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Archive for the ‘Authors’ Category

Linden MacIntyre–“The Kit Bag” (The Walrus, July/August 2010)

Posted in Canadian Content, Canadian Music, CBC Radio 3, Linden MacIntyre, The Russian Futurists, Work on June 17, 2010| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: THE RUSSIAN FUTURISTS -“Paul Simon” (2010).

Continuing my march through CBC Radio 3: I love the name of this band, but I’m sadly underwhelmed by this track.

This is a horn (synth) heavy track which has a somewhat lo-fi quality in the verses.  I have to assume that the horns are a nod to Paul Simon, but I can’t be sure of that.  It has an orchestral feel and it’s kind of fun.  But while I wouldn’t turn it off if I heard it again, even after two listens I didn’t think of it so much as a song as a catchy horn blast repeated over and over.

[READ: June 14, 2010] “The Kit Bag”

Now this seems like a quintessential Canadian story to me.

This is the story of a young boy, soon to be a man, saying goodbye to his father as he heads off for the mines of Flin Flon. (more…)

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Lisa Moore–“Mask” (The Walrus, July/August 2010)

Posted in Arcade Fire, Canadian Content, Canadian Music, Lisa Moore, Neil Young, New Yorker, Summer, The Walrus, Zeus on June 16, 2010| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: ZEUS-“Kindergarten” (2010).

Continuing my march through CBC Radio 3: The radio announcer dude said that this album might make the long list for the Polaris Prize.

Zeus is a Toronto based band that has worked as a backup band for one of the guys from Broken Social Scene.  This is an acoustic guitar/quietly distorted electric guitar track that’s poppy and fairly commercial.

I wasn’t all that inspired by it, until near the end where these wild backing vocals come in (and it gets something of an Arcade Fire vibe).  The second song on Zeus’ page, “Marching Through Your Head” is much more promising.  A catchy bouncy pop track with enough weirdness to keep it interesting.

They do a cover of Genesis’ “That’s All” which is described as “raucous.”  And if you click on the link you’d be hard pressed to disagree with that assessment.

[READ: June 14, 2010] “Mask”

Hot on the heels of the New Yorker Summer Fiction Issue, I received this issue of The Walrus with their own Summer Fiction section called “Canadian Studies.”  This issue features nine authors.  They were all asked to write “the most Canadian story they could think of.”  Now, I’ll start out by saying I’m not Canadian, and I don’t want to suggest that I know what the most Canadian story should be like. At the same time, I read The Walrus, I watch a lot of Canadian TV, so I have a slight grasp of the culture.  So while I know a Canadian story isn’t going to be about igloos and elk, I’m certain that some more subtle stories will be lost on me.

Lisa Moore’s story is first in the collection.  It is quite short.   And I didn’t think it was especially Canadian, although perhaps, given one of my Vancouver friends’ proclivities, it is. (more…)

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Herman Melville–Moby-Dick [Week 4] (1851)

Posted in 19th Century, Adventure, Barenaked Ladies, Big Books, Canadian Music, Death, Demons, Fishing, Herman Melville, Infinite Zombies, Moby, Neil Peart, Paul Quarrington, Rheostatics, The Beatles, The Replacements, Violence, Whale Music, Whales, Yuck! on June 14, 2010| 7 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: RHEOSTATICS-Whale Music (1992).

The Rheostatics are from Etobicoke Canada.  Their second album was called Melville (named after a town in Saskatchewan, but it has a whale on the cover so…).  Their third album (this one) is called Whale Music (inspired by the novel by Paul Quarrington).  When they made a film of Whale Music, the Rheostatics were asked to make the soundtrack for it, which they released as Whale Music.  So, the band have 2 albums called Whale Music and one called Melville.  Perfect soundtrack to Moby-Dick.

The album is chock full of all kinds of music: country tracks, folky tracks, metal tracks, and hooks galore.  And it’s all wrapped up in the oddity that is the Rheostatics.  This album features guest spots by the Barenaked Ladies and Neil Peart as well as horns, strings, spoken word parts, and “power tools”.

“Self Serve Gas Station” is a great opening.  It begins with swirling guitars and a beautiful solo (Rheostatics guitar lines sound so elemental as to seem like they’ve always been around).  But just as the vocals begin, the song becomes a sort of country track: a folkie song about adolescnece.  But it returns to a good rocking (and falsetto fueled) rock track.

“California Dreamline” is a wonderfully weird track, with more gorgeous guitar melodies.  It also has a disjointed section with squealing guitars.   While “Rain, Rain, Rain” opens with a lengthy percussion section (played by Neil Peart of Rush) with a weird time signature.  It’s a fun singalong.  “Queer” meanwhile has some great chugga guitars that turn into a rocking tale of an ostracized brother (and features the great line: “But I wish you were there to see it/When I scored a hat-trick on the team/That called you a fucking queer.”

“King of the Past” is another great track, with a wondrous string sound near the end.  It’s a gorgeous song with (again) different sections conveying shanties and jigs (and you can dance to it).  Like Moby from last week, Rheostatics, also bust out a fast metal track, but this one works well: “RDA (Rock Death America)” has a major hook and name checks everyone from The Beatles to The Replacements.

“Legal Age Life at Variety Store” is a great folky singalong (and features the piercing harmonies of Martin Tielli).  “What’s Going On Around Here?” is the most traditional song of the bunch, a poppy little ditty which avoids complacency with a rocking coda.

“Shaved Head” is a moody piece, wonderful for its roller coaster sensibilities, which is followed by the beautiful Tim Vesely sung ballad “Palomar.”  This track is followed by the humorous (but serious) shouted-word piece “Guns” which also features Neil Peart.

“Sickening Song” is an accordion based shanty song.  Followed by another pretty, poppy-sounding track, “Soul Glue.”  Drummer Dave Clark sings “Beerbash,” an upbeat song.  And tye final track is the epic, “Dope Fiends and Boozehounds.”  It opens with a beautiful acoustic intro and a wonderfully catchy wheedling guitar solo.  It ends delightfully: “Where the dope fiends laugh And say it’s too soon, They all go home and listen to
The Dark Side of the Moon.”

I had been listening to the band live a lot recently, and they play these songs a lot.  So it was quite a treat to go back and hear the original with all its full instrumentation.

[READ: Week of June 14, 2010] Moby-Dick [Chapters 62-86]

I never thought I’d ever say this, but I really enjoyed Moby-Dick this week.  So far, these twentysome chapters have been my favorite (even the gruesome whale sections), there weren’t any chapters that I thought really dragged.  So, good for me!

This week’s read begins with Ishmael stating that harpooners should not have to paddle and then be expected to harpoon as well.  They should save their strength for that last, all important act.  And that seems logical to me, although one also expects that the harpooners would feel kind of bad while everyone else is paddling. (more…)

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20 Under 40 (New Yorker, June 14 & 21, 2010)

Posted in 20 Under 40, C.E. Morgan, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi, Chris Adrian, Daniel Alarcón, David Bezmozgis, Dinaw Mengestu, Gary Shteyngart, Jonathan Safran Foer, Joshua Ferris, Karen Russell, Nell Freudenberger, New Yorker, Nicole Krauss, Philip Meyer, Rivka Galchen, Salvatore Scibona, Sarah Shun-lein Bynum, Short Story, Téa Obreht, Wells Tower, Yiyun Li, ZZ Packer on June 12, 2010| Leave a Comment »

This week’s New Yorker contains a list of the 20 authors under age 40 that they predict we’ll be talking about for years to come.  Their criteria:

did we want to choose the writers who had already proved themselves or those whom we expected to excel in years to come? A good list, we came to think, should include both.

They have published eight of these authors in the current issue and are publishing the remaining 12 over the next 12 weeks.  I’m particularly excited that they chose to do this now.  Since I’m currently involved in two big book projects, it’s convenient to be able to read a whole bunch of short stories to intersperse between big posts.

I’ve read half of the authors already (likely in The New Yorker and McSweeney‘s).  And have heard of many of the others.   The list is below: (more…)

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Fredy Perlman–[Week 1] Letters of Insurgents (1976)

Posted in Anarchy, Big Books, Consumerism, Corporate skewering, Death, Epistolary Novel, Foreign Books, Fredy Perlman, Insurgent Summer, Prison, Stereolab, Violence on June 11, 2010| 5 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: STEREOLAB-Transient Random Noise Bursts with Announcements (1993).

Stereolab are a bizarre band.  They make bubbly electronic music, with all sorts of bleeps and whirls and buzzes.  They even describe their music as space age pop.   Their album cover art is overexposed or simply silk screened.  (This is a hi-fi needle getting dropped on an LP).  The back cover looks like it’s a hi-fi test record.

This disc is a bit less electronic than future releases.  It’s more guitar drone (appropriate circa 1991, frankly).  When the songs start, Latetia Sadler’s voice is angelic and beautiful.  Delicate and sweet.  And you sort of realize that you don’t quite understand what she’s singing.  Because the song is in French!  No kidding.

And then you get to “Jenny Ondioline.” It’s 18 minutes of droning guitars and noises.  It has several parts (the song actually stops at one point and at another it plays a sample from “Channel Recognition Phasing and Balance.”  And if you listen carefully to the lyric, you’ll hear:

I don’t care if the fascists have to win
I don’t care democracy’s being fucked
I don’t care socialism’s full of sin
The immutable system is so corrupt
What is exciting is the triumph as the new nation.

A little later on the disc, on “Crest,” there’s more subversive songwriting.

If there’s been a way to build it
There’ll be a way to destroy it
Things are not all that out of control.

This is all done by those sweet, yet alien-sounding vocals.  When she’s not singing in French, Sadler sings in a fascinatingly broken English, emPHAsizing the wrong sylLABes.

Although I think my favorite moment comes in “Golden Ball” when the CD skips like a vinyl record.  It’s surreal.  Electropop and Marxism: perfect together.

[READ: Week of June 11, 2010] Letters of Insurgents [First Letters]

And so begins Insurgent Summer.

This is the first week of my second Summer Reading Book series.  I’d never heard of this book before getting the invitation to read.  But when the book was described as 800+ pages of letters between insurgents, well, how could I pass that up?

And that is indeed what you get here: Yarostan (Vochek) has not spoken to Sophia (Nachalo) in twenty years.  And he writes to her to her because she had written to him twelve years earlier (when he was in prison).  He writes back to bring her up to date on his life and to find out what’s going on with her. (more…)

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Mark Gonyea–A Book About Design: Complicated Doesn’t Make It Good (2005)

Posted in Art, Children's Books, James Kochalka, Mark Gonyea, Neverest Songs on June 10, 2010| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: NEVEREST SONGS-“Calculator” (2010).

Opening with a simple, discordant piano, this song quickly morphs into a fast chaotic piano run, all the while the vocal stay slow and calm.  Once the bass kicks in, the song feels less like a solo track and more like a band effort.  And it’s amazing that this simple bass can add so much to this swelling track.

I heard about this band from a nice review at wallernotweller.  I think I’ll have to order this CD, if for nothing else than because it looks beautiful.

I’d like to hear more from this label, but all their songs seem to be linked to last.fm, which I find very awkward to use.  One band’s “radio page” didn’t play their own songs and now at home it says I don’t have a plug in or some nonsense.  Pity.  But you can hear this song (and watch their mesmerizing webpage here.

[READ: June 7, 2010] A Book About Design

This book was also part of Sarah’s birthday present.  Inexplicably, although James Kochalka has absolutely nothing to do with the book, he autographed the inside and made a little cartoon that says, “Hi Sarah.”  Cute.

So this book is a wonderfully illustrated primer about design.  It is so basic that I read it to Clark (aged almost 5) and he loved it, too.  There are some sections that I had to use different words, obviously, but he enjoyed the basics very much.

Not including pictures almost makes this review pointless, (but you can see many pages at Google Books) and yet I have to say something here, so I’ll talk about a few things.  Chapter 1 talks about the effects on Object B if you change the appearance of Object A.  Chapter 2 starts: “Take a look at the square in the right.  Imagine drawing two straight lines that intersect only once inside the square.”  When I turned the page to reveal the basic window design of four equal squares, Clark said, “How’d it know that?”  It was very cool. (more…)

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Eli Kochalka–“The Pie” (2010?)

Posted in Comic Strips, Eli Kochalka, Magic Garden, Nostalgia, Sesame Street on June 9, 2010| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: THE MAGIC GARDEN (1970s).

When I was growing up in the 1970s one of my favorite shows was The Magic Garden. Even though I enjoyed Sesame Street and The Electric Company, Carole and Paula were my favorites.  And it was the songs that were so memorable.  Thanks to the Web, here’s four of their original songs, all of which I loved (although I understand the opening credits only ran on a few episodes).  So, travel back in time to The Magic Garden: Opening Credits, Story Box, Goodbye Song and this Theme Song which I seem to remember most of all.

The one song I can never seem to find is one that was for Sherlock, the squirrel.  There were lines like: Today is Monday…Monday peanuts…all you hungry squirrels we wish the same for you.  I’ve had the melody in my head for what seems like decades now, but I can’t find the lyrics anywhere.  Can anyone help out?  Oh, and if you were a fan Carole and Paula have a website where you can get some stuff.

[READ: June 8, 2010]

Kochalka is the son of James Kochalka, the Vermont based cartoonist/comic strip guy and leader of James Kochalka Superstar.   Sarah’s brother (who live sin Vermont) sent her some Kochalka books for her birthday and included in the set was this book by his son (who has several webcomics). (more…)

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Terry Moore–Echo #21 & #22 (2010)

Posted in Death, End of the World, Graphic Novel, Mad Scientists, Technology, Terry Moore, The Prodigy, The Shining, Violence on June 8, 2010| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: THE PRODIGY-Experience (1993).

Before Prodigy sang “Smack My Bitch Up” and Keith Flint had devil horns and pierced everything, Prodigy were a dancey techno act. This was their first album, and allmusic calls it “One of the few noncompilation rave albums of any worth.”  High praise indeed.

I love that this disc still has the price sticker on it and that I can see that I bought it some time around May 1993 from Ralph’s Record City in Scranton (RIP).

I popped this on because I was listening to Moby and it reminded me of this early 90s dance disc.  Sarah said that it made her want to work faster (some of the beats are crazy fast).  As with most dance records, this one works for dancing and for background music.  But it does have some standout tracks.

“Hyperspeed” which has more than a few words as lyrics is super catchy, as is “Fire” which samples “I am the god of hell fire!”  What I’m learning here is that you pretty much need some kind of words for a song to be more interesting than 4/4 beats at breakneck speed.

The best track on the disc is “Out of Space” which opens up with some twinkly keyboards before the drums kick in.  But rather than just a straight heavy beat, the song slows down (with a great “boing”) into a sort of reggae vibe.

The album is full of sped up vocals (who even knows what the originals sound like).  As well as crazy fast dance songs.  It even features a “live” track.  I’m not a huge fan of dancey techno music, although I know it has its place and some of it is quite good.  This disc is definitely better than most, although I much prefer when they get into their darker stuff starting with their next disc.

[READ: June 7, 2010] Echo #21 & #22

One of the difficult things about writing sequential comics (as if I know from experience) is that each issue needs a certain arc which propels the main story but which is also satisfying in itself.  And so the story arcs in these two issues are very exciting in themselves but serve as something of a detour from the main story.

And that’s all well and good.  But it’s so frustrating when you’re only getting single issues!  The story is so good, and you get to the end of the book and ack, six weeks before the next panel! (more…)

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Herman Melville–Moby-Dick [Week 3] (1851)

Posted in 19th Century, Adventure, Boredom, David Foster Wallace, Death, Demons, Digression, Eurhythmics, Fishing, Herman Melville, Infinite Zombies, LCD Soundsystem, Moby, Roberto Bolaño, Twin Peaks, Yuck! on June 7, 2010| 2 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: MOBY-Everything is Wrong (1995).

I suppose that everyone knows that Moby (the musician) is Herman Melville’s great- great- great- grandnephew.  And that’s why he has the middle name Melville and had the nickname Moby.

Moby started out as a techno guy. He even made the Guinness Book for the fastest bpm ever recorded (since then, many have surpassed that) with the song “Thousand.”  It’s an interesting song, although more for its novelty than anything else.  He also had a cool hit called “Go” that sampled music from Twin Peaks.  And in 1999 he took over the world with his album Play, which featured some 18 songs that were all licensed for commercial use (many of which were ubiquitous that summer).

But this disc, Everything is Wrong, came out before Play, and it was considered a high water mark for dance music (before the next high water marks of Fatboy Slim and LCD Soundsystem came out, of course).

So this disc was hailed as the big breakthrough for Moby.  And it has something for everyone.  It opens with a pretty piano piece ala Philip Glass which is, as its name implies, a “Hymn.”  From there we get a heavy techno beat and “Feeling So Real” kicks off.  Gospel-like vocals soar above the dancing (this foreshadows Play quite a bit).  It sounds very 1994 to me, although I don’t think it sounds dated, necessarily.  And then comes his stab at punk.  “All That I Need is to be Loved” is a fast blast of aggro music.   The problem is that Moby doesn’t do punk very well.  His guitars are too trebly, his vocals aren’t very strong and despite the beautiful melodies he creates, he doesn’t write very catchy hooks.

“Every Time You Touch Me” returns to the style of “Feeling So Real” and is another stellar dance track.  While “Bring Back My Happiness” runs even faster.

“What Love” is another screaming punk track.  This one is closer to Ministry.  It’s quite a slap in the face after the rest of the disc.

“First Cool Hive” slows things down with a groovy almost ambient track.  And “Into the Blue” is a moody song that sounds like it could also have been taken from Twin Peaks.

“Anthem” returns to the fast beats with ecstatic moans sprinkled over the faster and faster beat.

The album ends with two tracks, “God Moving Over the Face of the World” which is a beautiful instrumental (again ala Philip Glass or more likely Michael Nyman) that weaves in and around itself for 7 minutes.   (It, too, hints of Twin Peaks).  And, “When It’s Cold I’d Like to Die,” while not exactly uplifting is coldly beautiful (kind of like a long lost Eurhythmics track)..

The disc is such a mishmash of styles, that it’s hard to really know what to classify it as.  Some of it works wonders.  Other tracks (notably the punk experiments) are less successful (even though I did enjoy them then, I think they just didn’t age well…or maybe I didn’t age well).  Of course, over the course of his career, Moby has attempted all of these genres in more detail, so this was almost like a sampler of what he would be doing later.

Sixteen years later it holds up quite well (although I still think Play is better).

[READ: Week of June 7, 2010] Moby-Dick [Chapters 42-61]

The reading this week opens with a chapter about whiteness.  And how somehow Moby-Dick is even more fearsome for being white.  As the chapter opens whiteness (even in skin color) is lauded.  But by the end, he cites it as being particularly creepy: white whales, polar bears, albinos.  (I think that this was my very least favorite chapter so far–I was uncomfortable reading it and I didn’t get a lot of humor from it either).

Some more down time passes, with Ishmael describing how Ahab is able to plot a course to find Moby-Dick.  It’s not just looking for a needle in an ocean–there are pathways that whales follow, for instance.  This is followed by a chapter that allows Ishmael to swear, absolutely swear! that whalers can recognize the same whale even years later if you tried to kill it but failed (and that he himself remembers one whale that got away from a mole under its eye). (more…)

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Insurgent Summer: Fredy Perlman–Letters of Insurgents (1976)

Posted in Anarchy, Epistolary Novel, Fredy Perlman, Insurgent Summer, Jasper Fforde on June 5, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Because I needed one more reason to put off reading the huge stack of books on my nightstand (Jasper Fforde, I’m coming, I promise).  I have decided to join yet another group read of an inordinately large book.

I had never heard of Letters of Insurgents until I got the call from a fellow Infinite Summer gentleman and arbiter of good taste that Insurgent Summer is starting, well, now.

Visit the Insurgent Summer website for all the FAQs.  The book is hard to come by so there’s even PDFs of all of the book available on the site (so you can read the first letter and see right away if it’s your thing).

So, what’s the book about? (more…)

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