SOUNDTRACK: BRANDY CLARK-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #85 (September 23, 2020).
Brandy Clark is just too country for me. I do like her lyrical content, but there’s just too much twang in her voice.
The amazing thing in this video is the view from her apartment. The day doesn’t look very clear, but the view is still lovely. Who knew Nashville looked like that?
If you’re going to be stuck at home during a pandemic, it helps to have an awe-inspiring living room view. Stellar singer-songwriter Brandy Clark highlights hers in this charmingly casual set recorded in her loft-like Nashville apartment. The city’s verdant hills roll out behind her as Clark plays these four songs.
“Bigger Boat” is a standard slow country song with the rhythm provided by Vanessa McGowan on upright bass.
The song addresses serious issues
The floods down south, the fires out west
You turn on the news, scares you to death
Give me that hammer, somebody hold my coat
Yeah, we’re gonna need a bigger boat
But in an winking, funny way
We’re springing a leak, we’re coming apart
We’re on the Titanic, but we think it’s the ark
Sharks in the water got me thinking ’bout a movie quote
Yeah, we’re gonna need (we’re gonna need)
A bigger boat (a bigger boat)
I like the way Kaitlyn Raitz’ cello is the lead instrument.
“Can We Be Strangers” feels like a classic old country ballad with a clever country lyrical twist
We struck out as lovers
We struck out as friends
Is it too much to ask
Can we be strangers Again?
There’s some very nice harmonies here from Vanessa and Cy Winstanley (whom she just met today) who plays a simple solo at the end of the song.
She says that she was only going to do songs from the new record but “I can’t think of a show in the last six years that I haven’t done this song.” She says “Hold My Hand” is her absolute favorite.
“I keep saying thank you, because we’re used to playing live, it’s kind of weird,” she says after a particularly poignant rendition of her fan-favorite “Hold My Hand.” “I hope everybody’s clapping in their living room.”
She has a poignant but amusing introduction to the last song, “Who You Thought I Was”
She was at Americana awards and John Prine came out to introduce Iris Dement and there as lengthy ovation for him. He said “Well, I’m John Prine, but I’d like to go back to who you thought I was.”
She wrote that down as she imagined every songwriter did that night and she went the next day and wrote the song first.
I don’t really care for the very Nashville verses, but I do like the chorus:
Now I wanna be honest
Now I wanna be better
Now I wanna be the me
I should’ve been when we were together
I wanna be at least almost close to worth your love
I want to be who
You thought I was
She’s a singer with great lyrics who I will never listen to because of the kind of music she makes.
[READ: September 23, 2020] “From the ‘London Times’ of 1904”
During the COVID Quarantine, venerable publisher Hingston & Olsen created, under the editorship of Rebecca Romney a gorgeous box of 12 stories. It has a die-cut opening to allow the top book’s central image to show through (each book’s center is different). Get a copy here.
This is a collection of science fiction stories written from 1836 to 1998. Each story imagines the future–some further into the future than others.
As it says on the back of the box
Their future. Our present. From social reforms to climate change, video chat to the new face of fascism, Projections is a collection of12 sci-fi stories that anticipated life in the present day.
This story is from Mark Twain. He wrote it in 1898 and it is set in1904.
“Printed” on April 1, 1904, this correspondence from the ‘London Times,’ Chicago was written by the reporter Mark Twain.
He writes to keep us updated about the extraordinary event that has the whole globe talking.
But first some background. Back in 1898 there was a party full of notable figures. The young inventor, Mr Szczepanik; Mr. K. his financial backer, and Lieutenant Clayton, a man of quick temper were all at this event. Szczepanik and Clayton were talking over the telelectroscope. Clayton didn’t know why anyone would waste money on a toy like that–it will never be of any real service to any human being.
But K. is investing in it because Szczepanik is a smart young inventor and he sees great value in the device..
This irritated Clayton. He gave Mr. K a farthing and said if ever the telelectrosope does any man an actual service, please mail it to me as a reminder, and I will take back what I was saying.
In 1901, the telelctroscope was released to the public and the world was soon connected. The daily doings of the globe were made visible to everybody.
On two occasions, when Szczepanik and Clayton encountered each other again, there as more quarreling. Then Szczepanik was not seen or heard from again.
People believed that Szczepanik was a wacky inventor and was probably just off somewhere. But in December a corpse was discovered in Clayton’s basement(!).
Friends identified the body as that of Szczepanik. Clayton maintained his innocence even though he admitted that the evidence was unquestionable.
He was sentenced to death.
Clayton was married to the governor’s daughter and so his execution was delayed many times over he course of the next couple of years.
Finally, though, after much political pressure, a date was set and Clayton was to be executed.
He was given every indulgence before his end. One of his wishes was to have the telelectroscope as a diversion. He asked for Hong Kong and Melbourne and spoke to people around the world.
Then just before the execution, Twain himself was looking in the telelctroscopse and saw Szczepanik in a crowd of people! Twain got the inventor’s attention and he admitted that he was alive and well. The execution was stayed and he was pardoned form killing Szczepanik.
But hat’s not the end of the story.
In a wicked twist from Twain, the court gets involved.
In a new paragraph added to the Constitution, second trails are not State affairs, but national and must be tried by the most august body in the land–the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court said since Szczepanik was still alive, Clayton’s pardon for killing Szczepanik was invalid. What? There’s not much left in the story but Twain does some fascinating things.
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