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Archive for April, 2020

Dan Deacon / Ed Schrader’s Music Beat (Underground Arts, Philadelphia, PA, April 30, 2020) [POSTPONED]

Posted in Coronavirus, Dan Deacon, Ed Schrader's Music Beat, Miley Cyrus and her Dead Petz, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA, Postponed, Quarantine, Underground Arts on April 30, 2020| Leave a Comment »

[POSTPONED: April 30, 2020] Dan Deacon / Ed Schrader’s Music Beat

index

I have wanted to see Dan Deacon live ever since I saw his mind-blowing Tiny Desk Concert.

Deacon is an electronic musician and a bit of a wild card.  His shows are full of audience participation and are a lot of fun.  There’s improv and looping and a whole lot of jumping around.

He hasn’t played Philly since 2015 (apparently, when he opened for Miley Cyrus and her Dead Petz). Well, he did a show at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (!) back in 2018, which was apparently wonderful, but which I wasn’t prepared to go to.

I was super excited to see that he was playing at Underground Arts and I grabbed tickets immediately. UA would have been an ideal venue to see him in, with the low ceiling and wide audience area.  I do hope this tour gets rescheduled soon.

When show were first starting to get cancelled in March, I held out hope that a show at the end of April might still go on.  But shows all around him started getting postponed.  He held out longer than most artists before postponing.

Technically Deacon’s music isn’t really my scene.  I do like him quite a lot, but I don’t particularly like other music like it.

So Ed Schrader’s Music Beat is a duo and Dan Deacon produced their latest album.  I listened to a couple of songs but didn’t really like it all that much.

I’ll bet they are fun live, especially if Deacon is guiding them.

Do come back soon, Dan!

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Diane Williams–“Five Stories” (Harper’s, November 2019)

Posted in And the Kids, Artemis, Diane Williams, Flash Fiction, Harper's, Huh?, Maya Hawke, NPR/PRI/PBS, Rubblebucket, Stranger Things, Tiny Desk Concert, Tōth on April 30, 2020| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: TŌTH-Tiny Desk Concert #967 (April 13, 2020)

For reasons I’m unclear about, I thought that Tōth was a heavy metal band.  Well, they aren’t.  At all.

The last time we saw Alex Toth at the Tiny Desk, he was standing against the shelves, trumpet to his lips. He performed in 2015 with Rubblebucket and his partner Kalmia Travers was singing lead. This time around, Alex sings about their relationship’s end in the song “Copilot.”

It’s a quiet song with gentle guitar and throbbing synths from Ben Chapoteau-Katz.  Alex Toth sings softly and drifts into a high falsetto during the chorus. There’s even some whistling.

“Copilot” is one of two songs Tōth performed at the Tiny Desk from his album Practice Magic and Seek Professional Help When Necessary. These songs are thoughtful, honest reflections on the end of his personal relationship with Kalmia Travers (although it continues professionally).

The arrangements here are spare but textured with bits of Alex on trumpet and touches from Ben Chapoteau-Katz on sax and electronics. The rhythm section of drummer Rebecca Lasaponaro and bassist Ryan Dugre pin it all together.

Rebecca Lasaponaro drums with And The Kids and she is fantastic.  Her drumming here is a bid more subdued, but she has a lot of electronics at her disposal which is fun.

“No Reason” is a slower song which features some mellow drums, but  also some lovely twinkling keys and Toth’s trumpet solo in the middle.

He says he’s thrilled to be drinking tea out of an NPR mug at NPR.

Up next is an excerpt from a new record:

The new tune “Turnaround (Cocaine Song)” is a funny/sad (and I’ll assume true) tale of poorly timed indulgence at his Aunt Mary’s funeral in New Jersey.

It’s a slow meandering (silly sounding) story about an embarrassing incident involving cocaine.  There’s a muted trumpet solo and a simultaneous sax solo from Chapoteau-Katz.

Toth says “Juliette” has an amazing and weird video starring Maya Hawke from Stranger Things.  There’s also audience participation which he’ll teach during the song.  Oh, he also has to take his beanie off.

The song begins with everyone shouting wha wha / wha wha ooh ooh. A simple bass line from Ryan Durge runs through the whole song as everything else is quietly performed (including more sax solos).  The song is sweet and odd but pretty catchy.

At the end, while everyone sings along, Toth recites a romantic scene

there’s a double rainbow and children dance all around us with ice cream cones and red balloons and lots and lots of puppies!

Sometimes I’ll see a band at my desk and wish I could jump in and join. That’s what happened when Tōth played the Tiny Desk. I felt a deep connection to both the fun and emotion in their music. Besides, I loved their outfits.

I’m not sure how memorable these songs are, but they are sure fun to listen to.

[READ: April 30, 2020] “Five Stories”

Here is yet another installment of microfiction from Diane Williams.

Every time I read stories from her I try to imagine how they were constructed.  I have considered that she takes pieces from other stories and jams them randomly together into short fiction.  But now I’ve decided that the way she writes her stories is that she writes a longer story and as she edits it, she accidentally deletes more than she meant to but then just leaves it.

Her stories just leave me going… huh? (more…)

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Nell Zink–“The Bird Angle: Maladaptive decadence in the Amazon basin” (Harper’s, November 2019)

Posted in Birds, Curl-Crested Araçaris, Essays, Fiery-Capped Manakins, Harper's, Hoatzins, Jonathan Franzen, Kapoks, Mumford & Sons, Mumford and Sons, Nature, Nell Zink, NPR/PRI/PBS, Peru, Tiny Desk Concert, Trees, Wallcreepers on April 29, 2020| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: THE LUMINEERS-Tiny Desk Concert #966 (April 6, 2020).

When The Lumineers first came on the scene they were the band that sounded like Mumford and Sons.  It now seems likely that The Lumineers are more popular than Mumford.

I’ve known them since “Hey Ho” but I’ve never seen them I guess because sinegr Wesley Schultz doesn’t look anything like I thought he would (I’m not sure what I thought, but that’s not it).

Much of The Lumineers’ Tiny Desk comes from the band’s third LP, III, which tells a story of addiction in three acts.  They began with gut-wrenching renditions of “Gloria” and “Leader Of The Landslide.”

I’ve heard “Gloria” a million times, but it was nice to see it live.  I especially enjoyed  when violinist Lauren Jacobson joined in on the high notes of the piano while Stelth Ulvang played the low parts.  Byron Isaacs plays some interesting bass lines (That I’ve never noticed before) and adds nice backing vocals.

“Leader of the Landslide” has a very sad introductory tale.  Stelth Ulvang switches to accordion.  It is “accompanied by a cassette recording of crickets made on iPhones and dubbed to play on a boombox.”  It’s a quiet song, unlike what I think of them as playing.

The third track is also from III, but was an assignment from director M. Night Shyamalan. He tasked Schultz and his suspender-clad writing partner, Jeremiah Fraites, with composing a song for the end credits of a film. “Jer and I worked really hard on that, and then he didn’t need it,” Schultz confessed. The results are the stark and haunting “April” and “Salt And The Sea,”which strikes a different chord than any other song they’ve written.

“April (instrumental)” is a one-minute instrumental that segues into “Salt And The Sea” Drummer Jeremiah Fraites plays piano while percussionist Brandon Miller switches to drums. but he’s mostly playing cool atmospheric percussion (my new favorite thing of scraping drumsticks on cymbals).

It wouldn’t be a Lumineers show without a foot-stompin’ sing-along to end the set, which came with their crowd-pleasing hit “Stubborn Love”. Stelth Ulvang demonstrated a level of barefoot acrobatics unrivaled at the desk thus far, not an easy feat (or should I say, feet).

I never knew the name of “Stubborn Love” but I’ve certainly wanted to “Hey oh, oh oh oh) along with it.  And yes, Ulvang jumps on Bob’s desk to get everyone to sing along–I hope he didn’t step on anything (and that his feet were clean).

I’ve never thought about seeing them live, but I’ll bet their show would be a lot of fun. However, since they are now playing to 20,000 people, I can probably give that a miss.

[READ: April 25, 2020] “The Bird Angle”

Nell Zink and Jonathan Franzen are intricately linked.  As she writes in this essay

All I wanted when I first wrote to Jonathan Franzen–a birder who moonlights as a journalist–in 2011 was some attention for a bird-obsessed NGO.  With his help I debuted as a novelist five years ago at age fifty.

Her fifth book comes out this year.  She now has some money and wondered what to do with it.  Franzen recommended birding in Peru.

So this is the first non-fiction piece of hers that I have read.  It’s also the first piece about birds (aside from her novel the The Wallcreeper which has a bird prominently in it).

She was going to Cuzco, Peru for thee days.  First she toured churches (seventeenth century Jesuits made Christ look especially gruesome).  The next morning she hiked to Sacsayhuamán, an Incan ruin made of exceptionally large rocks.

She imagined Peru would feel like a hot night in New York when the A/C broke.  But she only got two mosquito bites the whole time she was there (both on her ass from peeing outside). (more…)

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Diavolo (State Theatre, New Brunswick, NJ, April 28, 2020) [POSTPONED]

Posted in Acrobats, Coronavirus, Diavolo, New Brunswick, NJ, Postponed, Quarantine, State Theatre on April 28, 2020| Leave a Comment »

[POSTPONED: April 28, 2020] Diavolo [moved to April 29, 2021]

indexI love going to see Cirques–all kinds of fun acrobatics and stunts on display.  When my kids were younger, we went to a lot of them.  Then we stopped for a while and I felt it was time to do it again.

Diavolo is in fact a dance company, but they perform amazing acrobatics and physically demanding pieces (as you can see from the reviews like: “Diavolo’s performers are fearless, elegant and strong with a sense of timing by which a Swiss watch could be set, and the way the troupe interacts with the moving sets, makes for a truly spectacular and awe inspiring show.”).

I found out about this show after it was cancelled, but when I saw that it was rescheuled for April of 2021, I was really interested in going to see it with the family.

VOYAGE is Diavolo’s newest adventure, inspired by travels in space and the 50th Anniversary of the first Moon Landing. A young woman dreams of traveling distances only astronauts can, escaping from the ordinary world into a surreal landscape of infinite possibilities. Gravity-defying bodies join her on a large wheel structure that rolls along the stage and on the journey in a universe that is alive with kinetic energy, fantastical whimsy, and surprising transformation.

TRAJECTOIRE is a signature Diavolo work that takes the audience on a visceral and emotional journey through the ebb and flow of the human experience. Watch as performers jump on and off a “Trajectoire” which is a 3,000 pound boat made of wood, aluminum, and steel that continuously rocks back and forth. Watch the performers struggle to find their balance on a voyage of destiny and destination in a daring display that shows the transcendence of the human soul against all odds.

diavolo

 

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Kevin Barry–“No. 13 Baby” (Harper’s, November 2019)

Posted in Coronavirus, Drugs, Excerpt, Funny (ha ha), Harper's, Irish Writer, Kevin Barry, NPR/PRI/PBS, Quarantine, Rodrigo y Gabriela, Tiny Desk (Home) Concerts, Tiny Desk Concert, Violence on April 28, 2020| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: RODRIGO Y GABRIELA-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #15 (April 28, 2020).

The only thing better than seeing Rodrigo y Gabriela live (which is amazing) is getting to see them up close just to be even more amazed by what they can do.

The Mexican duo known as Rodrigo y Gabriela travel the globe playing to crowds who are captivated by their almost telepathic acoustic guitar interplay. But they make their home in Mexico in a sunny Pacific beach town called Zihuatanejo (remember The Shawshank Redemption?). For this performance we get a peek at their home studio, where they surround themselves with guitars and dress down in sneakers and casual clothes. They run through tunes from throughout their recorded history, including a song they played at the Tiny Desk back in 2009. Rodrigo y Gabriela’s picking and strumming feel more relaxed than usual but maintains their intense focus.

“Tamacun” and “Diablo Rojo” come from their album Rodrigo y Gabriela (2006).  Rodrigo plays the amazing and catchy leads and it’s terrific to watch him.  But I think that Gabriela with her unconventional and at times mind-blowing rhythm section that is even better to watch.  I never quite know what she’s doing with her right hand.  Is she specifically hitting different strings with different fingers, or is it just an elaborate strum?

The percussive sound they both get on “Diablo Rojo” is fantastic.  That they can keep the song interesting while just hitting their guitars is so cool.

“Hanuman” is from the album 11:11.  Each song on that album is a tribute to an artist who has inspired them.  This is a tribute to Carlos Santana (whom they met after this song was released).

“Mettavolution” is the title track from their newest album.  I love that they are album to write so many instrumentals with just two acoustic guitars and have them all sound so different.  Near the end of this one Rodrigo says that normally they ask people to sing along (woah oh ohs), but since there’s no crowd, maybe you’ll sing along at home.

It’s hard not to.

[READ: April 25, 2020] “No. 13 Baby”

This is an excerpt from Barry’s novel Night Boat to Tangier.

I have mixed reactions to Barry’s stories.  I usually like the details, but sometimes the the overall story is too intense (I don’t especially like stories about drug dealers) .

Set in the Plaza de la Constitución in Spain, Maurice Hearne is waiting for someone. The man arrives and says Maurice needs to pay half of the money first before he can meet Karima.  Then the man tells him that he should have his head examined: Just forget these people, go back to Ireland and have some kiddies.

He called home to Cynthia to assure her that everything was going to be okay.  Then he went to meet Karima. (more…)

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Sarah Shun-Lein Bynum–“Bedtime Story” (New Yorker, April 27, 2020)

Posted in CCR, Coronavirus, Credence Clearwater Revivial, John Fogerty, Liars, Marriage (Happy), Marriage Trouble, New Yorker, NPR/PRI/PBS, Parenting, Quarantine, Sarah Shun-lein Bynum, Sex, Short Story, Tiny Desk (Home) Concerts, Tiny Desk Concert on April 27, 2020| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: FOGERTY’S FACTORY – JOHN FOGERTY + FAMILY-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #14 (April 24, 2020).

I’ve never given much thought to John Fogerty.  I like some CCR songs; dislike others.  He’s a legend for sure, but I never thought about him.  I certainly never thought about whether he had children (much less grown children).

Watching this Tiny Desk where Fogerty and his three grown kids are playing along to some utterly classic songs is pretty weird.  Imagine if your dad wrote “Centerfield”?  It’s not my favorite song.  I don’t even especially like it, but I’ve heard it a million times.

And there you on video playing guitar and bass with your dad who wrote the song.  Is that surreal and wild or is it just what dad does?

When John Fogerty breaks out his baseball bat guitar and swings into that famous guitar lick from “Centerfield” to open his Tiny Desk (home) concert, I can almost taste the Cracker Jacks. Welcome to Fogerty’s Factory, the tricked-out basement where the Fogerty Family (John, his sons Tyler (mustache) and Shane (no mustache), and his daughter Kelsy) make music in these quarantined times.

Fogerty jokes about his own tiny desk.

His desk is the road case his band Creedence Clearwater Revival used when they played Woodstock, and John shows off a guitar he played at the festival as well.

After “Centerfield” he plays

three of his CCR classics from 50 years ago (still singing in the same key), surrounded by family and sending out words of encouragement to all of us.

I have a hard time believing he wrote “Down on the Corner” if only because it seems like a song that’s been around forever (which it has).

It’s amusing hoe much he acts like a grandpa (which he just might be), when talking to us and to his daughter (who has wise words to say about missing her graduation).

I don’t really know “Long As I Can See the Light.”  Maybe I do, it sounds vaguely familiar, but all CCR songs sound vaguely the same (his voice is unmistakable–and he still sounds pretty good).  he plays organ on this song, which is a slight change of sound.

“Proud Mary” is another song that I just can’t believe he wrote. Can you imagine being the guy who wrote that song?  Again, not a song I especially like, but everyone has sung it.  Everyone knows it.  It seems like it was a blues standard or something.  But this guy wrote it.

That’s pretty wild.

[READ: April 26, 2020] “Bedtime Story”

Ezra Washington’s wife walked in on him telling a story to their younger child.  It was about the time he was rollerblading and Julia Roberts crashed into him.

At first she doesn’t realize that he is talking about Julia Roberts, she thinks he is talking about her (“That laugh you’d know anywhere”).  But none of the details sound familiar.  It’s when the child says, “She’s the one that plays the mom…with the big teeth and the long brown hair?” that she realizes it’s the Julia Roberts story.

The dad confirms and the child reiterates, “Julia Roberts went right between your legs?”

“Yes, but don’t repeat that.”

She was the biggest movie star in the world.  Back then. (more…)

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Peter Kuper–“Little Donald’s Sneeze” (After Winsor McCay’s “Little Sammy Sneeze”) (New Yorker, April 27, 2019)

Posted in Comic Strips, Coronavirus, Dinosaurs, donald tRUMP, Idiots, Liars, Little Sammy Sneeze, Mary Anderson, New Yorker, NPR/PRI/PBS, Parades, Peter Kuper, Political Humor, Quarantine, The Pop Ups, Tiny Desk (Home) Concerts, Tiny Desk Concert, Winsor McCay, Wow in the World on April 26, 2020| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: THE POP UPS-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #13 (April 23, 2020).

When my kids were little I tried pretty hard to introduce them to interesting children’s music.  I often wonder if I ruined them by not just letting them enjoy Raffi.  Because they don’t like much of what I listen to these days.

I’m not sure how long The Pop Ups have been making music, but this is sure a fun (and informative) children’s band.

The Pop Ups (Jason Rabinowitz (on the keytar) and Jacob Stein) sing the theme song to the wonderful NPR podcast Wow In The World and perform at Wow in the World live shows. In their Tiny Desk (home) concert, they save the earth from an asteroid, explain sound waves through a sing-a-long and a keytar, and encourage us all to invent and create.

Before the first song Jason introduces the greatest instrument in the world.  The guitarino?  No, the keytar.  Then he talks about the kind of sound waves a synthesizer can produce: a square wave, a sine wave and sawtooth wave.  “Synthesizer” is a song about making these sound waves–and you are encouraged to dance around and make those waves yourself.

Then Jacob wants to see if we can stump Jason with sounds the keytar can’t make: saxophone, whistle, marimba, organ?  Nope, it can do them all.

The next song, “Meteor” introduces a puppet, Doctor Bronc the Brontosaurus.  Dr. Bronc saw a meteor in the sky so he created a laser to shoot at the meteor.  If everyone turned off their lights for one day, it would save enough energy to power the laser.  The moral: “You can save the world when everybody tries!”

The final song “Inventors” introduces us to a woman I have never heard of.  Mary Anderson in Alabama saw that snow was piling up on the street cars.  She figured there was something that could clean off the snow and so she spent much of her time coming up with windshield wipers.  Which we still use today!

Young inventors will help solve the problems that our generation made for you.

It’s sure inspirational, and a useful piece of history.

[READ: April 26, 2020] “Little Donald’s Sneeze”

I love any cartoon that is going to mock trump.  It’s especially excellent if you can use his own words against him (which isn’t hard because he never stops saying stupid things.

I particularly enjoyed this cartoon because of its old-fashioned look.  Since I can’t find the original cartoon this is based on (or maybe it’s just based on the general style of Winsor McCay’s strip), I can’t tell if Kuper did all of the art himself or if he judiciously used the original panels.

I also don’t know what’s at the header originally, but this one pretty succinctly describes the man who is killing people with his deceit.

The header of this cartoon lays it out clearly: He just simply couldn’t stop lying / He never told the truth!

Why is it that cartoonist knows this but news reporters can’t seem to catch on and actually believe him when he says things? (more…)

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Okilly Dokilly / P-Funk North (Blackthorn Restaurant and Irish Pub, New Brunswick, NJ, April 25, 2020) [POSTPONED]

Posted in Blackthorn Restaurant and Irish Pub, Coronavirus, George Clinton, Mac Sabbath, New Brunswick, NJ, P-Funk North, Postponed, Quarantine on April 25, 2020| Leave a Comment »

[POSTPONED: April 25, 2020] Okilly Dokilly / P-Funk North

indexI saw Okilly Dokilly open for Mac Sabbath last summer.  The show was bizarre for sure.

Okilly Dokilly are a goof to be sure.  All five guys dress like Ned Flanders from The Simpsons and all of the lyrics are things that Ned has said. Except that the band plays pretty extreme metal (death growls and whatnot).  They call it Nedal music.

It’s very funny and quite surreal.  And the band puts on a pretty darn good show.

I wasn’t sure if I’d ever need to see them again, but when I saw that they were playing a at a pub in New Brunswick (not far from me at all), I thought it would be a fun place to see them again.

I hope they do come back there.

P-Funk North is “a musical cocktail with a reggae rock core. PFN, which means North Plainfield, is in reference to our hometown in NJ and being George Clinton’s neighbor to the north.”  I listened to one or two of their songs and thought they were okay–not really my thing.  But they have five records out so I guess they are in it for the long haul.

Maybe they’re awesome live.

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Nell Zink–Nicotine (2016)

Posted in Anarchy, Cigarettes, Coronavirus, Nell Zink, Nick Hakim, Nicotine, NPR/PRI/PBS, Nudism, Prison, Quarantine, Religion, Romance, Runaways, Set in New Jersey!, Sex, Sexual Assault, Squatters, Tiny Desk (Home) Concerts, Tiny Desk Concert, Travel, Violence, Virginity (Loss of), Wall Street, Yuck! on April 25, 2020| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: NICK HAKIM-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #12 (April 22, 2020).

I had a mixed reaction to Nick Hakim”s Tony Desk, although the blurb writer says he loved it.

Whenever I’m asked to name my favorite Tiny Desk concerts, Nick Hakim’s 2018 performance sits near the very top. He and his four bandmates reset the bar for intimacy at the Desk with their hushed groove.

Hakim plays three songs from his upcoming album WILL THIS MAKE ME GOOD

from the corner of his dark bedroom with a keyboard, guitar and stacks of audio components.

His vocals on all three tracks are quiet and echoing, as if he is whispering down a long hall.  In fact all of the music sounds muted and soft, with a feeling of hazy smoke floating around,.

“QADIR,” is a haunting dedication to a fallen friend.  He plays guitar–mostly slow muted echoing guitar chords.  When the song ends, he activates a mini applause effect box which is pretty funny.

He takes a few loud slurps from his drink and gives a big “ahhh,” before starting the next song. For “GODS DIRTY WORK” he switches to the keys.  His singing style is exactly the same, although the song may be a little slower.

He adds a little more fake applause and then a somewhat creepy echoing laughter as he switches the drum beat for “CRUMPY.”

Honestly, all three songs sound a lot alike and seems really slow and hazy. It’s weird how upbeat and smiling he is, in contrast to the music.  I wonder how he makes everything seem so quiet.

[READ: April 15, 2020] Nicotine

I really enjoyed Nell Zink’s two other novels, but somehow I missed this one entirely when it came out.  I couldn’t imagine what it was about with that title and boy I never expected it to go where it did.

I actually had a slightly hard time getting into the book. That may have been because it was Quarantine and it was hard to ficus or it was because the opening of the book was so puzzling.  And yet by the end I was totally hooked.  But the beginning:

A thirteen year old girl stands in a landscape made almost entirely of garbage, screaming at a common domestic sow.

Then a white man comes and takes the girl away.  Her name is Amalia. (more…)

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Joywave: The Possession Tour (Union Transfer, Philadelphia, PA, April 24, 2020) [POSTPONED]

Posted in Coronavirus, Philadelphia, PA, Postponed, Quarantine, Union Transfer on April 24, 2020| Leave a Comment »

[POSTPONED: August 27, 2020] Joywave

indexI don’t know all that much about Joywave, but Union Transfer hyped this show a lot, which made me very curious about them.

For some reason I thought they were European, but they are from Rochester, New York.

They’ve been around since 2010 and apparently have had some buzz around them.  Their music is kind of alt-rock with a lot of synth.  I’m not sure I would have gone (so many other shows that night) but this postponement gives me more time to check them out.

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