave Eggers has written all kinds of books through his career.  This was his first children’s book (with cut-out art by Tucker Nichols).

Eggers is from San Francisco and he loves his home city.  This book is a love letter to the Golden Gate Bridge and the area that inspired it.

I honestly had no idea about any of the information in this book, so it was educational for me as well.

For instance, I did not realize that the passageway between the bay and the ocean was called The Golden Gate.  Thus, that’s why the Bridge is named that, not because it was supposed to be gold.

Before the bridge, the only way to get from the San Francisco to Sausalito was by boat (or a long drive).

Some people wanted a bridge, but others did not–they did not want to mar the beautiful landscape.  But this book is not about that debate.

In 1928, it was decided to build a bridge.  Joseph Strauss would be the architect.  His first design was ugly but functional. But the people felt the area deserved a pretty bridge so Strauss got assistance from  Leon Moisseiff, a Latvian architect who designed the Manhattan Bridge.  The bridge was large and impressive but kind of stern so they asked Irving Morrow to help out.

Morrow and his wife were both architects, but they designed homes and gardens, not bridges.  He added pretty additions like art deco flourishes, walkways and beautiful lamps–he wanted the bridge to be something like art.

Steelworkers in Maryland, Pennsylvanian and New Jersey began building the bridge and then shipped the parts through the Panama Canal

It was a long trip, but the pieces of steel did not mind, for they are inanimate objects.

Then they started construction.  Men had to dive into the freezing ocean to sink the bridge’s foundation.  Other workers were on top–“if you drop a hammer or wrench from a bridge hundreds of feet above the ocean, you’re pretty much out of luck.”

The first thing to go up were the towers that rose 746 feet above sea level.

They were orange, because that was the default rust-proof paint that steelworkers used.  But no one had considered what color the bridge would be. Bridges were always gray after all.

The Navy wanted it to be yellow and black so planes and ships could easily see it.  The Army wanted red and white stripes for the same reason.

Irving Marrow enjoyed watching the bridge go up and he liked the orange–he thought it fit perfectly in the landscape.  He encouraged them to keep this orange color.

But this had never been done before and for a good portion of the human race, because something has not already been, that is a good reason to fear it coming to be.

Gray was safe and practical.

Finally it was Irving morrow who stood up and said this bridge will not be gray.  And so it stayed orange: officially International Orange.

But because of the harsh winds and the salty sea water, the bridge needs to be painted year round .  On any given day painters are repainting some part of the bridge.  They use 10,000 gallons of paint a year.

This was a really interesting book about something that exists very far from me.