Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘Funny (strange)’ Category

Stephen Dixon–I. (2002)

Posted in Books about writers, Funny (strange), Gang of Four, McSweeney's, Queen, Short Books, Stephen Dixon, The Futureheads, The Jam, Unreliable narrator on January 28, 2008| Leave a Comment »

i.jpgSOUNDTRACK: THE FUTUREHEADS-News and Tributes (2006).

news.jpgI enjoyed the first Futureheads album very much when it came out, but I balked at getting this sophomore release because they were part of that whole new angular-rock wave, and I didn’t want to stay caught up in the hype. Well, I relented because I’d continued to hear good things about this record, and I’m glad I did.

For me, The Futureheads sound like The Jam, mixed with a little Gang of Four edginess in their chords, and most intriguing of all, a bit of Queen in their vocals. This odd mix is totally up front in the second song, “Cope”. A choppy guitar, a voice that sounds like the Paul Weller and then at the end of the first line, all the guys sing the word Go! in a 4 part harmony that sounds partially machine-like; I almost thought it was a ship’s whistle when I first heard it. And, yet on subsequent listens it’s just four guys singing slightly off notes–note screaming at all, I can’t even really imagine how they do it– and it sounds great! I don’t know how they could duplicate that sound–which is so beautiful and unnerving at the same time–live, frankly.

And each song has little idiosyncrasies like that that really make this record fun to listen to. I think the reason I didn’t hear The Jam as an influence right away is because to me The Jam are smoooooth. (more…)

Read Full Post »

Mark Z. Danielewski–Only Revolutions (2006)

Posted in Barenaked Ladies, Batman, Big Books, Brian Wilson, Canadian Music, Christmas Album, Funky Web Sites, Funny (strange), Jacques Derrida, James Joyce, Laurence Sterne, Mark Z. Danielewski, Meta, South Park, Sufjan Stevens, Synesthesia, Technology, Unreliable narrator on December 26, 2007| 1 Comment »

onlyrev.jpgSOUNDTRACK: BARENAKED LADIES-Everything to Everyone (2003) & Barenaked for the Holidays (2004).

bnl-every.jpgEverything to Everyone. I was pretty down on this album when it first came out. I remember being rather disappointed in it because BNL had, gasp, matured somewhat, and were making more “serious,” less “wacky” songs. To me, the whole CD was somewhat flat. But, after a recent listen (possibly the first time in 4 years) and expecting the worst, I was pleasantly surprised by the record.

“Celebrity” is a decent start off, although it breaks from their standard set up of rollicking lead off tracks. “Maybe Katie” is a somewhat disappointing track 2 (a track that seems to produce great results for them)…. It seems to be so close to a single, yet it just misses. There is a somewhat zany song “Shopping,” which sets off a run of three or four good songs. It also ends on a pretty high note with, “Have You Seen My Love?” being a slow, but, sensibly, short song, so it doesn’t just drag on.

The noteworthy thing about this album, is what its title alludes to: everything for everyone. It seems like this album has fifteen different styles at work. There’s an Irish jig type song, a crazy rocking song, a soft ballad, a salsa beat. Basically everything is on here. It’s either crassly commercial or (more likely) a funny jab at their complex styles.

The overall sound of the album is definitely more mellow and “mature” than their earlier ones. There’s not a lot of outright silliness involved, and the tunes themselves have certainly calmed down a lot. If you’re not expecting the zany BNL of old, then the album works pretty well. Just don’t have high hopes for “If I Had $1,000,000.”

bnl-holiday.jpgBarenaked for the Holidays. This has become one of my favorite Christmas/holiday records (and it’s a good time of year to be writing about it.) It ranks up there with Brave Combo’s It’s Christmas, Man, brave.jpg South Park’s Mr. Hankey’s Christmas Classics, hankey.jpg Sufjan Steven’s great boxed set Presents Songs for Christmas, sufjan.jpg and Brian Wilson’s What I Really Want for Christmas, wilson.jpg which has also quickly jumped to the top of my Xmas list.

BNL’s is definitely silly, but it is also somewhat reverential for the time of year. They mix classics with originals (and if Jews don’t adopt “Hanukkah Blessings” as an official Hanukkah song, then they have no taste!).

The recording is a mix of old and new tracks (“God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” was recorded almost ten years (more…)

Read Full Post »

Douglas Coupland–The Gum Thief (2007)

Posted in "Weird Al" Yankovic, Canadian Content, Consumerism, Corporate skewering, Digression, Douglas Coupland, Edward Albee, Epistolary Novel, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Funky Web Sites, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Marriage Trouble, Meta, Tom Petty, Unreliable narrator on December 12, 2007| Leave a Comment »

gum.jpgSOUNDTRACK: TOM PETTY AND THE HEARTBREAKERS-Anthology: Through the Years (2000).

petty.jpgTo me, Tom Petty suffers more than anyone else from egregious overexposure. I’m not sure if it’s just me who feels that way, but in my experience, “Free Fallin'” was utterly inescapable for what seemed like an eternity. And, geez, his mug was all over MTV when that album came out. It got so bad that I simply decided I was done with him.

Well, as it turns out, Sarah is a fan, so I decided to get her a greatest hits for her birthday. We’ve listened to it a few times, and it made me remember that, hey! I used to like this guy. In fact, disc one of this set is pretty darn great. There are about three songs that I didn’t recognize immediately, but otherwise I was singing along to all of his old classics.

There’s a great memory from Fast Times at Ridgemont High with “American Girl,” And there’s some songs that I forgot about like “Breakdown” and “Refugee.” However, I feel that the Tom Petty/Stevie Nicks duet “Stop Dragging My Heart Around” was the original overexposure video on MTV. I can’t decide how many times I saw that video when I was a young’un watching MTV in its nascent years. It was so ubiquitous that even Weird Al made a parody of it on his first album called “Stop Dragging My Car Around” (which was not terribly inspired, really).

Through much of the post-Dylan years people were described as the “next Dylan.” What really struck me, re-listening to Tom Petty is that, he seems to have misunderstood that they were speaking about his lyrics, not his voice. It’s bizarre how Dylanesque he sounds, especially on “Breakdown,” If not Dylanesque necessarily, he is at least very idiosyncratic in a way that Dylan made commercial.

Even the second disc (the overexposed era) holds up pretty well, and now, seventeen (!) years later, I can sing along to “Free Fallin'” without cringing. See that, Tom, all I needed was a decade away and now we can hang out again.

[READ: December 10, 2007] The Gum Thief.

An unusual title, The Gum Thief.

I’ve enjoyed Coupland’s work for many years now (see the JPod review), and I’m always excited to see a new book come out. I opted for the autographed box set from amazon.ca which actually turned out be pretty cheap at the time I ordered it. The box set contains Roger Thorpe’s book Glove Pond, (which will make sense in a few paragraphs) which I will be reviewing shortly.

[DIGRESSION]: Incidentally, amazon.ca is THE source for imported items from England. Most of the time, the imports on amazon.com are really expensive. But the retail price on amazon.ca for British imports is usually quite good. (This was even more true before the looney reached parity with our dollar…the exchange rate for awhile was practically half off list price!)

Back to The Gum Thief.

This is what’s called an epistolary novel, meaning it is written as a series of letters. This book varies the premise somewhat by having the letters written to each other in a diary. But it is not a series of diary entries; rather, Bethany discovers Roger’s diary and begins writing responses to his entries in it. It’s a very interesting conceit, and it plays very nicely with these characters, both of whom are completely antisocial. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Roger is an alcoholic, divorced father whose life has been generally going downhill; he more or less bottomed out with a job at a Vancouver Staples. Bethany is a post-high school goth whose life is stalling while she works at the same Vancouver Staples. Roger begins the book with some diary exercises in which he tries to get into the mind of Bethany. Bethany discovers the entries and is appalled and flattered at the same time. She writes back to Roger, telling him what he got right, but also emphatically insisting that they never acknowledge each other outside of the diary.

What Roger’s diary also contains is the beginning of his novel: Glove Pond. The box set I bought contains Glove Pond as a separate item as well, and I’ll review that next. But for now, I can say that Glove Pond is basically Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, in tone, mannerism and setup. [I rather hope this will get people to read the great Albee play]. It is about an older, long-married couple (he is a writer) who inadvertently invite a young, newly-married couple (he is a writer) over for dinner. The angry resentment between youth and age, success and failure and so many other things brews up into a heady mixture of Scotch and insults.

What makes the story even more meta- is that Kyle, the young writer in Glove Pond is writing his new novel, about an old, drunken man who works in an office superstore.

Surrounding the chapters of Glove Pond are the actual letters of the story. Primarily they are between Roger and Bethany, but they also include some correspondence with Bethany’s mom (whom Roger knew in high school), and, in a break from the “in Roger’s diary” aspect, some letters between other co-workers (who also discover Glove Pond, and do not share Bethany’s (genuine) enthusiasm for it).

Aside from all of the intricacies of the make-up of the story, what about the narrative? Well, the story is basically about a young girl–whose life had been full of close people dying–connecting to a frankly pathetic father-figure (but her own father is also out of the picture, so it’s understandable). It is at times very sad, especially as you watch these characters shut themselves down internally and externally.

Ultimately, Bethany tries to make a bold move outside of Staples, a risk that she didn’t think she was capable of. And Roger sets his sights on accomplishing at least one thing in his life, namely, finishing a book. You watch these characters slowly come alive until the last chapter, in which the meta- world comes crashing in on Roger and makes you rethink a lot of what you have just read.

As with most Coupland, the pop culture references, and corporate skewering, are fast and furious. And, as with most Coupland, just when you think the novel is going to be light and funny, weighty themes are opened and genuine sadness falls over these seemingly frozen people. What I think is particularly cool about this book is the way he is able to take a somewhat detached literary style like the epistolary novel and imbue some real passion into these shells of human beings. Obviously, diary entries tend to reveal impassioned thoughts by the writer, but in a series of letters written to two people who are not wooing each other, one wouldn’t expect high emotion. And yet it comes out, and it comes across very naturally.

And, as it turns out, stealing gum does play a pretty big role in both the novel and the novel within the novel, so the title does make sense.

Oh, and there’s also some cool videos available from Random House Canada. They are promotional shorts for The Gum Thief, and they’re available at Coupland’s My Space page as well as on You Tube, which is funny given the You Tube references in the book.

Read Full Post »

Lawrence Weschler–Everything That Rises: A Book of Convergences (2006)

Posted in Consumerism, Dystopia, Funny (strange), Lawrence Weschler, McSweeney's, New Yorker, Paul Quarrington, Rheostatics, Technology on December 8, 2007| 5 Comments »

everything.jpgSOUNDTRACK: RHEOSTATICS-Whale Music [Soundtrack] (1994) & Music Inspired by the Group of 7 (1995).

As I understand it, The Rheostatics read a great book by Paul Quarrington called Whale Music whalebook.jpg and then decided to name their new album Whale Music. (The follow up to Melville…they definitely have a nautical theme in their early records). Their awesome song “Claire,” is co-written by Quarrinton (I think some of the lyrics for the song were in the book). So, a few years go by, and a movie is made of Whale Music (which is basically a fictionalized story of a Brian Wilson-esque musical genius-recluse).

Obviously, “Claire” is going to be in the movie (there’s a character named Clarie, you see), so why not just have the Rheos do the entire soundtrack? Thus, the Rheos now have TWO records called Whale Music. Fascinating, no?

whale.jpgWhale Music [Soundtrack] (1994)
The soundtrack is very soundtracky–largely instrumental mood pieces, and two slightly different takes on ‘Claire’. Overall while it’s really dynamite to listen to, especially while reading, it’s really for Rheos diehards. (more…)

Read Full Post »

Dave Eggers & Deb Olin Unferth & Sarah Manguso–One Hundred and Forty-Five Stories in a Small Box (2007)

Posted in Cop Shoot Cop, Dave Eggers, David Ouimet, Deb Olin Unferth, Firewater, Flash Fiction, Foetus, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), McSweeney's, Meta, Motherhead Bug, Sarah Manguso, Short Books, Short Story, Swans on November 28, 2007| Leave a Comment »

145.jpgSOUNDTRACK: MOTHERHEAD BUG-Zambodia (1993).

zam.jpgMotherhead Bug is the creation of David Ouimet. David was my boss at Tower Records way back when. He has been in some other influential NYC bands like Swans and Cop Shoot Cop, and he’s worked with Foetus as well. He has since moved on to bigger and better things, including doing wonderfully creepy illustrations for YA books (like Cat in Glass and Double-Dare to Be Scared).

David was a founding member of Cop Shoot Cop, and then left to do other things. What I find most interesting about Zambodia is that it sounds fairly comparable to the band Firewater, a band that was created by Tod A, one of the other founders of Cop Shoot Cop. No idea if there was something in their collective water but it’s interetsing that they both pursued this bizarre hybrid of punk/industrial/klezmer/gypsy/circus rock.

If you know Firewater (and you should, they’re very good), Motherhead Bug would be something like a slightly more indie version of them (if you can imagine that). The unconventional aspects of the songs are more to the fore, and the instrumentataion is a little more peculiar. This is probably due to the fact that Ouimet is a trombonist and samplist (is that what you call a sampler player?). It is clear that his love of the horn section and freedom of samples allowed his creativity to run amock.

Ouimet’s vocals work in a gravelley context similar to Tom Waits, but less drunken-bluesman and more gothic spooky storyteller. The whole shebang sounds something like a Kurt Weillian nightmare. And yet, there is a great deal of humor involved. Having said all that, for all of its unconventiality, the songs are pretty standard verse chorus verse, 4 minutes long. It’s just what he does within those limits is pretty outlandish!

For a genre that has so many tentacles, Motherhead Bug fills a fun niche of industrial carnival music. If you like a chaotic noisy band, and you’re interested in unconventional instrumentation, then check out Motherhead Bug.

Hi David.

[READ: November 20, 2007] One Hundred and Forty-five Stories in a Small Box.

The format of these books is three books in a small box. Each book is a volume of short short stories or flash fiction. The books themselves are also small in size: slightly smaller than a mass paperback. So, when I say that a story is a page long, it is in fact, about a typical paragraph length. One of the tropes of the flash fiction movement is that you try and write a fully realized story in as short a space as possible. It is amazing how complete many of these stories turn out to be. Even though they are devoid of most of the trappings of a conventional story, they often convey a full range of emotion, and even some details. According to the Wikipedia entry, most flash-fiction pieces are between 250 and 1,000 words long. This should all give a sense for what’s in the box. (more…)

Read Full Post »

Michael Bell (editor)–Scouts in Bondage And Other Violations of Literary Propriety [UK subtitle is “And Other Books from an Innocent Age”]

Posted in Books about writers, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Michael Bell, Nirvana, Scranton, PA, Short Books, They Might Be Giants on November 15, 2007| Leave a Comment »

scouts.jpgSOUNDTRACK: NIRVANA: With the Lights Out (2004).

withthe.jpgIt probably sounds like an urban myth to say that Nirvana was a catalyst for new music way back then. But I can recall when “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was first on the radio, and I was living in a region of the country (hey Office fans, it was Scranton, PA) that was devoid of anything interesting on the radio; it was like a flash of light: there is interesting music out there, somewhere. So, yup, Nirvana was a great moment for me.

Now, I’ll backtrack by saying that I had just graduated college, where I had been music director of our college’s radio station. We specialized in good indie music, so I was no stranger to Sonic Youth or They Might Be Giants, or anything that would soon be played on 120 Minutes, or labeled “alternative”; but as our station had a range of about 50 feet, I couldn’t even hear it from my apartment. So, I was left with Rock 107–not a bad station, just a typical classic rock outlet–and Marywood College’s very hip, very cool radio station, that came in if the weather agreed.

And suddenly there was Nirvana.

I wasn’t that bummed when Cobain killed himself, as I’d enjoyed their releases, but they were no longer the huge band in my life. So I got some of the posthumous releases, but held off on the box set because, who needs an expensive collection of outtakes? Well, for Christmas, Amazon was selling With the Lights Out for super cheap (sometimes it pays to wait), so I figured I’d grab it.

The best thing I can say about it is that it really rekindled my appreciation for Nirvana. It also made me realize that they only released three albums (not including all of the comps and live releases), which is a teeny output for such a huge band). And, finally, and most shockingly it made me realize that “Smells Like Teen Spirit” is over 5 minutes long…WHAT? How did a 5 minute song become a hit??

Anyhow, I’ve enjoyed listening to this collection. It was cool to hear some of the early demos of songs, and see how they morphed into the ones I know. There’s a few 8 minute jams that aren’t worth hearing more than once, but overall, it’s good for those who like Nirvana and would like a little more of their story. Especially if you can get it cheap!

[READ: November 12, 2007] Scouts in Bondage

This is a fantastically funny book. It is a collection of book covers from antique and rare books that are now shockingly inappropriate. I feel that the UK subtitle is more apt for the book, because when these books were written, they weren’t meant to be risque, but as times and language has changed, they are now full of double entendre.

(more…)

Read Full Post »

Lemony Snicket–The Latke Who Couldn’t Stop Screaming (2007)

Posted in Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Holidays, Housemartins, Lemony Snicket, Lisa Brown, McSweeney's, Short Books on November 8, 2007| Leave a Comment »

latke.jpgSOUNDTRACK: THE HOUSEMARTINS-Live at the BBC (2006).

housemartin.jpgI found out about the Housemartins after enjoying the Beautiful South, and since they only released two albums, it was easy to get into them quickly. This is a collection of live tracks from the BBC, some have an audience and some do not. What is most striking about the record are the amount of acapella works that are on here, and the, surprisingly religious aspect of many of the songs (especially for a bunch of guys who on the latest Beautiful South album say “No thanks to God, he did fuck all.”)

They sound great, and can totally pull off the acapella, and when they do break out the instrumentation it sounds even better. I would have resequenced it so that the acapellas were sprinkled throughout but hey, what can you do. My only sad moment was that “Happy Hour” was done acappella, and as I said, the acapellas are great, but that song just screams for full instrumentation. Anyhow, this collection will definitely get me listening to the Housemartins again.

[READ: October 21, 2007]: The Latke Who Couldn’t Stop Screaming.

What better way to get back into reading books than with a 20 page book full of illustrations! This is a holiday story of a latke who, because of his inherent religious beliefs, feels left out at Christmastime. As it is written by Lemony Snicket, it is twisted and even more twisted.

(more…)

Read Full Post »

McSweeney’s #24 [ “Trouble” and “Come Back, Donald Barthelme”] (2007)

Posted in Batman, Brazil, Corporate skewering, Donald Barthelme, Essays, Flann O'Brien, Funny (strange), Guided By Voices, Jacques Derrida, Marriage Trouble, McSweeney's, Samuel Beckett, Short Story, The Kids in the Hall on October 3, 2007| 1 Comment »

mcs24.jpgSOUNDTRACK: GUIDED BY VOICES-Universal Truths and Cycles (2002).

gbv.jpg

I like Guided By Voices more in theory than in actuality. In theory, Robert Pollard is a songwriting maniac who has released hundreds of songs that are all snappy, catchy and brilliant. In practice, Robert Pollard is a songwriting maniac who has released hundreds of songs that he puts out whether they are finished or not. A vast quantity of GBV output is about a minute long. And for the most part the songs feel like fragments, rather than real songs. Nevertheless, I find that just about everything he writes is catchy and quite good, it’s just that so much of it is so forgettable.

Despite that, they have several songs that are fantastic. I could easily make a greatest hits record of GBV songs that I think are fabulous, and it would probably have 20 songs on it. The only problem is Pollard has released probably a thousand songs, so that’s not such great average.

I received this copy of Universal Truths and Cycles as a promotional copy many years ago. I had really enjoyed Do the Collapse, and so I grabbed this CD, and much like my assessment above, I find that there’s nothing I really dislike about the album although at 4:59, almost three times longer than a typical GBV song, “Storm Vibrations” tends to drag, but overall there’s not that much that’s memorable. Of course, “Everywhere with Helicopters” is fantastic and “Christian Animation Torch Characters” is also pretty wonderful. I could pick maybe 3 of the 19 songs here to go on my hits collection, but overall, the album is typical GBV, a little weird, but very catchy.

[READ: October 2, 2007] McSweeney’s #24.

I just flew through this latest issue of McSweeney’s. It was a real treat to read. The packaging was another one of their fun covers. It is designed in two parts, with a gatefold type of sleeve that reveals a full nighttime scene if you open it all the way. These guys have so much fun with their design, I’m surprised they’re not noted more for that.

Anyhow, the contents: the one side is a selection of six short stories, they all seem to feature guns, and they’re not afraid to use them. The other side is a symposium of reasonably famous authors writing tributes about Donald Barthelme, and two short stories by Barthelme himself. It also comes with an excerpt from Millard Kaufman’s Bowl of Cherries, which I have not yet read, but if it’s good I will get the book and review it later. (more…)

Read Full Post »

Brock Clarke–An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England (2007)

Posted in Books about writers, Boston, MA, Brock Clarke, Consumerism, Corporate skewering, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Marillion, Marriage Trouble, Memoirs, Meta, Unlikable main character, Unreliable narrator on September 27, 2007| Leave a Comment »

arson.jpgSOUNDTRACK: MARILLION-Fugazi (1984).

fugazi.jpgAh, the delights of Marillion. My best friend in high school, Al, got me into Marillion. And he started me off with this record. As such, I can’t imagine how I could realistically critique it. I must have listened to this thing hundreds of times at this point. I also got into the other Marillion albums (until the theatrical madman and lead singer, Fish, departed). I did get one post-Fish album, Season’s End, but didn’t think too much of it. Although I still regard them highly, and anyone who names an album Anoraknaphobia is still alright in my book, I haven’t heard a note of anything post-Season’s End.

Fugazi, on the other hand is still fantastic after all these years. Fish’s lyrics are often bitter, but always eloquent. (more…)

Read Full Post »

Jasper Fforde–First Among Sequels [Book 5] (2007)

Posted in Adventure, Consumerism, Corporate skewering, Digression, End of the World, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Jasper Fforde, Meta, Sci-fi, Supernatural, Technology, Time Travel, Tori Amos on September 14, 2007| Leave a Comment »

firstamong.jpgSOUNDTRACK: TORI AMOS-American Girl Posse (2007).

americandoll.jpgI had been pretty down on Tori records since Scarlett’s Walk, which I felt was kind of blah. The Beekeeper followed and it didn’t do that much for me either. So, I was basically not that excited when this latest record came out. I probably would have gotten it eventually, but then my wife bought it for me for my birthday. Thank you!

Because, this is easily her best album since From the Choirgirl Hotel. It has everything that I felt her last two albums were missing: real tempo changes, really powerful singing, and great, great hooks.

(more…)

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »