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Archive for the ‘Boondocks’ Category

Mark Tatulli–Liō ‘s Astonishing Tales from the Haunted Crypt of Unknown Horrors (2009)

Posted in Aliens, Birds, Bloom County, Boondocks, Cats, Children's Books, Christmas, David Foster Wallace, Death, Demons, Dogs, Fairy Tales, Fantasy, Foxtrot, Funny (ha ha), Games (Non Video), Garfield, Halloween, Holidays, Humiliation, Inventions, Joe Henry, Liō, Loch Ness Monster, M.C. Escher, Mad Scientists, Mark Tatulli, Mark Trail, Mary Worth, Opus, Parenting, Peanuts, Pigs, Rats, Sam Phillips, Squids, Supernatural, Surreal, The Enfield Tennis Academy, The Family Circus, Tiny Desk Concert, Vampires, Vic Chesnutt, Woody Guthrie, Yuck!, Zombies on October 30, 2017| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: THE ENFIELD TENNIS ACADEMY-The Dark (2017).

The Enfield Tennis Academy is one of the major locations in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest.  So, of course, a band that names itself after it must be listened to.

This is the second release by the band (which states “The Enfield Tennis Academy is TR.”

The Dark is described as

This EP is a collection of remixes and covers of Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark”, from the 1984 album “Born in the U.S.A.” It is not ironic. “Dancing in the Dark” is © Bruce Springsteen and Columbia.

And that is literally what this is. Five tracks that rethink “Dancing in the Dark” each one called “Dancing in the Dark.”

Track 1 opens with someone doing a kind of Elvis impersonation (or is it actually Bruce?) of the first line of the song: I get up in the evening…”  It then gets echoed and looped on itself until it is inaudible.  After a minute a guitar comes in strumming music backwards, I believe.  The big takeaway is the rolling “I” repeated over and over.  After 1:30 there’s a rather pretty sax solo. which may be from the song, I don’t know it that well.

Track 2 is an ambient piece with electronic claps and a kind of slow almost pixelated pipe organ version of the main melody of the song.  There’s some of those 80s processed “ahhhhs” added to the end.  It would eerily make you think of the song without knowing exactly why.

Track 3 is a noisy track.  Electronic drums played very rapidly and then some glitchy guitars playing the melody in triple time.  It is the least recognizable of the five pieces.

Track 4 is a fingers-on-chalkboard electronic screech with what I assume is the song played in reverse.  It’s a tough minute before the noise clicks away and we’re left with the backwards vocals.  If you didn’t know it was “Dancer in the Dark” you might not recognize the melody but if you do, you can kind of hear it.

Track 5 plays the original song in the middle ear. But in the left ear is another song (as if the radio was staticky and in the right ear is another even louder song.  But Bruce is squarely in the middle.  It’s pretty disconcerting.  Ultimately, the left ear gives way to people talking and the right ear reveals itself to be “You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman.”  It fades and for about ten seconds during which you can hear pretty much only the Bruce song, but then it all falls apart into glitchy noise.

The longest track is 2:15; the rest are about 2 minutes.  No one will say this disc is enjoyable, but it is kind of ugly fun.

[READ: January 30, 2017] Liō ‘s Astonishing Tales from the Haunted Crypt of Unknown Horrors

I have observed before about the maddening publication life of Liō books.  It’s going on four years since a new collection has been published.

But at the same time there are a number of books that cover the same territory.  Like this one.

This book collects “Liō” (which I take to mean Happiness is a Warm Cephalopod) and Silent But Deadly.  But what puts this book head and shoulders above the others (and just about any other collection of any series) is that it is almost completely annotated.

I didn’t compare the two books to see if all of the strips were indeed included.  But I’ll assume that claim is true.

Tatulli doesn’t comment on every strip but he does on a lot of them.  Like the very first one (in which he criticizes his–admittedly horrible-looking–spider.

He has at least three comments about what a genius Charles Schulz was.  Including the first time he tried to draw Lucy and Charlie: “I wanted to use the retro 1950s Peanuts look, but it was a bitch to reproduce…Schulz just make it look so simple.”

He’s also very critical of his drawing style of Mary Worth: “I won’t even tell you how embarrassingly long it took to make this lousy copy.” (more…)

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Mark Tatulli–Liō: There’s a Monster in My Socks (2012)

Posted in Aliens, Birds, Boondocks, Bryce Dessner, Cats, Children's Books, Death, Demons, Dogs, Fairy Tales, Fantasy, Funny (ha ha), Games (Non Video), Garfield, Geeshie Wiley, Holidays, Humiliation, Inventions, Kronos Quartet, Liō, Loch Ness Monster, M.C. Escher, Mad Scientists, Mark Tatulli, Mark Trail, Mary Worth, Parenting, Peanuts, Pigs, Rats, Squids, Supernatural, Surreal, The Family Circus, The National, Tiny Desk Concert, Vampires, Yuck!, Zombies on March 4, 2017| Leave a Comment »

 socks kronosSOUNDTRACK: KRONOS QUARTET-Tiny Desk Concert #322 (November 25, 2013).

2013 was the 40th anniversary of Kronos Quartet.  I first heard of them about eight years after they started with their cool arrangement of “Purple Haze.”  And then I learned that they were like a sponge, soaking up and playing music from all over the world: In just one year they released albums with tango, songs by South African composers, Polish composers, jazz musicians and so much more.

I have many of their releases, although I realized I more or less stopped listening to new stuff from them around the turn of the century (since when they have released some 16 albums!).

Well, amazingly, the Quartet is still the same original players (except for the cellist–the cello is like Kronos’ drummer as they seem to replace her every couple of years).

They play three pieces here and the three range the gamut from dark and broody to rather sweet to quirky.  In other words, typical Kronos.

For more info:

The musicians —  David Harrington (violin) and longtime members John Sherba (violin) and Hank Dutt (viola) and new (as of 2013) cellist Sunny Yang — could reminisce over more than 800 new works and arrangements they’ve commissioned in 40 years. But instead, the new-music train pushes ever onward to new territories. They remain a living, breathing world-heritage site for music.

Now in the midst of its 40th-anniversary tour, Kronos brings to this Tiny Desk Concert a new arrangement, a work from a new album and, for Kronos, something of a chestnut, a piece the group recorded a whopping five years ago.

“”Aheym” (Yiddish for “homeward”) was written for Kronos by Bryce Dessner; a member of the Brooklyn rock band The National, he studied composition at Yale. The music thrives on nervous energy, pulsating with strumming and spiccato (bouncing the bow on strings) while building to a tremendous fever.”

I love this piece. It is intense and dramatic with its 4-3-3 bowing from all four members.  There’s an interesting cello melody with pizzicato strings from the rest.  The overall melody seems somewhat circular with different instruments taking on different leads.  But this song also plays with some interesting bowing techniques.  In addition to the spiccato (about 4 minutes in), the players drag the bow for momentary scraping and scratching sounds.

Another wonderfully dramatic moment comes at 7 minutes where each musician takes a turn bowing his or her note while the violin plays a super fast series of notes.  The song builds and build in dramatic until it gets to about nine and  half minutes and it reaches its powerful ending.

“Lullaby,” opens with plucked cello notes and strummed viola.  “It is a traditional song with Afro-Persian roots (from the group’s Eastern-flavored 2009 album Floodplain), [and] is woven from different cloth altogether. Colorful tones that lay between our Western pitches are threaded through the music, anchored by a gorgeous solo from violist Dutt; his contribution takes on the warm and weathered sound of a grandmother singing to a child.”  It is slow and moody and beautiful.

Harrington introduces the final piece by saying it’s by a performer that no one had heard of–including, until recently, even himself.

“Kronos caps off the concert with another hairpin turn, this time to a fresh arrangement of “Last Kind Words,” a little-known blues song from around 1930, recorded by singer and guitarist Geeshie Wiley. In Jacob Garchik’s exuberant arrangement (which Kronos premiered this fall), interlocking strums and plucks provide a kind of rhythm section, while Harrington’s violin stands in for the now-forgotten blues singer.”

There’s lots of plucked notes from everyone–including plucked bent note on the viola which gives it a real “early” guitar sound.  While I don’t know what Geeshie sounded like, so I can’t compare the violin to her vocal, the whole thing sounds great together.  In fact the whole thing is unlike any string quartet I’ve heard–so different and wonderful.

I’m going to have to bust out so Kronos CDs.

[READ: September 10, 2016] There’s a Monster in My Socks

I’ve been quite puzzled about the publication history of the Liō books.  And this just adds another layer of confusion.  This book covers the exact same time period as Happiness is a Squishy Cephalopod which was published in 2007.  The difference is that Cephalopod placed all of the strips in order, while this one seems to move things around quite a bit (the thinner format also means that it can’t quite handle the single panel strips very well.   But more egregious is that this volume (remember, the one printed after the previous one) prints the Sunday color strips in black and white.

The book also leaves some of the strips out.  It covers the date range from May 15, 2006 – Feb 16, 2007 (Cephaolopod went to May 23), but while it has the Feb 14 strip, it does not have the Feb 15 strip.  Weird.

So, basically this is an inferior version of the same book, but the publishers presumably wanted the books in this more friendly size (or some other nefarious reason).

I’ll include the review of Cephalopod below.

And, here’s the current list of existing Liō books. It’s a shame that there are years and years of strips thus far uncollected. (more…)

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Mark Tatulli–Zombies Need Love Too: And Still Another Liō Collection in Strip-o-Vision: They Came for Brains…and Found Friendship! (2012)

Posted in Aliens, Birds, Boondocks, Canadian Music, Cats, Children's Books, Death, Demons, Dogs, Dr. Seuss, Fairy Tales, Fantasy, Fred Basset, Funny (ha ha), Games (Non Video), Garfield, Holidays, Humiliation, Inventions, Liō, Loch Ness Monster, Mad Scientists, Mark Tatulli, Mark Trail, Mary Worth, Parenting, Peanuts, Pigs, Rats, Reverend Ken and the Lost Followers, Rheostatics, Rush, Spinal Tap, Squids, Supernatural, Surreal, The Family Circus, The Far Side, Vampires, Yuck!, Zombies, tagged on September 8, 2016| Leave a Comment »

lioSOUNDTRACK: RHEOSTATICS-El Mocambo, Toronto ON (November 1987).

ElMo-Nov1987After re-listening to some of the Rheostatics most recent shows, I checked the Rheostatics Live site and found out that he has added some really old shows.  This show is the oldest show on the site, dating back to 1987.  A brief Rheos history shows that in the earlier incarnation, it was Dave Bidini, Tim Vesely and Dave Clark.  They were joined by the Trans Canada Soul Patrol and played mostly R&B and funk.  Around 1985 the Soul Patrol left and Martin Tielli joined.  Around the time of this show, they had released Greatest Hits.  And then they broke up (circa 1988).  Then they reformed in 1991 with an entirely different sound.

So this is from what I guess you’d call he Mach II era: no Soul Patrol but before the breakup.  Interestingly, only two songs from this how appeared on their debut album, although many appeared on earlier demos.

They play 11 songs, including what I assume is an improvised rap from Dave Clark (the really silly one of the band).  And the songs are dominated by a smooth guitar sound and often times a funky bass.  Perhaps the most amazing thing about this set is the prominence of Tim.  He sings many of the songs and Dave includes him in many jokes.  Martin is almost non-existent.

“National Pride” dates back to 1983 and starts as a kind of goofy rap song but then turns into the funky version from the demo.  Martin Tielli also released a solo song called “National Pride” which is nothing like this.  They follow this with the “Greensprouts Theme Song” (which they played at the AGO almost 30 years after this show).  Dave Clark calls it the “silliest song ever written,” although in the years hence they have made a few challenges to that claim.

“Good on the Uptake” is a song I’ve heard in a few places before.  Tim sings lead and there’s a kind of funky bass line with lots of guitar harmonics.  I think Martin is singing backup (and probably playing the harmonics).

Tim breaks a string and Dave Clark shouts, “This song is called Rheostatics learn how to string their guitar.”  With a broken string they play an impromptu version of “Red Dog Ray” taught to them by Reverend Ken and the Lost Followers “about the beer strike in 1983.  We were all pissed off because we had to drink Old Milwaukee and Rolling Rock and all that shit.”  This song has come up in their sets in the early 2000s.

It segues right into “Ditch Pigs” from Greatest Hits and sung by Martin.  The middle section devolves into a chant of “I want an egg salad sandwich and a glass of Coke.”

For “Four Upright Walls” Bidini introduces David Clark as the Poet Laureate of Etobicoke.  This is a rap of sorts in which the band does response to Dave’s rap (with all kinds of crazy sound effects and even some beatboxing (!)).

“Crystal Soup” is very much a Tim song–it sounds a lot like a song he would write now–there’s a surprise guitar riff in the middle of the verses that sounds a bit like Rush.  At the end of the song Dave introduces “Mr. Nigel Tufnel,” although I’m not sure to whom he is referring.  “Sue’s Mining Song” (also sung by Tim) has a kind Rush feel although the lyrics are very un-Rush (“woman,” “girl” and a line about “buzzards on your Steely Dan”).  It also features Tim screaming a high note!  It’s a pretty heavy song (especially at the end).

It’s funny that they follow-up with “a nice song,” Martin’s sung “Crescent Moon” a very, very new wavey song that Bidini wrote, and which leads of Greatest Hits.  They follow with a fun and fast rocking “People’s Republic of Dave” in which Dave encourages Tim to make silly faces.  And Tim growls that he wishes his name was Dave.  This seems like a great show ender, but they’ve got one more song.

“Chemical World,” has a kind of discoey guitar opening and lots of slap bass.

[READ: January 5, 2016] Zombies Need Love Too

I prefer to read series like this in order, but sometimes you can only get the books that you can get (and you don’t get upset).  For reasons I don’t understand, my library only had the first two books (which were also collected in Liō’s Astonishing Tales which they also have) and the two most recent books.  There’s maybe two books in between, as far as I can tell.

The good thing is that there’s not a lot of forward narrative in these stories–except perhaps for the new pets that Liō acquires.

So after four years what is Tatulli writing about?  Well, largely the same stuff, which is fine with me. (more…)

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Mark Tatulli–Liō: Happiness is a Squishy Cephalopod (2007)

Posted in Aliens, Birds, Boondocks, C., Cats, Children's Books, Death, Demons, Dogs, Fairy Tales, Fantasy, Funny (ha ha), Games (Non Video), Garfield, Holidays, Humiliation, Inventions, Joe Henry, Liō, Loch Ness Monster, M.C. Escher, Mad Scientists, Mark Tatulli, Mark Trail, Mary Worth, Parenting, Peanuts, Pigs, Rats, Sam Phillips, Squids, Supernatural, Surreal, The Family Circus, Tiny Desk Concert, Vampires, Vic Chesnutt, Woody Guthrie, Yuck!, Zombies on May 4, 2016| Leave a Comment »

lio1 SOUNDTRACK: JOE HENRY-Tiny Desk Concert #176 (November 21, 2011).

joe henryI had never heard of Joe Henry, so imagine my surprise to find out that he was releasing his 12th album in 2011.  For this Tiny Desk, it’s just him at a stool playing his guitar.  He has a very easy vibe, telling stories between songs and playing them with very little fuss.

He opens the show by saying this is, “not exactly like Woody Guthrie playing for the union members but you are working people.”

He plays four songs, “Sticks and Stones,” After the War,” “Odetta” and “Piano Furnace.”

Between the first two songs, he says he first became aware of Tiny Desk Concerts when his friend Vic Chesnutt was on the show (amusingly, he was the second person on the show).  He says he has a song on his new record about Chesnutt (Chesnutt had recently died).  He doesn’t play it though.  At first it seems like he might not be allowed to play it, but then it seems like maybe he just doesn’t get to it.

Rather he plays “After the War” where his guitar sounds like it has an incredible echo on it.  That echo is also present on the third song.  After which Bob asks him about his guitar.

Joe says he’s had the guitar for 6 years.  But the guitar dates back to 1932.  He says that he heard things differently with this guitar.  It’s got a smaller body and was actually sold as a budget guitar by Gibson (for $19 in 1932).  He also jokes that it’s black and looks a bit like a World Wrestling Federation belt.

Then someone asks him about Sam Phillips.  Joe says he sold her husband a guitar about 20 years ago.  She and her husband have split and Sam got the guitar and has been playing only that guitar for the last 20 years.  He says that he loves that she doesn’t plug in her guitar.  She plays into a microphone where you can hear the whole guitar and which makes the other players lean in to hear her.

I love the chords he plays in the final song, “Piano Furnace,” even if I don’t know what the song is about.  Henry’s voice is familiar.  I think he sounds a bit like a number of different singers.  And overall, nothing really stands out in his performance, except that everything sounds great and hiss songwriting is really solid.  That’s not a bad thing.

[READ: December 20, 2015] Happiness is a Squishy Cephalopod

Mark Tatulli is the author of the Desmond books.  I liked the stories, but I didn’t love the drawing style so much.  Imagine my surprise to find out that Tatulli has been drawing comics featuring this little boy Liō since 2006 (going forward, I’m leaving off that line over the o, because it’s a real pain).

And even more surprising is that I like the drawing style in the comic quite a bit–it is slightly refined over the Desmond books and is all the better for it.

I am also really surprised to find out that this strip appeared in newspapers across the country.  I’ve certainly never heard of it (but then I don’t read newspapers anymore, either).

So Lio is strip about a boy named Lio.  Lio is a dark, dark kid.  He has a pet squid, he loves monsters and he’s delighted by chaos. (more…)

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Aaron McGruder–Public Enemy #2: An All New Boondocks Collection (2005)

Posted in Aaron McGruder, Barack Obama, Boondocks, Consumerism, Corporate skewering, Doonesbury, Funny (ha ha), Graphic Novel, Michael Nyman, Poetry, Political Humor, Prison, Q, Racism, Smarty Pants, The Divine Comedy, War, WMDs on December 11, 2008| Leave a Comment »

pe2SOUNDTRACK: THE DIVINE COMEDY-Promenade (1994).

promednade1I heard about The Divine Comedy in the beloved British magazine Q.  I used to get every issue up until about two years ago.  I enjoyed their reviews, and especially enjoyed learning about bands that were under the radar here.  I think the Divine Comedy album that was being talked about was Casanova, but I wound up getting Promenade first.  And once I did, I was hooked.

Promenade is their second album, and it is still my favorite.  It features a musical soundtrack that is similar to Michael Nyman in its electronic/repetitive structure.  Nyman’s The Piano soundtrack came out in 1993, and although Nyman had been writing scores for years, The Piano seems like a pretty close reference point to Hannon’s work.

And yet, despite the “modern” sounding style of the music, the lyrics are old school Britain at its best.  And, Neil Hannon’s voice is truly an old-school croon (it’s almost cheesy, but not quite).  But it’s the words, oh the words, that really sell the disc.

In fact, the song that sold me from the beginning was “The Booklovers,” which is just a list of authors.  Really.  But the list is punctuated with smarty pants allusions to the writers’ works and it’s all wrapped up in a catchy chorus. But that’s not all, each song references literature in some way.

“Bath” opens with an orchestral flourish as a woman, well, bathes. “Going Downhill Fast” is about racing your bike downhill, with my favorite line: “Vacuous vice!/Just once or twice/Thrice/Four times in five we forget we’re alive.” A Seafood Song” and “Geronimo” lead you to the realization that this album is about two young lovers.  First they are having lunch, and then they get caught in a torrential downpour.  “Don’t Look Down” has one of my favorite orchestral pieces as towards the end of the song, the young man on a Ferris Wheel has a discussion with a God “who really ought not to exist” as the music grows more and more tense.

“When the Lights Go Out All Over Europe” is another stellar song that contains a wonderfully building chorus.  “The Summerhouse” is a really nice ballad.  “Neptune’s Daughter” has the story taking a dark turn until the ribald delights of “A Drinking Song.”  This song in particular has been one of my favorites because it is raucous and silly and oh so clever.  It also ends with one of the great couplets in all of drinking songdom: “From the day I was born ’till the night I will die/All my lovers will be pink and elephantine.” It is soon followed by “Tonight We Fly” a propulsive song of the two lovers “flying” over their life together and flying away from everyone.

It’s truly sublime.  I can understand those who don’t like Michael Nyman’s style not really enjoying this disc.  But if you like lyrical wonderment, you must check this out.  Divine Comedy’s next disc “Casanova” removes the Nyman influence but retains the cleverness. By most accounts it is a better album but I still love Promenade.

[READ: January 2008] Public Enemy #2

Sarah bought this collection for me for Christmas last year.  I don’t read a lot of comic strips, but occasionally one pops up on my radar.  I had seen a few Boondocks comics and really liked them.  This is the 2nd to last collection of the strip (I think…some are called treasuries, so I’m not sure what the distinction is). (more…)

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