SOUNDTRACK: SUPER XX MAN-Tiny Desk Concert #12 (January 27, 2009, recorded Oct. 22, 2008).
I included the recording date because this is the first one that actually mentions the recording date. I had always known that the shows were recorded before they were posted, but i had no idea they were so far apart.
Super XX Man is another “band” that I only know about because of NPR. Scott Garred is Super XX Man (pronounced Super Double X Man), and he has recorded most of his albums at home. Interestingly, he is also a music therapist in the maximum-security wing of the Oregon State Hospital—the location where they filmed One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. His job is helping psychiatric patients cope with drug addiction, severe mental illness and other assorted disorders.
I’m not sure exactly what his recorded output is like (he has been recording for 15 years and had recently recorded with a band for Volume XII: There’ll Be Diamonds), but this solo venture is just him with a guitar. He has a very nice voice and his melodies are simple and catchy.
“There’ll Be Diamonds” is a very nice catchy song—very positive. The second song, “Big Balloon,” is for the newly admitted patients at the hospital. It is a very tender look at people who are dealing with something quite traumatic.
“Collecting Rocks” comes from Volume VI, and is based on a story his grandfather told him a while ago. It’s an incredibly sweet song about two people in love. But it’s also fun how he gets the room to sing along at the end. I imagine that NPR employees are more docile than his usual audience.
[READ: January 5, 2014] The True Meaning of Smekday
I have known Adam Rex first as an illustrator. Then I knew him as a children’s picture book author. And now, the other day, I saw that he also wrote larger children’s books. In the library I saw Unlucky Charms. I was going to grab it but then I saw that he was “the author of” other books. So, being the kind of person I am, I decided to read his first novel first, which was this one.
This novel combines art (photographs—which are drawn by Rex), comics (as drawn by an alien) and a school story written for a time capsule (as such, the font is in a weird sans-serif that I found bothersome to read (man I am really getting old)).
Anyhow, I thought this book was very very funny on so many level. There were pop culture jokes, there was great dialogue and there were fun internal jokes. There were some sophisticated jokes and some really juvenile jokes. And they all combined to make for a very good read.
The only problem with the book was that it was so damned long. No one needs to write a 422 page book about an alien invasion. The story could easily have lost 100 pages and not been harmed at all. And I say that because I loved the beginning and I devoured the end, but I felt rather adrift in the middle. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 