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Archive for the ‘Authors’ Category

Nell Zink–“Make Me Live” (Harper’s, March 2015)

Posted in Canadian Music, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Excerpt, Harper's, Huh?, Joe Jackson, LGBTQ, Meatloaf, Nell Zink, Poetry, Poets, Rheostatics, Rush, Set at School, tagged on March 10, 2015| Leave a Comment »

harp marchSOUNDTRACK: RHEOSTATICS-Ted’s Wrecking Yard Toronto, ON, (March 25, 2000).

tedsThis was the sixth and final night of Green Sprouts Music Week–the band’s annual residency at Ted’s Wrecking Yard.  Sadly this is the only night that is up on the site, but man, is it a good one.  The band played for over two and a half hours and they cover nearly every album.  There are guests galore, there’s on stage hijinks and a great sense of fun for band and fans alike.

 I don’t know what they played on other nights but there is a still a focus on Harmelodia. Things are a little different this night from previous shows on the tour.  “Song of the Garden” and “Sweet Rich Beautiful Mine” are really rocking. When they call in a female vocalist up, a fans shouts out “we could use a little estrogen” and they get it with her lead vocals.

Kevin Hearn joins them on keyboards.  He ges a verse in “Four Little Songs.”  He also adds piano to “Queer” which sounds extra jaunty  And he puts accordion in “I Fab Thee.”  There’s even the unexpected Kevin song “Yellow Days Under a Lemon Sun” which originally appears on the Group of 7 disc.

The most fun is had during “My First Rock Show, in which several “guests” appear during the song.  Meatloaf (Kevin) plays a bit of “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad,” Geddy, Alex and Neil (Martin) show up to play a verse of “Closer to the Heart” with Martin screeching “salesmen!” There’s a brief jam of Walk This Way (although no one can remember the words).  And there’s some fun with Joe Jackson’s “Is She Really Goin Out with Him.”  Look over there.  Where?  That’s called a hook.  There’s also a funny joke about playing “Harvest X-1, Rush Never Sleeps.”

There’s some real guests too, Karmen from Sheks? sings “One More Colour” and sounds awful, like she can’t hear what the band is doing.  Julia Pietrus guests on “Home Again.”  She sings her verse in Polish (and is part of a Polish Rheos tribute band!).

There’s a drum solo (!) on “Dope Fiends and Booze Hounds.”  The set and the night ends with “A Midwinter Nights Dream.”  Martin sounds in great voice even if he cant hit all th ehigh notes which is undetsnable after nearly 2 and a half hours of playing

They also mention that their next show is Canada Day and that is our next show as well

[READ: March 4, 2015] “Make Me Live”

I am always intrigued by the fiction that appears in the front section of each Harper’s issue.  It is typically not an author I have heard of and is often a translation.  It’s also usually really short (often excerpted) so that if it’s not so good, you’re not stuck with a long read and if it is good it whets your appetite for a longer piece.

This excerpt is a definite appetite whetter.

I genuinely can’t imagine how long Mislaid (the full novel) is, because this story just seems to fly through time in a real hurry 9and feels rather complete).

It opens with Peggy Vaillancourt’s birth in 1948 in Virginia.  Her family was educated and rather reserved.  Her mother had hoped to send her to Bryn Mawr, but Peggy wanted to go to Stillwater, a former plantation and current finishing school.  It was considered a mecca for lesbians.

I’m confused about the transformative event in Peggy’s life in which a gym teacher, Miss Miller,  readjusts her gym shorts and Peggy assumes she was meant to be a boy.  The story seems to bulldoze forward whether you can keep up or not.  So I have no idea if an average female reader would “get” what happened here (it doesn’t seem to be sexual to me). It also seems odd that one incident should affect her so profoundly, but there ya go. (more…)

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William T. Vollmann–“Invisible and Insidious: Living at the edge of Fukushima’s nuclear disaster” (Harper’s, March 2015) and “Into the Forbidden Zone” (Harper’s, May 2011)

Posted in Canadian Music, Essays, Harper's, Japan, Law, Radiation, Reverend Ken and the Lost Followers, Rheostatics, Threats, Travel, William T. Vollmann, tagged on March 9, 2015| Leave a Comment »

harp marchSOUNDTRACK: RHEOSTATICS-Vertigo, Victoria British Columbia, (January 22, 2000).

vertigoOne of the things that I like about listening to Rheostatics live shows is that when they play a couple nights in a row, they play such different sets both nights.  In the two nights at Vertigo, they played 44 songs and only 5 of them were duplicated (all from the newest album and a song that was on the live album).  That is a fan pleasing band.

It’s hard to even say which night is better.  Night 2 had more deep cuts and yet, they’re not exactly rare tracks for them to play either.

Lucky’s notes for this one say that the band were given cell phone type gadgets and that Martin played with his throughout the show.  You can hear that as the set opens and Martin is goofing off with his.

Overall for these shows I found that the band was playing a lot of songs in a bit more mellow vibe.  It’s not the way I like to hear them, but I wonder what it was like live.  However, “King of the Past” one of my favorite songs was played too slow on this night, as was “Christopher.” And “Northern Wish” sounded quite different–it had an almost meandering quality to it. Even “Stolen Car” has a slow moody quality (which Martin agrees with).

But the band is clearly having fun.  On “Four Little Songs there’s a crazy drum solo.  And as it ends and “The Royal Albert” starts, there’s some odd guitar sounds which Martin describes as change falling in an elevator.

The stage banter is certainly fun tonight, especially the talk about Sean Brodie and ordering a pizza (which was terrible).

The final song is a great version of “Aliens.”   But before that they play a cover of Reverend Ken and the Lost Followers’ “The Midnight Ride of Red Dog Ray ” which is all about a guy who drove to Quebec when there was a beer strike in Toronto.

Here’s the original

Although I love the song choices in this set, I feel like its slowness makes me prefer the previous night’s set a little more.

[READ: March 2, 2015] “Invisible and Insidious”

Vollmann is one of the more prolific writers I know (or at least his one collection of works is over 3,000 pages).  I sort of have designs on reading his output but there’s so many other authors I like and Vollmann has so much out there that I think my best bet is to keep up with his writing when I see it and just let it go at that.

So he occasionally writes non-fiction for Harper’s.  And they are usually pretty dark and unhappy pieces about the state of the world–Vollmann is not afraid to go to dark places.  In this article he talks about living in Japan and he reminds us that not that long ago (March 2011) there was a tsunami and a huge nuclear meltdown in that country.  And how most likely we all assume it must have been fixed, since we don’t hear about it anymore.

I don’t wish to overwhelm with details–that’s Vollmann’s job.  But he does a few interesting things in Japan.  He explores locations that are off-limits (or at least in the evacuation zone) and he talks to people who live and work in these areas.  He also (of course) has a dosimeter (which I assume must be pretty common in a radiated site).

The nuclear utility that monitors the plant, TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) has issued various information over the years, although none of it seems verifiable.  In August 2013, The Japanese Nuclear Regulation Authority said the leak was re-categorized from level 1(anomaly) to level 3 (a serious accident).  And the Japan Times says a the radioactivity was about 100 times more than what TEPCO had been allowing to enter the sea each year before the crisis. (more…)

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Cory Doctorow–Information Doesn’t Want to be Free: Laws for the Internet Age (2014)

Posted in Amanda Palmer, Canadian Content, Canadian Music, Consumerism, Corporate skewering, Cory Doctorow, Crash Test Dummies, Law, Luke Doucet, McSweeney's, Neil Gaiman, Rheostatics, Short Books, Stompin' Tom Connors, Technology, Threats, Veal, Whitehorse, Wil Wheaton, tagged on March 8, 2015| Leave a Comment »

information_cover_FINAL_webSOUNDTRACK: RHEOSTATICS-Vertigo, Victoria British Columbia, (January 21, 2000).

21Jan2000I recently learned that the Rheostatics Live website has added dozens of new (old) shows.  It has been almost exactly a year since I last did a tour of some of these live shows, so it was time to move into 2000 (with one new show added since I last looked).

As of 2000, the band is still touring the Harmelodia album, and the set has a lot of songs from that album.  I recently relistened to the album (something I don’t listen to all that much).  I was surprised to hear how many songs had narration–which pretty much precludes them from playing them live.  So that explains why they focus on just a few songs live.

Lucky’s notes for this show state: The Rheos were on a short west-coast swing and they played in Whistler the night before this show. In fact, the inspiration for ‘Satan Is The Whistler’ (from their following album) came from this trip, as Martin remarked something along the lines of ‘They are a bunch of Fascists in Whistler!’.

This is a really good set.  The sound quality is excellent and the band is in very good form.  There’s some great harmonies on “Loving Arms” and Martin really rocks the guitar on “I Fab Thee.”  “Junction Foil Ball” sounds awesome here–a good breakdown in the middle.  And it’s a rare sighting of “Oneilly’s Strange Dream” and a replay of “Good Canadian.”

It’s always fun when the band is feeling chatty.  In this show they joke about the Crash Test Dummies and even sing, “Superman never made any money saving the world from Crash Test Dummies.”  They also have fun with “My First Rock Show” with talk of blood on the seats.

The band has some technical failures, and they play a Stompin’ Tom song (“Bud the Spud”) while they get fixed.  But it doesn’t mess them up as they play a killer version of “Stolen Car” with a great solo.

Luke Doucet (now of Whitehorse, then of opening act Veal) plays during “Legal Age Life” and the band jokes about the Vealostatics.

The whole show ran for nearly two hours.  It’s a great set and the first of two nights at Vertigo.

[READ: February 10, 2015] Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free

This short book is Doctorow’s plea for Copyright common sense, Net Neutrality and internet freedoms (among other things).  Of course Net Neutrality just passed–hurrah!– which makes this book less urgent but no less spot on and worth remembering while going forward.

Doctorow starts each section by stating his three laws:

  • “Anytime someone puts a lock on something you own, against your wishes, and doesn’t give you the key, they’re not doing it for your benefit.”
  • “Fame Won’t Make You Rich, But Yo Can’t Get Paid Without It”  (or as Tim O’Reilly said “The problem for most artists isn’t piracy, it’s obscurity.”)
  • “Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free, People Do.”

(more…)

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Mallory Ortberg–Texts from Jane Eyre: And Other Conversations with Your Favorite Literary Characters (2014)

Posted in Ayn Rand, Charles Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Funny (ha ha), Henry James, Herman Melville, J. M. Barrie, Jane Austen, Mallory Ortberg, Manatee Commune, Tiny Desk Concert, Tiny Desk Contest, William Shakespeare on March 5, 2015| Leave a Comment »

textsSOUNDTRACK: MANATEE COMMUNE-“Wake” (Tiny Desk Contest Runner-Up 2015).

manateeLast week, a Tiny Desk Contest winner was announced. This week, All Songs Considered posted ten runners up that they especially liked.  And I want to draw extra attention to a couple of them.

I know very little about these bands, so I assume that Manatee Commune is just this one guy doing some pretty electronic music (with some live flourishes on top–but not looped apparently).

When there’s a cheesy black curtain, you know that it is either hiding something or covering something up.

Manatee Commune’s setting looks like he’s trying to hide something.  He plays it up by having furniture in front of the curtain which is slowly removed.  And then we learn what he is hiding—it’s a pretty magnificent reveal

The song is pretty cool too. It’s electronic (I’m not sure how it’s all playing–I don’t know much about electronic equipment these days). But the drums sure seem live when he bangs on them.  (And I enjoyed the way he discards the sticks when he is done). The live violin at the end is also a nice touch.

The song is interesting, although it’s not my favorite.  This is one where the video really sells the song.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qdtVdqbenw]

[READ: January 3, 2015] Texts from Jane Eyre

Sarah brought this book home from the library.  When I first heard about it a while back I thought it was a re imagining of Jane Eyre as text messages.  And I thought that was a really lame idea (and honestly isn’t the Jane Eyre trend over yet?).

That’s not quite what this book is though (note the subtitle).

Rather, it is a collection of imagined text messages between two (or more) characters from famous classics (and some non classics) of literature.  Knowing the originals helps tremendously, although sometimes even just knowing what the originals are about will do enough to make the jokes funny.

But the thing I found was that even though I fancy myself a well-read person who has read many of the stories, I didn’t always “get” what the joke was about.  I mean, I could tell obviously from the conversation what they were talking about, but I couldn’t always connect it to the story.  So basically this book made me feel really dumb. (more…)

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Neil Gaiman–The Graveyard Book: The Graphic Novel Adaptation (2014)

Posted in Adventure, Boredom, Children's Books, David Lafuente, Death, Demons, Fantasy, Galen Showman, Graphic Novel, Jill Thompson, Kevin Nowlan, Maraj, Minnesota, Neil Gaiman, P. Craig Russell, Scott Hampton, Stephen B. Scott, Supernatural, Threats, Tiny Desk Contest, Tony Harris on March 4, 2015| Leave a Comment »

graveyardSOUNDTRACK: MARAJ-“Gettaway” (Tiny Desk Contest Runner-Up 2015).

maraj Last week, a Tiny Desk Contest winner was announced. This week, All Songs Considered posted ten runners up that they especially liked.  And I want to draw extra attention to a couple of them.

I know very little about these bands, but I assume that these folks are all members of Maraj.  They are from Kalamazoo MI and they do hip hop with a twist. I loved that there was a live upright bass player. And that the music had a steel drum sound (although it was all electronic).

The verses were done by two different rappers Motor Cit Kam–whose flow is incredibly fast and clear (even if I didn’t actually know what he was saying, the style was great) and Dari G who has a very different flow (and also sings a beautiful backing vocal later).  I enjoyed that there were two rappers, but I liked even more that the third verse (or perhaps bridge) was sung by two of the women in the band.  They totally change the tone of the song—an excellent mix of rap and singing.

What I thought set this song apart was that the chorus–while the music was the same, the slower singing gave a very different sound to the song.  It really changed the flow from the fast first verse.  And the singers–all six of them–all sing well together.

[READ: December 23, 2014] The Graveyard Book

Back in 2009, I read the prose version of this book.  Now in 2014, it has been re-imagined as a graphic novel.  And it’s funny, now that Gaiman has well established himself as a novelist, that I forgot he was originally a graphic novelist.  So this format works for him quite nicely.

As I said, I read the book five years ago, but I didn’t remember all the details.  Naturally the most exciting parts came back to me as I was reading it, but the little details has been lost to time.

I gave a rather detailed review of this book here and there’s really no reason for me to rewrite what I thought about it because it is pretty much unchanged.

But in sum: the story is about Bod Owens.  His family was murdered when he was 18 months old. He escaped to a graveyard (while the killer tried to track him down) and he was raised by ghosts.  They keep him safe from Jack, the killer, whose superiors want him to finish the job.  (more…)

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Karl Ove Knausgaard [Knausgård]–“My Saga: Part One” (New York Times Magazine, February 25, 2015) [translated 2015]

Posted in Biography, Diana Gameros, Drinking, Foreign Books, Ingvild Burkey, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Karl Ove Knausgård, Peter van Agtmael, The New York Times Magazine, Tiny Desk Concert, Tiny Desk Contest, Translation, Travel, Yuck! on March 3, 2015| 1 Comment »

01cover-articleLarge-v3SOUNDTRACK: DIANA GAMEROS-“Ligerita” (Tiny Desk Contest Runner-Up 2015).

ligeritaLast week, a Tiny Desk Contest winner was announced. This week, All Songs Considered posted ten runners up that they especially liked.  And I want to draw extra attention to a couple of them.

Diana Gameros doesn’t do anything flashy or fancy in this video.  She simply plays the acoustic guitar (amazingly) and sings.  And man, does she have a beautiful voice.  Even more impressive is the way her guitar begins as delicate finger-picked melody in the verses and then transforms into a rollicking Spanish guitar style beauty for the chorus—the way she uses her right hand for the chord playing is great.

This is an absolutely beautiful song, and I was happy to read that she was recently featured on Alt.Latino.

I’m not sure what relaxing location she is in, but it’s nice little room. And even her cat—Lulu—seems to have enjoyed the song.

[READ: February 26, 2015] “My Saga Part One”

I didn’t know that Karl Ove had written this piece for the New Yorke Times magazine until someone brought it to my attention.  I was pretty excited to read it because Book Four of My Struggle isn’t due out until April and I think I’m going through Karl Ove withdrawal.

This first part of the story (because of course it would have to be in two parts) was, I have to admit, a little disappointing.  It features everything that I’ve come to expect from Karl Ove–minutiae, history, shock at people who are unlike him, and a general misanthropy.  But it almost feels like Karl Ove lite–like the Times asked him to write a piece like My Struggle, but, you know, more suitable for a newspaper.  Which may even be how they phrased it.  Of course, it may also be the translation.  Unlike the books, this was translated by Ingvild Burkey.  It’s not that the translation is bad, it seems perfectly fine to me, but the story isn’t as compelling in some way, and perhaps Don Bartlett knows how to capture Karl Ove’s voice better? (more…)

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Malachai Nicolle & Ethan Nicolle–Axe Cop: Volume 4: President of the World (2013)

Posted in Animation Domination High Def, Axe Cop, Children's Books, Death, Enormodome, Ethan Nicolle, Graphic Novel, Malachai Nicolle, Tiny Desk Concert, Tiny Desk Contest, Violence, Yuck!, Zombies on March 2, 2015| Leave a Comment »

axe4SOUNDTRACK: ENORMODOME-“I’m Gonna Love You” (Tiny Desk Contest Runner-Up 2015).

enormodomeLast week, a Tiny Desk Contest winner was announced. This week, All Songs Considered posted ten runners up that they especially liked.  And I want to draw extra attention to a couple of them.

I know very little about these bands, so I don’t know if they are on the trend (opposite of yesterday) of two guys playing really loud music.  And man, they rock the office.  Sometimes a gimmick makes you want to watch a video, but the song has to be good for you to watch it more than once.

This video was filmed in the office of the Mayor of Flagstaff–what a good sport!  I love that they have his employees coming around and working as usual while these two guys are making an unholy racket.

I’ve been very impressed with most of the two person bands who really make a very full sound.  And this one is no exception.  I was sure there were more than two guys playing along.  And their voices gel nicely.  The only weak spot is during the solo, when the rest of the  guitars drop out so it’s a little too spare.  But aside from that the song is a great rocker.  I like the simple blues riff, but I really like the way the middle section (before the solo) messes with that riff somewhat–it’s very cool.

[READ: February 22, 2015] Axe Cop Volume 4

axechopLike Volume 2, Axe Cop Volume 4 is a full length story.  This one pushes the idea that came up in a previous book that Axe Cop is President of the World.  For the writing of this book Malachai was 8 years old.  It was at this point that I started to wonder how different the stories of an 8-year-old would be from those of a 5-year-old.  Since my son is nine, I know that he understands the logic of storytelling a bit more and he even understands the internal logic of stories, so I assumed that Malachai’s stories would be more linear and less surreal.

And of course, the nature of a big graphic novel like this is that it must be linear and coherent.

I liked that the book opened with something we hadn’t seen before–Axe Cop is having a recurring nightmare about a talking gorilla.

But then we get down to business.  As president, Axe Cop is going to live in the Gold House in the real Washington (not DC). But his real business comes down to one question–since he got rid of all the bad guys, the people want to know if they will ever come back.  Axe Cop talks to God (!) and is told that they will come back in 1 million years, but until then it is time for peace in the world. (more…)

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Malachai Nicolle & Ethan Nicolle–Axe Cop: Volume 3 (2012)

Posted in Advice, Axe Cop, Children's Books, Chronicles of Narnia, Death, Ethan Nicolle, Graphic Novel, Malachai Nicolle, Michael J. Nelson, Mystery Science Theater 3000, Nick Offerman, Spirits of the Red City, Tiny Desk Concert, Tiny Desk Contest, Vampires, Violence, Yuck!, Zombies on March 1, 2015| Leave a Comment »

axe3SOUNDTRACK: SPIRITS OF THE RED CITY-“Halfway Poem” (Tiny Desk Contest Runner-Up 2015).

spiirtdLast week, a Tiny Desk Contest winner was announced. This week, All Songs Considered posted ten runners up that they especially liked.  And I want to draw extra attention to a couple of them.

I know very little about these bands, but I assume that this folkie collective uses this kind of instrumentation all the time, although I have to suggest that two upright basses and a viola seems excessive.  The beginning of this video shows an early aborted attempt with different instruments (accordion, banjo, flute, drum and ukulele), so that sounds promising–and honestly the overload of large strings doesn’t sound bad at all in the final product.

It’s interesting that bands with lots of members are a kind of trend–it’s so impractical.  And yet when done well, it’s quite lovely.  And when these seven folks starts singing along near the end of the song it’s really pretty.

The story of this video is also interesting.  They had planned to film their video outside.  But on the day of their video shoot it was 33 degrees below zero (in Minnesota).  They have some brief footage at the beginning and then the video switches to them inside a quite cozy cabin.

It’s hard to tell from just this one song what kind of folk collective Spirits of the Red City is, but I enjoyed this song quite a bit.

[READ: February 20, 2015] Axe Cop Volume 3

Axe Cop Volume 3 returns to the format of Volume 1 (the one I liked better) with a mix of shorter comics and the return of Ask Axe Cop!

The first comic we see features the return of Bat Warthog Man and features the practical science of Chemist M (whom Axe Cop buys for ten dollars). It also has a chihuahua who was a soldier that was turned into a chihuahua when the soldier’s dog bit him (Malachai’s understanding of how transformations work makes me hope he never gets bitten by anything).  The dog can turn back into a man “only when I am not ready to fight…which is almost never.”  There’ also a hilarious scene where Axe Cop is inside the imagination of a mouse which is in color and is “full of unicorns and cheese.”

The Ask Axe Cops are more intense in these later variations, like the one that asks if he ever got in trouble (he got in trouble with his mom when he chopped the head off a rabbit who was not following rabbit rules).  We also see the introduction of head trash–a place where all the heads that axe cop has removed are disposed.  There’s dating advice (very sound); a jumping competition and a hilarious bit about Halloween (where he gets 1,051 candies to share with his friends, but the bad guys have poisoned 1,040 pieces of it.  There is also Axe Cop’s strangely violent generosity on Thanksgiving (yipes).  (more…)

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Malachai Nicolle & Ethan Nicolle–Axe Cop: Volume 2: Bad Guy Earth (2011)

Posted in Axe Cop, Children's Books, Death, Ethan Nicolle, Graphic Novel, Malachai Nicolle, Reina Del Cid, Tiny Desk Concert, Tiny Desk Contest, Violence, Yuck!, Zombies on February 28, 2015| Leave a Comment »

axe2SOUNDTRACK: REINA DEL CID-“The Cooling” (Tiny Desk Contest Runner-Up 2015).

coolingLast week, a Tiny Desk Contest winner was announced. This week, All Songs Considered posted ten runners up that they especially liked.  And I want to draw extra attention to a couple of them.

I know very little about these bands, so I don’t know if this is Reina del Cid’s normal band or what.  But I love the sound of this orchestral chamber pop.  There are plenty of chamber pop bands, but there’s something about the melody of this song that works so perfectly with the strings.

There are seven people in the video (Reina is the singer).  I love the way the song starts out with some pizzicato guitar and slowly building violin strings.  I also love the starts and stops that the song has–very dramatic.  And it all works so well with Reina’s voice which doesn’t soar or hit super high notes, rather it is just powerful and strong and very pretty (even when she does an occasional mmm mmm).

When the song builds to its climax, the violins switch to pizzicato and the drums grow louder.  It’s quite lovely and I’d like to hear more from her (them).  I gather that the new album is coming out in May!

[READ: February 19, 2015] Axe Cop Volume 2

I enjoyed Axe Cop Volume 1 so much I couldn’t wait to jump into Volume 2.  But something was different.

This book was made for Dark Horse as a three issue arc.  It’s in color and it’s all one long story.  Ethan is super proud of it, and I think he should be, it’s pretty impressive that he and his brother (now aged 6) were able to come up with such a huge story.

But I found that like the longer stories in volume 1, I got a little bored by the end of this book.  Indeed, I let Clark read the first book (it was placed in the YA book section, but I figured if it was written by a  5-year-old, my nine-year old could read it).  He liked the first book but only gave this one a few pages before he gave up.  He likes Ask Axe Cop best too. (more…)

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Malachai Nicolle & Ethan Nicolle–Axe Cop: Volume 1 (2010)

Posted in Archer, Axe Cop, Children's Books, Cold Blue Mountain, Death, Ethan Nicolle, Graphic Novel, Kevin Murphy, Malachai Nicolle, Mystery Science Theater 3000, Nick Offerman, Tiny Desk Concert, Tiny Desk Contest, Violence, Yuck! on February 27, 2015| Leave a Comment »

axw1SOUNDTRACK: COLD BLUE MOUNTAIN-“White North” (Tiny Desk Contest Runner-Up 2015).

cbm Last week, a Tiny Desk Contest winner was announced. This week, All Songs Considered posted ten runners up that they especially liked.  And I want to draw extra attention to a couple of them.

I know very little about these bands, and I seriously hope that the guys from Cold Blue Mountain look like this when they play all the time.

This may be the best set up and reveal of a joke that actually contains an awesome song.  The video is 4 and a half minutes long, but the music doesn’t start for nearly a minute and a half as the set up proceeds.

When the music starts it is heavy, like really heavy, but beyond heavy there’s a great riff mixed into the music on the second guitar–it’s a great sound.

But the “joke” isn’t over, since at 2 minutes the music stops for 20 seconds until the next reveal comes in.  It’s pretty awesome.

My only gripe is that I don’t like the vocals (growly cookie monster type)–they work pretty well with the music, but it’s not something I want to listen to, which is shame since the song really really rocks.

And the video is awesome.

[READ: February 15, 2015] Axe Cop Vol. 1

After watching Archer on FX the other week I saw a few minutes of an animated show called Axe Cop which looked weird and silly and starred Nick Offerman as Axe Cop.  I only watched a few minutes of it and then went to bed.  A few days later I was in the library and saw four volumes of Axe Cop books.  Well, I had to check that out right away.

And here’s what I learned.  Axe Cop is a web comic that was drawn by Ethan Nicolle.  But the best part is that Axe Cop was written by Ethan’s younger brother who was 5 at the time.  That’s right, five.  So Axe Cop comes from the delightfully twisted imagination of a (rather precocious in my opinion) five year old.

This book collects the beginning web comics, including the first slew of Ask Axe Cop, perhaps my favorite feature of the comic.  It also has a forward by Mystery Science Theater 3000’s Kevin Murphy!

In the beginning, there was Axe Cop.  No, in the beginning Ethan tells about how he was visiting his younger brother over a Christmas break and they started playing with action figures and what not.  And one of the guys was a firefighter with an axe.  Malachai didn’t want to play fireman, so he called this guy Axe cop.  Ethan decided to make a comic out of it and it all started from there. (more…)

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