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Suzanne Rivecca–“Someone Steps In” [The 2018 Short Story Advent Calendar #9] (2018)

Posted in Al Martino, Anorexia, Bing Crosby, Canadian Content, Christmas Album, Food, Hingston & Olsen, Parenting, Short Story, Suzanne Rivecca, Tanya Tucker, The Hollyridge Strings, The Lettermen, The New Christy Minstrels, The Roger Wagner Chorale, The Short Story Advent Calendar, Virgil Fox on December 9, 2018| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: WE WISH YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS (1994).

This is another disc that S bought a long time ago.  It’s fun looking these up because most of them are ones she bought for $5 at the CVS or something.  This one is yet another collection with classic crooners and country stars merged together.

BING CROSBY-“Hark!  The Herald Angels Sing/It Came Upon a Midnight Clear” is everpresent on Christmas collections–I wonder if he sang the most Christmas songs or if he is just the most popular. This version is so over the top with the choir and backing team that Bing is almost superfluous.  But it’s pretty.

TANYA TUCKER-“What Child is This”
My imagination for this conversation: Tanya, you are a good time country gal, and we need you to be really intense and serious as you sing this.  Boy howdy, does she emphasize and enunciate every syllable.  It’s also total whiplash after the previous song to have an acoustic guitar and string version of a song.

THE LETTERMEN-“Silent Night”
This version is pretty vanilla but honesty you don’t want frills and fancy on this lovely song.  It’s not my favorite but it’s nice anyway

AL MARTINO-“O Holy Night”
I don’t know who Al Martino is, but this version is straight and understated–a solid proper version of this song with a choir and everything

THE NEW CHRISTY MINSTRELS-“Here We Come a Caroling/Deck the Hals/We Wish You a Merry Christmas”  This is a classic mashup with the songs melding into each other–while one group is singing deck the halls, another is fading out “Here We Come.”  It’s pretty fantastic, and decades before Glee.

SUZY BOGGUSS-“The First Noel”  This version is straightforward and pretty with acoustic guitar. She is yet another country singer doing Christmas.

THE BEACH BOYS-“We Three Kings”  Certainly my least favorite Beach Boys Christmas song.  Possibly my least favorite Christmas version.  Why is this so slow and mournful.  Every verse sounds like they regret showing up and they are wiped put from their gift giving.   Although the live version was much better.

VIRGIL FOX-“Joy to the World.” I have no idea who Virgil Fox is but this is a lovely pipe organ version of the song.

THE ROGER WAGNER CHORALE-“Good King Wenselsas.”  If you like chorales (and they are lovely) this is a wonderful version of thus song.  I can’t tell the quality of one chorale from another but it is nice.

THE HOLLYRIDGE STRINGS–“Jingle Bells”  This is my favorite song of the bunch.  The Hollyridge Strings are kitschy and wonderful.  This song includes a great  farfisa organ solo and clopping wood blocks.

[READ: December 9, 2018] “Someone Steps In”

Once again, I have ordered The Short Story Advent Calendar.  This is my third time reading the Calendar (thanks S.).  I never knew about the first one until it was long out of print (sigh).  Here’s what they say this year

Fourth time’s the charm.

After a restful spring, rowdy summer, and pretty reasonable fall, we are officially back at it again with another deluxe box set of 24 individually bound short stories to get you into the yuletide spirit.

The fourth annual Short Story Advent Calendar might be our most ambitious yet, with a range of stories hailing from eight different countries and three different originating languages (don’t worry, we got the English versions). This year’s edition features a special diecut lid and textured case. We also set a new personal best for material that has never before appeared in print.

Want a copy?  Order one here.

Like last year I’m pairing each story with a holiday disc from our personal collection.

This is one of those stories that is important but kind of tedious to read.  And yet I feel like when my daughter is older I would love her to read it to feel like she is not alone. (more…)

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McSweeney’s No. 48 (2014)

Posted in Alexander Pushkin, Angela Rodel, Anna Meredith, Anorexia, Barack Obama, Bekim Sejranović, Boots Riley, Boris Cvjetanović, Celia Hawkesworth, Christina MacSweeney, Colin Winnette, Coral Petkovich, Croatia, Damir Karakaš, Dan Keane, Dave Eggers, David Gumbiner, Death, Delusions, Dentists, Ellen Elias-Bursać, Etgar Keret, Fish, Food, Gary Rudoren, Georgi Gospodinov, Gitmo Escape XI, Gordan Nuhanović, Huh?, Humiliation, Ismet Prcic, John McManus, Josip Novakovich, Julia Slavin, Katherine Heiny, Keaton Patti, Kelly Link, King Crimson, LGBTQ, Matt Sumell, McSweeney's, Miriam Toews, Miriam Towes, Murder, Newspapers, Non-fiction, Olja Savičević, Paul Whyman, Paula Whyman, Philip Glass, Political Humor, Rachel B. Glaser, Radio, Rebecca Curtis, Revenge, Sex, Sexism, Sonny Smith, Stephen M. Dickey, Superstitions, Surreal, Téa Obreht, Tea Tulić, Tiny Desk Concert, Valeria Luiselli, Violence, War, Yuck!, Zoran Ferić on March 8, 2018| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: ANNA MEREDITH-Tiny Desk Concert #713 (March 2, 2018).

I have never heard anything like this.  From sound to melody, to intensity, to instrumentation, this whole thing just rocked my world.

The melody for “Nautilus” is just so unexpected.  It opens with an echoed horn sound repeating.  And then the melody progresses up a scale, but not a scale, a kind of modified scale that seems off kilter just as it seems familiar.  The cello plays it, the guitar plays it, the sousaphone (!) plays it.  And it continues on in like fashion until only the high notes remain and then a menacing low riff on sousaphone cello and guitar breaks through–a great villain soundtrack if ever there was.  While everyone plays this riff, Anna returns to the keys to play the modified scale.

Meanwhile, the drummer has looked like he’s asleep behind his small kit.  And then 3 anda half minutes in he wakes up and starts playing a loud but slow rhythm.  The guitar begins soloing and as it fades out that main riff begins, now with a simple drum beat–not matching what anyone else is playing, mind you.  The sousaphone (which must have an echo on it or something and the cello pick up the low menace and it seems like everybody is doing his and her own thing.  But it all works amazingly.

So just who is Anna Meredith?

Anna Meredith was a former BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra Composer in Residence. Two of the three songs performed here come from her 2016 release called Varmints.

Bob Boilen was also impressed when he first saw Anna Meredith live:

I first saw this British composer a year ago, in a stunning performance at the SXSW musical festival. It was one of the best concerts of my life. The music I heard sent me into a state of reverie. If music could levitate my body, this is how it would sound. It carried me away and thrilled my soul. I was giddy for days.

Now, I know this isn’t music for everyone. … But if you know and love the music of Philip Glass, King Crimson or Steve Reich — music that’s electrifying, challenging and sonically soars and ripples through your body — then crank this up.

Lest you worry that she couldn’t translate it to the Tiny Desk (she says they normally have 23 suitcases full of crap so this has been an exciting challenge to squeeze in here)

Out of nearly 700 performances at the Tiny Desk, this is simply the most exhilarating one I’ve experienced. The instrumentation is unusual, with pulsing bass sounds produced by a wonderful combination of cello, tuba and electronics. It’s all rhythmically propelled by an astonishing drummer and Meredith pounding a pair of floor toms. And much of the repetitive melody is keyboard-and-guitar-driven that morphs and erupt with earth-shaking fervor.

The second song, “Ribbons” is quieter.  It’s and new song and it has vocals.  Her vocals aren’t great (“hard when you’ve got the voice of a five-year old boy”) but the melody she builds around it shows that her  voice is just one more instrument (albeit saying interesting words).  Actually, that’s not fair, they are just so different from the noise of the other two songs that it feels very faint in comparison.

It opens with a quiet guitar and electronic drum.  And slowly everyone else joins in.  A nice string accompaniment from the cello (Maddie Cutter), bass notes on the sousaphone (Tom Kelly) and even backing vocals from everyone.  By the third go around the drummer (Sam Wilson) is playing the glockenspiel.  By that time the song has built into a beautiful round and the quietness of her voice makes complete sense.  As the song nears its end, Sam has switches to a very fast but quiet rhythm on the floor tom.

She introduces the band and wishes a happy birthday to guitarist Jack Ross.  She says this is a great present as “so far all we’ve gotten him is an apple corer, the gifts have been a bit low grade.”

They make some gear switches, “we have a bit of a logistics problem with all our gear we can’t quite afford to bring enough glockenspiels, we pass the pure crap glockenspiel  around ans everyone gets to go ‘my turn!'”

“The Vapours” opens with a wonderfully wild guitar riff–fast and high-pitched and repeated over and over.  Anna Meredith adds waves of synths and then in comes the sousaphone and plucked cello.  Then fast thumping on the floor tom propels the song along.  The song slows a bit a Anna plays the clarinet (!).  The song dramatically shifts to some complicated time signature while Anna plays glockenspiel.  After a few rounds, while this complex guitar riff continues the drum and sousaphone start playing a pretty standard beat the contradicts everything else that’s going on and then Anna just starts pounding the crap out of some more toms.

All through this there are electronic sounds adding to the chaos and I have no idea who is triggering them, but it’s really cool.

The end is almost circusy with the big sousaphone notes and yet it’s like no circus anyone has every heard.  When the camera pulls back and you can see everyone working so hard and yet smiling ear to ear (especially Maddie), you know this is some great stuff.

The end of the song winds up with a hugely complicated tapping melody on the guitar and everyone else working up a huge sweat.

I couldn’t get over how much I loved this.  I immediately ordered Varmints and checked her touring schedule.

How disappointed was I to see that Anna Meredith had played Philly just last month and has now gone back to Europe!  I do hope she comes back soon.

[READ: August 30, 2017] McSweeney’s 48

For some reason, I find the prospect of reading McSweeney’s daunting.  I think it’s because I like to post about every story in them, so I know I’m in for a lot of work when I undertake it.

And yet I pretty much always enjoy every piece in each issue.  Well, that explains why it took me some three years to read this issue (although I did read Boots Riley’s screenplay in under a year).

This issue promised: “dazzling new work; a screenplay from Boots Riley with a septet of stories from Croatia.”

LETTERS

GARY RUDOREN writes about using the Giellete Fusion Platinum Razor every day for 18 days and how things were good but have gotten a little ugly.  On day 24 he had a four-inch gash under his nose.  Later on Day 38 it was even worse–a face full of bloody tissue squares.  By day 67 he is writing to thank McSweeney’s for whatever they did perhaps it was the medical marijuana but now his face is baby butt smooth even without shaving.  He wants to change the slogan to Gilette Fusion the shave that lasts forever. (more…)

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Charles M. Schulz–The Complete Peanuts: 1981-1982: The Definitive Collection of Charles M. Schulz’s comic strip masterpiece: Dailies & Sundays (2011)

Posted in Adventure, Advice, Angst, Anorexia, Baseball, Basketball, Birds, Boredom, Butterflies, Cats, Charles Schulz, Citizen Kane, Comic Strips, Dogs, Doug Hennig, Etiquette, Fantagraphics, Fantasy, Football, For Better of For Worse, Funny (ha ha), Golf, Halloween, Hockey, Humiliation, Ice Skating, Jealousy, Letters, Math, Peanuts, Regrets, Religion, Romance, Sexism, Soccer, Son Little, Summer Camp, Technology, Tennis, The Bible, The Future, The Muppet Show, Tiny Desk Concert, World War I, WXPN 88.5 FM--Philadelphia, PA on October 14, 2016| Leave a Comment »

1981 SOUNDTRACK: SON LITTLE-Tiny Desk Concert #496 (December 18, 2015).

sonlittleI know of Son Little, although only vaguely.  WXPN has played his song “The River” quite a lot, although I don’t think I’ve heard anything else.

For this Tiny Desk Concert, he’s really stripped down–just his acoustic guitar, a percussionist (Jabari Exum playing a djembe with accoutrements) and a backing vocalist, his sister Megan Livingston.  His playing is even pretty stripped down–his chords are minimal, almost more like accents for most of the songs (although he does play louder from time to time).

As such, this really celebrates his voice which is strong and almost gospel-like.

He plays three songs. “Lay Down,” is a quiet soulful song with perfectly spare accompaniment.  When it ends, everyone seems adorably shy with Little saying, “just mildly awkward enough.”

“Your Love Will Blow Me Away When My Heart Aches” is a bit bigger–Little sings a bit louder and plays louder chords, but it is still quite minimal.

He ends with “The River” which is certainly stripped down from the radio version.  It opens with some claps and he encourages everyone to clap along although “If you’re like clap challenged then maybe… don’t–you know who you are.”  The song has that bluesy rock feel even in this understated form.  And while I like the original better, this is a great version–that quiet clapping and percussion is really nice.

[READ: July 26, 2016] The Complete Peanuts 1981-1982

So far the 1980s see Schulz settling into a few consistent themes in his strips–regular motifs that he mines over and over again.  Although it’s interesting to see how they have morphed over the decades.

Patty is constantly falling asleep in school (and getting D minuses), Snoopy continues to write funny/bad jokes and gets rejection letters about his books (this is usually pretty funny but it’s also surprising as Snoopy is usually the “successful” one); Snoopy also plays a lawyer a lot in these strips.

1981 begins where 1980 left off with Patty loving the story of Hans Brinker.  1981 also has a lengthy section about Valentines Day (a subject that gets more emphasis in some years than others), although this year Sally is the major protagonist (and her Sweet Babboo her object).  1982 also has a Valentine’s Day with Sally–she gets her hand stuck in the Valentine’s Day cards box.

Schulz used to do bible instruction which is why he quotes it so much.  And he occasionally peppers his strips with religious commentary.  There’s a joke about school prayer–Patty has to go up to the board and when her teacher falls ill she shouts “school prayer works, Marcie.”  There’s an amusing joke that Snoopy used to teach Sunday School at the Daisy Hill Puppy Farm.

Although the running jokes are funny, I love when he gets a new idea.  Like the a fun twist on the dog ate my homework joke when Snoopy as the WWI pilot steals Sally’s homework claiming it is the enemy’s secret papers and he eats them.

Sometimes Schulz gives a one-off joke that’s just silly and funny like when Woodstock “poofs” a dandelion and it “poofs” him back. (more…)

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Katie Green–Lighter Than My Shadow (2013)

Posted in Angst, Anorexia, Big Books, Canadian Music, Constellation Records, Depression, Eric Chenaux, Food, Graphic Novel, Hospitals, Illness, Katie Green, Menstruation, Parenting, Sex on October 3, 2016| Leave a Comment »

shadowSOUNDTRACK: ERIC CHENAUX-Skullsplitter [CST112] (2015).

chenAn album named Skullsplitter sounds like it should be really heavy and loud.  But if you know Chenaux, you know that that’s not his thing at all.  So what wins?

The traditional Chenaux wins.  At times light and beautiful and at times wobbly and disorienting, Skullsplitter sounds like many other Chenaux releases.  And you either like him or you don’t. His slow songs, vibratoed guitar and really delicate voice either win you or not.

“Have I Lost My Eyes?” has one of the most wobbly guitars I can thing of (even for him).  The slow electric guitar solo is pretty much perpetually played with wah-wah bar in motion.  After 90 second of this, Chenaux’s delicate tenor voice comes in and sings a melody that is not exactly suited to the music, but which doesn’t sound off, either.  Classic Chenaux.

Alternating with the vocal pieces are instrumentals.  Chenaux plays a lot of ringing and delicate solos and overdubs them.  And the instrumentation is pretty varied: Voice, electric guitar, un-amplified electric guitar, nylon-string guitar, speakers, melodica and electronics.  “The Pouget” is roughly two minutes long.  “My Romance” has a kind of warbling guitar solo over some mellotron.  “The Henri Favourite” is another 2 minute slow piece with a slow guitar solo played over some keyboards.  The last instrumental is quite different.  “La Vieux Favori” changes the tone with a bowed sound (although you can see there’s no violin listed–he must be bowing the guitar).  It doesn’t have the same smoothness as the other songs, although it is certainly interesting, especially near the end when it is just that bowed instrument with no accompaniment.

“Skullsplitter” is, as I said, a mellow song just like the others.  His voice is relaxing and calming and the music is also mellow with waves of keys.  I’ve never really tried to figures out the words to any of his songs before–he sings so slowly it’s kind of hard to follow the thoughts.  But the lyrics to this song are the cover art.  And seeing them printed, I still don’t know what they mean.

“Spring Has Been a Long Time Coming” is the most friendly song of the bunch–music and vocals meld perfectly, and Chenaux’s guitar sounds beautiful.  The 8-minute “Poor Time” has a jazzy feel as it unfurls slowly.  It intersperses his vocals with a delicate but wildly-wah-wahed solo.  The final track, “Summer & Time” ends the disc with some pretty acoustic guitars and Chenuaux’s delicately soaring voice.

[READ: June 1, 2016] Lighter Than My Shadow

I was looking on the shelves in the library for some books and I saw this book on the shelf next to them. I loved the title, Lighter Than My Shadow and when I pulled it off the shelf, I really liked the drawing style that Green employs.

I genuinely had no idea that this book was going to be about woman suffering from body issues and anorexia.  It all seems obvious, but i didn’t look that closely at first.  Such a topic could be really hard to read about, but I was also really surprised and delighted at how good the book was.

She covers her mental state in all capacities.  And she really demonstrates the way her body rebelled against herself.  In fact, this was the most compelling and complete look at anorexia that I have ever seen.

There is something about the way her drawings style–simple figures and even simpler backgrounds work perfectly in this story.  She is able to show herself getting thinner without resorting to shocking illustrations (well, there are one or two mildly shocking ones).  The most effective part of the book is the black scribble that hovers around her representing her interior self. (more…)

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