SOUNDTRACK: THE KOPECKY FAMILY BAND-Tiny Desk Concert #131 (June 6, 2011).
I’d never heard of The Kopecky Family Band, but the write-up about them was pretty interesting, so I decided to give the Tiny Desk concert a listen. The band (all 7 of them) play a great collective of music: two guitars (acoustic & electic) bass, cello, violin, drums and keyboard. They play a sort of traditional folk with a very full sound.
Indeed, they remind me an awful lot of The Head and the Heart (the singer’s voice in particular), although they are from different edges of the continent and have been playing music about as long as each other (indeed, The Kopecky Family Band released an EP in 2008 whereas Head and the Heart formed in 2009).
And the Kopecky website offers lots of free music (which is very cool).
“Howlin’ at the Moon” is a full acoustic sounding track. “Birds” has a simply gorgeous whistle/xylophone melody that is as beautiful as it is catchy. “Disaster” is a tender ballad with wonderful harmonies. And “Red Devil” is a somewhat more rocking song, which really helps to demonstrate the bands’ diversity.
And the band is charming. Keyboardist/singer Kelsey admits to having left a trinket of some kind of the office bookshelves (which are littered with things). It’s a wonderful set, and because of it, I downloaded the band’s first EP from their site.
[READ: June 5, 2011] Great Philosophers Who Failed at Love
Shaffer was signing books at BEA this year. My coworker told me that he was very funny and that he signed her book in an amusing way. He happened to be signing at the table next to the line I was on. Sadly, he finished before I was able to get to him. But I was pretty close to the beginning of the line, so I asked if I could grab a copy of his book, which I did (although no autograph for me).
This is a silly book of nonfiction. It looks at thirty-seven philosopher or thinkers and their utter failure at love. Each man (and occasional woman) has had some distinguishing characteristic that made them pretty lousy in the emotional range.
The title of the book is funny and is meant to be kind of surprising: these smart folks were terrible at love. Of course, spending a minute or two thinking about who these people were and what they did, it’s not surprising that they were lousy at love. These were intellectuals, people who spend most of their time in their own mind. Of course they couldn’t have a serious relationship.
Nevertheless, these stories are all more or less amusing (Louis Althusser accidentally strangled his wife to death(!) which isn’t amusing per se, but the story of it is, kind of). Shaffer does a great job at keeping each entry brief but really retaining the salient points of the thinker’s philosophy and a cogent example of his or her lousiness at love. He also throws in some amusingly snarky comments of his own as he goes along.
I was delighted that the book order was done alphabetically rather than chronologically. A chronological list would have been a little too samey in terms of each person’s context. The alphabetical list allows for jumping around from say Plato to Ayn Rand which keeps the stories interesting and fresh.
At the end of each person’s piece, there’s an “In His Own Words” which offers a quote that details his or her written philosophy regarding love.
Dare I say that this is an ideal bathroom book? It certainly is. And it makes you feel a little better about yourself (if you haven’t for instance, adopted your mistress as your daughter (Sartre)).
I Just Read About That... 