SOUNDTRACK: KING GIZZARD AND THE LIZARD WIZARD-“Honey” (2020).
A new King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard song is never a surprise (few bands are as prolific) but it is always a delight.
After the seriously heavy metal of their last album and accompanying live records (I do wish they’d release a live show that’s not so heavy metal-dominated since they have such a wonderfully diverse catalog), this song drifts back to their more psychedelic sound.
Stu Mackenzie says he wrote it a few years ago. It starts out with a middle eastern microtonal acoustic guitar (I’ve never seen an acoustic microtonal guitar). It’s lovely melody, fluid and open. After about a minute, the bass comes in and rumbles the song along adding a complex texture to this mostly mellow song.
Stu’s guitar is simple but has some tasty bending notes. But since nothing is simple, there some wild drum fills and unexpected falsetto vocals.
The third part shifts gears a little with what I think is a (processed?) flute solo. and because no KGATLW can be traditional, there’s another part in the middle that’s almost a bass solo with a few sitar-like strummings.
It’s always exciting to get more music from KGATLW and this promises some great new stuff in the near future.
[READ: July 10, 2020] “The Constant Muse”
This issue of the New Yorker has a series of essays called Influences. Since I have read most of these authors and since I like to hear the story behind the story, I figured I’d read these pieces as well.
Although I have never read anything by John Le Carré. I don’t even really know what he writes–spy novels?
Anyhow, as I started this I recognized the name of his novel The Constant Gardener, although as I say I don’t know anything about it. He says the novel follows a British diplomat as he searches for the people who killed his wife, Tessa. The story opens with Tessa dying on the shores of Lake Tukana in northern Kenya.
When he finishes a novel, John asks where the ideas came from–a stupid question, but one he likes to ask himself. He says he got the initial idea for this story twenty years earlier when he saw a man come into the restaurant where he was eating and begin handing out flowers to everyone–refusing to accept any money. The proprietress gave him a glass of wine and a kiss. She told John that they call him the mad gardener. He had suffered a great loss and he felt better handing out the flowers from his large garden.
Le Carré wrote a paragraph about this man and then tucked the story away.
He says he likes to travel to the places he is writing about–to really get a feel for a location. In this case he chose Africa.
Le Carré had a friend, Yvette Pierpaoli. Yvette was a master at getting what she wanted. She would fight tooth and nail for people who were in need. She worked hard to get food to the vulnerable and starving. She was resourceful and sometime shameless about what she would do to get what she wanted.
She also savored danger. She hated the miseries of war but never shied away from any conflict.
Two days after he landed din Kenya to begin writing, Yvette died in a car crash in Albania. She had been on a mission for Refugees International.
But here’s where things get unnerving. Months earlier as he began to flesh out characters for this book. He imagine a woman doing aid work in Africa whose death was the impetus of the story. He felt like he was mourning Yvette before Yvette died. Yvette was aware of this character. He told Yvette what his inspiration was, but he didn’t tell her that Tessa would be murdered.
He realizes that he was trying to celebrate Yvette’s work—to spread the word of her great deeds. And he believes it was Yvette’s presence that steered him through the composition of the novel.
This does make me want to read it, I must say.
Leave a Reply