SOUNDTRACK: KATIE PRUITT-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #102 (October 26, 2020).
I was supposed to see Katie Pruitt open for City and Colour, but those shows were cancelled. I didn’t know who Pruitt was at the time, but since then, her song “Experience” has been getting a lot of airplay on WXPN. And I really like it.
I thought it was either a new or newly released Fleetwood Mac song. Both Katie’s (fantastic) guitar sound and (more importantly) her vocal delivery sounds like classic Fleetwood Mac. Even Zach Witcher’s bass seems to fit perfectly. And the way he plays along with that super catchy opening and closing riff is perfect. She adds a cool guitar solo to the end of the song, too.
She says that “Out of the Blue” is about letting someone go and growing from it. It’s a slower song with more pretty guitars (and soft drums from Ross McReynolds). It almost feels loungey with the echoey guitar and her delivery. Witcher gets a nifty high note bass solo before Pruitt plays a solo of her own.
After the song, she says, “It’s been a hard year.”
“But one thing about painful experiences is that … it forces you to grow.” Expectations offers myriad scenes of such transformation, documenting Pruitt’s journey from a Southern Catholic childhood to adulthood as an out lesbian who, as she sings in “Loving Her,” is “staying true to who I am.”
“Loving Her”was another song by Pruitt that I knew by Pruitt. She released it on national Coming Out Day. It’s a lovely love song about loving who you want and loving yourself. The lyrics are great. Here’s sample
You see, I used to be ashamed to write a song that said her name
‘Cause I was too afraid of what they all might say
But if loving her is wrong and it’s not right to write this song
Then I’m still not gonna stop and you can turn the damn thing off
If loving her’s a choice, she’s all I’m gonna choose
No way you could sway me in another’s favor
Some people choose Buddha or Jesus or booze
But her body’s my temple and her soul is my savior
Now I’m even more bummed that the show was cancelled.
[READ: December 4, 2020] “Four Minutes and Thirty-Three Pairs of Sweatpants”
This year, S. ordered me The Short Story Advent Calendar. This is my fifth time reading the Calendar. I didn’t know about the first one until it was long out of print (sigh), but each year since has been very enjoyable. Here’s what they say this year
You know the drill by now. The 2020 Short Story Advent Calendar is a deluxe box set of individually bound short stories from some of the best writers in North America.
This year’s slipcase is a thing of beauty, too, with electric-yellow lining and spot-glossed lettering. It also comes wrapped in two rubber bands to keep those booklets snug in their beds.
As always, each story is a surprise, so you won’t know what you’re getting until you crack the seal every morning starting December 1. Once you’ve read that day’s story, check back here to read an exclusive interview with the author.
It’s December 4. Martin Riker, author of Samuel Johnson’s Eternal Return, prefers the term “loungewear.” [Click the link to the H&O extras for the story].
Yesterday’s story was a little tough for me to read. But today’s story was fantastic. I loved it immediately. The nod to John Cage’s 4’33” was great but the story doesn’t have anything to do with Cage.
It is written from the point of view of a female musician. She say the story she wants to tell deals with Byron Brandt and Peter Smith.
Peter Smith is a minor celebrity now, but when they dated, he was a struggling artist. Actually, she was the struggling artist, working four jobs, while he sat around and did very little.
He sat around most of the day in sweatpants. This particular quirk really irritated her. She counted that he had hurty three pairs of sweatpants in the house. This inspired her to create the titular composition that would give her a small amount of fame.
Byron Brandt, on the other hand, was just a guy. He was known as the Astor Place Crier because he stood on the corner in nothing but a yellow bathing suit shouting about whatever was on his mind.
One day he was shouting that music was the alpha discourse because it said nothing. And nothing is the superior thing to say. It was an ironic claim from a man who apparently never stopped talking.
She had some time and so she decided to shout him down–it was surprisingly easy. But he apparently took this engagement as an attempt to hook up with him, because he began coming to her work and continuing the argument. He even put on clothes to enter the store.
She kept mentioning her fiance (she and Peter were not engaged, but Byron didn’t know that) but it didn’t have any effect.
So “Four Minutes and Thirty-Three Pairs of Sweatpants,” the composition, was really something of a competition. If you could put on thirty-three pairs of sweatpants in under four minutes, you could use the rest of your four minutes to play whatever you liked on stage (they provide a wide array of instruments for the contestants).
But no one could do it. And it soon became an underground sensation–they sold out many shows.
Peter was at first offended by the composition. Then he was helpful and then, when it grew successful, he was put out by the whole thing. peter moved out and she focused on the production.
Then one night Byron showed up. He got on stage and, everyone was shocked to see, had managed to get eleven pairs of sweatpants on and off very quickly. It was grotesque to watch, but very effective. What would he do when he finally got to play a song?
The denouement makes a lot of sense and the post script to that night is really enjoyable.
I enjoyed this a lot and will look for more stories by him.
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