SOUNDTRACK: BITCH FALCON-Staring at Clocks (2020).
Everyone can agree that Bitch Falcon is a terrible name. Just awful.
Having said that, this album is pretty great. Drummer Nigel Kenny was interviewed in the Irish Drummers book, and that book continues to introduce me to bands that I like.
Bitch Falcon is a trio who have been together for five years. They released their debut album Staring at Clocks in 2020.
Their sound touches on grunge and shoegaze, which I rather like, but they move beyond that and explore really interesting sounds from Lizzie Fitzpatrick’s voice and guitar. Her guitar shimmers and wobbles and she is excellent at sculpting feedback into sounds that veer into harshness. Her voice is strong and powerful, hitting and holding notes that ring out. But also singing in otherworldly styles like almost wordless sound effects.
The album is held together by bassist Barry O’Sullivan’s prominent position–playing the main lines and basic rhythms of most songs and by Nigel Kenny’s not traditional almost lead drumming.
The album opens with a squealing feedback followed by a rumbling bass and some solid thumping. And it continues in this vein for some 40 minutes. There’s diversity in the songs–some are softer and some are dreamy–but the overall sound is consistent. Throughout the album, there are gorgeous washes of guitars and wicked feedback.
I love the thumping bass and drum and the ringing guitar and voice in “How Did I Know?” “Staring at Clocks” opens with guitar sounds that are so unguitarlike, it’s wild. The fast drums and bass propel the otherwise ethereal song along. The guitar sounds at the end of the song are like out of a sci-fi movie.
The opening bass sound of “Damp Breath” is great and when they throw in the cool guitar rolls over the top it sounds tremendous. I love the lead bass line of “Martyr” while the guitar lays down intricate passages. And the final song, “Harvester” is 6 minutes long with the final two allowing the guitars to roar until the album crashes to a conclusion.
This album was a great surprise. I would love to see them live.
[READ: February 1, 2021] Dragon Hoops
Gene Luen Yang’s books are always fantastic. He has such an excellent way with storytelling, that no matter what his books are about you know they’re going to pull you in. Even if they’re about basketball! Even high school basketball.
Mr Yang opens the book explaining that he never like sports–he was never interested. He got his excitement from comic books, He teaches at Bishop O’Dowd High School (in California) and has been there for seventeen years (Do his kids know that he’s an amazing cartoonist? I assume so). In all that time he never thought much about the school’s basketball team, but in this year 2014-2015, there was talk that their team would go all the way. It was a big story, and Yang loves stories.
In order to see if this would work as a book, it meant talking to Coach Lou Richie. They have obviously talked over the years, but not very much. So Yang takes the first step (a wonderful recurring theme in the book) and approaches Lou. They talk and Yang has an idea for his next book.
We go back through Coach Lou’s life. He was a young nerd just like Gene. He was short and skinny. But when he went to a Bishop O’Dowd game at the Oakland Coliseum, Lou knew he wanted to do that one day. So he worked out and grew some and by his junior year he was only 5’8″ (like me) but he was a formidable player. Lou’s team made it to the Coliseum that year (some kind of State playoffs) and, cliche of all cliches, he scored the game-winning basket. But, cliche of all other cliches it was called a no basket because of a penalty. It was one of the most controversial calls in a high school game and obviously Lou never forgot it. (Despite the cliches that’s all true).
Lou became head coach at O’Dowd, and since he came back his teams have been to state five times, but have never won.
But this year he has two secret weapons: Ivan Rabb and Paris Austin.
Imagine being a high school kid, being great at basketball and then having Mr Yang draw you in his book? Wow.
Soft spoken Ivan is a monster on the court, and aggressive talking Paris weaves through people like an acrobat.
What I especially liked about this book though, and this is quintessential Yang, is that he infuses this tory with a lot of history as well. Like a quick run-through of how James Naismith invented the game (a fun story in an of itself). He also tackles racism in the sport–both on the court and in the stands.
The initial racism of course was black vs white, with early basketball leagues afraid to have black players on their teams. Also that white doctors said that black players could never be athletic enough to play. But then later as players from China and India came to the pros (and even high school), they were treated equally as badly.
Even on a team level, did Coach Phelps (the precursor to Lou) favor white players over black players? And Coach Lou wonders if he favored his black players over his Chinese and Indian players.
Yang introduces us to Oderah and Arinze a brother and sister who both payed for O’Dowd. In doing so he discusses the history of women’s basketball. Senda Berenson in Smith College in 1892 modified basketball for her girls. It was, of course, believed that women couldn’t pay team sports–they’d get ugly muscles, athletic faces and never get the husbands they wanted, So she modified the game so that women played only one third of the court at a time, had to dribble and couldn’t steal. It was a step. By 1971 (!) all those restrictions were removed and now the only difference is the women’s ball is one inch smaller in diameter.
He mentions Georgeann Wells–the first woman to dunk–and the crazy story about why footage of that dunk didn’t appear for nearly 20 years. She later wet on to play for the Harlem Globetrotters
Oderah was amazing and was always bigger than Arinze. He was very jealous, but he had pride in his big sister. The he outgrew her and became just as good. Now they have mutual pride.
But as a Junior, Arinze was sent to JV (with the freshman end sophomores) because Coach Lou thought he needed the extra work. He was placed there with Quianjun “Alex” Zhao who was also a junior. Although Arinze’s story is interesting, Alex’s is far more interesting.
Alex was born in China. He learned to play basketball in China. He grew up around the time of Yao Ming playing n the US (Yao Ming blocked Shaq!) and he wanted to play in the US. So he did research and found a school in the US that was great as basketball and he applied there (this is high school mind you). He flew to the States to study and pay basketball. The school he chose was the bet in the state of Rhode Island, which… wasn’t that great. So he did more research and moved to California and went to Bishop O’Dowd. But the policy was that you had to play JV if you tanswerferred (I guess to avoid getting all the biggest guys on your team right away). So these two great players were on JV for a year.
But the next year they both made the starting lineup.
We also meet Jeevin Sandhu a Punjabi kid who practices the Sikh faith. He went to O’Dowd because of basketball as well. Yang then gives a brief introduction to the Sikh faith and the messed up history of India and how it was partitions along religious lines. Much murder and death followed especially of Sikhs.
Jeevin alos hard a lot of taunting–mostly that he was a terrorist but he let it bounce off of him, because Sikhs are awesome.
Yang also includes this story about Gandhi which I had never heard before
Gandhi wanted the partition of India driven by Winston Churchill and his planners. It was the biggest forced migration of all time, between 250,000 and 500,00 Sikhs were murdered. He sent two million Indian to fight in World War I because he thought it would make us look more favorable to the British. Over 750,000 deaths! He refused to acknowledge Sikhism as its own religion and instead pushed it under Hinduism which it is not.
The last player he talks about is Austin Walker, not to be confused with Paris Austin. Austin is a great player but as a senior, he has no intention of playing in college–he’s going to school for business. He has a great head on his shoulders but is also a phenomenal athlete who scores a very important basket late in the book.
While all this is going on, Mr Yang gets a call from DC. They offer him the job of drawing a Superman series. Superman! But how can he possibly make his basketball book and teach and make Superman. Plus, the have some crazy ideas that they want to do with superman. I don’t really care about Superman comics but I am definitely going to read his arc Superman Vol. 1 Before Truth. He also works on New Super-Man.
He has a huge decision to make.
But this book is about basketball. And as Yang points out throughout the whole book–he’s writing this as it happens–what if the team is a bust, what if their season is no good? What if they tank in the playoffs? He’s still got to make this book interesting and make the story worth reading.
Well, as she says, anyone can look up the results of the games to see what happened (don’t do that though. Regardless of how the games turn out, Yang does an amazing job of drawing the games. He makes these stil photos exciting and he works his storytelling magic to infuse every game with a great story arc.
This is a fantastic book regardless how you feel about basketball or really anything. You will learn some important lessons from history and important lesions about taking chances.
I loved this.
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