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Archive for the ‘India’ Category

Kal Penn–You Can’t Be Serious (2021)

Posted in A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas, Autobiographies, Barack Obama, Funny (ha ha), House M.D., India, John Cho, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Kal Penn, LGBTQ, M.K. Gandhi, Memoirs, Michele Obama, Mira Nair, Mississippi Masala, NASCAR, Racism, Sunnyside, The Namesake, Van Wilder on January 5, 2022| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus

[READ: December 31, 2021] You Can’t Be Serious

S. and I were wrapping presents for Christmas this year and put on A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas (which I thought was new and didn’t realize was ten years old).  I had said something about thinking Kal Penn was really cool and respecting his decision to work for the White House.

And lo and behold but there was this book in my Christmas pile.

Kal Penn, Jersey represent!, has led a fascinating life.  And he seems like a very cool (but not scoring you weed on the weekend kinda cool) guy.

Kal starts his book by saying that in kindergarten, the fastest, dumbest boy in his class called him the n-word.  He didn’t know what it meant, but he knew it was bad from the way the kids reacted.

A traumatic way to start a book and a school.  But things got better from there.  He recalls not paying much attention in school and also class trips to Old Sturbridge Village–that’s over three hours away!  His class went there–multiple times?  He loved the acting that went on there.

He talks about getting picked on for being a nerd.  But also about being grateful for living in a diverse New Jersey town–he went to a lot of mitzvahs.  His story of being on a boat for someone’s mitzvah is pretty funny.  And yet, he also talks about a hate group called Dotbusters based in Jersey City (I am so shocked to hear about this) who harassed assaulted and even killed Indian people.  His aunt lived there and his grandmother visited her there. (more…)

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Anita Roy–Gravepyres School for the Recently Deceased (2020)

Posted in Adventure, Anita Roy, Boredom, Children's Books, Corporate skewering, Death, Fears, India, Set at School, Supernatural, Vultures on January 4, 2022| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus

[READ: January 10, 2021] Gravepyres School for the Recently Deceased

I found this book at work and was instantly intrigued by many things.  The title Gravepyres sounded unusual to me.  It also seemed like a children’s book (which it is).  Plus, it had a stamp that said “For sale only within the territories of India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.”  Which I found pretty fascinating.

Even more so because this is a children’s fantasy book about being dead and the kind of “life” that you can have “there.”  I thought it might be quite different than an American book.

The book opens on Jose who has just died.  He has no idea that he just died and as he is trying to get his bearings, he is greeted by a small, bossy girl named Mishi.  She brings him to Gravepyres School for the Recently Deceased.  She tours him around the place, scolds him for his poor clothing (she provides him with a tunic) and tells him to get ready for classes..

Of course there is school when you are dead!  There is mathamythics.  Where the seemingly simple question 6+4= is not what one expects.  None of the students answered until finally one of them said four hundred and sixteen.  Jose chuckled, but the teacher said “Good, excellent.”  Other seemingly correct answers were ninety seven and a half, eight thousand, fifty two, even twelve.  But when Jose said the answer is ten, Professor Styx said Oh dear. not quite.  The rest of the classes made the same amount of sense.

Like Scare Studies from Madam Morte and Seeing from Dr Chiplunker (who wore the most outrageous spectacles he had ever seen).  Can you See the pencil in front of you?  Look closely.  Look at it for an hour.  Jose decided it was the most boring class he had ever heard of. (more…)

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Saadat Hasan Manto–“Toba Tek Singh” [India] (translated by Frances W. Pritchett) [The 2021 Short Story Advent Calendar #15] (1955/translation 2005)

Posted in Alberto Manguel, Canadian Content, Christmas, Frances W. Pritchett, Hingston & Olsen, India, Pakistan, Saadat Hasan Manto, Short Story, The Short Story Advent Calendar, Translation on December 15, 2021| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK:  hiatus

[READ: December 15, 2021] “Toba Tek Singh”

This year, S. ordered me The Short Story Advent Calendar.  This is my seventh time reading the Calendar.  The 2021 Short Story Advent Calendar is a deluxe box set of individually bound short stories.

As always, each story is a surprise, so you won’t know what you’re getting until you crack the seal every morning starting December 1. Once you’ve read that day’s story, check this link where editor Alberto Manguel is providing daily commentary on each of the stories he selected for this year’s calendar.

This political story addresses the absurdity of the partitioning that separated India from Muslim Pakistan.

The inmates of lunatic asylums were to be sent to their appropriate countries.  Most of the inmates couldn’t even conceptualize what this Pakistan was.

One of the inmates stood all day long–he never lay down, never slept.  He muttered nonsense syllables about this Pakistan Government.  Eventually the nonsense syllables changed to reflect the Toba Tek Singh Government. (more…)

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James Felton–52 Times Britain was a Bellend: The History You Didn’t Get Taught in School (2019).

Posted in Australia, Disease, Elephants, Eurovision, Funny (ha ha), Geese, Hindus, History, Humiliation, India, Ireland, James Felton, Law, LGBTQ, Liars, Military, Morality, Museums, Muslims, Non-fiction, Pakistan, Plague, Politicians, Poo, Priests, Prison, Religion, Revenge, Sex, Slavery, Toilets, Torture, Vikings, Violence, Wales, War, Witches, Yuck! on May 26, 2021| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: JAMES NEWMAN-“Embers” (England, Eurovision Entry 2021).

.Eurovision 2021 is over and the big news (aside from drug-taking accusations against the winner) is that the entry from England received zero.  Nul points.

This is not unique, but it’s not something that anybody wants.  It’s actually better to not make the finals than to make the finals and get nul points, because no one is going to forget that.

So just how bad was “embers?”

I’m not going to defend the song, because I would never listen to it on purpose–it’s not my thing.  But by the same token I can think of a lot of songs that are much worse than this.

This song is just kind of bland.  It thinks its big and catchy with the horns and the “light up the ROOM!” line.  But really it just doesn’t do much.  I could see this song playing in a club and people would dance to it and then forget it.  No one would ask who it was or request it again.

And maybe that’s worth nothing.

[READ: May 26, 2021] 52 Times Britain was a Bellend

Bellend is such a great insult and it is exclusive to Britain, which is a shame.

Also a shame is just how terrible Britain as a country has been throughout history.

Obviously any global superpower is going to be dickish–you get power by crushing others.  You could write this same book about the United States and cover just the last four years.

But Felton, whom I’ve never heard of before, but who is apparently a huge Twitter presence, narrowed history down to 52 (one a week) examples of Britain being absolutely horrible (and somehow managing to make it funny).

How did he decide on these events?  Well, they are judged by today’s standards (saying “I’m from the past” is no excuse).

What you’ll get here is a good overview of fun and horrifying times when we were cartoonishly evil, from a comedian just as appalled as you are about what shits it turned out we were in the past.

Most of the terrible behavior involves other countries.  Like starting wars with China because they wouldn’t buy British opium.  Or making Zanzibar pay for the bombs that Britain dropped on  them. (more…)

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Salman Rushdie–“Summer of Solanka” (New Yorker, July 16, 2001)

Posted in Al Gore, Coronavirus, Excerpt, George W. Bush, India, Marriage Trouble, New York City, New Yorker, Politicians, Protoje, Quarantine, Salman Rushdie, Sevana, Short Story, Tiny Desk (Home) Concerts, Tiny Desk Concert on March 25, 2021| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: SEVANA-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #159 (January 26, 2021).

I had not heard of Sevana, although she is a member of Protoje’s In.Digg.Nation collective

“If You Only Knew” is a pretty pop song.  I enjoyed the way the music dropped out and there wa s quiet drum fill Mark Reid.

This concert was filmed at the Kingston Creative Hub back in September 2020 (the interludes you’ll hear about the pandemic are reflective of that time).

The second song “Blessed” opens with gently picked guitars from and Nicolas Groskoef and Almando ‘Mundo Don’ Douglas who also both play solos throughout Almando first, Nicolas later in the song.  It sounds like a Santana song and is an example of her

jumping delicately between traditional R&B, Caribbean gospel and soul, with touches of reggae interspersed.   On “Blessed,” an infectious ode about the miracle of life and faith, she welcomes us with open arms into her church and demonstrates the wide range of her multi-octave voice.

“Be Somebody” has some interesting sound effects and vocal samples from Jean-Andre Lawrence and washes of keys from Rhoan Johnson.

She closes out the four-song set with her most recognizable tune, “Mango,” a dancehall-influenced love song.

I would have thought this dancehall song would be more of a banger, but aside for some quietly pulsing bass from Kawain Williamson, the song is pretty mellow.

[READ: June 3, 2019] “A Dream of Glorious Return”

This is an excerpt from Rushdie’s novel Fury which I have not read.  The thesis sentence comes fairly early though.

Life is fury, he’d thought.  Fury–sexual, Oedipal, political, magical, brutal–drives us to out finest heights and coarsest depths

It concerns professor Malik Solanka, a fifty-five year old retired historian of ideas.  He is presently living in Manhattan, although that is a recent change in his life.

He seemed to mostly want to be a solitary man–celibate by choice–ignoring those around him.  Like his neighbor, that damn Mark Skywalker who asked if the slogan “The sun never Sets on American Express International” would seem offensive to Britons.

The novel really sets the time and place quite well–current movies, the election (“unlovable presidential candidates (Gush, Bore))” and the talk of Cuban refugee Elian Gonzales.

The phone rings and it is his wife Eleanor in England.  She complains that their son is ill and he doesn’t seem to care.   But more importantly

without a scrap of credible explanation you walked out on us, you went off across the ocean and betrayed all those who need and love you most.

He thinks back to how they met and how he had fallen in love with her voice.  Fifteen years ago when he phoned a publishing friend, Eleanor had answered and he was smitten with her voice–asking her out for dinner that evening.

So how could he leave her and his child?  One night

he sat in the kitchen, in the middle of the night, with murder on the brain: actual murder, not the metaphorical kind.  He’d even brought a carving knife upstairs and stood for a terrible, dumb minute over the body of his sleeping wife.  Then he turned away, slept in the spare bedroom, and in the morning had packed his bags and caught the first flight to New York

He had left his first wife Sara earlier in a less dramatic fashion.  They married too quickly and felt trapped almost immediately.

He reflected back to his childhood in Bombay when Mr Venkat, the big-deal banker whose son Chandra was the ten year old Malik’s best friend

became a sannyasi on his sixtieth birthday, and abandoned his family forever, wearing no more than a hand-hewn loincloth, with a long wooden staff in one hand and begging bowl in the other.

He would never return.

This story could go in many directions from here.

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Nell Freudenberger–“Lucky Girls” (New Yorker, June 18 & 25, 2001)

Posted in Amy Winehouse, Death, India, Marco Benevento, Marriage Trouble, Nell Freudenberger, New Yorker, Racism, Short Story, Travel on November 6, 2020| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: MARCO BENEVENTO-Between the Needles and Nightfall (2010).

This is the third album by Marco Benevento and his trio: Reed Mathis on bass and Andrew Barr on drums.

It’s hard to put this release into any genre because of how fluid Benevento is.  He has some poppy songs, some jazzy bits and some experimentation.

Most of the songs are pretty long (over 6 minutes) and none of the songs have words (well, one has a aspoken section).

“Greenpoint” flows around a very simple bass line as Marco plays a poppy piano throughout the song.  There’s also some synthy blasts that move the song beyond a simple piano motif.  Around the four minute mark, the song shifts gears, growing a little faster and little more intense as the drums crash through.

“Between the Needles” is a slower song with a pretty bass line and slow piano chords.  After a minute and a half it takes off a bit with bigger piano chords and a more dramatic tone.  But then it all slows down to just piano before building up again, this time with even more evocative lead bass.  “Two of You” is quieter, with a waverly keyboard line that lays under the lead piano  The main piano line acts like a lead vocal line and is really pretty and quite catchy as well.  It builds into a nice bouncy song by the end.

“Numbers” is a slow song with a lead bouncing bass and simple keyboard intro chords.  The song builds in layers until it is a loud, almost-crashing sound with some jazzy piano soloing on top.  “It came from You” is a super catchy piano melody with some complicated electronic drumming. It turns into a bouncy and fun romp by the end.

“Ila Frost” is one of the catchiest things on the album–a lively piano melody both in the repeated background and the main lead line.  It’s followed by the even catchier “RISD.”  In addition to the fun pulsing bass, the main echoing keyboard melody is simple but instantly catchy.

“You Know I’m No Good” is the shortest song on the disc.  It’s a slinky torch song that is actually written by Amy Winehouse. Knowing that, you can hear it in the delivery.  There’s a sort of crashing drum section in the middle.  This song also has the only vocals–worldless “da da daing” toward the end.

“Music Is still secret” is a lovely, slow jazzy ballad. While “Wolf Trap” is the opposite.  There’s some loud clangy drums and a big fuzzed up bass that matches perfectly with the really noisy piano melody.  Once the song starts going, there is some ferocious soloing from Marco as the rest of the band jams behind him.

The disc ends with “Snow Lake” an electronic kind of processed sounding track that mixes some interesting synths and some low ringing bass.  It ends with a wild cacophony of sounds–electric and otherwise–and then abruptly ends.

There’s not a lot of earworms on this disc.  But everything sounds great.  The musicianship is top notch and the songs are all pretty fun.

[READ: September 14, 2010] “Lucky Girls”

In this story, the narrator is an American woman living in India.

As the story opens she says she always imagined what it would be like meeting Arun’s mother for the first time.  She pictured a fancy restaurant with herself looking stunning.

But in reality, Mrs Chawla showed up at the apartment one day, unannounced.  The narrator had been living there for five years and had yet to meet the mother of the man who owned the place.

The narrator was in her painting clothes when Mrs Chawla showed up.  The narrator considered changing, but decided against it.  Mrs Chalwa was shorter than expected; she looked at the narrator as if she too were not what was expected. (more…)

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Begum Rokeya–“Sultana’s Dream” (1905) [Projections Box] (2020)

Posted in Ann VanderMeer, Ardmore Music Hall, Ardmore, PA, Begum Rokeya, Black Lives Matter, BUMPER, Coronavirus, Crying, Hindus, Hingston & Olsen, India, Japanese Breakfast, Kenny Rogers, Muslims, Octavia Butler, Philadelphia, PA, Philly Music Fest, Politicians, Projections Box, Quarantine, Rebecca Romney, Religion, Sci-fi, Science, Sexism, Tears for Fears, The Districts, The Future, The Indian Ladies Journal, The Used, Union Transfer, Utopia on September 28, 2020| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: JAPANESE BREAKFAST-Live at Philly Music Fest @Ardmore Music Hall, Philadelphia PA, September 25, 2020).

I saw Japanese Breakfast back in 2018 at Union Transfer.  It was a really fun show.  Since Michelle Zauner is from Philly she really made the show personal. 

During the introduction to her set for Philly Music Fest, the announcer said that he’d been trying to get Japanese Breakfast to play this festival since it began.  So one good thing about the pandemic was that the band was still in Philly and not world touring.

We got to watch the band come out from back stage, take up their instruments and start “Diving Woman.”  This song has a wonderful, memorable bass line and a jamming guitar solo from her lead guitarist.

For this show she had the addition of Molly on violin.  Molly added so much to the upbeat and poppy “In Heaven.”

Michelle put down the guitar for “The Woman That Loves You,” a shorter song that was followed by the funkier “Road Head.”  This song is really catchy and has a very interesting slide sound from the bass.

It was funny to see her not playing the guitar because usually when she just had the microphone, she would interact with the crowd some.  But she only had the video monitor to look at.  Nevertheless, after the song she said “it feels great to feel like you have a purpose again.”

They played a new song–the first time the band played it together–called  “Kokomo Indiana” which is from the perspective of a love-lorn 17 year-old boy whose girlfriend moved to Australia for a summer exchange program.  It was a slower song with a slide guitar melody.

Michelle returned to the guitar for “Boyish” the catchy song from her old band Little Big League, with the chorus

I can’t get you off my mind
I can’t get you off in general
so here we are we’re just two losers
I want you and you want something more beautiful

Up next was “The Body is a Blade” with some slinky guitar lines.  After the song, someone triggered a sample of a crowd cheering, which was fun to hear and made Michele laugh.

Michelle put the guitar down again for “Essentially,” with a dynamite bass line that runs through the song.

Then she sat at the keyboard for the next song.  A new one called “Tactic.”  This is the first time she’s sat at the keyboard, “I feel very professional.” Her guitarist also played keys for this slow song.

She commented that it was lovely to see The Districts play–they are rehearsal space buddies and she felt it was surreal hearing them practice for the same show that her band was.

Then it as time for an old classic, the bouncy “Heft,” with a really nifty guitar line after the chorus.

During the quarantine, Michelle made a quarantine music project with Ryan from Crying.  The band is called BUMPER, and they released an EP called Pop Songs 2020.  She did a countrified version of the song “Ballad O” which was a look at both perspectives from Kenny Roger’s “Don’t Take Your Love To Town.”  Peter plays the slide guitar and the drummer sings the male parts.

She announced that her bass player Devon was going to get married (cue the fake cheers from the sampler) and so she was going to play a sing about marriage, “Til Death.”  This is the first song I’d heard from Japanese Breakfast many years ago and it always sounds great live.  The opening verse feels even more poignant today:

all our celebrities keep dying
while the cruel men continue to win

Then came a surprise cover: Tears for Fears’ “Head Over Heels.”  Musically it sounded spot on and I enjoyed her vocal take on it–not unusual or weird, just very differed with her voice instead of Roland Orzabal’s.  Then for the “da da da da” part at the end, three of The Districts came out (with masks on) to sing into one of the microphones.  It was a wonderful moment of live spontaneity (or not, but still) that is what makes live shows so much fun.

They followed that with a ripping version of “Everybody Wants to Love You.”  The drummer sang the backing vocals on this part to good effect.

Michelle took a moment before the last song to use her platform and say that of course “Black Lives Matter.  Not just saying it, it means marching and fighting.  Please vote.  We must work to defund the police and invest in our communities.”

That’s another thing I’d missed about live shows–bonding over good causes.

They ended with a “goofy” cover of a “Taste of Ink” by The Used.   I don’t know the song or the band, but it was a jangly bouncing song and the most rocking song of the night.

And then it was over.   While it was nice not having to drive an hour to get home, I still would have preferred to be there (although maybe not right now).

Diving Woman [§]
In Heaven [¶]
The Woman That Loves You [¶]
Road Head [§]
Kokomo, Indiana [new]
Boyish [Little Big League song]
The Body is a Blade [§]
Essentially [newish]
Tactic [new]
Heft [¶]
Ballad 0 [BUMPER song]
Til Death [§]
Head Over Heels [Tears for Fears cover]
Everybody Wants to Love You [¶]
Taste of Ink [The Used cover]

[§] Soft Sounds from Another Planet (2017)
[¶] Psychopomp (2016)

[READ: September 24, 2020] “Sultana’s Dream”

During the COVID Quarantine, venerable publisher Hingston & Olsen created, under the editorship of Rebecca Romney, a gorgeous box of 12 stories.  It has a die-cut opening to allow the top book’s central image to show through (each book’s center is different).  You can get a copy here.

This is a collection of science fiction stories written from 1836 to 1998.  Each story imagines the future–some further into the future than others.

As it says on the back of the box

Their future.  Our present.  From social reforms to climate change, video chat to the new face of fascism, Projections is a collection of 12 sci-fi stories that anticipated life in the present day.

About this story, Romney writes

I first learned about Muslim Bengalese feminist and writer Begum Rokeya through a massive landmark anthology: Ann and Jeff VanderMeer’s The Big Book of Science Fiction published in 2016. …  The story was first published in The Indian Ladies Journal in 1905…. She simply switches the roles of men and women in her Muslim society.  This may seem like a simple trick, but … writers of science fiction have long known that sometimes a switch on perspective is all it takes to illuminate truths that are otherwise obscure.

This story is pretty simple and straightforward.  A woman, Sultana, falls asleep.  She dreams (or is it real?) that a woman named Sister Sara has come to walk her through the streets of Darjeeling. (more…)

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Madhuri Vijay–“You Are My Dear Friend” (New Yorker, August 17, 2020)

Posted in Adoption, Buscabulla, Coronavirus, India, Madhuri Vijay, New Yorker, Parenting, Puerto Rico, Quarantine, Short Story, Tiny Desk (Home) Concerts, Tiny Desk Concert, Violence on August 20, 2020| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: BUSCABULLA-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #66 (August 18, 2020).

I know of Buscabulla from some glowing reviews of their debut album.  Their story is an interesting one as well.

Buscabulla is made up of husband and wife Luis Alfredo Del Valle and Raquel Berrios, two Puerto Rico-born musicians who were based in New York until 2017. When their birthplace was devastated by Hurricanes Maria and Irma that year, they decided to leave New York and go back to where they were born. It was an emotional journey, one that inspired the songs of Regresa and which they chronicled for an upcoming mini-documentary.

Despite that setup, their music is soft and gentle–ethereal and beautiful.  Raquel Berrios’ voice is delicately echoed and sexy without being over the top.

Their setting for this Tiny Desk (Home) (Beach) Concert is the trunk of their van.  Luis del Valle has created a studio within the car that perfectly reflects the band’s sound.  So two of them are

sitting inside their car at the beach in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico performing their Tiny Desk (home) concert. It’s as if the bubble of being inside the car will protect them from any chances of encountering the virus on the beach. But it’s also a reflection of how the band’s atmospheric sonic textures get inside your head when we listen with headphones. Buscabulla set up shop in New York years ago, but returned to their home to help support the island’s redevelopment — thus their entry from the beach.

It looks almost like a Zoom meeting background, with the gentle waves lapping against the shore, although in the beginning of the video you can see some people walking on the beach.

The set starts with “Mio” which has a cool slinky bass line from Luis Del Valle and an inset video of JD Matías playing timbales and cowbell.  And although LD Valentín is laying down some nice backing keys (also in an inset), it’s Berrios who plays the trippy keyboard solo.

“Nydia” has a funkier bass line and layered spacey keys from Valentín. Berrios’ voice floats above all of it.

The duo have to maneuver a bit in that cramped space to play the final song.  Luis puts his bass outside of the car (!) and switches to keys.  Berrios also plays keys and this lovely set ends as beautifully as it began.

I’m not sure what kind of car this is, but it’s a pretty decent ad for trunk space–maybe Buscabulla could make some cash.  It’s also a pretty nice ad for the gorgeous beaches of Puerto Rico.

[READ: August 20, 2020] “You Are  My Dear Friend”

I thought this story was going to be about a British couple living in India, because it opens with a British couple living in India.  They are hosting a party and their daughters’ au-pair, Geeta, brings their two little girls to meet everyone.

One of the party goers is a middle-aged Indian man sitting by himself.  He looks old and tired.

A few days later Geeta is at the markets and she runs into this man.  She has trouble placing him at first then she realizes that this man, Srikanth, was the man from the party.  He talks with her and she resists engaging with him at first.  Then she rethinks, and turns to talk to the man.

They met a few more times and then decided to get married. (more…)

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Brennan Lee Mulligan, Molly Ostertag–Strong Female Protagonist (2015)

Posted in 99%, Angelica Garcia, Angst, Cancer as plot device, Death, George W. Bush, Gods, Graphic Novel, Guns, India, Mega-Girl, Morality, NPR/PRI/PBS, Phoebe Bridgers, Pint Size, Political Humor, Spiderman, Superheroes, Superman, Tiny Desk Concert, Top Shelf Productions, Violence, YA Books on May 2, 2020| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: ANGELICA GARCIA-Tiny Desk Concert #968 (April 15, 2020).

I saw Angelica Garcia open for Phoebe Bridgers.  Her show started off okay but she totally won me over by the end.  She played guitar, she looped her voice and synths and was really impressive.  She also sang some songs in Spanish.

Well, two years later, Angelica Garcia is very different.

The biggest change is the amount of color she has added (when I saw her she was in a black floral print dress).  She is also embracing her heritage a bit more than when I saw her.  It was present then, but it is way out in front here.

Angelica Garcia decorated the Tiny Desk with colorful fabrics, orange flowers, a fuchsia dress, and a great deal of pride in what she calls her “Salva-Mex-American” heritage. Her song “Orange Flower” got my attention back in 2016, but I thought of her only as a Virginia rock and roller. Not anymore. Angelica Garcia’s music in the 2020s embraces her heritage, her life growing up in Los Angeles, and the ranchero music she heard from her family.

The show opens with a sample of a high pitched voice (presumably hers) saying “I wanna be like her.”  It works as a repeated sample in “Guadalupe.”  In this song

Angelica expresses respect for La Virgen de Guadalupe, the patron saint of Mexico, singing “I wanna be like her.” Guadalupe inspires her to declare that “power isn’t defined by your physique.”

But power comes from the loud rocking guitars from John Sizemore (what a great raw sound).  Josh McCormick plays big electronic drums, including some electronic cowbells.  In between the power chords, the melody is provided by a quiet and interesting keyboard sound from Ryan Jones

And let’s not overlook Garcia’s impressive voice.  She has power and a lot of diversity in her delivery.  She might even sound better than she did when I saw her.

The middle of the song has a breakdown where she and percussionist Kenneka Cook sing together a kind of scat.  Anchoring all of this is really great bass sound from Chrissie Lozano.

For “Valentina in the Moonlight” Angelica plays the quieter guitar melody (she’s really good).

This song is slower and quieter, a love song.  When the whole band kicks in, the song gets really full, with quiet guitar chords from Sizemore, while Garcia plays the main melody.  You can clearly hear Lozano’s nice bass sound in this song.

Angelica moved to Virginia at age seventeen. The songs she sings at the Tiny Desk, all from her album Cha Cha Palace, reflect the way she was seen, or more to the point, not seen, in her new home. “Jícama” captures that feeling of invisibility:

“Jícama” starts out with cha cha sounds.  Angelica sings with a pronounced accent.  I really like the splash cymbal sounds that accent her song.  When the whole band kicks in there’s a real Tex-Mex vibe  which feels like a children’s song melody, perhaps the best way to get the message across

“I see you, but you don’t see me
Jícama, jícama, guava tree
I been trying to tell ya but you just don’t see
Like you, I was born in this country.”

Angelica Garcia has definitely changed.  And for the better.

[READ: May 2, 2020] Strong Female Protagonist

Strong Female Protagonist is a webcomic which is on hiatus (although I don’t know for how long).

We’ve had this book floating around the house for a while and I’ve been meaning to read it.  I loved the title–so simple, so terrific.  I finally grabbed it off the shelf and decided today was the day.

I didn’t really know what the story was about and I found myself very surprised.  This proved to be a superhero story with a difference–a huge difference.  Both the origin story of the superpowers and the exploration of the ethics of superpowers are handled in a very different way.

One oft he big differences right up front was the language–these people say bad words… a lot.  It’s while reading this book that you realize you’ve never heard Superman or Spiderman say “fuck.”  But then these superheroes are not superheroes in the conventional sense. (more…)

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David Duchovny–Holy Cow (2015)

Posted in 3-D Printer, Californication, Cows, Dan Tepfer, David Duchovny, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), India, Israel, Middle East, Pigs, Pythagoras, Rats, Religion, Supernatural, Surreal, Technology, The X Files, Tiny Desk Concert, Turkey, Turkeys on October 15, 2019| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: DAN TEPFER-Tiny Desk Concert #885 (August 29, 2019).

Most of the time, a Tiny Desk Concert is an opportunity to see an artist in a quiet almost unplugged setting.  Sometimes, it’s an opportunity to see a band really show off in a close space.  And sometimes a Tiny Desk Concert will blow your freaking mind.

Like this one.

I have never seen anything like this.

Dan Tepfer has created a program that plays the piano along with him.  It’s for a project he calls Natural Machines.

Watch the keys and you’ll see this Disklavier — a player piano — plucking notes on its own. But it’s not a prerecorded script.

Here’s how it works: Tepfer plays a note, and a computer program he authored reads those notes and tells the piano what to play in response. Tepfer can load different algorithms into the program that determine the pattern of playback, like one that returns the same note, only an octave higher. Another will play the inverted note based on the center of the piano keys. These rules create interesting restrictions that Tepfer says make room for thoughtful improvisation. In his words, he’s not writing these songs, so much as writing the way they work.

Tepfer plays free improvisation–he “makes things up and tries to be present in the moment” but the computer responds to him in real time based on rules.

He says for “Canon At The Octave” theres’ an axis of symmetry on the piano and “everything I play on one side if reflected on the other side.  Super simple, but it leads to musical problems that lead to real music.”

Since he is improvising, he is also reacting to what the computer makes.

He explains that “Tremolo” is when a note is repeated very quickly.  He gives the example of a violin player playing a note quickly.  It’s much harder on piano than a violin and it’s impossible to do more than ten notes at once.

He plays single notes that generate a series of chords playing quickly all at once–it’s really cool to watch the piano take off as if with a mind of its own.

But watching the piano isn’t the only cool thing

To better communicate what’s happening between him and the piano, Tepfer converted these audio-impulse data into visualizations on the screen behind him, displaying in real time the notes he plays followed by the piano’s feedback. [We dive even deeper into this project in a recent Jazz Night in America video piece].

He explains that these improvs are super short versions to show off how the programs work.

“TriadSculpture” is all about harmonic ratios.  Pythagoras discovered that sounds work with whole numbers.  The math behind music.  So Tepfer has mapped numbers as a 3-D object and he has been printing them–even more mind blowing.  The computer program generates these shapes–  everything he plays on his left hand creates those shaped in real time on the screen.

Perhaps the trickiest part here, unlike a human-to-human duo, is that the computer plays along with 100 percent accuracy based solely on Tepfer’s moves. He compares it to dancing with a robot that never misses a beat. Tepfer has to play in kind to keep the train on the tracks, but if he falls out of step, so does the computer.

Fortunately he never falls out of time (or at least it’s hard to tell since it’s all improvised.

The final piece is “Constant Motion” in which he plays a note and the computer responds to it by playing a note either up or down.  This creates a fun fast piece that explores the full range of the piano.  The visuals for it are very cool too.

I’m not sure if this would be fun to see live (at least any more fun than an improvising pianist is) because listening to it you don’t always really know what’s happening or that the piano is doing the work.  But seeing it up close like this is awesome.

[READ: August 21, 2019] Holy Cow

Like most people, ever since watching The X-Files, I’ve liked David Duchovny (why don’t you love me?).

I watched some of the Red Shoes Diaries just for him.  I watched some of Californication just for him (Didn’t have whatever network it was on, so never watched more than a bit of it).  But I’m always willing to give him a shot because I think he’s smart but goofy.

Enter Holy Cow.

This is Duchovny’s first novel and just what a pitch it must have been.

Hi, this is David Duchovny.  Yup, that one.  I’d like to write an adult book about a cow that wants to go to India once she finds out cows are worshiped there.  Yes, David Duchovny.

I had no idea he had written this book.  I just happened to see it on my library shelf when I was looking for something else.  The book was short and had (terrible) drawings in it and seemed like it would be absurdly funny.

So, with the caveat that if you think that a talking cow buying a plane ticket and going to Jerusalem with a pig and to Turkey with a turkey sounds stupid and juvenile.  Well, you’d be right.  But you’d be missing out on an enjoyable, silly romp if that kept you from reading it. (more…)

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