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Archive for the ‘Funky Web Sites’ Category

Téa Obreht–“High School Confidential” (New Yorker June 13 & 20 2011)

Posted in AV Club, Awkward, Books about writers, Essays, Fears, Humiliation, Kanye West, New Yorker, Parts & Labor, Set at School, Téa Obreht on August 1, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: PARTS & LABOR-“Runaway” (2011).

Parts & Labor cover Kanye West’s “Runaway” at the AV Club. 

I didn’t know Parts & Labor when I played this, but I was really curious to see how any band of non-rappers would perform this awesome Kanye West track.  It’s a testament to how great the song is that Parts & Labor (who totally kick ass) can play around with it as much as they do (they wisely don’t rap) and retain the greatness of the song. 

Parts & Labor seem like a pretty standard punk-type outfit: guitars, bass, drums and keys (although some of their studio albums belie that simplicity).  But the keyboardist (who opens the song) is playing notes while manipulating effects pedals on top of the keyboard.  It’s a great introduction.  The bassist (with his amazing beard) sings in a couple of different registers that work out the angst of the song wonderfully. 

But for me the guy I can’t stop watching is the drummer. He opens the track with his snare drum on his lap.  While keeping the beat with one finger on a floor tom he is clearly playing the snares of his snare drum with a guitar pick.   When the song breaks half way through and he puts his snare back, he is a maniac of intensity and cacophony. It is amazing.  The second half of the song is a cathartic release for the noisy beginning. 

This is a wonderful cover.  And I’ll be checking out Parts & Labor on Spotify to see what I’ve been missing.  Watch it here.

[READ: July 20, 2011] “High School Confidential”

Continuing with the New Yorker’s Fiction Issue, we get this Starting Out essay from Téa Obreht.  Now, Obreht’s story was the least believable of the five for me.  As you can see by this photo, Obreht is adorable.  Now we all know people who blossomed from an ugly childhood or had a youthful gangly phase or grew into beauty or whatever.  But the introduction of her essay, when she describes herself in quite unflattering terms seems like it may be, if not over the top, then at least wishful thinking.

Téa

She claims she was awkward, tall, gangly with coke bottle glasses a huge gap in her teeth from one that never came in.  In reading it again I guess it’s not as dramatic as I though the first time, and corrective work could fix those things, but still.  It seemed a bit like that MTV show Awkward (second mention in a few days–it’s been a slow summer, TVwise), in which the main character is way too cute to be considered an outcast.

Too cute to be that awkward

But hey, maybe cute people have problems too. 

It’s when Obreht moves past that and talks about being made fun of for what she wanted to be that things get interesting.  

Obreht has always wanted to be a writer and when she let her classmates known that, they picked on her (oh are you going to write about that).  But she pressed on.  She was most devastated when the stories she gave to a boy in confidence were soon being read, aloud, by a girl who hated her.

Maybe cute girls are unpopular too. (more…)

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Junot Díaz–“The Money” (New Yorker, June 13 & 20, 2011)

Posted in AV Club, Billy Idol, Canadian Music, Essays, Gary Numan, Junot Díaz, Memoirs, New Yorker, Sloan on July 31, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: SLOAN-“Cars” (2011).

When Sloan went to the A.V. Club to record their cover, they were disappointed by the selection.  Of course, that’s the game, so suck it up Sloan.  But they decided to do Gary Numan’s “Cars.”

Now, I feel compelled  to say that Gary Numan’s “Cars” may be my least favorite song of all time (it’s very close to Billy Idol’s “Eyes without a Face”).  I understand that “Cars” was “groundbreaking” or whatever.  But gah, it is boring and monotonous and just awful (and I say that while admitting that I like Phillip Glass, so i know from monotonous).  While I will admit that the riff is pretty great, everything about the song, from the performance to its endlessness (it’s like 8 minutes long, right?) drives me nuts.

And that may be why I love this cover so much.  It keeps the riff but it adds music to it.  All of that horrible “one guy with a cheap keyboard” sound is taken away.  It’s replaced by a great full-sounding band bringing live joy to the song.  I love that the whiny keyboard is replaced by a guitar and that the drummer rocks the hell out of the ending.  I mean really rocks the hell out of it.  Well done, Sloan.  You’ve been a favorite for years, and you’ve now redeemed my most hated song.  I think Billy Idol just peaked on my list.

You can watch it here.

[READ: July 20, 2011] “The Money”

Junot Díaz’ story in the New Yorker’s Fiction Issue is also a Starting Out piece.  This story is about how his mother always sent money home to her family.  No matter how little money they had, she would always scrimp and save and stash away until she had a few hundred dollars to send every six moths or so.

From Diaz’ other work, we assume that he was not a model citizen as a youth, but even he knew not to tamper with his mother’s money.  (Stealing from her purse was one thing, but the wrath of stealing from the “to be sent money” was unfathomable).

Then one week when they go on vacation they return to see that their house has been robbed!  Some of Junot’s things were taken as well as the money.  The Money!   (more…)

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Jennifer Egan–“Archeology” (New Yorker, June 13 & 20, 2011)

Posted in AV Club, Biography, Essays, Jennifer Egan, Josh Caterer, New Yorker, Nostalgia, Smoking Popes, The Onion, Travel on July 29, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: JOSH CATERER-“Ask” (2011).

Josh Caterer is the main guy behind The Smoking Popes, whose first album, Born to Quit, Morrissey has said was his favorite –and which is also not only no longer in print, it’s not available on Spotify! (the first album that I have looked for which was not available).

Anyhow, this cover comes from The Onion’s A.V. Club’s Undercover series.  (The current series offers a list of 25 songs from which the bands can choose to cover–but each time a song is chosen, it is removed from the list.  Soon, bands will cover songs they may not even like!)

Anyhow again, this cover is delightful.  I was going  to say that “Ask” is one of my favorite Smiths songs, but I think they’re all my favorite songs.  Nevertheless, this one is pretty high on my list.  And this version is, indeed delightful.  Caterer is accompanied by a guitar, a violin and a viola.  The strings cover most of those catchy melodies, while the guitars keep the song propulsive (you don’t even miss a rhythm section).  Caterer’s voice, while not as distinctive as Morrissey’s is perfect for the song.

Overall, an excellent cover.  Watch it here.

[READ: July 20, 2011] “Archeology”

This was the first of five “Starting Out” pieces in the New Yorker’s fiction issue.  The Starting Out pieces are one page (or less) and are a look into the author’s childhood/adolescence.

Egan, who wrote  A Visit from The Goon Squad, talks about what she wanted to be as a child.  First, she wanted to be a surgeon.  She saw blood and that was the end of that.  Then she thought that maybe she could be an archaeologist.  She desperately wanted to become one, even sending her resume (which was: high school and a desire to dig) to every place she could think of (only one even bothered to write back). (more…)

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Arthur Bradford–“The Orderly” (Nerve.com, May 1, 2006)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Arthur Bradford, Buffalo Tom, Esquire, How's Your News?, nerve.com, Sex, Short Story, Virginity (Loss of) on July 28, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: BUFFALO TOM: “Guilty Girls” (2011).

Holy cow, Buffalo Tom!  I more or less forgot about these guys (who I really liked back in the 90s).  Some of their songs from that period are fantastic.  They never had any major success, but they had a series of great releases.  Evidently they reformed a few years ago and released a reunion album.  And now, in 2011, they have a brand new record.  Wow.

I haven’t listened to them in a few years, (although their albums covers are still very fresh in my head).  But I listened to a few older songs for comparison’s sake.  To me the biggest difference between Tom in 1999 and Tom in 2011 is that the singer now sounds even more like Elvis Costello.  Bill Janovitz has always had a strong baritone voice, but with a few extra years thrown on, it has maturity that it lacked back then (not that it needed it, but the songs are more mature lyrically now, and the voice fits it well). 

This song is a kind of punky (poppy punk, but still punky) rocking anthem.  It’s under three minutes and it aims for mega catchiness.

[READ: July 18, 2011] “The Orderly”

Having read the brief story by Arthur Bradford in Five Dials, I realized that I knew the name and decided to see what else I had read by him. It wasnt much, but I enjoyed what I’d read.  I decided to look him up and discovered that he really only wrote one book, a short story collection called Dogwalker, before switching media to TV (and a show called How’s Your News?).

On his website, he has links to a number of published stories (fiction and non-); since the Esquire pieces have been collected in his book, there’s really only three unique fiction stories available here.  So i decided to read them all.

Now Nerve.com was a site for “literate smut.”  I remember when it came out and it was somewhat revolutionary in the sex world because it tried to raise the bar of quality and to include some decent writers.  I didn’t actually know that nerve.com was still active (it is, and there’s some really good stuff there).  As such, I feel like perhaps the stories at nerve aren’t entirely top-notch.  Not Penthouse forum, mind you, but not Hemingway either. (more…)

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John Banville–“Dining with the Tiger: Dublin’s Restaurant Bubble” (Harper’s, July 2011)

Posted in Basia Bulat, Food, Funky Web Sites, Funny (ha ha), Harper's, John Banville on July 19, 2011| 1 Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: BASIA BULAT-“The Shore” (2010).

I loved Basia Bulat’s “In the Night” which wa s fun, uptempo folk rocker.  “The Shore” is a hauntingly beautiful, wistful ballad.  “In the Night” featured the autoharp as its main instrument, but “The Shore” features the pianoette as its sole instrument (on this recording anyway, I haven’t heard it on the record).

Listenin to the song is great, a wonderful expereicen.  But once you watch her play it, the song is even more powerful.  This video in particular is enchnating–where is this beautiful open room?  How did she learn to play the pianoette?  What is that little hammer she’s using?  Is anyone not blown away the first time she hits a string for multiple notes and the song goes from simple to majestic?

And what do you suppose uwolnijmuzyke means?  I don’t know, but it’s a really cool music site from Poland.

Pretty good, huh?

[READ: July 13, 2011] Dining with the Tiger

I wasn’t going to talk about this “review” either.  But several things stood out for me:  John Banville!  It’s hard to pass on him.  I also seem to be talking a lot about food this week (what with Will Self, Jun’ichirō Tanizaki and Lucky Peach in general).  And because I have to wonder if my friend Lar knows of any of restaurants that Banville mentions (now that he is a landed, married gentleman and not the post-graduate guy who would take an American mate to an “American” diner on Grafton Street–which was lorryloads of fun, make no mistake).

So Banville gives a brief run through of the state of Irish restaurants circa the end of WWII–as in, there were none.  Then came the 1990s and the critical moment in Irish culture–the scandal of Bishop Eamon Casey and his unexpected son. The scandal seemed to rock the country, but mostly it made them let fall the shackles of conformity across the country.  Banville suggests that such a major event could have shaken a Catholic country to the core, but in Ireland, it seems to have just woken everyone up to the possibility of making money. (more…)

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Grace O’Connell–“Noisemakers” (The Walrus, June 2011)

Posted in Canadian Content, Canadian Music, CBC Radio 3, Funky Web Sites, Grace O'Connell, Marriage Trouble, Short Story, Sloan, The Walrus on June 7, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: CBC Radio 3’s Sloan 20 Anniversary Podcast (2011).

2011 sees the 20th anniversary of Halifax’s Sloan.  I’ve liked Sloan since their first single, “Underwhelmed” broke through American radio (more like MTV’s 120 Minutes, I suppose) eighteen years ago.  The band’s profile faded in the US since then, but they have been producing steadily great albums over all of these years.

CDC Radio 3 has created a twenty year best of Sloan Podcast.  (And the band has all of their songs streaming online as well).

The Podcast has brief shoutouts from a bunch of fans (famous and non-) and a favorite selection from each of their nine albums (“Underwhelmed” is not included).  There were even a couple of tracks that I wasn’t familiar with (some seriously buried tracks from those early records).

Perhaps the funniest moment for me comes when the DJ admits that he didn’t know “Delivering Maybes” from Between the Bridges.  I was listening to that album just yesterday, and that’s one of my favorite tracks on the disc.  But really, they have so many great songs, it’s hard to choose.

Twenty years.  Good on ya, Sloan.  Looking forward to the new record The Double Cross.

[READ: June 2, 2011] “Noisemakers”

This story has a suprise appearance by a foley artist.  I love foley artists and am totally fascinated by them and would secretly love to be one.  So, even though the foley artist is almost drowned, I liked this story quite a bit.

It opens with Peter and his wife, Sarah, riding a boat in a lake. There’s some tension between them, but everything changes when she has to quickly turn the boat to avoid hitting something in the water.  It turns out to be a body.

The body happens to be of Lucy (the foley artist) who was Peter’s ex girlfriend.  Sarah hates Lucy (there is some background given about them and how Lucy seems to have been involved with Peter since he got married–but I feel like the given details are too vague to justify his current wife’s hatred of Lucy).  Sarah believes that Lucy being here is some kind of connection to Peter, but realilstically, they are quite far from their cabin, and she is floating in a lake…. (more…)

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The Universal Sigh (2011)

Posted in Books about music, Consumerism, End of the World, Environmentalism, Funky Web Sites, Jay Griffiths, Nature, Poetry, Radiohead, Robert MacFarlane, Stanley Donwood, Technology on April 22, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: RADIOHEAD-The King of Limbs (2011).

I finally had a chance to really listen to this CD and I have some mixed feeling about it.  It doesn’t excite me as much as previous Radiohead releases have and yet, at the same time I can’t stop listening to it.  But I find that I’m listening to it a lot as background music, so I haven’t been able to fully appreciate what’s happening on all the tracks.  Now that I’ve really listened, my appreciation for the disc is higher, although I don’t find it as overall exciting as In Rainbows.

The opener, “Bloom” is a really spare song.  And although I like it, there’s a part of me that wonders almost what’s the point of making an electronica song that is so spare when many others have done much the same.  (It’s interesting to me that iTunes declares that this album is in the genre Electronica).  Of course, with some closer listening, there are some interesting Radiohead things happening, but for me the album doesn’t really start until “Morning Mr. Magpie,” a wonderful weird little song with a great opening guitar riff and excellent use of noisy drumming.  The drumming is really amazing.  It seems to be off-beat and then it speeds up to get on the beat–in every line!  Disorienting and compelling.  But it’s the guitar, I think, that was really missing from the opener.  (Of course, having said that I did like Radiohead’s previous forays into electronica that was sans guitar).

“Little By Little” proves that you can make a weird electronica song that is full of crazy noises and still have a supremely catchy chorus too.  “Feral” is, as far as I can tell, an instrumental (there are lots of sounds that could be voices, but I’m not sure).  It also features one of the great spooky keyboard type sound in a Radiohead song.  Its pretty cool.

“Lotus Flower” is the “obvious” single from the disc (and the radio by me is actually playing it!).  Even though it’s not radically different from the rest of the album, it stands out as the most melodic, the most catchy, the most, well, “single.”  It’s really great.

“Codex” slows things down with, if not a traditional piano ballad, something of a traditional Radiohead piano ballad.  My 5-year-old son made his first venture into music criticism when this song came on.  He said: “Why are you listening to a sad song?”  And when I asked if he liked sad songs he said, “No, sad songs make me feel sad.”  This is a pretty sad song, but it has Thom Yorke’s vocals of redemption pulling through at the end, even while the song retains its sadness.

My son really liked “Give Up the Ghost” though.  He said it sounding like the music at the end of a film, in fact, he was certain it was the music from the end of The Land Before Time movies. (That song is actually a James Horner song, sung by Diana Ross called “If We Hold On Together”).

The final song is a more drum filled track.  Yet despite the manic percussion, the song itself is actually kind of mellow and slow.  It’s pretty much a quintessential late Radiohead song.  Clark’s final review came with this song: “I love this song!  It sounds like someone bonking bananas on your head.”  So there ya go.

So overall, I enjoy the album, but I don’t think it will have as much staying power for me as their other discs.  It’s also surprisingly short (about 35 minutes–although just the other day they released two more tracks).  However, having said that, I’ve since listened again, and I find that I notice something new with each listen, so maybe it will continue to grow and grow on me.

Two of the more interesting things on the album though are the liner notes.  I can’t imagine what inspired, “A big thank you very much indeed to Drew Barrymore”.  And I’m intrigued at “Fluegelhorn on “Bloom” and “Codex” performed by Noel Langley and Yazz Ahmed.”  I’m intrigued that a) there is a fluegelhorn and b) that they needed two people!

[READ: April 10, 2011] The Universal Sigh

This “newspaper” was distributed at some record stores around the world as a tie-in to the new Radiohead album’s release in hard format.  I found out about it from my friend Lar.  He comments that he is too old to be hanging around in the streets waiting for this kind of titbit, and I couldn’t agree more.  He is too old.  As am I.  So it’s nice that there’s a digital version of the paper available.  (Remember when Radiohead snuck little things like this into the backs of their CD cases?)

Now just what is this thing?  Well, it is a newspaper of sorts.  There is a tenuous connection to Radiohead (in other words if you didn’t know they made it, you wouldn’t find out from looking at it). But the main focus seems to be environmental causes.  (Which means that since I printed out the PDF, I have undermined the band’s intention of producing a low carbon footprint product–but hey at least I printed it double-sided). (more…)

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Stephen Marche–“Lucy Hardin’s Missing Period” (The Walrus, November 2010)

Posted in Beck, Bjork, Canadian Content, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Funky Web Sites, Pregnancy, Sex, Short Story, Sinéad O'Connor, Stephen Marche, Stereolab, Technology, The Walrus on December 6, 2010| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: CHARLOTTE GAINSBOURG-IRM (2009).

Charlotte Gainsbourg is Serge Gainsbourg’s daughter.  Segre is, of course, known for his risqué songs–although Charlotte doesn’t fall into that same camp.

This is her third album.  Her first was released when she was 13.  The second was recorded with the band Air.  This album was written by and recorded with Beck.  And it’s a fantastic forum for her wonderfully complex voice and also just a great album of varying styles and textures.

IRM is the French abbreviation for MRI (she had a life threatening accident and was subject to many MRI’s). In fact, track two, called “IRM” is an electronic workout with sounds not unlike what you might hear in an MRI.  But the album is very diverse, from whispering vocals to soaring altos.  She has some scary/creepy songs as well as some sultry tracks.  Gainsbourg is also an actress and I like to think that her skills in film have allowed her to inhabit so many characters in these songs.

“Le Chat Du Café Des Artistes” (written by Jean-Pierre Ferland) is the only cover on the disc, and man is it great.   Whether it’s the French lyrics, which add a cool Stereolab-ish feel to the proceedings or the outstanding keyboards which are creepy and alluring at the same time, I don’t know, but this song alone makes the disc worthwhile.

Luckily there’s a lot more great songs here, too.  “Heaven Can Wait” is a duet with Beck (although really, Beck takes the lead).  It sounds like a great Beck track with a stomping acoustic guitar feel.

“Me and Jane Doe” follows with a sound like it belongs on the Juno soundtrack.  It gives Gainsbourg a great opportunity to show of her vocal tricks, since she sings with a flatly American accent.  “Vanities” is a beautiful string-filled track which emphasizes Gainsborugh’s voice (and has a kind of Bjorkian symphonic sound to it().

“Trick Pony” is a heavy electronic dance track, bringing an amazing sonic change to the proceedings of the disc.  And “Greenwich Mean Time” is a nasty sounding song where Gainsbourg is not afraid a to sneer at the listener.

The disc ends with “Dandelion,” a kind of slow blues, “Voyage,” a tribal track  (sung in French) and “La Collectionneuse,” which is not sung in French, but which is a piano based song that kind of creeps along on the edge of sinister.  The end of the song has spoken French words at the end and it sounds not unlike an early Sinéad O’Connor song

It’s rare that you hear an album full of so much diversity which actually holds together so well.  Gainsbourg doesn’t have an amazing voice or a voice that makes you go “wow,” but what she has is a really good voice that she can manipulate to convey a lot of styles, and I think that may be more impressive than an eight-octave range.

[READ: November 4, 2010] “Lucy Hardin’s Missing Period”

It’s hard to talk about this story as a story because of the gimmick that is attached to it.  This is a choose your own adventure story, albeit for adults.  In the magazine itself, there are two paragraphs.  You have to continue the story online here.  The technology involved is superb (you can save your story so that when you come back you can pick up where you left off) and each time you click to go to a new section, it fills in right after the section where you were reading so that the finished story looks like a complete (printable) story.

I tried two different stories and it became obvious that there are hundreds of story segments to choose from.  I’m rather amazed at the author’s ability to create what appears to be so many different stories parts out of these few characters (although I suppose realistically there can only be a half a dozen or so outcomes, no?).  And yet for all of that, I didn’t find the story all that interesting.

(more…)

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Lincoln Park–Handle Time (2008)

Posted in Canadian Music, Corporate skewering, Funky Web Sites, Funny (ha ha), Lincoln Park, Luther Wright & The Wrongs, Office Space, Short Books, Steve Martin, Work on September 19, 2010| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: LUTHER WRIGHT AND THE WRONGS-instrumentality (2006).

I loved Luther’s Rebuild the Wall, and I kind of thought of him as country, but not really country.  A sort of punky country (his song “Broken Fucking Heart” lead me in that direction, too).

But this album is all instrumentals (hence the title) and it’s very traditional bluegrass/banjo-fueled tracks.   Eleven tracks in all (totaling about 22 minutes).  There’s even a cover of “Yankee Doodle Dandy.”  Listening to this I realized that I like banjo music (not as my favorite type mind you, but certainly more than a little).  Steve Martin (an excellent banjoist himself) once said:

“You just can’t sing a depressing song when you’re playing the banjo. You can’t go– [grins, plays and sings] “Oh, murder and death and grief and sorrow!”

And there’s something to be said for that.  With this fun collection of mostly 2 minutes songs, you’ll smile for twenty minutes or so.  (And the playing is top notch, too).

[READ: September 11, 2010] Handle Time

When I wrote about One Night @ the Call Center, several readers said I must read Handle Time, that it was the consummate Call Center novel and that it was much better than One Night.  So I tried to find it.  No libraries in New Jersey carried it.  And although I could get it at Amazon, there was precious little other information about it.  Well, I finally decided to add it to our library collection (so I didn’t have to pay for it) and to read it for myself.

My first surprise came when the first line of the text has the word embarrassed written in a super large font.  The font is so large in fact that it put a pretty sizable space between the lines of text (that’s called leading).  My second surprise came when I saw that littered throughout the text were a whole bunch of large words and crazy fonts and a bunch of clip art pictures that showed what was happening.  (I was especially surprised when one of them turned out to be Mr Burns from The Simpsons!).

So it turns out that there are different fonts throughout the book, some of them large and crazy, others fancy and scripty.  But the long and short of it is that this book is really only about 50 pages long (I mean I read the entire 188 pages in about 2 hours).

Okay, but what about the content.  Well the plot itself is fairly brief.  Chase gets a job at a call center.  She sits through orientation, begins working, gets demoralized and has a panic attack about her job.  That’s pretty much it.  But really what you read the book for is for the side bits, the comments, the snark, the sympathizing with call center workers.

Except that I’ve never worked in a call center and yet I have experienced many of the things in the novel.  So, this book, much loved by call center workers, could be about pretty much any shit job (except for the part about keeping your numbers up (and the part about not actually helping people because it skews your average handle time)).  But bad cafeterias, microwaves, bizarre HR nonsense, stupid powerpoints, they’re part of any corporate job.  And she does a good job in skewering them, they’re just not specific to call centers.   (more…)

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America in Color 1939-1943

Posted in Depression, Funky Web Sites, History, Military, Newspapers, Nostalgia, Photo Essays, Set at School, Technology, Work on August 8, 2010| Leave a Comment »

[VIEWED: August 5, 2010] America in Color 1939-1943

The Denver Post recently published 70 color photographs from the Depression.   You can see them all here.  The photographs are part of the Library of Congress’ collection of photos.  The Library of Congress’ collection houses 1,600 color and over 160,000 black and white photos from this period in American history.  It is a bit more for scholars, as you can’t just browse the pictures like in the Denver Post site, but for completeness, you really must check out the LOC prints.  They’re available here.

But back to the Denver Post.  The Post’s collection of 70s prints come from the Library of Congress’ 2006 Exhibit Bound for Glory: America in Color.  These Post’s pictures are very large and very clear (they are reproduced from slides).  And they are all downloadable.

They include photos from New Mexico, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, Georgia, Oklahoma, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, California, Texas, Nebraska, Ohio, Montana, South Carolina, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, Washington D.C., Illinois, Iowa, Virginia, Kansas, Kentucky and Michigan.

And, they show the amazingly diverse makeup of the country.  From a peach farmer to a railway worker.  From kids fishing, to kids playing in the snow.  From women at a fair, to women welding.  From men on horseback to men in front of bomber.  Not to mention, the creation of the Shasta Dam!  (It’s amazing — #28)

The thing that amazes me most about these pictures is that although some things have changed quite dramatically in sixty years, other things haven’t.  Kids still fish, stores still sell fruits and veggies, and people still love pictures of scenery and interesting faces.

You can obviously tell that these pictures are old.  Even the ones without people just look old, why is that?–see #2 in particular for one that looks old even though nothing in the picture is dated.  Or picture #11: the women’s faces simply look like the were photographed 60 years ago.  Or this one, which I’m including.  There’s nothing particularly dated about the picture, and yet you can tell this didn’t just happen in 2010.

(more…)

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