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Archive for the ‘Funny (ha ha)’ Category

Breyten Breytenbach–“How Beautiful the Mountain” (Harper’s, June 2008)

Posted in Avishai Cohen, Breyten Breytenbach, Eric Harland, Field Recordings, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Futility, Harper's, Huh?, Masturbation, Newport Jazz Festival, NPR/PRI/PBS, Political Humor on November 11, 2018| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: ERIC HARLAND AND AVISHAI COHEN-“Scrap Metal Improv” (Field Recordings, February 28, 2012).

This Field Recording [Eric Harland And Avishai Cohen: Scrap Metal Improv] is set behind the scenes at the 2011 Newport Jazz Festival.

Eric Harland is the sort of drummer who can conjure the music out of just about anything. And when you are this sort of drummer, you get asked to play with a lot of different musicians. When he joined us for this field recording, Harland was in the middle of playing three sets with three different bands in under five hours at the Festival.

One of those gigs was with the trumpeter Avishai Cohen and his band Triveni. Right after they finished with their set, we absconded with both trumpeter and drummer into an abandoned quadrant of Fort Adams State Park for a little experiment. Watch as Harland squats and annexes a rusty piece of scrap metal for a makeshift ride cymbal. The following improvisation seems to just fall into place.

This is an unusual field recording because, indeed, as it opens Harland is banging on pieces of metal (they sound pretty good too).  He plays for a bout a minute and then Avishai comes over and plays a two-minute trumpet improv around what Harland is doing.  It’s pretty need and a good example that you can make music anywhere.

[READ: January 22, 2018] “How Beautiful the Mountain”

This is (surprise) a strange story–one of those where the narrator just seems to be having a great old time being weird and rambling.  Where a descriptive paragraph just turns insane.

After a nice descriptive paragraph about a country it gets a bit, questionable: You could perhaps say this country has the smoothness and the symmetry of the inside of a much used mouth. I am the suckhole, the chewing and the cud.”

After this statement, “During the twentieth century there arose in some peripheral parts of the globe an obsession with democracy and human rights. Don’t bother to read the rest, it is of no importance.” (more…)

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Michael Shea–“Uncle Tuggs” (published 1987) [Ghost Box II] (2018)

Posted in Bauhaus, Beer, Bela Lugosi, Canadian Content, Death, Drinking, Drugs, Funny (ha ha), Ghosts, Halloween, Hingston & Olsen, Michael Shea, Patton Oswalt, Revenge, Short Story, Supernatural, The Ghost Box, Violence, Yuck! on October 30, 2018| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: BAUHAUS-“Bela Lugosi’s Dead” (1979).

This was Bauhaus’ first single–a nine minute ode to being undead.  It’s considered the foundation of Goth music.

“Bela Lugosi’s Dead” starts with noises and feedback–echoing guitar scratches and atmospherics.

After about a minute and a half the simple three note bass line begins–slow and menacing.

Another minute later the vocals begin–Peter Murphy’s low voice reciting the lyrics.

White on white translucent black capes
Back on the rack
Bela Lugosi’s dead
The bats have left the bell tower
The victims have been bled
Red velvet lines the black box
Bela Lugosi’s dead
Undead undead undead

The guitars are primarily high notes as the chords change and for a brief moment in the chorus, the three-note melody goes up in stead of down.

The remainder of the lyrics:

The virginal brides file past his tomb
Strewn with time’s dead flowers
Bereft in deathly bloom
Alone in a darkened room
The count
Bela Lugosi’s dead
Undead undead undead

Around five-minutes the song quiets down to just drums and echoing scratched guitars.  Around seven minutes, Murphy starts wailing “Bela’s undead.”  The last minute or so returns to the beginning with echoed guitars sounds and scratches.

Lo-fi creepiness.

[READ: October 29, 2018] “Uncle Tuggs”

Just in time for Halloween, from the people who brought me The Short Story Advent Calendar and The Ghost Box. comes Ghost Box II.

This is once again a nifty little box (with a magnetic opening and a ribbon) which contains 11 stories for Halloween.  It is lovingly described thusly:

The Ghost Box returns, like a mummy or a batman, to once again make your pupils dilate and the hair on your arms stand straight up—it’s another collection of individually bound scary stories, edited and introduced by comedian and spooky specialist Patton Oswalt.

There is no explicit “order” to these books; however, Patton Oswalt will be reviewing a book a day on his Facebook page.

Much respect to Oswalt, but I will not be following his order.  So there. (more…)

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Harlan Ellison–“From A to Z, in the Chocolate Alphabet” (published 1976) [Ghost Box II] (2018)

Posted in AtoZ, Canadian Content, Danny Elfman, Death, Fears, Funny (ha ha), Ghosts, Halloween, Harlan Ellison, Hingston & Olsen, Horror, Louisa Baldwin, Mudhoney, Patton Oswalt, Philip K. Dick, Religion, Sci-fi, Short Story, Sonic Youth, Supernatural, Surreal, The Ghost Box, Yuck! on October 25, 2018| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: MUDHONEY-“Halloween” (1988).

Mudhoney recorded a cover of Sonic Youth’s “Halloween” just two years after the original was released.

Mudhoney, a deliberately noisy and abrasive band recorded a deliberately noisy and abrasive version of this song.  And yet at the same time, it doesn’t hold a candle to Sonic Youth;s version for deliberate noise and chaos.

On the other hand, in many respects the Mudhoney version is better.  It feels more like a “real song” with the guitar, bass and drums all playing along fairly conventionally.  It follows the same musical patterns as the original, with that same cool riff, but it just feels…more.

Mark Arm sing/speaks the lyrics more aggressively and less sensuously than Kim Gordon did.  In some way it helps to understand the original song a little more, as if they translated it from Sonic Youth-land into a somewhat more mainstream version.  Although it is hardly mainstream what with the noise and fuzz, the cursing and the fact that it lasts 6 minutes.

It feels like Mark emphasizes these lyrics more than the others although it may just be that the songs builds more naturally to them:

And you’re fucking me
Yeah, you’re fucking with me
You’re fucking with me
As you slither up, slither up to me
Your lips are slipping, twisting up my insides
Sing along and just a swinging man
Singing your song
Now I don’t know what you want
But you’re looking at me
And you’re falling on the ground
And you’re twisting around
Fucking with my, my mind
And I don’t know what’s going on

Happy Halloween

[READ: October 24, 2018] “From A to Z, in the Chocolate Alphabet”

Just in time for Halloween, from the people who brought me The Short Story Advent Calendar and The Ghost Box. comes Ghost Box II.

This is once again a nifty little box (with a magnetic opening and a ribbon) which contains 11 stories for Halloween.  It is lovingly described thusly:

The Ghost Box returns, like a mummy or a batman, to once again make your pupils dilate and the hair on your arms stand straight up—it’s another collection of individually bound scary stories, edited and introduced by comedian and spooky specialist Patton Oswalt.

There is no explicit “order” to these books; however, Patton Oswalt will be reviewing a book a day on his Facebook page.

Much respect to Oswalt, but I will not be following his order.  So there. (more…)

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Denis Johnson–“Strangler Bob” (New Yorker, October 23, 2017)

Posted in Denis Johnson, Drugs, Felix Mendelssohn, Field Recordings, Funny (ha ha), Murder, New Yorker, NPR/PRI/PBS, Prison, Short Story, The Ebene Quartet, Violence on October 23, 2018| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: THE EBENE QUARTET-“Felix Mendelssohn: String Quartet No. 6 in F Minor Allegro assai” (Field Recordings, January 25, 2013).

I don’t quite understand why this Field Recording [The Ebene Quartet Powers Through Mendelssohn] sounds so great–it is rich and full with resonant bass notes.  Is it the recording or the quartet itself?

The title suggests it is the players.

The Paris-based Quatuor Ebene — the “Ebony Quartet” — has risen fast in the musical world with two separate artistic identities. In recent years, audiences have gotten to know the “other” Ebenes — the sophisticated cover band that plays everything from “Miserlou” (the Pulp Fiction theme) to jazz to “Someday My Prince Will Come” (yes, the one from Disney’s Snow White).

But when violinists Pierre Colombet and Gabriel Le Magadure, violist Mathieu Herzog and cellist Raphaël Merlin play classical music — whether Beethoven’s transcendent Op. 131 quartet or, as on their latest recording, works by brother-and-sister composers Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn — you realize the depth and beauty of vibrantly intense performances.

Felix Mendelssohn completed his String Quartet No. 6 in F Minor just two months before his own death, and very shortly after the death of his beloved sister Fanny. Even though this second movement, marked Allegro assai, is architecturally the “light” section in this piece, it’s full of dark colors, tense and moody and shaded with grey and black. The music provides rich counterpoint to the setting, the bright and spacious powerHouse Arena, a bookstore, gallery and performance space in Brooklyn’s Dumbo neighborhood.

We thought that the setting would appeal to the quartet’s double identities, given powerHouse’s signature mix of art titles and whimsical children’s selections, including a board book with a cute little piglet that clearly fascinated Raphaël to no end. And our idea worked: The shoot was bookended, so to speak, by the quartet browsing and buying. Maybe our idea worked a little too well? No matter — once the quartet got down to playing, the results were magical.

I have enjoyed Felix Mendelssohn’s music before, but this recording is outstanding.

[READ: October 20, 2017] “Strangler Bob”

I don’t enjoy prison stories.

This one is a little different, I suppose.  It concerns a guy remembering his days in prison.  He was eighteen and hadn’t been in too much trouble when his malicious mischief landed him a sentence of forty-one days.

His cellmate was an older guy, late forties, who was in the cell for doing “something juicy.”  The narrator would eventually learn that his roommate is Strangler Bob, and that his own nickname is Dink.

He befriended a guy his own age named Donald Dundun, who liked to stroll the catwalks and climb the bars spreadeagling himself against the jambs .suspended in the air. (more…)

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Louisa Baldwin–“How He Left the Hotel” (published 1895) [Ghost Box II] (2018)

Posted in Canadian Content, Danny Elfman, Death, Fears, Funny (ha ha), Ghosts, Halloween, Hingston & Olsen, Hotels, Louisa Baldwin, Patton Oswalt, Short Story, The Ghost Box, The Nightmare Before Christmas on October 21, 2018| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: “This is Halloween” (The Nightmare Before Christmas) (1993).

Danny Elfman is pretty awesome at creating catchy and spooky songs.

This song, the theme from The Nightmare Before Christmas, is remarkably catchy.  I mean you hear it once and you’re singing “This is Halloween, This is Halloween!” and it leaves you feeling pretty good and excited for the holiday.

Somehow while you’re watching the movie, the creepiness is in the visuals more than the lyrics.  But divorced from the movie, the lyrics (and vocals are really creepy).

I am the one hiding under your stairs fingers like snakes and spiders in my hair.

or better yet

I am the clown with the tear-away face
Here in a flash and gone without a trace
I am the “who” when you call, “Who’s there?”
I am the wind blowing through your hair
I am the shadow on the moon at night
Filling your dreams to the brim with fright
You can do some pretty amazingly scary music when you market it as a children’s song (and maybe throw in this caveat):
That’s our job, but we’re not mean
In our town of Halloween

[READ: October 20, 2018] “How He Left the Hotel”

Just in time for Halloween, from the people who brought me The Short Story Advent Calendar and The Ghost Box. comes Ghost Box II.

This is once again a nifty little box (with a magnetic opening and a ribbon) which contains 11 stories for Halloween.  It is lovingly described thusly:

The Ghost Box returns, like a mummy or a batman, to once again make your pupils dilate and the hair on your arms stand straight up—it’s another collection of individually bound scary stories, edited and introduced by comedian and spooky specialist Patton Oswalt.

There is no explicit “order” to these books; however, Patton Oswalt will be reviewing a book a day on his Facebook page.

Much respect to Oswalt, but I will not be following his order.  So there. (more…)

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Ben Marcus–“Cold Little Bird” (New Yorker, October 19, 2015)

Posted in Ben Marcus, Doctors, Field Recordings, Funny (ha ha), Humiliation, New Yorker, NPR/PRI/PBS, Parenting, Religion, Short Story, Yuja Wang on October 19, 2018| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: YUJA WANG-“Toccata in D minor, Op. 11” (Field Recordings, February 19, 2014).

I have never given much thought to the physical creation of a piano.  This Field Recording [On A Chilly Factory Floor, Yuja Wang’s Piano Sizzles] is set on the factory floor of Steinway & Sons.  As it opens you can see the craftsmen putting some touches on a piano, which really makes you think about how these machines are created.

This episode also introduced me to Chinese-born pianist Yuja Wang.

She is a [at the time] “27-year-old ultra-glam artist” who came to the factory in

one of her trademark dresses, significant stiletto booties and a Gucci fur stole, as well as some wrist warmers as a concession to the temperature.

The piece she played was also one I was unfamiliar with, played a piece that would chop shrinking violets to mulch: Prokofiev’s “Toccata in D minor, Op. 11.”

The blurb calls the piece “blisteringly difficult” and I totally agree.  It is nonstop notes for nearly five minutes.  Wang is up and down the keyboard, banging out notes in a nearly atonal piece (how she even remembered it much less played it is amazing).  And to see her pressing pedals in stilettos is pretty amusing too.

On a third listen, it’s not so much atonal as just very busy.  The melody is in there, it is just surrounded by so much else.  And watching the blurs that are Wang’s hands is jaw-dropping.

[READ: January 6, 2017] “Cold Little Bird”

I feel like Ben Marcus stories resist me, somewhat.  But this one was fantastic.

Martin and Rachel have two boys: a ten-year old-and a six-year-old.  As the story opens, Jonah, the ten-year-old says he doesn’t want to big hugged anymore. That he doesn’t like it.  He hopes that they will respect his decision about this.  He tells them that they can always cuddle with Lester, the six-year-old.

The parents shrug this off and think it is a phase.  Even when Jonah flatly says “I don’t love you.”

His parents tried to respect his wishes even as it went on for several weeks.  Martin was getting more and more exasperated, but Rachel seemed to be okay with it–telling him to back off and give the boy some space.

Soon enough, Jonah started playing with Lester–being very chummy and lovely with him.  And yet he did not warm up to his parents. (more…)

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Kevin Barry-“The Coast of Leitrim” (New Yorker, October 15, 2018)

Posted in Big Boi, Funny (ha ha), Humiliation, Irish Writer, Kevin Barry, New Yorker, OutKast, Poland, Sex, Tiny Desk Concert on October 15, 2018| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: BIG BOI-Tiny Desk Concert #793 (October 9, 2018).

Like everyone is America, I loved OutKast’s “Hey Ya” when it came out (still do).  And that album was pretty great (if a little long).  And then they kind of imploded.

I was always more of a fan of Andre 3000’s trippy side than Big Boi’s pop side.  And yet for this Tiny Desk, Big Boi is  aton of fun and the songs are really catchy.

These guys helped redefine the sound and style of hip-hop in the ’90s, incorporating funk and psychedelia while transcending genre boundaries. As half of OutKast — still the only rap group ever to take home Album of the Year at the Grammys —

The energy in the room was buoyant and vibrant from the moment they walked in the door. OutKast star Big Boi, Sleepy Brown of the prolific Atlanta production collective Organized Noize, and their eight-member backing band have been working together for 20-plus years, and their chemistry is instantaneous and undeniable.

And Big Boi is hilarious from the get go:

We have come from the planet of Stankonia to give y’all three big songs behind a tiny-ass desk.

The set starts with OutKast’s: “So Fresh, So Clean.”  It sounds as good as it did in 2000, and possibly a little better live.  Big Boi’s voice instantly sounds like it does on the record (the way he echoes clean).  The bass (Preston Crump) sound great running through the song and the gently echoing guitar (David Brown) sounds great.

The backing vocals (Keisha Williams and Terrance “Scar” Smith) are spot on.  Perhaps the biggest surprise comes from the trumpets (Jason Freeman and Jerry Freeman).  It didn’t occur to me that he’d use them, but they really make the track.

After the track, he cracks up the room by saying “the Tiny Desk needs a Tiny fan” (of course they are all wearing matching hoodies that say TRAP HOUSE (in the style of WAFFLE HOUSE).

Big Boi continues to thrive as a solo act, riding the charts with last year’s Boomiverse and its hit single “All Night.”

He describes the song as a “current pop smash hit with L.A. Reid–the first hit to launch that label.”  It opens with a super catchy and fun piano riff (very old-school sounding). The piano is a sample which DJ Cutmaster Swift plays on his Mac and then scratches it on the turntable.

Holy cow is that song catchy.  I love at the end when Big Boi and his rapping partner Sleepy Brown mime the piano part perfectly.

The final song is “The Way You Move” from 2003’s Speakerboxxx/The Love Below.  He describes it in a hilariously casual way as “one of the biggest things we’ve ever done.”  It opens with some great scratching and the snappy drums from Omar Phillips.  This is a song that was a little too poppy for me on the record, but man it’s an undeniable track.

It’s a terrific set and one that I wish was ten minutes longer.

[READ: October 14, 2018] “The Coast of Leitrim”

This story seems like a simple case of a loser-ish guy trying desperately to woo a woman.

Seamus Ferris is thirty-five.  He lives alone in an inherited house and he has fallen hard for a Polish woman who works in a cafe down in Carrick.  He has no mortgage, which is a plus, but he’s not especially exciting, generally speaking.

He feels that the situation is like a vast love affair, although he has never spoken to her–more than ordering anyway.  But he knew that she was sensitive, with a “dreamy distracted air” and she was “at a remove from the other mullockers who worked in the cafe.”  She was pretty but no supermodel–Seamus admitted he himself was not hideous.

Using some sly detective work–he peeked at the work schedule while using the toilet, he learned her name and then did some research on Instagram.  Her full name Katharine Zeileinski was unique enough for him to be able to narrow down the account quickly.  She didn’t post much, but what she did suggested she was single. That’s all he wanted. (more…)

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Etgar Keret–“To the Moon and Back” (New Yorker, October 3, 2016)

Posted in Etgar Keret, Funny (ha ha), Marriage Trouble, New Yorker, Parenting, Saba, Short Story, Sondra Silverston on October 3, 2018| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: SABA-Tiny Desk Concert #791 (October 1, 2018).

I have been thinking about why I have never heard of many of these new artists. Since I don;t pay active attention to the pop charts, it makes sense that I wouldn’t know many of these artists.  I just assume that anyone riding high on the pop chart will worm his or her way into my consciousness.

So maybe it makes sense that I haven’t heard of Saba as his fame seems to be forthcoming:

Every Tiny Desk is special, but sometimes the stars align and we’re treated to an artist just as he’s coming into his own. Six months after releasing Care For Me — a sophomore studio LP on which Saba transforms his survivor’s guilt into something equal parts traumatic and transcendent — the Chicago native paid a visit to Tiny Desk. His performance at NPR’s Washington, D.C. headquarters came just two days after he announced his first tour of Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Korea, scheduled to begin in November. It’s an incredible achievement for an independent artist who released one of 2018’s best hip-hop albums without the benefit, or creative constraints, that come with major-label backing.

The live band does a great job with this music (although it is a little too lite/lite jazz sounding for me).  But the choice of two keyboards, bass and trumpet is interesting if not inspired.

To help translate Care For Me live, Saba brought along a band consisting of the same musicians who helped bring his album to life in the studio — including Daoud Anthony [keys, with the dreads] and daedaePivot [keys, with the shaved head], who produced the entire LP with him; instrumentalists Cheflee [bass] and Brandon Farmer [drums]; theMIND and Kaina [Castillo], who contributed vocals on the record; and another featured vocalist and special guest that Saba took extra pride in introducing.  [And Tahj Chandler on trumpet].

“You’re not gonna believe me when I say it,” he prepped the crowd, turning to the tall man wearing the Saba tee and Panama hat. “This is Chandlar, my father.” Fans of the album may be familiar with Saba’s references to his dad on the songs “Life” and “Prom / King” — the epic seven-and-a-half minute eulogy to Saba’s cousin and Pivot Gang rap collective founding member, John Walt, whose 2017 murder serves as the impetus for Care For Me. But Chandlar is also an accomplished soul singer, songwriter and producer in his own right, as well as one of Saba’s earliest musical influences.

Saba himself is a really nice guy (it seems).  He’s funny and self depricating and his rap skills are impressive.

I didn’t like “Busy/Sirens” as it started because Saba’s delivery is oddly affected (he has that Chicago-style of rapping which I’m mixed on).  The chorus is very mellow and with that trumpet sounds very smooth jazz.  But there’s something fascinating about his delivery.  And the lyrics are really good–tons of words covering all kinds of personal topics with great rhymes.  theMIND sings a verse and he has a nice voice.  It switches to “Sirens” which is an interesting shift.  I hate the repeating keyboard sound, but again the lyrics are great. I wonder if the album version is different.

Hands behind your head
And they won’t let up out they lead
But if I move thats disrespect
But if they shoot then that’s just that?
And if I run then that look bad?
Drawing they gun right off their hip
I’m probably deservin’
‘Cause I know they serve and protect
But they think I’m servin’
Or they think my cellphone’s a weapon
Heard that the robber wore a black mask
I fit the description, a.k.a. “nigga”
What is the difference? It’s an enigma

After a lengthy and thoughtful introduction of everyone, he says, “I very rarely have to introduce this many people… So I feel like I did okay so make some noise for me for doing it.”

For “Logout” he shifts his delivery a little bot and I really like it.  The first verse has a great rhythm and the second verse has amazing speed.  I love how with the chorus (chorus?) it ends with four beat where every gently sings a different staggered word each time.  It’s very cool, especially that it ends so dramatically as well.

In a live set that proved to be as resonant as Care, Saba and his band showcased the album’s emotional depth and range with stark juxtaposition, like the sound of the bright hook on album closer, “Heaven All Around Me,” set against a particularly haunting version of “Life.” It’s a Tiny Desk testament from an artist whose future feels as promising as his pen.

“Heaven All Around Me,” has a cool middle section breakdown with a trumpet fill that switches into the much darker “Life.”

After some more terrific powerful verses, we get the direct chorus

Life don’t mean shit to a nigga who ain’t never had shit.

I wish him and his father a great trip to Europe and beyond.

 

[READ: January 2, 2017] “To the Moon and Back”

About the last Keret story I wrote:

Sometimes a very short, very well written story can really make your day.  I read this story this morning (because it was so short–a page and a quarter) and I was immediately hooked.

I feel like all of his stories are very short and compact.  This one wasn’t quite as enjoyable as the previous one, primarily because it was much darker and full of aggressive language (like his other stories, this one was translated from Hebrew by Sondra Silverston).

This is the story of a man who has been divorced from his wife.  He opens the story by telling us that he can only celebrate his son’s birthday n the day before or the day after his actual birth day because of the restraining order. “The botch.”  He asks if he can just come by and give Lidor a kiss on his birthday she says she’ll make his life hell if he does.

So he has to make up by buying expensive presents, like the $89 multi-copter drone he picked up in duty free.  However, he forgot to buy batteries for the thing.  And rather than disappointing his son, he lies and says they are going to the mall first to buy some candy. (more…)

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David Sedaris–“A Modest Proposal” (New Yorker, September 28, 2015)

Posted in Anthony Bourdain, David Sedaris, Essays, Funny (ha ha), LGBTQ, Marriage (Happy), Marriage Trouble, New Yorker, Smif-N-Wessun, Tiny Desk Concert on September 27, 2018| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: SMIF-N-WESSUN-Tiny Desk Concert #787 (September 17, 2018).

As this Concert opens, you hear Steele or Tek, the duo who make up Smif-n-Wessun say, “Very mysterious as you can see.  I’ve been his partner for 20 plus years, so it’s alright.”   The other replies “I’m not gonna do nothing crazy, I promise.”

And with that yet another old school hip-hop act whom I’ve never heard of gets their 15 minutes of Tiny Desk time.  And once again, they are pretty great.

And the blurb seems to really love them:

Brooklyn-bred hip-hop duo Smif-N-Wessun – consisting of partners in rhyme, Steele and Tek – illuminated the Tiny Desk with their signature, 80-proof poetry: straight, no chaser. Their music, inspired by their gritty and pre-gentrified Bedford-Stuyvesant and Brownsville neighborhoods, offers the vocabulary of veterans who survived the grimy streets. The[y] represent quintessential ’90s true-school hip-hop from the bedrock, when Timberland boots were standard issue.

Backing Steele and Tek is D.C.’s own Black Alley band.  The Black Alley Band played (and were awesome) with Nick Grant some shows ago.  About the band I wrote

I really like the live band, Black Alley.  The percussionist (Walter Clark) is particularly interesting with his congas and an electronic “plate” that plays all kinds of effects.  The bass (Joshua Cameron) is also great and the guitarist (Andrew White) plays a lot of interesting sounds.  I also like how muscular the keyboardist is playing simple chords.  And the drummer is pretty bad ass too.

For this show, they were more subdued and there were only four of them, but their live music was great for the duo and made the whole thing sound great.

Steele says, “It’s always different for us to perform with a live band.  If I look a little sweaty it’s because I’m catching the holy ghost, alright.”

Smif-N-Wessun set things off with their classic debut single “Bucktown,” an ode to their native Brooklyn, which uses their love for lyrical clapbacks as an allegory for overcoming the violence-ridden reality of their wonder years.

Tek says “This was the first single from our first album.  Came out in ’92 that’s probably older than most of you all in the room.”

Throughout the performance, the two emcees dance, share easy banter and express their spiritual connection to the music they’ve created over the years.

Things climax when the two perform “Stand Strong,” another favorite from their debut album Dah Shinin’. Anchored by the mantra, “I never ran / never will,” … the music decries the struggles of late-stage capitalism and the plight of the disenfranchised. It’s a revelation of love, life, and brotherhood in an era when the antiheroes were really just the ones cunning enough to avoid becoming victims.

Steele says this goes out to our street soldiers.  Then says he says Rest in Peace Anthony Bordain, Rest on Peace Todd Banger.  Stay Alive, people!

That survivor’s drive is personified when Steele lets his guard down during the performance and gifts the audience a little boogie, “You can dance to Smif-N-Wessun music too, y’all.

The set concludes with an exclusive premier of their new single, “One Time,” from their forthcoming album, The All, produced by 9th Wonder & The Soul Council.

Steele says “I’m nervous about the next one, this next song has never before been performed.  It’s fresh off our yet to be released (maybe by the time you see this the album will be out).  Hope you enjoy it because we definitely don’t know what we’re gonna do.  I know these guys sound amazing so just listen to them.”

The song is smooth and cool and again the live band (this is the first time they’ve played with Black Alley) sound fantastic.

[READ: January 6, 2017]  “A Modest Proposal”

I don’t always get to read Sedaris’ pieces in order (if they are even published in order).  But this one follows up on a piece he wrote a while back about him picking up trash by the side of the road.

If memory serves he was picking up trash as a way to get extra exercise.  Anyhow, he states that he is still doing this. And while it doesn’t actually impact the story directly, it’s great to see the continuity.

It’s also hilarious to see that while he usually find candy wrappers and the like, on one outing he found a three-inch dildo: “You’d think that if someone wanted a sex toy she’d go for the gold-size-wise.  But this was just the bare minimum, like getting AAA breast implants.” (more…)

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Simon Rich–“The Book of Simon” (New Yorker, September 26, 2016)

Posted in Funny (ha ha), Gods, GoGo Penguin, New Yorker, Religion, Simon Rich, The Devil, Tiny Desk Concert on September 26, 2018| Leave a Comment »

CV1_TNY_11_18_13Tomine.inddSOUNDTRACK: GoGo PENGUIN-Tiny Desk Concert #786 (September 14, 2018).

I’d never heard of GoGo Penguin before, but I was blown away by this Tiny Desk Concert.

The band is a trio: piano, upright bass, and drums.  They play jazz, I suppose.  But there are elements that are prog-rockish and avant garde (none of which makes it not jazz, I realize) such that their music, while instrumental, is genre defying.

GoGo Penguin models closely the leaderless jazz power trio set in motion by forbearers in The Bad Plus, but you can also hear the drippings of electronica groups like Bonobo, and drum-and-bass foundations akin to Roni Size with a bit more acoustic rattle (Turner even fashions his own prepared drum accessories from rope, duct tape, and metal rings, which you can see resting atop his ride cymbal and snare. He tells me he usually has more, but he hasn’t made new ones in a while).

This trio found a way to wedge themselves in the middle of the Venn diagram that overlaps musicians and music heads. Among my colleagues at NPR, I witnessed expressions ranging from studious squints to closed-eye meditation, those in the room experiencing GoGo Penguin’s tunes like they would a collage: the fine details as valuable as the larger shape.

It’s true that Nick Blacka’s fretless bass maintains a very jazz sound and Chris Illingworth has the fluidity of a jazz master on piano.  But it’s pointless to try to define it when you could just enjoy it.

“Raven” was inspired by a dream Chris had of playing chess with a raven.  It opens with ringing piano notes and a bowed double bass.  Then Blacka switches to plucked high notes while Turner plays the cymbals. After about a minute the song kicks into high gear.  The piano hasn’t change, but the bass is pulsing quickly and the drums are playing a fast but quiet rhythm on primarily the snare, but with flourishes left and right.  And it’s all really catchy too.  The rhythm section anchors Chris’ melodic piano lead as the song careens to a close that hearkens back to the opening.

The next one is called “Bardo.”

During his setup, GoGo Penguin’s pianist Chris Illingworth asked if he could remove our piano cover to “access the inside” and, after a few rotations of a screwdriver, he soon handed me a long plank of black painted maple, which has no convenient place to rest in the NPR Music office. If you look closely at the piano innards during “Bardo,” you can see a strip of black tape stretched over a few strings, opposite Illingworth’s bobbing head. It mutes a group of strings, turning them into percussive jabs and dividing the instrument into more explicit rhythmic and melodic sections. What you can’t see: GoGo Penguin’s audio engineer a few feet to the left of frame, dialing-in reverb effects on the piano, which we heard in the room. These two elements, in tandem with bassist Nick Blacka’s precise canvasing and drummer Rob Turner’s charged and delicate pulse, have heavily contributed to the sonic identity of this trio – a signal to jazz jukebox listeners that, “Ah yes, that’s a GoGo Penguin tune.”

It is so neat watching him the piano but making distinctly not piano sounds.  I would have argued that it was a synth making those sounds (which I guess it sort of is).  But the fact that he can do that while also playing a pretty piano melody is great.  I love the way Blacka repeats a simple high note–sliding up the neck of the bass before returning to that incredibly low note that really grounds the song.  All the way through this, Turner is playing some great drum parts–great off kilter rhythms that marry the snare with the toms in complex patterns. And then ending the song by sliding his stick across the top of the cymbals to create a high-pitched squeak.

The final song “Window” opens with a kind of contemporary classical piano melody.  The drums and bass starts playing a great counterpoint and the song just takes off from there.  There’s a false ending where everything stops, just briefly before resuming once more. It’s never clear who to pay attention to during any of these songs, there’s all so fun to watch.

[READ: January 4, 2017] “The Book of Simon”

Simon Rich continues to write very funny, rather blasphemous stories.

This one begins with the story of Job, the righteous Hebrew in the land of Uz.  He had more faith in God than anyone.  Satan made a wager with God that Job would not be so faithful if his life was hard.  And so Satan made Job’s life miserable but still Job praised God.

Four thousand years later however, the Hebrews had become less religious.  Oh there were still bar mitzvahs, but the themes were about Broadway or sports and the parents would hire dancers to come and teach the children dances, may of which were sexually suggestive.

So Satan started gloating.

And by the 21st century he would lean in and say “What’s yup now?  Or even more aggressively, ‘Sup now?” And this put God’s self-esteem at an all time low. (more…)

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