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Archive for the ‘Film & TV’ Category

Hari Kunzru–“Raj, Bohemian” (New Yorker, March 10, 2008)

Posted in Consumerism, Drinking, Funny (ha ha), Hari Kunzru, John Grant, New Yorker, Revenge, Short Story, Sigourney Weaver, Tiny Desk Concert, Winona Ryder on July 30, 2016| Leave a Comment »

2008_03_10-400SOUNDTRACK: JOHN GRANT-Tiny Desk Concert #372 (July 13, 2014).

grantI know and like John Grant from his albums after this one.  These three songs perfectly encapsulate Grant’s pop sensibility with his acerbic wit.  His later albums are also a bit more dancey, so it’s interesting hearing these as straight up piano and guitar songs.

On “Where Dreams Go to Die,” he plays piano in a very dramatic fashion and sings in his slow sometimes whispered baritone voice.  The song is pretty and then the lyrics come in: “I’m willing to do anything to get attention from you dear.”  But it’s not until the chorus (with acoustic guitar added) that the melody gros even more catchy and the lyrics grow even more dark:  “Baby…. you’re where dreams go to die and I regret the day your lovely carcass caught my eye.”  There’s  great bass riff on the piano that he plays during the end of the song which ups the drama even further.  It’s quite a song.

In introducing “Sigourney Weaver,” he says that when he was 12 he moved from Michigan to Colorado and he hoped the move would erase his homosexual feelings.  He changed his mind about that “when he got the hang of it.”  The song doesn’t have anything to do with Weaver except as simile: “I feel just like Sigourney Weaver when she had to kill those aliens.”  Although I think the follow-up simile is even better: “I feel just like Winona Ryder in that move about vampires and she couldn’t get that accent right and neither could that other guy.”

“It Doesn’t Matter to Him” is about the inability to deal with the sudden absence of love.  It features the great lyrics: “I am no longer as awkward as I was when I was younger I guess I’m one of those guys who gets better looking as I age.”

Grant is a marvel and his songs, while caustic, are quite fun.

[READ: February 15, 2016] “Raj, Bohemian”

I really enjoyed this story a lot.

I enjoyed the way the story began with a bunch of wealthy city kids doing all kinds of debauched things with no repercussions.  None of them worked, but somehow they were trendsetters.  “We went dancing whenever we felt like it and watched illegal pre-releases of Hollywood blockbusters… By the time the world caught up we usually got bored and moved on.”

They are smug asses, but they aren’t obnoxious about it–“we despised trendies–fashion kids who tried to hard,”

And then we met the narrator’s friend Sunita who throws the best parties.   She had a gorgeous apartment and lived there rent free (for complex reasons).  For this latest party, which promised to be her best, she cryptically said “dress sincerely.” (more…)

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Carrie Brownstein–Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl: A Memoir (2015)

Posted in 7 Year Bitch, All Songs Considered, Bikini Kill, Books about music, Boredom, Carrie Brownstein, Cate Le Bon, Cats, Corin Tucker, Depression, Dogs, Eddie Vedder, Excuse 17, Feminism, George Michael, Heavens to Betsy, Janet Weiss, Madonna, Mötley Crüe, Mecca Normal, Memoirs, Pearl Jam, Pets, Portlandia, Record Labels, Regrets, Riot Grrrl, Sleater-Kinney, The Byrds, The Gossip, The White Stripes, Tiny Desk Concert, Wild Flag, Yeah Yeah Yeahs on July 21, 2016| Leave a Comment »

carrieSOUNDTRACK: CATE LE BON-Tiny Desk Concert #337 (February 18, 2014).

cateCate Le Bon has a very interesting style of singing–it reminds me of Grace Slick in her enunciation, but also like someone whose speaking accent is very strong and is somewhat masked by her singing (like the way she sings “reason” as “ree-sun” as opposed to “reezun”).

The blurb explains that her “phrasing is completely tied to her Welsh dialect — in fact, her first record was in Welsh…. The enunciation is completely tied to the loneliness and the questioning.”

 For this concert it is just her and her fellow guitarist H. Hawkline (both wearing super cozy sweaters).  They share the guitar licks very nicely–it’s not always clear who is playing what–with her sometimes finishing his lines (I believe).

“Are You With Me Now?” has a very catchy chorus (with an “ah ha ha ha ha” part that makes it sound like an olde English ballad).

“No God” plays with very simple guitar lines (chords played very high on the neck of her guitar and a simple accompanying riff).  Hawkline plays keys (and sings some great falsetto backing vocals) to flesh out this song.  Everything is so clean you can hear each note from the guitar and her voice.

“Duke” opens with some interesting slightly off sounding from Cate while Hawkline plays a simple chord pattern (his fingers are enormous, by the way).  Hawkline’s falsetto is almost as engaging as the vocal lines that match the guitar line which Cate plays.  And when she says “I’ll see you here” in that unexpected pronunciation, it’s totally captivating.

I like Le Bon a lot and want to hear what she wounds like on record.

[READ: May 18, 2016] Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl

After finishing Bob Boilen’s book and thinking about how I don’t really love music-based books, I immediately read Carrie Brownstein’s book.  Carrie Brownstein is one of the two guitarists in Sleater-Kinney and Wild Flag.  She is also one of the leads (writer and actor) on Portlandia.  And she wrote for NPR for a while, too.  Basically, Carrie is the shit.

One thing I took away from this book is that I’ve read a few musician memoirs (Mötley Crüe and Marilyn Manson to name a few) and this is the first one I’ve read that was filled with so much sadness.  Not “I was stoned and regret sleeping with that person with an STD sadness,” but like, real family problems and even a dead pet.  And, as Carrie herself jokes, her stories of being on tour and ending up in the hospital are not based on drugs or other debauchery, but on anxiety and even worse, shingles.

The beginning of the book starts in 2006, around the initial break up (hiatus) of Sleater-Kinney.  Carrie is in pain–emotional and physical–and she can’t take much more.  She starts punching herself hard in the face. (more…)

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Pokémon: Symphonic Evolutions (Mann Center for the Performing Arts, Philadelphia, PA, July 10, 2016)

Posted in Andrew Aversa, Chad Seiter, Jeron Moore, Junichi Masuda, Mann Center for the Performing Arts, Philadelphia, PA, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Pokemon, Red Robin, Susie Benchasil Seiter on July 10, 2016| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: July 10, 2016] Pokémon: Symphonic Evolutions

evolutionWe have been really enjoying the Mann Center this year.  And since Clark (whose birthday was not so long ago) has been really enjoying Pokémon this year, this seemed like a perfect evening–orchestral Pokémon music at the Mann.

A friend of ours had seen it and said it was fun, so we bought some balcony seats (never been up there before), had a meal en route at Red Robin (yum), and made it with minutes to spare.  There were no baseball cards for this event (pity), but there was plenty of people watching.

2016-07-10 19.44.48I really didn’t know who would come to this show.  I assumed it would be families with little kids.  It never occurred to me that there would be hundreds of cosplayers here too.  There were people in costume (!)–I didn’t get any good pictures–there were 20- and 30-somethings in Pokémon hats and shirts and there were plush Pikachu all over the place (including in the orchestra!).

The conductor was Susie Seiter and the music was composed by her husband, Chad Seiter and his co-worker Jeron Moore.  The original press release states:

This has been the brainchild of me [Chad] and co-creator Jeron Moore for over 7 months now…. We have all been working very closely with The Pokémon Company International to create an authentic Pokémon experience, and all the music is approved by original Pokémon composer Junichi Masuda himself.

The show is turning out awesome – we have a large 80+ piece orchestra, and I’ve been working on 80 minutes of new arrangements, putting the Pokémon music into an epic symphonic Hollywood context. The show will be conducted by my wife, and LEGEND OF ZELDA: SYMPHONY OF THE GODDESSES conductor, Susie Seiter – who has also painstakingly orchestrated all the music. It will also feature innovative percussive and electronic accompaniment by Andrew Aversa.

So we sat down and out came the conductor.  But before the show started, Chad came out and introduced the show.  He said that this was the first show they had performed since Pokémon Go came out and they took a photo of all of us holding up our login screens.  For some reason our game wasn’t connecting there, which was very disappointing since we heard everyone saying–there’s Charmander, there’s Squirtle.  There’s even a photo of someone catching a Pikachu in the audience.

I have seen a few orchestral shows before, but there was something really amazing about this one.  Perhaps it was where we sat–the angle was great–or perhaps the size of the orchestra, but it was so much fun to watch this spectacle.  And, yes, the music was pretty fantastic too.

What made the show especially fun, though, was the audience.  Typically an orchestral show is quiet and reserved.  Not here.  The crowd went nuts before each piece and went absolutely crazy when their favorite Pokémon came on screen.  I had to assume the orchestra really enjoyed getting wild cheers instead of polite applause. (more…)

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John Baxter, Joshua Faudem, Koren Shadmi–Mike’s Place: A True Story of Love, Blues and Terror in Tel Aviv (2015)

Posted in #10yearsof01, Blues by the Beach, Bombs, Death, Drinking, First Second :01, Graphic Novel, History, John Baxter, Joshua Faudem, Koren Shadmi, Marwan Barghouti, Monika, Non-fiction, Racism, Religion, Sex, Tiny Desk Concert, Travel, Violence, War, Yuck! on June 21, 2016| Leave a Comment »

mikesplace SOUNDTRACK: MONIKA-Tiny Desk Concert #529 (May 6, 2016).

monikaMonika is a superstar in her native Greece (her full name is Monika Christodoulou).  She is a charming woman with a big voice and a bigger stage presence.  She incorporates theatrical notions in her performance too (the fact that she has a shirt that looks like a mime’s kind of encourages that idea): “throwing” stars, flying, sleeping.

It is hard to believe that the blurb says used to sing sad songs, as she is so fun and bouncy.  But there’s this biographical note:

her recent transition from singer of sad songs to purveyor of upbeat jubilance came after she nearly lost her life in a boat fire; she had to swim eight hours in the dark to safety without food or drinkable water. These days, it’s all about a great band grooving, her joyful voice, and that infectious smile.

Wow.

She sings four songs.  The first, “Yes I Do,” opens with what I assume is a lyric about the then current moment: “24th of March has arrived and I think it’s Thursday?  Washington is beautiful out there but we don’t really care.”  It has a kind of circus opera feel.  And Monika’s voice is a marvel–powerful and beautiful with a good range.

monika2For the second song, “Shake Your Hands” she asks if everyone is ready to dance a little.  She climbs up on the desk and as she sings the slow opening, when she gets to the “I love you” moment, she sings without the mike and is as loud as when she uses it.  Once the song kicks in, it has a big disco beat: wah wah’d guitars and a funky bass line.  She encourages everyone to sing along: “Even if you don’t understand, just repeat, okay.”  The song ends with a very fun extended ending of staccato chords.

“Hand in Hand” has a kind of gospel quality (a big group sing along of the opening lines), although it is a brief, transitional song before “Secret in the Dark” begins.  She straps on a guitar for this final song which has a discoey riff and a fuzzy keyboard sound.  It’s really fun.

I’d never heard of Monika, but she seems like the kind of pop/dance star that would be really fun to see live.

[READ: April 1, 2016] Mike’s Place

Somehow I missed that word in the subtitle: True.  I didn’t realize that this was a true story until the very end.  The story was really good before I knew that and it makes it even more amazing after I found the truth.

In Tel Aviv, Israel, John Baxter (Jack), a filmmaker has come to cover a story.  He goes into a local bar called Mike’s Place for a meal.  He is greeted warmly and is told that there is live music every night of the week.  They proudly state that Mike’s is a place where people of all stripes comes to congregate and do anything but talk about politics.

It turns out that there are already people making a documentary about the subject who John came to cover (Marwan Barghouti) so Jack  decides to give up. (more…)

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Barenaked Ladies (Mann Center for the Performing Arts, Philadelphia, PA, June 18, 2016)

Posted in Barenaked Ladies, Howard Jones, Humus, Led Zeppelin, Mann Center for the Performing Arts, Philadelphia, PA, Star Wars, The Big Bang Theory, Violent Femmes, Zahav on June 19, 2016| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: June 18, 2016] Barenaked Ladies

2016-06-18 22.36.35Why have we seen Barenaked Ladies so many times?  Because they unerringly put on a super fun show.  Whether it is headlining their summer extravaganzas or even playing at our lowly Balloon Festival [*I was taken to task for calling this festival lowly, please see the end of the post for an update], their sets are fun and they always give their all.

Their set seemed really short this time–although it was the same number of songs as previous summer sets.  Sometimes it feels like they are stuck playing the same songs a lot.  They absolutely have to play a few songs–“$1,000,000,” “Brian Wilson,” “Big Bang Theory” and of course “One Week” and at least one or two new ones.  And yet they do a good job of pulling out some unexpected songs.

And they really mixed up the stage show this year.  In the past, they have started big and ended with some acoustic songs.  But this year they started with a small acoustic set. (more…)

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OMD (Mann Center for the Performing Arts, Philadelphia, PA, June 18, 2016) [BARENAKED LADIES]

Posted in Barenaked Ladies, Ben Folds, Colin Hay, Flight of the Conchords, Guster, Howard Jones, Mann Center for the Performing Arts, OMD, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, Philadelphia, PA, Violent Femmes on June 18, 2016| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: June 18, 2016] OMD

2016-06-18 20.15.58Sarah and I calculated that this was our fourth time seeing Barenaked Ladies (I’ve seen them at least two more times than that).  What I enjoy about tehir summer tours is how they have such diverse opening acts.  Two years ago it was Guster and Ben Folds.  Last year it was Violent Femmes and Colin Hay and this year it is Howard Jones and Orchestral Manoeuvers in the Dark.  I was never really a fan of Howard Jones (I didn’t know most of his songs), but I love OMD’s greatest hits (which I know isn’t saying a lot since they have about a  dozen albums out, but it’s a great collection).

Because of circumstances beyond our control, we wound up missing the entirety of Howard Jones’s set.  A friend who saw the concert in New York last week said that HoJo was phoning it in.  But the two people n front of us at Philly said he was really good.  Bummed to miss him, especially the keytar.

We arrived just as the opening notes of “Enola Gay” were playing through the crowd.  Perfect timing. (more…)

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Simon Rich–“The Foosball Championship of the Whole Entire Universe” (New Yorker, May 9, 2016)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Anachronisms, Art, Florist, Foosball, Funny (ha ha), Humiliation, Juno, Kimya Dawson, New Yorker, Short Story, Simon Rich, Tiny Desk Concert on June 15, 2016| Leave a Comment »

592016SOUNDTRACK: FLORIST-Tiny Desk Concert #527 (April 29, 2016).

floristFlorist is a quiet band–they remind me a bit of Kimya Dawson from the Juno soundtrack.  There are four members of the band–lead singer/guitarist Emily Sprague and a drummer who has only one drum and plays very sparsely. And then there are two guys who switch between bass/guitar and keyboards.  In this Tiny arrangement, the keys are right next to the guys which makes it very easy for them to switch back and forth–I wonder if it works so well on a bigger stage.

I knew the first song, “Vacation” from an earlier All Songs Considered show and this live version sounds pretty much like the recorded version.  Sprague has a very gentle voice–almost a whipser (but not mumbling or anything).  And her guitar playing is really pretty.  I remember Bob Boilen talking about how much he liked her lyrics like:

Like when I used to ride roller coasters with my dad / When a swimming pool in a hotel / Was a gift from God / Like, love, we’re like a family / I don’t know how to be

The song is mostly just her singing until the end when the bassist sings (also very quietly) a duet with her

At least I know that my house wont burn down down to the ground / or maybe it will / if I’ve been in love before and I’m pretty sure I have / I’m pretty sure that my house could burn down down to the ground tomorrow.

 Between the first and second song the bassist/keyboardist holds down some notes while the others tune and get ready to play.  They’re the most un rock n roll looking band I’ve seen, with them dresses in cozy clothes as they calmly prepare for the second song.

“Cool and Refreshing” sounds that way.  The melody is really pretty once again.  And Sprague’s vocal line is quite lovely.  And the lyrics:

Think of me by the creek in cutoff jeans holding onto / Something that has meaning to me / I don’t really think my life will ever make me / As happy as Kaaterskill Creek

I like the middle of the song when everything drops away except for the lone synth note.

The notes ring out after the second song when Emily finally looks up and says “Thanks everybody” before looking sown and starting the third song, “1914.”  This vocals are a duet, and musically it is just the two guitars.  It’s a very simple song, sparsely conveying the idea of a farewell letter from 100 years ago:

Please remember to feed the cat.  Please remember that I’m never coming back.  I was born in 1994 / I as born in the 70s / I was born in 1823 and you were born right next to me.

Florist was touring recently.  I imagine it must be the quietest show you could ever go to.  But also a very pretty show.

[READ: December 13, 2012] “The Foosball Championship of the Whole Entire Universe”

The premise of this piece is very simple–it is indeed the foosball championship of the whole entire universe.  And the players are eleven-year old Nathaniel Rich and seven-year old Simon Rich.

This “joke” more or less tells itself, but Rich is able to add wonderful details to the story of it to make it much funnier than just the title.  Nathaniel’s Blue team has won all 83 matches, but this game–the last of the summer vacation–is for all the marbles.

Rich has broken the “story” down into analyses of Keys to the Game.

Like Coaching, in which we learn all about Coach Simon’s style (as told by the “players”): “Coach cries a lot” or “the last time we lost, coach attacked us.  It was scary because even though he’s just a boy, he’s also a giant–fifty to sixty times our height.” (more…)

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Flight of the Conchords sing Flight of the Conchords (Mann Center for the Performing Arts, Philadelphia, PA, June 12, 2016)

Posted in Arj Barker, Flight of the Conchords, Flight of the Conchords, Led Zeppelin, Mann Center for the Performing Arts, Philadelphia, PA, Pokemon, Richard Thompson, Tom Waits, Wilco on June 13, 2016| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: June 12, 2016] Flight of the Conchords sing Flight of the Conchords

chipsAfter having gotten a number of concert tickets fort he summer, I had planned a moratorium.  But it was impossible to pass up the opportunity to see Flight of the Conchords.  Especially if they were going to be singing Flight of the Conchords!  I didn’t even realize they toured (clearly they do), and since there were no plans for a new television season and since Jemaine Clement has lent his voice and face to all manner of awesome evil roles, I assumed the FotC was no more.  [Bret McKenzie has also done things but not nearly as much as Jemaine].

Since we loved the show and the music, I jumped on tickets once they were available.  Once again, I thought our seats would be better than they were (I really need to understand seating charts better), but it didn’t matter because they had two giant screens on which they projected the two of them and did many great visual effects as well.  It was easy to forget to look at them on stage since the screens were so compelling, but it’s always important to see what the guys are doing too.

They played 13 songs in total and did a lot of very funny banter in between.  The strange thing is that I didn’t know they had released a second album (how did I miss that?) so a lot of the songs that I thought were “new” were just new to me.  Although there were some brand new songs thrown in as well.

It was also awesome that as soon as Arj Barker left the stage, there was no delay before Flight of the Conchords came out. (more…)

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Arj Barker (Mann Center for the Performing Arts, Philadelphia, PA, June 12, 2016) [FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS]

Posted in Arj Barker, Flight of the Conchords, Flight of the Conchords, Game of Thrones, Mann Center for the Performing Arts, Philadelphia, PA, Pokemon, Richard Thompson, Wilco on June 12, 2016| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: June 12, 2016] Arj Barker

arjArj Barker opened for Flight of the Conchords.  I didn’t know him, although I knew he had been on some episodes of the FotC TV Show.

Much like with my trip to the Mann for Wilco, it took a lot longer to get there than I anticipated–I think we’ll have it all figured out for our next show there later this week.  We wound up arriving a few minutes before 8 and had enough time to get a snack before the show started.  Barker didn’t start exactly at 8 either (how come Richard Thompson was so punctual?)

As we were chowing down, we noticed that later this summer the Mann Center is putting on a symphonic Pokemon event and we knew we had to get tickets for the kids for that.  So I ran out to the box office and spared myself the $13/ticket Ticketmaster surcharge at the expense of missing the beginning of Arj’s set.

We walked in just as he was going on about his girlfriend’s insistence on their new gluten-free diet (I’d guess we missed about ten or fifteen minutes). (more…)

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Sarah Shun-Lein Bynum–“The Burglar” (New Yorker, April 11, 2016)

Posted in Books about writers, Film & TV, Grace Slick, Jimi Hendrix, King's X, New Yorker, PJ Harvey, Racism, Sarah Shun-lein Bynum, Seratones, Short Story, Tiny Desk Concert, Violence on June 8, 2016| Leave a Comment »

41116 SOUNDTRACK: SERATONES-Tiny Desk Concert #522 (April 15, 2016).

seraThis Seratones show totally rocked!  And it was a nice change of pace from the slower bands who have been on the Tiny Desk lately.

The lead singer and guitarist is A.J. Haynes.  She plays guitar with a pick on her thumb and has a very clean guitar sound.  Her voice is really lovely—powerful and strong and covering multiple styles from Grace Slick to PJ Harvey.  The blurb says

Haynes grew up singing in the Brownsville Baptist Church, learning to sing out to and hit that back wall without a microphone.

And that’s apparent from the ease she has at singing.  The rest of her band is really great too.  Continuing the blurb:

bassist Adam Davis heard a lot of American rock’s greatest guitarist, Jimi Hendrix, as well as the amazing voice of Janis Joplin. The rest of the band is rounded out by the drumming of Jesse Gabriel, who is spare but there with a sharp backbeat, while guitarist Connor Davis rocks with lyrical grit.

Although I had to laugh because Haynes seems to be having so much fun while her bandmates are rather stonefaced.

They play three songs and they are all great.  “Don’t Need It” rocks out like nobody’s business.  Haynes is a charismatic (and adorable) lead singer with a big afro and a great smile.  “Get Gone” has a much more bluesy sound.  I like the way she delivers the line: “Suns coming out like you knew it would.”  After each verse she gives a big high-pitched “ooh oooh.” And then comes back with a growly low voice.  I love that she’s alternately belting out notes and then singing falsetto.

“Chandelier” has a great funky groove.  When the song sorta stops and just the drums kick in she gives a delightful giggle.

I was really delighted with this band whom I’d never heard of before and I definitely want to check out their recently released debut album.

[READ: April 11, 2016] “The Burglar”

I enjoyed the way that this story was structured.  One paragraph at a time with a dot in between them.  This allowed for a strange juxtaposition of time, with some things happening simultaneously and others possibly out of sequence.

There are several characters in the story.  There is a the burglar (known primarily as “he”); there is the wife who is waiting for exterminators to come to the house–she’s out and hopes to get home before they do).  There is the husband, who is off at work.  His job is fascinating, he’s writing his first script for a TV pilot.  The producers of the show want it to be edgy and different.  The character he is working on (the only person named in the story) is Emmet Byron Diggs, who is falsely accused of killing his wife.  Emmet is black, but the producers don’t want him to think about that as he develops the character.

The story rotates through these characters.  We see the scriptwriter and the producers talking about the show: a time travel show in which Emmet is going to start killing people.

The burglar encounters a dog in the house and tries to figure out how to deal with it.

The wife is racing to get home.

And Emmett is also walking down a street checking out the twenty-first century world he’s in.

Okay so the burglar is in the woman’s house.  But she hears him upstairs and assumes he is the exterminator.

And then the burglar hears her and tries to figure out what he’s going to do.  He calls out, “Just the cleaning crew.”  he berates himself for saying such a weird thing and she thinks its weird that the exterminator would call himself the cleaning crew.

And that’s when the phone rings and it’s the exterminators calling to say they’ll be late.

How does this real-life scenario play out at home while her husband is trying to create a similarly fictionalized setting on the page?

The stories even began to overlap somewhat with action in both stories taking place in a kitchen.  By the end of the story it’s not entirely clear what’s even happening, at least to me.  And yet despite or because of this confusion, I really loved the story.  It was intense and strangely funny at the same time.

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