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Archive for August, 2019

Elizabeth Strout–“Motherless Child” (New Yorker, August 5 & 12, 2019)

Posted in Colin Greenwood, Jeff Buckley, New Yorker, NPR/PRI/PBS, Parenting, Radiohead, Short Story, Tiny Desk Concert on August 5, 2019| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: TAMINO-Tiny Desk Concert #871 (July 26, 2020).

Tamino is a 22 year-old singer of Belgian, Egyptian and Lebanese descent.

I didn’t know anything about him.  But the blurb mentions his voice.  As soon as I read Jeff Buckley and I heard it in the middle part of the first song I knew it was right on.

His voice is powerful and can really soar.  For “Habibi,” (a song about a sweetheart) it starts with just him and his guitar.  He plays a simple, quiet, repeating guitar melody.  After a few verses, he adds the low strings on his guitar.  The song has been so devoid of bass up until now that it’s hard to imagine it coming from that guitar. Vik Hardy adds repeating piano lines that create a tension that continues throughout the song.

Tamino fills this song with yearning in his voice, much the way Buckley did.  And the end of the song has him hitting some gorgeous ethereal high notes.

His use of that falsetto had some faces in the NPR audience gasping in astonishment.

The songs performed at the Tiny Desk by the 22-year-old singer come from both a 2018 EP titled Habibi and later that year an album titled Amir.

The second song, “Indigo Night” (about despair turned to joy) stars in a similar way–quietly with just a little guitar and Tamino’s amazing, deep vocals.

Colin Greenwood (yes, of Radiohead) plays bass on this song, adding some nice lines to the moody piece.  There is definitely a Radiohead feel.  The blurb lets us in on a bit of personal humor:

The Radiohead bassist shared a brief text exchange with his son, basically telling his hugely accomplished dad that playing the Tiny Desk was “the coolest thing he’d ever done!” That made us all smile.

Midway through the song, as Tamino’s voice wordlessly soars along with the guitar melody, it feels even more like a Radiohead song, except with a more impressive voice than Thom Yorke’s (sorry, Thom).

Tamino’s grandfather was Muharram Fouad, a well-known Egyptian singer known as “The Sound of the Nile.”

The final song, strangely called “Tummy” starts with Tamino’s almost plucked guitar style.  He learned on his grandfather’s guitar.  He gets such an interesting sound out of the instrument.  Ruben Vanhoutte adds some simple drums to flesh out the sound.

It’s a truly impressive set and he has a truly impressive voice.

[READ: August 5, 2020] “Motherless Child”

Olive Kitteridge is an older woman with a grown son.  The son is married with children of his own.  They have been rather estranged for the last few years.

But Christopher was finally coming to visit his mother with his wife and children. But they were late.  In fact, Olive had lunch set up for them, but Christopher had just called to say they were going to eat lunch on the road (it was two P.M.) and that they wouldn’t be there for a few more hours.

Olive had been taking things down in her house–it looked almost bare.  Her husband had died three years ago and she was ready to move on.  She just hadn’t told Christopher yet. (more…)

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Samantha Hunt–“Three Days” (New Yorker, January 9, 2006)

Posted in Cab Calloway, Death, Drinking, Drugs, Easter, Horses, Lorenzo Cromwell, Masego, New Yorker, NPR/PRI/PBS, Samantha Hunt, Short Story, Thanksgiving, Tiny Desk Concert on August 4, 2019| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: MASEGO-Tiny Desk Concert #870 (July 24, 2019).

Naturally when I saw this guy’s name, I assumed Massive Ego.  And he does seem to have a massive ego.  But he totally earns it.  And I’ll agree with this allusion:

Imagine for a moment if Cab Calloway, the Cotton Club’s exuberant bandleader, was reincarnated in the 21st Century. Now imagine if he was dropped in the middle of the music world of today. He’d no doubt be a tall and slender, silky-wearing goof ball with a moisturized braid-out, instruments inscribed as knuckle tattoos and a penchant for genre-blending. Yes, the spirit of Cab lives on in Masego, the singer, producer and multi-instrumentalist who surprised NPR’s Tiny Desk audience with a zany sense of showmanship and a demonstration of his own genre, TrapHouseJazz.

Masego gets five songs (and over 20 minutes…come on!), but the whole set is fun and flows really nicely with Masego acting as the great frontman he is.

First, before opening with the jazzy “Tadow,” Sego pulled off a quick, mini-prank by sending his friend, comedian Lorenzo Cromwell, up to the mic before stepping forth himself.

Cromwell wears a Michael Jackson glove and plays a fake saxophone (the credits state: comedic saxophone).  But Masego plays a proper saxophone, smooth and jazzy.  Then he starts singing and he has a nice smooth voice too.  Lex Nelson adds some nice call and response backing vocals.

Throughout the song, Maxwell Hunter plays some excellent grooving sliding five string bass.

This next song, “Nayhoo” he says “white people love it.”  It opens with some fantastic guitar work from Melanie Faye–she plays amazing guitar licks throughout the show.

Next, Sego tossed up 100 dollar bills with his face on it and beckoned the crowd into a call-and-response of “hi-di-hi-di-hi-di-ho.”  (There’s the Cab Calloway).

Up next, is “Queen Tings.”  He points to Jon Curry and says “You.  Show me that junk you showed me yesterday.”  Curry stars playing a nice beat.  Masego says, “Now gimme that shoulder” and Curry starts swaying his shoulder into it.

Midway through the song Masego plays a saxophone solo.  Then keyboardist Dan Foster picks up a saxophone and plays a solo as well.  Then the two play together and it sounds fantastic.

Before the fourth song he says, “there’s black people here, I got a song called ‘Black Love.'” Then he points to the keyboards.  “You.  Play some keys for me.  This is Dan Foster.  He has a flower tattoo.”  The melody of this sounds a lot like the melody for “Careless Whisper.”

All these instruments you see here are tattoos on my knuckles because I can play them all.  That’s why he wrote this song, “I Do Everything.”  This song is pretty good but the best part is when he introduces Melanie Fay and she plays a ripping guitar solo.  I wonder what else she’s been in.

Finally, to have a few more moments of fun after “I Do Everything” — and to prove he really does do everything — Sego juggled water bottles to the rhythm of the luscious music his band providing.

Masego is a lot of fun and I enjoyed his set a lot more than I expected to.

[READ: July 31, 2019] “Three Days”

I enjoyed the way this story started but hated the way it ended.  I hope it’s an excerpt, because there’s so much more that could be done with all of this and yet so much was wasted on a dead horse.

Beatrice is walking to her mother’s house from the bus station.  The house is actually a farm, but not a working farm. It is the only remaining farm in the area, since all the other farms sold out to to the box stores.

The farm is in disrepair.  I like this detail:

There are some withered Duane Reade Easter decorations–a hip-high bunny rabbit and a bright-green egg–wired to the front porch.  It is Thanksgiving.

Her parents weren’t farmers and as soon as they both agreed they didn’t want to farm, they gave up and got proper jobs.  Beatrice’s mother loved her work.  She was employed by “Mythologic Development, which turned myths and sometimes history into marketable packages used for making new products and ideas more digestible to the consumer public.”

I love this idea and want to learn more about it. Although the examples her mother gives about Atlantis and Montezuma are disappointing. (more…)

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Colin Barrett–“The Alps” (Harper’s, August 2019)

Posted in Colin Barrett, Drones, Funny (ha ha), Futility, Harper's, Jacob Collier, NPR/PRI/PBS, Short Story, Tiny Desk Concert, UFOs, Violence on August 3, 2019| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: JACOB COLLIER-Tiny Desk Concert #869 (July 22, 2019).

I’ve never heard of Jacob Collier, but wow is he an impressive figure.

the North London 24-year-old can hardly contain his creative energy. It comes out in his wardrobe and most definitely in his music, but it’s not misdirected or out of control. These are intricate and precise compositions, like a ship in a bottle made of thousands of planks of wood, yet light enough to sail in a breeze.

He starts with “Make Me Cry.”  Collier plays a fascinatingly deep-sounding acoustic guitar (with amazing flourishes).  But the biggest shock comes when he sings.  He has such a deep sonorous voice.  The backing vocals (from Becca Stevens–who also plays the charango–and MARO on the acoustic guitar) are high–a real contrast to his voice. That is until he switches to piano (while still holding the guitar) and then his voice reaches the high notes as well. Drummer Christian Euman adds some nice xylophone bells to the song as Collier’s voice soars impressively.

After the first song he says “I’ve spent the last year or so making four full length albums [called Djesse].  I don’t know why, its quite exhausting. But its fun.  Each is it’s own musical universe.”  All three songs today are from Vol 2.

But another example of his excess is this:

This year he covered Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer’s “Moon River” by recording himself 5,000 times and working in 144 other vocal submissions, and then he printed and sold signed copies of his Logic Pro audio session for fans while on tour.

“Feel” opens with a simple drum pattern and everyone giving some gentle oohs before Jacob plays a slow piano motif.  Robin Mullarkey switches from acoustic to electric bass.  This song is a more jazzy composition with some lead vocals from MARO (Collier sounds great doing backing vocals as well).

Before the final song,”It Don’t Matter” he explains that he wrote this song about five days ago specifically for this event.  It starts with him making a fascinating array of sounds with his mouth–clicks, hisses and water droplets–and then adding percussive elements like the top of the piano. Then he plays a funky bass line on the tiny acoustic bass.   Becca Stevens gets a lead verse.  And the middle of the song has a melodica solo.

Virtually every combination of band members harmonizes at some point in the show. It’s reflective of his philosophy on music as a connecting tool, to use the instrument we all possess, which drew me to his art in the first place. And as if to make good on those beliefs and bring all of us into one moment, he invited the crowd to sing the final lyrics of the concert together.

The NPR employees are always good sports (and have good voices) so the end of the show is a good one.

[READ: August 1, 2019] “The Alps”

I noted the last time I read a story by Colin Barrett that he writes about Ireland and drugs.  This story was also about Ireland.  But not about drugs.

It’s also not about the Alps as you might expect.

In this story, The Alps are three brothers: Rory, Eustace and Bimbo.  Bimbo was 37, the other two in their fifties.  They claimed to be tradesmen, but none of them have a trade.  Rather they painted, wired, tiled and plumbed at a competitive rate.  They ate too much take out, and downed vats of Guinness.  They traveled together, they worked together, they drank together.

As they pull into Mikey’s pub, Bimbo sees a light up in the sky. It’s behaving strangely and for a minute I thought this story was going to be about UFOs.  But instead, Bimbo realizes it’s a drone surveying the landscape.  Its owned by Landry, a rich man with a lot of land. (more…)

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Lydia Davis–“New Things in My Life” (Harper’s, August 2019)

Posted in Flash Fiction, Harper's, Lydia Davis, Memory, NPR/PRI/PBS, Priests, Short Story, Tiny Desk Concert on August 2, 2019| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: PRIESTS-Tiny Desk Concert #868 (July 19, 2019).

[UPDATE: Priests effectively broke up in December 2019, which is a major bummer].

I saw Priests live back in April and they were fantastic.  This Tiny Desk Concert was no doubt filmed around this time (although singer Katie Alice Greer’s hair wasn’t blue when I saw them).

This Tiny Desk really shows how different a band can sound in this setting.  When I saw them, they were loud and slinky, with a real punk flair.

This show is so much calmer.  The addition of their accompanist Mary Voutsas on piano really changes the whole sound of these songs.

Indeed, the request of an upright piano was the last thing I expected when singer Katie Alice Greer and guitarist G.L. Jaguar talked about doing a Tiny Desk Concert. But we wheeled the Yamaha upright in place and they invited their accompanist Mary Voutsas to join bandmates Daniele Yandel and Alexandra Tyson. What we have is a kinder, gentler and starker version of this great band.

Priests played only songs from their personally groundbreaking, genre-stretching album The Seduction of Kansas.

“Jesus’ Son” starts with Alexandra Tyson’s deep rumble of a bass.  She’s not their original bassist, but she fit in perfectly when I saw them and here.  Katie Greer’s voice sounds great and you can hear the lyrics more clearly here.  The biggest surprise is the subdued sound of guitarist G.L Jaguar.  He can play quietly but he also roars at times. But here, most of the melody comes from the delicate piano rather than his guitar.  Although he does get a quiet guitar solo.

“The Seduction of Kansas” sounds the most different here. It still opens with the great bass line, but the recorded version is very electronic and seductive.  This stripped down version sounds so much more clean, it’s odd but cool.

I’m glad that drummer Daniele Yandel was invited to come out from behind the kit to sing “I’m Clean” (with Greer on drums).  This song is slower with echoing guitars.  Yandel doesn’t sound dramatically different from Greer.  In fact, Yandel’s singer voice sounds a lot like Greer’s lower register.  In fact, when Greer sings the backing vocals (call and response), they sounds almost exactly the same.  It’s cool.

I’m so glad that I got to see them, and that they did this Tiny Desk before they broke up.

[READ: August 1, 2019] “New Things in My Life”

This is another of Davis’ short pieces that seem so much like Lydia just telling us her thoughts that I’m not even really sure what to call it (short story, memoir, thought.

Davis says it takes her a long time to get used to new things in her life.  So much so that, if she is tried, she will inevitably call her new husband by her old husband’s name.  And when she is very tired she can hardly remember the new husband’s and son’s names. (more…)

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Caleb Crain–“Talkin’ ‘Bout a Revolution” (Harper’s, August 2019)

Posted in 99%, Activism, Caleb Crain, Canadian Music, Excerpt, Harper's, Occupy, Positively Stompin', Protests, Rheostatics on August 1, 2019| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: POSITIVELY STOMPIN’-“Jump on My Wheels” (Moose: The Compilation, 1991).

Back in the 1990s, it was common to buy a compilation or soundtrack or even a band’s album based on one song.  Only to then find that you didn’t really like anything else on it.

Maybe that single sounded like nothing else on the album.  Maybe the movie was almost entirely one genre, but they had that one song that you liked over the credits.  Or maybe the compilation was for something you didn’t know, but a song you really wanted was on it, too.

With streaming music that need not happen anymore.  Except in this case.

I bought this compilation, used, recently exclusively for one song, Rheostatics’ “Woodstuck.”  It’s a goofy song and this is the only place you can get the studio version.  The actual compilation was not well documented, so I didn’t know what the other bands on it might sound like.  It turns out to be a compilation for Ontario based Moose Records which specialized in Rock, Folk, World & Country.  They put out another compilation in 1992 and that’s all I can find out about them.

Positively Stompin’ certainly sounds like a certain kind of music.  So it’s a little surprising how quietly this song starts out with just acoustic guitar.  The song picks up with some slower stomping about midway through although a ripping guitar solo really activates the buzz in the song.

It’s a short lived buzz though as the song more or less settles into a kind of Southern Rock, which is a bit ironic coming from a band from Toronto.  I cant find much out about this band, although they did have an album out called Junk Drawer.

[READ: August 1, 2019] “Talkin’ ‘Bout a Revolution”

This is an excerpt from Crain’s novel Overthrow. which is about the Occupy movement and protests.

Lief and Matthew were together when Lief’s phone started buzzing.  Lief read the text–its happening. police were everywhere.

They decided to go check it out–many of their friends would be going as well.

They brought earplugs–the police have some kind of sound weapon that they bought after 9/11.

The city was sleepy and quiet. So quiet and still, that it felt abandoned. (more…)

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