SOUNDTRACK: SHOVELS AND ROPE-Tiny Desk Concert #304 (September 16, 2013).
This Tiny Desk Concert starts with the most fun opening of any—the duo of Shovels & Rope brought their dog along, and as they are warming up, the dog roams around, getting pet by people and sneaking treats.
As the blurb notes:
But once Cary Ann Hearst and Michael Trent showed up, the office quickly lost sight of the approaching performance, as the murmurs began: “There’s a dog in the office there’s a dog in the office there’s a dog in the office!” You could practically see our coworkers’ brains short out from a combination of cognitive dissonance and canine adoration.
I’ve enjoyed Shovels and Rope’s punky folky country music, But I didn’t know much about them:
As endearing as our new friend was, Shovels & Rope soon won back the crowd’s attention [with] the husband-and-wife duo’s mix of rowdy folk-rock and rootsy balladeering. After opening with the plaintive ballad “Carnival,” the South Carolina duo ripped through one of its signature rockers — “Birmingham,” during which the pair held eye contact sweetly while singing in unison — before closing with “Bad Luck,” a clattering gem for which the two swap instruments (he on guitar, she on drums). The song, originally from a Michael Trent solo album, most recently appeared on a deluxe version of Shovels & Rope’s 2012 debut, the winning and appropriately titled O’ Be Joyful.
The band’s music is definitely steeped in country and yet there’s something about it that I like—they have country spirit without all the twang—or perhaps it’s just the gorgeous harmonies that elevate it above pedestrian country fare.
“Carnival” is a slow, sweet song. She plays guitars, he plays keys and he gets a harmonica solo. For “Birmingham,” he jumps up and switches to drums. And it’s amazing how much power that simple drum beat puts into these songs. This is a hootin’, hollerin’, country stompin’ song. There’s a punky element to it- sort of an X vibe (although I think its more like The Knitters than X) with their voices mingling.
As that song ends, they switch places–he takes guitar she takes the drums. Before starting, he asks, “Where’d our dog go? Anyone got a line on a hound dog?” She jokes, “If your ham sandwich is half eaten?” Then corrects: “He won’t half eat it, he’ll get it all.”
The final song “Bad Luck” is a big stompin’ fun song. There’s simple loud punky drums and she hollers the vocals for extra fun
The dog even gets an on-screen handshake at the end (and then the duo shake each others’ hands, too).
[READ: July 30, 2016] The Metamorphosis
I’ve been enjoying the art of Peter Kuper lately. So I found a few of his older books, like this adaptation of The Metamorphosis, which is pretty great.
I don’t know if this is meant to be a complete telling of the story. I’ve read it a few times, but I don’t know all of the details.
I liked that he clearly doesn’t include all of the dialogue or text–it’s not a comprehensive version of the story. Rather, he uses a the art to move the story along.
The cockroach is drawn in Kuper’s very blocky, very robotic style–it’s cool and creepy. But not bug-creepy just inhuman-creepy.
As the book opens, he flashes back to his life and job as a traveling salesman . He hates the work–it is exhausting–and if his parents didn’t need the money he would have quit a long time ago.
But while he’s thinking all this he realized that he is late for work. He tries to get up and that’s when the limitations of being a cockroach really hit him.
His supervisor comes to tell him that he is fired because of poor performance and when his family sees him, they are disgusted by him.
Only his sister Grete treats him kindly–bringing him scraps of foot (real food at first and then rotting food, since he is a bug). We learn that in the family only Grete and Gregor are close–their father is distant and cold. The father is really annoyed at Gregor the bug still being in the house–how do they even know he is that creature or if he is even still “in” there. He throws an apple at Gregor and it gets embedded in his back (ew).
Without Gregor’s income the family must take in lodgers, who are bossy and inconsiderate Gregor wants them out but when they see him, they freak out and storm out without paying.
Can a story like this find any happiness at the end? Well, sort of, in a very unexpected place.
Even though this is primarily a visual work, it really conveys the horrors of the original in a very clever way.
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I didn’t know this story, nor did I know anything about the Thorne rooms before our trip to Chicago last summer.
I Just Read About That... 