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Archive for the ‘Funny (ha ha)’ Category

“Out There” (New Yorker, March 23, 2020)

Posted in Cimafunk, Clones, Funny (ha ha), Kate Folk, New Yorker, NPR/PRI/PBS, Romance, Sex, Tiny Desk Concert, Vacation on March 23, 2020| Leave a Comment »

  SOUNDTRACK: CIMAFUNK-Tiny Desk Concert #952 (February 28, 2020).

Tiny Desk Concerts have shown me how much I enjoy Afro-Cuban music, a genre I really didn’t know much about previously.

The fact that Cimafunk incorporates elements of funk makes his even more fun.

The band plays three songs.

From the moment Cimafunk and his band start their feathery intro to “Alabao,” it’s clear that something different is about to go down. Lead vocalist Cimafunk (Erik Rodríguez) has mastered the mash-up of Cuban soneos (vocal improvisations) and deep, soul-singing over music that I swear could have been played by any of the funk bands I saw back in the ’70s.

Cimafunk has a terrific voice–deep and resonant, able to rap and scat and make interesting vocal asides.  But he also shares the lead on “Alabao” with Ilarivis Garcia “Hilaria Cacao” Despaigne  who takes a verse and then plays trombone!

The middle of the song has a great stomping section with heavy bass from Ibanez Hermida “Caramelo” Marrero  and congas from Mario Gabriel Mesa “Machete” Meriño.

You can hear the funky guitar chords from Diego “Bejuko” Barrera Hernandez as the song draws to a close.

The next song “Cocinarte” opens with that fun Afro-Cuban chord progression on the keys from Juan Marcos “Firulais” Rodríguez Faedo (which I guess is called guajira).

the very traditional guajira piano riff on “Cocinarte” transitions to a James Brown-styled funk groove so easily, it sounds like they were made from the same root.

Backing singer Miguel “Miguelo” Piquero Villavicencio plays a percussive sliding instrument and Cimafunk adds in a fast rapping section.  Everyone sings along on the fun chorus especially “Hilaria Cacao” and “Miguelo” (who makes the kissing sound later in the song).

The band breaks things down into the funkiest of bolero-swing only to have it explode into another funk romp, powered by lead singer Cimafunk’s reimagining of 1960s soul singer Otis Redding and Cuban icon Benny Moré.

The final song “Me Voy” opens with great guitar work from “Bejuko” before it turns into a party from start to finish with everyone singing, a funky bass and great drums from Raul “Dr. Zapa” Zapata Surí.

Cimafunk proves that he’s a great front man as the song nears the end and he sings really fast, ending in a big “whooo!”

It’s really fun watching “Caramelo” slide his hands up and down the neck to make grooving bass sounds and when “Miguelo” brings out the whistle, you know it’s a party.

their tune “Me Voy” raises the roof and wakes the dead, with a deep Afro-Cuban, funk-party groove. This time, they turned the Tiny Desk into the hippest Cuban dance spot on the East Coast.

I don’t know what these songs are about, but I don’t care, because they are super fun.

[READ: March 22, 2020] “Out There”

This story is about dating.

But in addition to the normal pitfalls of modern dating, Folk has incorporated blots into the mix.

The narrator says that after a bleak Thanksgiving back home in Illinois, she returned to San Francisco and downloaded Tinder, Bumble and a few other similar apps.  She says she never liked the idea of ordering up a date the way you’d order an Uber, but now the blots had really complicated things.

I thought that perhaps I was too out of touch with this story and that blots were some thing I hadn’t heard of.  But no, blots are (as far as I know) specific to this story. They are biomorphic humanoids.

Early blots were easy to identify–too handsome, tall and lean, they were like models with no sense of humor.

She met one at a party.  Her fiend had invited her to the party to beta-test the blots without her knowing about them.  Roger was “solicitous, asking about my family, my work as a teacher and my resentment toward the tech industry.  He seemed eager to charm.”  But she felt spotlighted by this attentiveness and was not charmed by him. (more…)

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Cayti Bourquin & Yishan Li–Paradox Girl: First Cycle (2019)

Posted in Adrianne Lenker, Australia, Big Thief, Bryan Valeza, Caitlin Kittridge, Cayti Bourquin, Fantasy, Feminism, Funny (ha ha), Graphic Novel, Huh?, Indigo Sparke, NPR/PRI/PBS, Roberta Ingranata, Superheroes, Supernatural, Time Travel, Tiny Desk Concert, Waffos, Yishan Li on March 22, 2020| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: INDIGO SPARKE-Tiny Desk Concert #951 (February 26, 2020).

I was sure that I had heard of Indigo Sparke before–in some kind of NPR context.  But I can’t find any evidence of that.

The only thing I can figure is that I must have listened to this Tiny Desk Concert when it was first published, because I remembered her telling the story about driving a car (before the second song).

Indigo Sparke is an Australian singer-songwriter.  She sings quietly and plays an electric guitar almost without amplification (aside from occasionally loud drone sounds).  Bob says,

I asked everyone to gather a little closer than usual around my desk for this one.

“Colourblind” starts the set off as she quietly strums and sings.

Up next is “the day i drove the car around the block.”  She introduces the song by telling about

trying to learn how to drive on the other side of the road while in Los Angeles, with a huge vehicle and a stick shift.

After that introduction, you might think the song was amusing.  But it is not

It is a tale of defeat and solace:

“Take off all my clothes, kiss me where the bruises are,” …
“Love is the drug, and you are in my blood now.”

Sparke sings a little too slowly for my liking–the kind of stretched out vocals that make it hard for me to follow the thread of the song (or maybe that you need a few listens to fully appreciate).

Before the final song, she invites her partner, Adrianne Lenker of Big Thief up to play guitar with her.  She tells us that the song is so new it has no title–if you think of one while she’s playing it, let Bob know.  It has since been named “Burn.”

Lenker’s addition of chords (and lovely harmonics) add a nice extra layer to the song.

[READ: March 21, 2020] Paradox Girl: First Cycle

Who doesn’t love a story that begins: “Do you know what happens when you violate causality?”

Paradox Girl is a time-traveler who has changed her past so many times she doesn’t know what he truth is.  She also lives with about a hundred copies of herself.

Her partner in crime-fighting is Axiom Man.

This book had so much that I love in a superhero story–strong female characters, wild humor and all kinds of time-travel paradoxes.  It even had fantastic artwork from Yishan Li–I love the light purple lines that indicate some time travel magic.

But I guess I learned that this is something of a one-note premise.  Which means that most of the stories are variants on the one idea that she can appear anywhere at anytime and that her other selves will be there as well.

Often this works pretty well, but I guess reading six comics in a row gets a bit samey. (more…)

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John Patrick Green–Investigators (2020)

Posted in Alligators, Children's Books, Death Cab For Cutie, First Second :01, Funny (ha ha), Graphic Novel, Hot Pockets, Jenny Lewis, John Patrick Green, Language, Mystery, NPR/PRI/PBS, Tiny Desk Concert on March 21, 2020| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: JENNY LEWIS-Tiny Desk Concert #950 (February 24, 2020).

I was lucky enough to see Jenny Lewis open for Death Cab for Cutie.  I really enjoyed her set and how much fun they all seemed to be having.  Although I guess my version of her show paled in comparison to her headlining show:

Having seen Jenny Lewis’ recent concert spectacle, with its Las Vegas sparkle — complete with a multi-level stage — I loved the contrast her Tiny Desk Concert provided.

There was certainly spectacle, but maybe it was the venue (darker than it should have been) that made it less Las Vegas and more Atlantic City.  But either way, it’s obvious that this Tiny Desk is very different from that set.

Jenny arrived at NPR with just her acoustic guitar and bandmates Emily Elbert, who sang and played guitar, and Anna Butterss on upright bass and vocals. Stripped of all the glitz, it was the words that found their way to my heart. A consummate storyteller, going as far back to her days with her band Rilo Kiley, Jenny’s words have comforted and inspired so many.

She sings two of her three Tiny Desk songs from her fourth solo record, On the Line. These are tough breakup songs, though she redirects all the pain into thoughtful fun.

Jenny plays guitar on “Rabbit Hole” and that upright bass adds some great low notes to Jenny’s high vocals.

She even turned “Rabbit Hole” into an NPR sing-along

The crowd very willingly sings along–except for one person who looks defiantly at the camera instead.

For “Do Si Do” Jenny puts down her guitar and picks up a tambourine.  The low bass notes that start the song are almost shockingly loud and rumbling.  There’s a few very high backing vocals in the song which are all provided by Emily Elbert (I especially like the Ooh ooh ooh and wonder if she does them on record as well).

The blurb also includes this line

and [she] gave us all a Hot Pockets surprise. You’ll have to watch for that one.

That comes when she messes up “Just One Of The Guys.” (or J-O-O–T-G).  I’ve thought that that song sounded really familiar, but never in the way she suggests.

They (thankfully) start the song from the top.  It’s my favorite song of hers and I’m glad to get it all the way through.

The original of this song is super catchy and this quieter version (no electric guitar melodies mid-song) is just as catchy.  Elbert also does a nifty solo (very high up the neck) on the acoustic guitar.

This is another wonderful Tiny Desk Concert that once again I am going to complain is waaay too short.  One of these days, artists I’ve heard of will get more than fifteen minutes.

[READ: March 15, 2020] Investigators

I have loved everything that John Patrick Green has done–Hippopotamister, Kitten Construction Company and now Investigators.  His humor is excellent and his artwork is so clean and enjoyable.

The premise of this book is pretty much based upon the fact that Gators is the last sound in Investigators.  What I mean is that this book is chock full of word play–some of it clever, some of it really dumb and all of it very very funny.

Mango and Brash are the top agents and they are on the case (Brash: “Hey get offa my case!” while Mango stands on Brash’s suitcase).  The case contains a mustache and chef hats.  Turns out that chef Gustavo Mustachio is missing.  Gustavo is the guy on all the pizza boxes and is the chef behind some of the best cupcakes.

There’s a giant creature who has taken him and is demanding that Gustavo cook something perfect. (more…)

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Thomas Siddell–Gunnerkrigg Court: Volume 4: Materia (2013)

Posted in Adoption, Adventure, Alternate Reality, Boredom, Canadian Music, Culture Shock, Demons, Elisapie, Fantasy, First Nations, Funny (ha ha), Ghosts, Graphic Novel, Inuit, Lizzo, Magic, Monsters, Myths, Pigeons, Research, Robots, Romance, Science, Set at School, Smarty Pants, Supernatural, Superstitions, Thomas Siddell, Threats, Tiny Desk Concert, Unfinished series, Witches, YA Books, Zombies on March 19, 2020| Leave a Comment »

516ZKjM2CqL._SX351_BO1,204,203,200_ (1) SOUNDTRACK: ELISAPIE-Tiny Desk Concert #948 (February 20, 2020).

downloadElisapie (I have no idea how to pronounce that) is a First Nations singer from Salluit, on the Northern tip of Quebec.

She sings in Inuktitut (as well as in English and French).  And her voice is absolutely intense.

Her songs are very personal–she sings of

her life as an adopted child and of meeting her biological mother. Now, as a mother herself, she sings about what it must have meant to her own mother to give up her child.

Elisapie left her birth-village, Salluit, as a teenager and headed to Montreal, leaving her community and her sick mom. The songs she sings, here all come from her album, The Ballad of the Runaway Girl and deal with the consequences of her leaving.

These songs are definitely rock, but with a different overall sound.  Jason Sharp’s bass saxophone is fantastic–creating deep low rumbles and otherworldly squawks.

“Arnaq” opens with some chugging guitar riffs (I can’t tell if the guitar is acoustic or electric) from Joe Grass and after a verse or so, some great noisy electric guitars from Josh Toal, who punctuates the song with little solos.  There’s no bass guitar because the bass saxophone covers all of the low ends.

The song, even though it is in Inuktitut is rally catchy with a chorus of “ahhhhhh, I, yi, I” (or something).

The middle section is full of great noises as both guitars and the sax all play some wild solos.

All of this is held together by “the tasteful drumming of Evan Tighe.”

She says the second song, “Una” is the most painful yet the most freeing song.  It is  written to her biological mother.  In Inuktitut the word for mother means “our little bag” because they carried us.

It opens with slow staccato guitar chords and a near a capella vocal before the quiet electric guitar from Josh Toal joins in.  The spareness of the beginning of this song is a great counterpoint to the end of the song when everyone joins in–vocals, guitars, sax and some complex drumming.

Before the final song, she looks around and smiles and says Lizzo was here!  My daughter is very excited.

The final song “Darkness Bring The Light” opens with some great weird sounds from everyone.  Tighe makes scraping metallic sounds as he slides his drum sticks around the cymbals.  Toal plays a synth intro as Grass bows his guitar and Sharp makes waves of gentle sounds to underpin the melody

This one is in English.  She sings a melody that rides over the sounds.  After 2 minutes the drums kick in and after a run through of the chorus, the guitarists join in

Bob Boilen concludes

This is an extraordinary Tiny Desk from an artist with something meaningful to say.

He is absolutely correct.  This set is fantastic.

[READ: March 10, 2020] Gunnerkrigg Court 4 [32-41]

I really enjoyed the first three books of this series and then promptly forgot about it.  I happened to see this book at the library and was excited to see that I hadn’t read it.  Can it really have been three years since I last read about these characters?

Being away for so long made some of this a little confusing.  I will have to read the whole story again some time.

Chapter 32 shows Antimony returning from the forest and there is a warm welcome with Renard. But Katarina’s welcome is cool–“you kinda make it hard to be your friend.” Antimony tries very hard to make Kat like her again…too hard.  She creates scary situations in which she can “save” Kat,  It doesn’t exactly work, although Kat isn’t really mad anymore, just annoyed.  But then a gigantic creepy monster thing comes out of the water.  Kat is impressed by Annie’s conjuring until Annie says she didn’t do it.  They run out.

Only to learn that this is Lindsey–the creature who helped design most of everything at the court–a giant crablike creature.

All this time Kat has been working on the idea of growing a robot.  Well, not exactly, but kind of.  She imagines using a muscular frame to build a robot body around.  Or something.  She is able to use the smarts of one of the existing robots to give her a hand.  The code they provide is actually a small white cube with no writing on it.  Amazingly Kat is able to read parts of it. (more…)

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Colin Jost–“My High-School Commute” (New Yorker, March 16, 2020)

Posted in Boats, Colin Jost, David Lynch, Essays, Funny (ha ha), Goonies, Joanne Kyger, Julie Doiron, Mount Eerie, New York City, New Yorker, NPR/PRI/PBS, Saturday Night Live, Set at School, Tiny Desk Concert, Trains on March 17, 2020| Leave a Comment »

2020_03_16 (1)SOUNDTRACK: MOUNT EERIE-Tiny Desk Concert #945 (February 12, 2020).

maxresdefaultI’ve heard of Mount Eerie, but I didn’t really know that much about them. And when I say them, I really mean him, Phil Elverum.

Phil Elverum’s songs come full circle, swooping down like vultures and floating up like ashes from flames. Throughout his work in Mount Eerie and The Microphones, idealism comes up against realism, existence entangles with impermanence and love discovers new forms. So when he sings, “Let’s get out the romance,” in close harmony with Julie Doiron at the Tiny Desk, there’s a history going back nearly two decades to an isolated cabin in Norway where he first wrote the phrase.

I have never really enjoyed quiet, sad music.  It’s just not my thing.  So this Tiny Desk is definitely not my favorite.  Although I can appreciate the intensity of his lyrics and the beautiful way his and Julie’s voices combine.

They recorded an album, Lost Wisdom Pt. 2, last year.

the sparsely decorated, deeply felt album meditates on a heart still breaking and mutating, but also gently reckons with a younger version of himself. That refrain on “Belief” is performed here with only an electric guitar and a nylon-string acoustic bought in Stockholm during that Scandinavian trip many years ago.

“Belief” opens with quiet acoustic guitar and then the two of them singing together.  And it’s pretty intense:

Elverum remembers himself as a young man who begged “the sky for some calamity to challenge my foundation.” We then become the Greek chorus, witness to the unfolding tragedy: first, the death of his wife and mother to their child, the musician and illustrator Geneviève Castrée, in 2016; then the marriage to actor Michelle Williams in 2018 and their divorce less than a year later. “‘The world always goes on,'” Doiron sings in answer, quoting a Joanne Kyger poem, “‘Breaking us with its changes / Until our form, exhausted, runs true.'”

Doiron’s guitar contributions are so minimal, she doesn’t play for most of the song.   The song runs almost seven minutes and does seem to end mid-sentence.

When “Belief” suddenly ends, seemingly in the middle of a thought, Elverum’s eyes search the room. The audience responds with applause, but a version of this dynamic plays out everywhere he’s performed for the last three years — long silences broken up by tentative claps, nervous laughs struck by grief and absurdity.

The second song, “Enduring The Waves” is only three minutes long.  He begins it by speak/singing “Reading about Buddhism” and I wasn’t sure if it was a lyric or an introduction.  It’s a lyric.  This song features Julie and Phil singing seemingly disparate lines over each other until their final lines match up perfectly  The construction of this song is really wonderful even if it is still a pretty slow sad song,

“Love Without Possession” Julie sings the first verse and after her verse, Phil starts strumming his guitar in what can only be described as a really catchy sort of way.  They harmonize together and Doiron includes minimal electric guitar notes.  This is my favorite song of the bunch.

[READ: March 13, 2020] “My High-School Commute”

Colin Jost is one of the presenters on Saturday Night Live‘s Weekend Update.  I think he’s very funny and has a great sarcastic tone.  Although, I have to agree with the title of his new memoir: A Very Punchable Face.

This is an amusing essay about his daily commute to high school, in which he took “a journey by land, sea and underground rocket toilet.”

His grandfather always told him about the value of an education–protect your brain! was his constant refrain.

It was his brain that got him out of Staten Island.  It got him into a Catholic high school called Regis* *Regis Philbin was named after my high school but went to Cardinal Hayes High School which was full of kids who beat the shit out of kids who went to Regis.

Regis is one of the best schools in the country and it is free–tens of thousands of kids apply for 120 spots. (more…)

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Chris O’Dowd & Nick V. Murphy–Moone Boy: The Fish Detective (2015)

Posted in Brazil, Chris O'Dowd, Christmas, Fish, Funny (ha ha), Imaginary Friends, Ireland, Irish Writer, Maren Morris, Moone Boy, Nick V. Murphy, NPR/PRI/PBS, Sheryl Crow, Stevie Nicks, Tiny Desk Concert, Video Games on March 5, 2020| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: SHERYL CROW-Tiny Desk Concert #919/Tiny Desk Fest October 29, 2019 (December 2, 2019).

This Tiny Desk concert was part of Tiny Desk Fest, a four-night series of extended concerts performed in front of a live audience and streamed live on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.

Back in October, NPR allowed fans to come watch some Tiny Desk Concerts live.  October 29th was pop rock night featuring Sheryl Crow.

I had tried to get tickets to the Tiny Desk Fest.  Possibly on this night, although really I wanted the indie rock night.  If I had gotten tickets to this night I would have been a little bummed to find out it was Sheryl Crow.  I did like her many years ago, but I basically grew disinterred in her after her first couple of albums.

However, this set proves to be a lot of fun.  Her old songs sound great, the new songs are fun and her voice sounds fantastic.

“I heard a big thing on NPR about the shrinking of the attention span and how now, with pop songs, everything has like six seconds before you gotta change it, because the kids swipe over,” Sheryl Crow tells the crowd early in her Tiny Desk Fest concert. “I’m just gonna tell you right now: We’re dinosaurs. … And while the kids are all writing fast food — which is super-cool ’cause it tastes great, super-filling — we’re sort of still writing salmon. We’re the songwriters that are here to tax your attention span.”

She opens with “All I Wanna Do”

Twenty-five years ago this fall, Crow was in the midst of a massive career breakthrough: Her inescapable hit “All I Wanna Do” was entrenched in the Top 5 — it would later win the Grammy for Record of the Year — and her 1993 debut album, Tuesday Night Music Club, was well on its way to selling more than 7 million copies in the U.S. alone.

Gosh it seems way more than 25 years ago to me.

I get a kick that she starts the song by saying “This ain’t no country club.  This ain’t no disco. This is Tiny Desk.”  The songs sounds terrific.  It holds up well and feels rejuvenated with some amazing pedal steel from Joshua Grange.  Surprisingly, the song doesn’t finished, it just jumps right into “A Change Would Do You Good.”  This song is one of several that feature nice keyboards sounds from Jen Gunderman (who also provides backing vocals).  Sheryl hits some nice high notes and there’s a great slide guitar solo from Peter Stroud.

She played some songs from her new album.  Introducing “Prove You Wrong,” she says this song features Stevie Nicks and Maren Morris.  They’re not here but were gonna play it anyway.  This song is remarkably country-sounding with some bouncy country bass from Robert Kearns.  There’s also a honky tonkin’ guitar solo form Audley Freed and a more rocking guitar solo from Stroud.

She wrote some songs with Chris Stapleton, like “Tell Me When It’s Over.”  This opens with a little drum fill from Frederick Eltringham.  It’s got a surprisingly disco feel in the middle of the song with some real old-fashioned keyboard sounds.

Fifteen years ago she moved to Nashville to quite out the noise–you know the noise of the world.  She says NPR is calming.  There are tiny desks everywhere with good people sitting behind them telling the truth at their tiny desks.  This is an introduction to “Cross Creek Road” an Americana song with solos from first Stroud and then Freed.

She continues saying that things are crazy these days and its hard to raise kids telling them you’re not allowed to lie, truth matters, be nice to one another, be empathetic and then having to turn off the TV if the news comes on.  Her nine year old asked her if the apocalypse was real, which freaked her out until she realized he was watching a zombie movie.  This

“Out Of Our Heads” proves to be a good old-fashioned campfire sing along.

The set ends with “If It Makes You Happy.”  She starts it slowly in an improv way, but when everyone kicks in it sounds pretty darn nice (although maybe a little slow).  I really like the keys that sound like flutes in the middle.

The blurb says she performed two unexpected encores.  I assume we heard them but they just cut out the intervening clapping?  Either way, it’s a really great set and shows that Crow still has it.

[READ: December 2019] Moone Boy: The Fish Detective

This second book has an introduction from the imaginary Friend just like the first one.  It invites you to put your feet up (but not on the book unless you enjoy reading through your toes) and to have a snack (the red bits on the cover taste like strawberries).

The book opens with the explanation that Martin Moone doesn’t handle the calendar very well–he doesn’t like long stretches of time on between holidays, so he divides the calendar into “yections:”

  • Boxing for Love: St.Stephen’s Day to Valentine’s Day
  • Lovefool: Valentine’s Day  to April Fools Day
  • Fools’s Gold: April Fools Day to 20th May (my birthday when I always ask for gold gifts)
  • Golden Days: 20th May to end of term
  • Days of Wonder: summer holidays!
  • Wonder What Happened to the New School: start of term to 5th November
  • Why Won’t It End: 5th November to Christmas Day

We were in the last yection–it was 50 sleeps til Christmas and Martin wondered if his parents had thought of a good present for him. They said they were torn “between getting you new school trousers or fixing the sink in the bathroom. You love that sink, don’t you?”

Then Martin gives the crux of this book: For Christmas he wants a Game Boy.

That seems unlikely to happen so maybe Martin could get a job.  He thinks he’d like to a be a bin man.  But the actual bin man says you’re not exactly a man are you?  It’s in the job title after all. (more…)

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David Sedaris–“Unbuttoned” (New Yorker, March 2, 2020)

Posted in CHAI, David Sedaris, Death, Essays, Funny (ha ha), Hospitals, Kawaii, New Yorker, NPR/PRI/PBS, Nudism, Old Age, Parenting, Tiny Desk Concert on March 2, 2020| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: CHAI-Tiny Desk Concert #905 (October 23, 2019).

What sounds like circus music plays as four women dressed in hoods with colorful bangles run out behind the desk and start dancing.

The lyrics begin: C-H-A-I.  CHAI.  We are CHAI.

The choreography continues for about a minute and a half when they take off their robes to reveal the four of them wearing matching pink and orange outfits.

The quartet made its grand entrance wearing hooded pom-pom outfits, with loosely choreographed dance moves, while the band’s song “This Is CHAI” played boombox style. It felt adorable. But once the hoodies came off, revealing their matching pink, crop top uniforms, the serious fun began.

In yet another example of how the best Tiny Desk Concerts are unfairly short, this super fun and adorable set is not even 11 minutes long.

Although CHAI does manage to play 4 songs in that time.

My face hurt from smiling so much! That’s what I remember most about CHAI’s Tiny Desk. CHAI is a sweet, colorful blanket of joy. These four women from Japan — twin sisters Mana and Kana, along with Yuna and Yuuki — are on a mission to expand the conventional notion of what we think of as “cute” or “kawaii” as it’s called in Japan.

They open with “Hi Hi Baby.”  Yuna plays drums while Mana and Kana start singing.  Then Yuuki starts playing the bass–a fast rumble while Mana and Kana keep singing (and doing choreographed arm gestures).

Their voices are high and they are decked out in pink.

CHAI’s music leans punkish, and the outfits quite pinkish. The songs played at the Tiny Desk come from both the band’s 2017 album Pink and the 2019 album appropriately named Punk. The group’s lyrics bounce back and forth from Japanese to English, often in the same sentence.

For “N.E.O.” Yuna sits at the drum kit and plays a cool, complex pattern while Yuuki’s bass brings in a great low funky riff.  Kana adds some guitar licks as they sing in a kind of staccato style (in harmony).

The song ends and the three of them raise their arms and say We are CHAI!

“Fashionista” is one of these songs where you can tell it’s Japanese and English.  There’s big thumping bass as the vocals kinds of whisper the lyrics.  I don’t know what they’re saying–except the chorus “we are fashionista.”  There’s some cool chunky guitar and a great sliding bass (their bass sound is terrific).  Mid-song Kana plays guitar by itself while singing before the band jumps back in together.

Before the last song.  They introduce themselves:

I’m Mana and I’m Kana and we are twins!   Same face!  Same face!
I’m Yuna and I’m Yukki.  We are … not twins.

CHAI chose “Future” for the final song, with more lyrics to brighten my smile and the smile of those around me.

“This is just my FUTURE！
This song about us forever！
Are you ready？
Never seen before！
It’s just what I imagined！
Come on!”

For “Future” Kana plays a futuristic synth sound while Yuuki plays a slow, low bass and Yuna hits the drums and percussion with her hands.

I’ve been looking forward to this Tiny Desk and it did not disappoint.

[READ: March 1, 2020] “Unbuttoned”

This is a another essay about Sedaris’ father.  Sedaris’ father is 96 and quite frail.

David himself was in the hospital about to undergo “a pretty disgusting procedure: in a few hours’ time, a doctor was scheduled to snake a multipurpose device up the hole in my penis” when his sister called to say that their father was dying.

The urologist said the device had a camera that showed what was going on inside: There’s your sphincter!

He says his previous exam like this involved his prostate

I’m fairly certain it involved forcing a Golden Globe Award up my ass.  I didn’t cry or hit anyone, though.  Thus it annoyed me to see what he English radiologist who’d performed the test had written in the comment section of his report: “Patient tolerated the trans-rectal probe poorly.”

They bought next-day plane tickets for the U.S.  En route DAvid learned that his father had been taken out of intensive care and sent back to his Assisted Living Facility.

When his father woke up, David said “I figured you’d rally as soon as I spent a fortune on last-minute tickets.”  He said he knew “that if the situation were reversed he’d gave stayed put, at least until a discount could be worked out.” (more…)

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Jeremy Whitley, Rosy Higgins, Ted Brandt, Sorah Suhng, Jason Strutz–Princeless: Raven: The Pirate Princess: Book Three: Two Boys, Five Girls and Three Love Stories (2016)

Posted in Action Lab Comics, Elves, Fantasy, Fears, Feminism, Funny (ha ha), Graphic Novel, Jason Strutz, Jeremy Whitley, LGBTQ, NPR/PRI/PBS, Ongoing, Pirates, Rosy Higgins, Science, Sexism, SiR, Sorah Suhng, Supernatural, Ted Brandt, Tiny Desk Concert, Violence, YA Books on February 27, 2020| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: SiR-Tiny Desk Concert #941 (February 3, 2020).

I had never heard of SiR, the R&B singer from Inglewood, CA.  That’s not surprising since I don’t listen to R&B.

But as I often say I’m always surprised to read that someone is very successful and yet I have never heard of them.

Since signing to hip-hop juggernaut Top Dawg Entertainment in 2017, Sir Darryl Farris has been the most consistent, most reliable player on the roster outside of its original four.  His output has further solidified the label’s stake in spaces outside of just rap music.

He sings four songs, all ballads.  His voice is somewhere between speaking and singing with an interesting raspy quality.

The songs come from his latest LP, Chasing Summer.

Themes of regret loom throughout the album and he’s never shied away from writing about personal flaws. His depiction of misdirected desires and heartbreak on “John Redcorn” and “The Recipe” reveal a cruel honesty that couples grapple with at times.

“The Recipe” has some really nice backing vocals from Davion Farris, Jacquelyn Farris and Zyah Belle.

“New Sky” has a pretty piano melody from Ledaris “L.J.” Jones with some nice fat bass from Samuel Davis.   I quite like like the vocals on the chorus.

When he introduces the band he reveals that Davion Farris is his older brother and Jacquelyn Farris is his mom.

The set was also a family affair with his mother and older brother offering support as two of the three background vocalists. We get a glimpse of his upbringing in the gospel choir once those harmonies open up.

The set proves to be unexpectedly emotional

About halfway through the performance, SiR revealed that he’d lost his infant godson a few days prior and dedicated the performance to him. “We’re doing this for him. I didn’t want to come… It took a lot for me to be here today …but we’re gonna get through this.”

He plays the spare “Wires in the Way.”  It’s just his voice with some quiet jazzy guitar from Terrall Whitehead.  Midway through some lovely jazzy piano is added.  Throughout, you can see how emotional SiR is while singing the song and then he needs a moment at the end before they start the last song.

Woah.

He is able to bring the happiness back for the last song.  He says “It’s my favorite song off the album.  Hope you like this last one.”

“John Redcorn” feels like a culmination of the other songs, with everyone playing or singing to make this song very full.  I especially like the way Roger “Jooseondrums” Benford makes the cymbals sound like they are filling up the room.

Many Tiny Desk Concerts are emotional and you;d have to be stone cold not to be moved by this one.

[READ: February 20, 2020] Princeless: Raven Book 3

Book Two ended with a cliffhanger–would Raven be able to save Ximena?  She needs to take Ximena for medical care, but she knows that she can’t go anywhere on the island, since her brothers rule everything there.

Katie looks at the maps that Ximena has been making and sees that there’s an island not too far off.  It’s a spa for people who are really injured.  They set sail immediately and Katie is put in charge while Raven stays with Ximena.  Raven reveals that she is in love with Ximena (which most of the crew guessed anyway).

Raven is told that Ximena needs to hear her voice if she is to recover and so Raven tells the story of how her mother and father met.  It’s a pretty wonderful story and is beautifully drawn by Sorah Suhng.

All this time, Sunshine has been listening at the door.  It turns out she’s quite jealous of Ximena because she has a major thing for Raven.  So when Raven asks Sunshine to tell Ximena a story, Sunshine is really torn.  But she knows how important it is so she tells the story of how her parents met–that a human and an elf could conceive.  It’s a pretty great story drawn in a very different style by Jason Strutz. (more…)

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Jeremy Whitley, Rosy Higgins & Ted Brandt–Princeless: Raven: The Pirate Princess: Book Two: Free Women (2016)

Posted in Action Lab Comics, Fantasy, Fears, Feminism, Funny (ha ha), Graphic Novel, Jeremy Whitley, Kristin Hersh, Magic, NPR/PRI/PBS, Pirates, Rising Appalachia, Rosy Higgins, Science, Sexism, Ted Brandt, Tiny Desk Concert, Violence, Witches, YA Books on February 26, 2020| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: RISING APPALACHIA-Tiny Desk Concert #940 (January 31, 2020).

I feel like I have heard of Rising Appalachia, but I’m not sure that I have.  If I had, I certainly didn’t know anything by them.  But I think I had a pretty safe guess.

Rising Appalachia’s Tiny Desk Concert is charged with the roots music that sisters Leah Song and Chloe Smith learned in fiddle camps as kids. Growing up in urban Atlanta and beyond, they also heard rhythms from a wider world, and their music grew to reflect new sounds and their activism. When they came to NPR, their van was packed with a bodhrán (Irish drum), an ngoni (West African harp) a huge gourd, a cello, a baritone guitar and more, including the other musicians who make up this wandering, Atlanta-based band: David Brown, Biko Casini, Arouna Diarra and Duncan Wickel.

And so, with this band you get traditional-sounding folk music but with world music instruments and influences.  It melds beautiful.  And their lyrics are great, too.

“Resilient” starts the set with just the two of them.  Chloe Smith is on banjo while Leah Song is on bodhrán.  Their voices are great together as they sing a fantastic protest song. There’s so many great lyrics to choose from, but I’ll pick just this one

My voice feels tiny I’m sure so does yours / put em all together make a mighty roar.

There’s also a really catchy “who ho ho” in the chorus, which is a fun treat.

After the song, Leah says they are reviving the voice of the people.  Then, introducing the next song, “Medicine”  she says this is for all of our ancestors and all the medicine keepers.

Chloe switches to acoustic guitar.  The song begins with a a bowed, then plucked cello from Duncan Wickel.  Biko Casini plays a high hat with a big circular gourd for a bass and percussive sound.

There’s a very nice bowed cello solo.  Leah sings lead and Chloe adds some terrific harmonies.  Midway through the song you can really hear Arouna Diarra on the ngoni, playing some high notes, but it’s his solo at the end of the song that is so cool.  I’m fascinated by this instrument.

Before the final song, they joke that they wanted Leah to jump on the desk and that they might crowd surf.

Leah says she was going to shave I Love Bob Boilen into her hair.  Or maybe NPR, but if you mess that up it could just go wrong.

They end the set with a song Leah and Chloe “learned from our mama, an old boot-stompin’ Appalachian folk tune” called “Cuckoo.”  They aim to bring old music into a new format.

“Cuckoo” is a song I know from Kristin Hersh and, coincidentally, she played it when I saw her recently.

For this song, Leah plays the banjo and Chloe plays the violin (as does Duncan Wickel).   Their take is rather different from Kristin’s–not in the melody or lyrics but the way they sing the words.  Kristin has a very different vocal style.

The end features a njongi solo along with the baritone guitar solo from David Brown followed by a fiddle solo

And after a minute or so of soloing there’s split second pause before everyone rocks out a bit.  You can really hear the baritone guitar and its bass notes here.

I really enjoyed this set and I’m very curious about this band.

[READ: February 20, 2020] Princeless: Raven Book 2

Book One of this series was pretty intense.  And book two doesn’t really let up.

Well, the first chapter lets up some as we meet the crew and the women get used to the ship.  There are some rope climbing contests, everyone also wants to take a turn steering.  And Ximena and Raven are arguing already.

It’s a cool way to meet some of the new cast.  Dezzy would rather sunbathe than work.  Helena is very strong, Cid is deaf–which we find out because Jayla is yelling at her (to no avail obviously) and is getting frustrated and petulant–she’s a terrible character.  And powerful Sunshine is incredibly seasick.

Then they get into some sword practice. Raven addresses her crew calling them bilge rats. But Katie interrupts, “The insulting thing, is that something we have to do?”

Raven says she never thought of it.  That’s just how pirates speak. But Raven decides the ship will be a democracy (except in battle when her word is law).  She asks who finds insults to be a motivator?  No one raises her hand.  Raven hereby abolishes “name-calling, back-biting, under-cutting, insulting and sarcastic undermining” from her ship. (more…)

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Jeremy Whitley, Rosy Higgins & Ted Brandt–Princeless: Raven: The Pirate Princess: Book One: Captain Raven and the All-Girl Pirate Crew (2016)

Posted in Action Lab Comics, Fantasy, Fears, Feminism, Funny (ha ha), Graphic Novel, Jeremy Whitley, Kikagaku Moyo, Magic, Pirates, Rosy Higgins, Sandy Denny, Science, Sexism, Ted Brandt, Violence, Witches, YA Books, Yuck! on February 25, 2020| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: KIKAGAKU MOYO-“Gypsy Davey”/”Mushi No Uta” (2020).

Japanese psych rock band Kikagaku Moyo (who are amazing live) were picked for the new Sub Pop 7″ singles cub release.  I’m not part of that club, but the tracks are available to stream.  Here’s what the band says:

This is a limited release as a part of the Sub Pop Singles Club Vol. 4, and physical copies will only be available to subscribers of the series. As such, it won’t be available at our shows or in stores…but you can listen now on streaming sites.

The first song, “Gypsy Davey,” is a reworking of the traditional British folk song by the same name. We referenced Sandy Denny’s arrangement from the 1971 album Fotheringay for our performance.  We recorded the track in London with guest vocalist Kandice Holmes, aka Bells @be__lls.

The second song, “Mushi No Uta,” was written by Tomo and Go and recorded last summer in their living room.

Both of these were recorded in brief windows during our touring in 2019. We are very happy with opportunity hope you enjoy the songs.

I love the way they have taken this old English folk song “Gypsy Davey” and added some great psychedelic elements.  First off it starts with drums and some very cool sitar work.  The guitars are slow and echoing.  Then after the first verse, the full band joins in with a slow 70’s sounding folk rock (with electric guitars) song.  By the third verses, the two guitars are doing different things and it all works together very nicely.

I had never heard of Kandic Holmes (aka Bells) but her voice is perfect, sounding old school and like she has heard this song a million times and can’t wait to sing it again.

The middle of the song has a wonderful, slow sitar solo.  I love that they have taken folk and made it international folk.

“Mushi No Uta” is a slow ballad. It does sound a bit like a home made recording (or else it is recorded deliberately close-sounding).  The vocals are whispered and the guitars intertwine nicely.  After a minute and a half, expansive, echoing guitar chords come rumbling through totally changing the atmosphere.  The second guitar plays some wild lines.  After about a minute, it all fades out and the original sound returns–gentle folk acoustic guitar and falsetto vocals.

It’s a nice single and shows a different side of the band.

[READ: February 20, 2020] Princeless: Raven Book 1

I really enjoyed Book 3 of the Princeless series in which Adrienne encountered Raven locked up in a castle.

I thought Raven was a pretty awesome character and I was really happy to see that Jeremy Whitley had created a series just for her.

This series is a lot less light-hearted than the Princeless series and definitely skews a bit older than Princeless.  It’s also not quite as funny (by design, I assume).  However, it features a wonderfully diverse crew of women and all of the great feminism that Princeless is known for.

As this book opens, we see Raven’s father showing her how to shoot an arrow–how she came to be known as Black Arrow and how fearsome she was even as a child.

The story of the excitement she had as a child on her father’s ship is contrasted to the drudgery of the present–fixing up the ship that she has commandeered from her brother’s mates.  She realizes that if she is going to get revenge on her brothers for locking her up, she needs a crew.  So she heads into town where she bumps into (literally) a woman who barely speaks English and is down on her luck.  She says she ate today, but has no money left.  Raven gives her some coins and the woman replies, “You give me to have these?”  She gives Raven a huge kiss and walks off.  That’s when Raven realizes the woman stole her purse.

The rest of the chapter shows some excellently drawn chase scenes from Rosy Higgins and Ted Brandt in which the thief (who we will learn is a half-Elf named Sunshine) is impressed by Raven’s tenacity and in which Raven is impressed by Sunshine’s physical abilities.  Sunshine runs into a bar and as Raven is about to tackle her, the bar owner points a crossbow at her. (more…)

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