SOUNDTRACK: SOCCER MOMMY-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #1 (March 21, 2020).
Since the quarantine began, many many many musicians have been playing shows at home. There are so many online home recordings that it is literally impossible to keep up with them. I have watched a few, but not many. I’m not sure how many of the online shows are going to be available for future watching, but at least these are saved for posterity.
The Tiny Desk is working from home for the foreseeable future. Introducing NPR Music’s Tiny Desk (Home) Concerts, bringing you performances from across the country and the world. It’s the same spirit — stripped-down sets, an intimate setting — just a different space.
On Monday March 30, Sophie Allison, aka Soccer Mommy, was to perform a long awaited Tiny Desk concert at my desk. Now the world has changed, and with the coronavirus keeping us at a distance, we’re taking a break from filming Tiny Desks at the office for a while.
Sophie wanted to share her music and her thoughts with you. So we’re kicking off our Tiny Desk (Home) Concerts series with Soccer Mommy from her home in Nashville.
Soccer Mommy was supposed to play a show in Philly on March 31. I had a choice between this show and a show from Vagabon. I wasn’t sure which one I wanted to go to. Well, now I get this home concert instead.
This Home Concert (as most will be) is Sophie and her acoustic guitar. Since I don’t really know (most of) the originals, I can’t compare them.
All three songs have catchy melodies. It’s cool watching her hands up close to see he playing modifications to the chords in “Bloodstream” so it’s not as simple a melody as it seems.
Her voice is soft and high (although a little hard to hear in this mix).
“Circle the Drain” has been getting some airplay and I rather like it. It reminds me of a Lemonheads song in style. This acoustic version is nice, but I prefer the studio version (that extra guitar line is a nice touch). She says it’s about being depressed and staying inside all day. “I’m sure some of you can relate to that right now.”
Before the final song, “Royal Screw Up” she asks if anyone can guess what tuning she is going from and into. My guess is that she is going into standard E tuning, although I’m not sure from what.
Most of her melodies remind me of the singers I liked in the 90s, and I think with a slightly better production I would have really enjoyed this set. I might have to check out her album a little more closely.
[READ: April 1, 2020] The Customer is Always Wrong
I enjoyed, Mimi Pond’s first memoir(ish) book, Over Easy, but I grew tired of it by the end. It was an look at late 1970s San Francisco and all of the low-level drug dealers and users who worked and ate at the restaurant where Madge was a waitress.
And yet, I came away from it with enough good vibes that I was interested in reading this second volume. And this second volume had the heart and soul that I felt the first one lacked.
The story begins with some of Mimi’s past boyfriends (good boys whom her mother loved). Then it moved on to bad boys who treated her like crap. Finally, she meets Bryan, a nurse who treats her kindly–and the sex is amazing.
But the shine starts to wear off and a turd is slowly revealed–the way he breaks up and gets back together (he loves the drama), the way he watches the World Series at her house even though she doesn’t care about baseball (or own a TV–he brought his own). Oh, and the way she finds out later that he lied about nearly everything.
The drug dealer characters from the first book are still there of course. The most prominent one is Camille, a “straight looking” and pretty young woman who has hooked up with Neville, a real dirtbag (but one who tells great stories). She has big dreams–they will sell a ton of coke, make a ton of money and go to Paris. Of course that never happens.
And then there’s Lazlo. Lazlo is the real main character of the story. Even though it is Madge’s story, it all more or less revolves around Lazlo. Lazlo runs the diner where Madge works and he is always around–wearing his cool hat, telling great stories (he is a poet). It’s hard to remember that he is married. Hard for him to remember too, apparently.
For when his fourteen year old daughter, Persephone, from a previous woman comes to live with him, it is quite the shock–she has his seditious smile and those eyes that take in everything. She will be a handful.
This story has a lot more drama than the previous one.
Camille and Neville moved in next door to Madge. Neville apparently took $25,000 worth of coke to sell as a way to make money for a higher up dude named Bluto. But Bluto apparently got the drugs from some Colombian gangsters. And when they come looking for Neville, they see Madge and assume she is Neville’s lady. And she pays for it.
In fact her life looks to be over until one of the the thugs admires her cartoons–suddenly he goes soft one her, an artist (this has a nice payoff later).
There is also the death of a co-worker (she was raped and murdered (!)). And so much cocaine (the story ends in 1982).
Madge’s plan all along has been to get out of the waitressing gig and be a proper artist. Some of this comes true when some of her cartoons are accepted by National Lampoon. Things are even better when two swanky drugs dealers (not the low-rent ones she knows) befriend her and buy some of her art (they are hilarious).
The second half of the book really focuses on Lazlo, though. Madge is so directly tied to him. He’s like a brother to her. He’s the only one who is super happy for her about National Lampoon, and he is her shoulder to cry on.
The first big moment for Lazlo is when he sacrifices himself to make sure that Camille and Neville get to the methadone clinic every day. They have been doing serious drugs (Persian) and they need to detox before they die. He is essential for that (how did he do all this while he had a family?).
The next big story comes when Persephone runs off with a 30 year old man.
There’s a lot of inherent racism in this story, but it’s that sort of weird late 70s racism where black people were more of an “other” not an enemy. There are, of course, minorities who work at the restaurant, and they all get along well. When Persephone dates a guy nicknamed The Black, it’s not a racist epithet, it’s almost like a badge of pride. (It’s hard to look back on the 70s with a clear head).
Anyhow, The Black is a bad dude and he treats Persephone terribly, but she can’t deal with her dad’s rules so she doesn’t want to come home. The story of her “rescue” had Madge and Lazlo trawling through the seediest parts of East Oakland, going to bar after bar in search of The Black. They finally wind up in a bar where they are the only white people and the bartender is The Black’s aunt. Even the Colombian gangster is afraid of The Black’s aunt. But Lazlo charms her, because Lazlo is awesome.
It’s only when Lazlo (truthfully?) tells Persephone that he has cancer, that she agrees to come home.
Lazlo’s wife Ruthie later says that she never knew the Lazlo from the diner–the only Lazlo we readers know. It’s hard to imagine what he was like at home–it can’t have been very good, honestly.
Madge has been saving up. National Lampoon wants her to move to New York. She knew that she wouldn’t stay at the diner forever and said that when she saved up $2,000 she was going to move East (can you imagine $2,000 being enough?). She gets really close but an emergency depletes her funds.
Finally at the end of the book, Madge has enough to leave but a emotional gut punch sidetracks everything.
For the last book I was bored by the end but in this book the end was emotionally overpowering. What a great story. I’m very curious if there will be a part 3.
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