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Archive for the ‘Death’ Category

harperioctSOUNDTRACK: RHEOSTATICS-Centennial Square, Victoria, BC (July 18 2001).

victoriaThis concert was a free outdoor show outside of City Hall in Victoria.  It was in the afternoon and the band also played a paid show later that night.  How interesting.  They even joke at the end wondering if anyone will be coming to their show that night.  Someone asks if it will be the same songs and Dave says yes, and same sweat too.  They have a good rapport with the audience (the fact that it is outside makes the crowd sound really tiny although I imagine it wasn’t).

It’s also the first show (online anyhow) to feature Michael Phillip Wojewoda on drums.

The sound is a little odd here, even though it is a soundboard recording.  Maybe it’s because of the outdoor atmosphere of the location–perhaps they mixed it differently?  I have no idea.

They play most of the songs from, NotSS, but there’s also a few classics like “Stolen Car” and “Saskatchewan.”  They even play a great rendition of “Junction Foil Ball” which Dave says reveals was on their Nightlines record but that they re-recorded for the new one (which was not out yet).  Martin explains that the origin of the story is about a guy who collects the tin foil from cigarette wrappers and makes a ball out of them.

In “CCYPA” there’s along part with no singing—it seems as if something went wrong.  The volume also rises and falls a bit which is weird.  There’s a similar pause in “I Fab Thee” where Martin resumes singing ooh ooh ooh.  He explains that “P.I.N.” is played on a tenor guitar.  And then later they joke that they were going to name their album Kid, Eh?

This may be the first time they’ve played “In It Now” at least that I know of.  I love when they play “Satan is the Whistler” but they never seem to get the end right—this one is no exception.

The end, “Saskatchewan” is amazing—a very slow dramatic rendition.  It’s a nice show and as Lucky says in the notes, “Always a treat to see the Rheos twice in one day!”

[READ: April 15, 2015] “The House on Bony Lake”

Boswell crams a novel’s worth of information into this long short story.  It begins as Paul wakes in his Airstream. He is next to Melinda and they are talking about old TV.  She is naked and asks if he wants to have sex again.  He says he’s too sleepy.

Then we get some back story.   Paul’s marriage is over and since that happened he has slept with several women in the area–none of them resemble his wife.

And then we go further back–“In the whole of the twentieth century, the Iris clan floated just two offspring to the shores of adulthood.”  And floated is a good choice of words, because the family, all those generations had lived near Bony Lake the whole time.

His grandfather was Colman Sheelin Iris (there’s an amusing story about their last name).  He built the house that Paul grew up in but he refused any changes to it–no electricity, no upgrades–during his life time.  And during his lifetime his wife bore four children.  Only one, Sean, survived to adulthood. (more…)

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gambler SOUNDTRACK: DakhaBrakha-Tiny Desk Concert #435 (April 25, 2015).

dkahDakhaBrakha are a band from Kiev, Ukraine.  There are four members, one man (unsure how he is dressed because he plays the accordion which covers his body) and three women.  The women are dressed in fetching white gowns (with lovely detail work done on them) and gigantic woolen “farmer’s hats.”

The women play drums, (with what looks like a wooden spoon), bongos a horn instruments that sounds a bit like a kazoo (I wish NPR gave more details here) and a cello.  They also provide most of the singing.

The first song, “Sho Z-Pod Duba”features bowed cello.  It opens with the male yelling quite loud and some wild yipping and shrieking from the women by the song’s end.

The second song, “Torokh” features lead vocals by the middle woman (the one with the kazoo).  But it also features interesting backing sounds and hums from the other two women.  The cellist (who is plucking the strings like an upright bass) also sings a partial lead vocal.  When the kazoo (which isn’t a kazoo at all, and is more like a penny whistle with some kind of vibrating piece on it) kicks in, the song goes utterly bonkers for a few measures.  The male singer starts yelling and the song is just insane until it stops and slowly builds again.

The end of “Torokh” and a lot of “Divka-Marusechka” has the women singing in the style of Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares (Bulgarian folk harmonies).  This song is the most unsettling of the three because the accordion and cello play an incessant drone that is a two note lurch.  The male sings lead while the females sing harmony and dissonant harmonies as well as a bird call kind of sound.  The end has one of the women signing an almost hip hop style while the other sings a higher, faster lyrics (all of which is in Ukrainian, so I have no idea what they are saying).

It is a strangely familiar music and yet it is also disconcerting.  I listened to it three times and I loved blasting it in my car–t woks great at loud volumes.  I also want to get one of those hats.

Check it out here.

[READ: March 28, 2015] Never Love a Gambler

This is a collection of three short stories from Irish writer Keith Ridgway.  They are quite dark and explore the criminal underbelly.

“Never Love a Gambler”
In this story we meet a family, the father of which is a gambler.  We meet his son and wife as they talk tough to the loan shark’s thug.  The son is pretty tough, standing up to Mossie, who gets the whole bar quiet when he walks in.  Mossie explains that he has been round to their house and they have some lovely things, but he can’t find the gambler himself.  They tell him that they don’t know where he is and then set out to try to find him.  In the meantime, they find a filthy homeless dog and a boy who is waiting to be picked up by his dad.  And they go on a quest together.  The stories converge in a dark but funny (but actually very dark) way. (more…)

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5dials34SOUNDTRACK: MATT HAIMOVITZ & CHRISTOPHER O’RILEY-Tiny Desk Concert #426 (March 14, 2015).

matthThere’s no introduction or fanfare for cellist Matt Haimovitz and pianist Christopher O’Riley’s Tiny Desk set.  They just start right in with a romping Beethoven piece.   I don’t know these two, but the notes say the duo has a new album out called Shuffle.Play.Listen., in which music by Stravinsky and Astor Piazzolla mingles with Cocteau Twins and Arcade Fire.  There’s no contemporary music in this set, but it’s very cool nonetheless.

The Beethoven piece sounds alive and wild and very modern.  The Glass piece is slow and beautiful  The final piece is lively and playful (with hints of darkness).  It introduced as reminding O’Riley of a scene in The Unbearable Lightness of Being when Daniel Day-Lewis gets a quickie.

It’s especially fun to watch how animated Haimovitz is.  The set list:

  • Beethoven: Cello Sonata No. 4 in C – IV. Allegro vivace
  • Philip Glass/Foday Musa Suso: The Orchard
  • Leoš Janáček: Pohádka – II. Con moto

[READ: April 6, 2015] Five Dials 33 Part II

After several themed issues of Five Dials we get back to the ones that I really like–random things thrown together under a tenuous idea.  It’s got some great authors and a surprising amount of large scale doodles–full page scribbles and some drawings that go from one page to the next (which works better online than in print).  Some of the giant illustrations also are fun–they are of jokey images like a memory stick that states I have only memories.  The art was done by JODY BARTON.

As with a previous issue there is a page of contributors and “The Unable to Contribute Page.”  These are journalists unfairly imprisoned (see more at cpr.org).  The Table of Contents is back, along with the FAQ: (more…)

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lumpenSOUNDTRACK: WE ARRIVE ALIVE-“Walls” (2011).

wallsI discovered We Arrive Alive from the Girl Band bandcamp site (it says the bands are friends).  They are from County Wicklow and play very cool post rock instrumentals.  They have three EPs, all of which are available for free on their bandcamp site.

Their first is called Walls.  The opening song “Walls” has fast guitar with a slinky Sleater-Kinney kind of guitar progression. Unlike S-K, there is bass and no vocals. The middle section feels like any number of post-rock instrumentalists like Explosions in the Sky.  But it’s not derivative–it’s expansive and beautiful.  “Save Me from the Morning” is a much faster song with a more intricate bassline underneath the guitar riffs. The structure of the song makes it seem more like a conventional song (ie one with words). But there are no words, and the guitars fill in very nicely for where vocals might appear. But 90 seconds in, the songs switches gears and becomes a bit more jazzy.  Then around 3 minutes the bass takes over with big loud notes—it’s a great transition. There’s yet another part, a quiet section, that ends the song.  That’s a lot of music packed into 6 and a half minutes.

“This is a City” is the final song.  A seven minute slow building instrumental. It starts quietly and the intertwining guitars get louder as they echo more.  I love the way at around 5 minutes the song shifts gears entirely to a sort of electronic feel with pinging notes.  It ends with a  fantastic closing riff.

I’m glad to have discovered these guys, I love a good collection of instrumentals.

[READ: March 17, 2015] A Little Lumpen Novelita

This may be the final extant untranslated book by Roberto Bolaño.  Although I have yet to read The Secret of Evil (that fell right off my radar), as far as I can tell, the only things left untranslated are:

  • Diorama (this book is unpublished at all, so it’s unlikely to be translated anytime soon)  AND
  • Consejos de un discípulo de Morrisona un fanático de Joyce, 1984  [Advice from a Morrison Disciple to a Joyce Fanatic] which has yet to be translated and I don’t know why, so I assume it never will be.

I don’t fully understand the use of the word “Lumpen” in the title, but don’t let that odd word (which is in the Spanish title, so we can’t blame excellent translator Natasha Wimmer) keep you from reading this breezy and entertaining (if not a bit dark) book.

As with many books by Bolaño, there’s not a lot of plot, per se.  In this book, a young woman (Bianca) and her brother have been orphaned at a young age.  Their parents died in a car crash in Italy (which is where they live).  They try to cope as best they can, but they ultimately decide to drop out of school and do nothing except watch a movie a day.  Bianca tells her brother that they can’t afford that lifestyle (especially since he just seems to get X-Rated films), but he continues to do so anyway.

They realize that they will need money of course, so Bianca gets a job as a hair washer at a salon.  Her brother gets a job cleaning floors at a gym.  It seems to be enough for the time being. (more…)

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Terry Pratchett [1948-2015]

tpI have been reading Terry Pratchett since I lived in Boston (circa 1993).  I “discovered” him from the book Good Omens, which he co-wrote with Neil Gaiman (who I had also recently discovered).  I recently learned that even though I purchased Good Omens, I had never actually read it.  Duh.  Perhaps I was planning to read it in order after reading his Discworld books.

My fondest memory of reading Discworld is that when I first bought the Discworld books (not easy to get in the States back in 1993), the only versions I could find were these tiny editions (which now I can’t even find evidence of online–perhaps I am the only one who owns them).  I have no idea why they were printed in this preposterous format (the couldn’t have been more than 5 inches square with stupid tiny print).  And I remember diligently reading them at lunch at work.  Which must have looked absurd.  I have these books at home and will have to look up the ISBNs to see their virtual existence.

At any rate, those first four books in the Discworld series all came in that format and I read them all.  And then I proceeded to read through the rest of the series (which would have been up to about book number 17  or so).  At the time of his death there were some 41 books in the Discworld series, including YA books and, geez well so many other things.

And what were they about?  Everything.  Literally. He talked about religion and science.  He talked about metaphysics and witches, he talked about working and police.  He eventually started using popular culture as the basis for a lot of his books–riffing on something or other but never simply parodying them.  His later books advanced the civilizations on Discworld from a more medieval setting to a more contemporary one with newspapers, telephones, money and steam engines.  And of course, there was always Death.  Amazingly he managed to make all of this funny–usually a good laugh every page or two. (more…)

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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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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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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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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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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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