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Archive for the ‘Guns’ Category

Octavia E. Butler–Parable of the Sower [week 1: 2024-2025] (1993)

Posted in Death, Dogs, Dystopia, Frank Zappa, Guns, Hyperempathy, Infinite Zombies, Politicians, Racism, Rain, Rape, Religion, Sci-fi, Sexism, Sexual Assault, Suicide, The Dog Dies, The Future, The Mothers of Invention, Thieves, Threats, Violence, Yuck! on March 22, 2021| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: THE MOTHERS OF INVENTION-“Trouble Every Day” (1966).

Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention would play all kinds of music over the course of their existence (even more genres added when Frank went solo).  It’s not even entirely clear how you’d describe their first album Freak Out!

This song opens up side three of the double album and is a bluesy song based around a four note (and one bent note) melody and includes harmonica solo.  The song runs almost 6 minutes long and doesn’t change much until after about five and a half the tempo increases dramatically until the song fades.

It was written after the Watts Riots.  It was an accurate description and also sadly prescient.

Right in the middle of the song Frank states:

Hey you know something people I’m not black But there’s a whole lots a times I wish I could say I’m not white

That seems like it was a pretty powerful thing to say (and something you’d be unlikely to hear on the radio) back in 1965.

The chorus sticks with us

So I’m watchin’ and I’m waitin’
Hopin’ for the best
Even think I’ll go to prayin’
Every time I hear ’em sayin’
That there’s no way to delay
That trouble comin’ every day
No way to delay
That trouble comin’ every day

He certainly predicted the state of 24 hour news

Well you can cool it, You can heat it… ‘
Cause, baby, I don’t need it…
Take your TV tube and eat it
‘N all that phony stuff on sports
‘N all THOSE unconfirmed reports
You know I watched that rotten box
Until my head began to hurt
From checkin’ out the way
The newsmen say they get the dirt
Before the guys on channel so-and-so
And further they assert
That any show they’ll interrupt
To bring you news if it comes up
They say that if the place blows up
They’ll be the first to tell
Because the boys they got downtown
Are workin’ hard and doin’ swell,
And if anybody gets the news
Before it hits the street,
They say that no one blabs it faster
Their coverage can’t be beat

Things haven’t changed since this song was written

And it’s the same across the nation
Black & white discrimination
They’re yellin’ “You can’t understand me!”
 And all the other crap they hand me
In the papers and TV
‘N all that mass stupidity
That seems to grow more every day
Each time you hear some nitwit say
He wants to go and do you in
Because the color of your skin
Just don’t appeal to him
(No matter if it’s black or white)
Because he’s out for blood tonight

Perhaps the theme verse for recent events

Don’t you know that this could start
On any street in any town
In any state if any clown
Decides that now’s the time to fight
For some ideal he thinks is right
And if a million more agree
There ain’t no great society
As it applies to you and me
Our country isn’t free
And the law refuses to see
If all that you can ever be
Is just a lousy janitor
Unless your uncle owns a store

It’s a shame this song still resonates.

[READ: March 22, 2021] Parable of the Sower [2024-2025]

I found Kindred to be an enjoyable (not exactly the right word, I know) novel.  I thought the premise was really cool and I thought the content was impactful and was conveyed really well.  It was a powerful story that did not shy away from brutality.

But it in no way prepared me for Parable of the Sower.

I didn’t know anything about this book at all before starting.  At first I thought it was neat that it was set in 2024 (hey that’s so close!)  And that, coincidentally, myself and my daughters are almost the same ages as the main character and her father (will this be our future?).

But then, holy crap, Butler doesn’t hold back.

The brutality of Kindred was based on reality.  It was horrible and, in retrospect, hard to believe that people could do such things.  The brutality of Sower, however, is all based on the future projection.  The book was written in 1993. Basically, she posits that in 30 years, America has become a rotting hellscape.  And while we haven’t reached quite the levels that she imagines, there are some pretty eerie accuracies.  I have to assume, given the natural of the elected politicians, that some things are going to get very very spookily prescient.

The book opens in 2024 with a quote from Earthseed.  We don’t know what that is yet, but by the end of this week’s read we’ll learn that Earthseed is a sort of manifesto written by the main character, Lauren Oya Olamina–I didn’t realize her name was given after the first quote from Earthseed until looking back on it.  Each chapter has another quote from Earthseed and then the story unfolds as a series of diary entries. (more…)

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Stephen King–“The Death of Jack Hamilton” (New Yorker, December 24 & 31, 2001)

Posted in Carly Rae Jepsen, Coronavirus, Death, Gangsters, Guns, mxmtoon, Quarantine, Short Story, Stephen King, Tiny Desk (Home) Concerts, Tiny Desk Concert, tUnE-yArDs, Violence on March 7, 2021| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: mxmtoon-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #137 (January 15, 2021).

mxmtoon is another young musician who has gained success through the internet.  Two years ago when All Songs Considered played her, they noted that the then 18-year old has “amassed a sizable following on Twitter and YouTube on the strength of her endearingly intimate presence.”

mxmtoon sings songs filled with dreams and anxieties. Much of the music comes from her recent 2020 EPs, Dawn and Dusk.  Those EPs included collaborations with Carly Rae Jepsen and Tune-Yards’ Merrill Garbus. For this Tiny Desk (home) concert, her sweet voice and ukulele are accompanied by Nicole Wakabayashi on piano and Cale Hawkins on guitar.  Her melodies are simple, with the words up front mighty and personal.

They play five songs and the blurb is absolutely right.  These are simple, pretty songs.  Maia’s voice is wonderful and she happily allows th eband to play behind her.

On “Fever Dream” Nicole and Cale play the delicate melody (which gets slightly large after the first verse) as she sings her intelligent and thoughtful lyrics.  Nicole throws in the occasional backing vocal harmony which adds a nice touch.  A

After the sing she jokes,

“Hi, I’m mxmtoon, and I’m doing my Tiny Desk at the world’s biggest desk!” And so it begins, from an eerily empty New York City office building,

It’s been almost two years now since we first played the Oakland-based mxmtoon on All Songs Considered. She was just 18 then, singing about crying in her “prom dress” (which I’m thrilled she is performing here).

On “Prom Dress” she adds her ukulele to this amusing and sad song about going to prom.

I can’t help the fact I like to be alone
It might sound kinda sad, but that’s just what I seem to know
I tend to handle things usually by myself
And I can’t ever seem to try and ask for help
I’m sitting here, crying in my prom dress
I’d be the prom queen if crying was a contest

One of the first songs she released is called “Feelings Are Fatal,” which she also performs. It’s a candid song about emotions and why we’re often afraid to share them. It’s a model for what mxmtoon does so well: humble, honest songs, sung here behind a massive desk.

She says she credits her writing style to “Feelings Are Fatal” because this was the first song that she was completely honest in wanting to share her feelings with the world. (According to bandcamp she had about a half dozen songs before this one).  It’s just her on the ukulele (it’s a large ukulele) singing these clear words.

i’m always sad
and i’m always lonely
but i can’t tell you
that i’m breaking slowly

closed doors
locked in, no keys
keeping my feelings hidden
there is no ease

“Wallflower” opens with the piano and her singing very clearly.  Her voice sounds like someone else’s here, although I can’t quite place it.

“Bon Iver” is a cute song started on the ukulele before the band joins in with lovely backing oohs.  The title comes in in this verse:

Playing Bon Iver on late night drives
My window, moon, and fireflies
Holding onto moments that we found
Even when the sun goes down.

It’s a lovely little concert and I look forward to hearing more from her.

[READ: February 21, 2021] “The Death of Jack Hamilton”

This is a long story about John Dillinger.

It’s told by Homer, a Dillinger flunkie.  He’s a colorful character who speaks colloquially.  He wants to set the record straight about Dillinger’s death.  He does this by talking about the death of John’s closest partner Jack Hamilton.

The three of them were escaping from a job and the police were after them.  After some bullets were fired, they realized that Jack was hit.  He said he was fine, but over the course of a few hours he started to look pretty bad–with a lot of blood leaking out.

The realized they needed a new car so they pulled over and waited for a car to come help them.  A family of three pulled over to help.  Dillinger and his men showed off their guns, but the family recognized him and seemed pretty thrilled to be meeting Dillinger himself.  He promised no one would get hurt–Dillinger robbed banks, he didn’t kill people  Dillinger was charming and could always make people smile. (more…)

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John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, Nate Powell [art]–March: Book Three (2016)

Posted in Activism, Andrew Aydin, Barack Obama, Coronavirus, Death, Fannie Lou Hamer, Fascism, Free Speech, Genocide, GlobalFEST, Graphic Novel, Guns, History, Humiliation, John F. Kennedy, John Lewis, Law, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Memoirs, Morality, Murder, Nate Powell, Poverty, Propaganda, Quarantine, Racism, Rokia Traoré, Rosa Parks, Supreme Court, Tiny Desk (Home) Concerts, Tiny Desk Concert, Universities, Violence on March 4, 2021| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: ROKIA TRAORÉ-GlobalFEST Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #136 (January 14, 2021).

Rokia Traore.GlobalFEST is an annual event, held in New York City, in which bands from all over the world have an opportunity to showcase their music to an American audience.  I’ve never been, and it sounds a little exhausting, but it also sounds really fun.

The Tiny Desk is teaming up with globalFEST this year for a thrilling virtual music festival: Tiny Desk Meets globalFEST. The online fest includes four nights of concerts featuring 16 bands from all over the world. 

Given the pandemic’s challenges and the hardening of international borders, NPR Music and globalFEST is moving from the nightclub to your screen of choice and sharing this festival with the world. Each night, we’ll present four artists in intimate settings (often behind desks donning globes), and it’s all hosted by African superstar Angélique Kidjo, who performed at the inaugural edition of globalFEST in 2004.

The final artist of the fourth and final night is Malian singer Rokia Traoré.

Rokia Traoré performed at globalFEST in 2005, the music festival’s second year, and it’s a thrill to present her meditative performance as part of Tiny Desk meets globalFEST. Her work is rooted in the Malian musical tradition, but defies the confines of a single culture. Born in Mali to a diplomat father, Traoré had a nomadic upbringing that exposed her to a wide variety of international musical influences. She joins us from Blues Faso, a theater inside her Foundation Passerelle in Mali, which she created to support emerging, interdisciplinary artists, from music and the performing arts to visual arts and photography.

She plays three songs that more or less segue into each other.  I don’t know a lot about music from Mali, but the little I know I can recognize from the Ngoni played by Mamah Diabaté and the guitar played by Samba Diabaté, with lots of speedy runs.   In “Souba Lé” melody is played on the balafon by Massa Joël Diarra (although I wish they’d have shown us it up close).  Both this song and “Tiramakan” feature subtle bass from Aristide Nebout.  The final song “Fakoly” is a little louder and drummer Roméo Djibré is a bit more prominent.

But all of these songs are all about Rokia Traoré’s vocals which soar and ring out.

[READ: February 25, 2021] March Book 3

Each book has gotten longer.  Book one was 121 pages, Book 2 was 187 and Book 3 is 246.

This book begins right after the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist church in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963.   You meet the victims before they were killed.  It continues through until the passing of the Voting Rights Act in 1965.  Holy cow was there a lot of violence in these two years and the amazing art by Nate Powell never shies away from showing it.

Eagle Scouts at Klan rallies who then go on to kill Black teenager’s, hicks in pickups celebrating the deaths of the girls in the church with anti-integration chants and, as we see more and more in this book, police killing innocent people and not getting in any trouble because of it.

This book has opened my eyes to what Black people have known all along about police forces.  That they are completely corrupt and need to be restructured from the ground up.  When you see that it was their job to be racist in 1963, is it any surprise that they are still racist in 2021?

Reading a book like this I can’t help but think that the best thing we could have done for our country would have been to let the south secede.  Bring all people of color north and let the racists fester in their own lack of diversity.  Because their racism poisons the whole country.  And yet that is exactly the opposite belief that this book is based upon.

I’m embarrassed at how naïve I am. (more…)

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John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, Nate Powell [art]–March: Book Two (2015)

Posted in Activism, Andrew Aydin, Barack Obama, Bob Dylan, Canadian Music, Coronavirus, Death, Elisapie, Fascism, Free Speech, Genocide, GlobalFEST, Graphic Novel, Guns, History, Humiliation, Joan Baez, John F. Kennedy, John Lewis, Law, Mahalia Jackson, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Memoirs, Morality, Murder, Nate Powell, Odetta, Peter Paul & Mary, Poverty, Propaganda, Quarantine, Racism, Religion, Rosa Parks, Supreme Court, Tiny Desk (Home) Concerts, Tiny Desk Concert, Universities, Violence on March 3, 2021| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: ELISAPIE-GlobalFEST Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #136/156 (January 14, 2021).

ElisapieGlobalFEST is an annual event, held in New York City, in which bands from all over the world have an opportunity to showcase their music to an American audience.  I’ve never been, and it sounds a little exhausting, but it also sounds really fun.

The Tiny Desk is teaming up with globalFEST this year for a thrilling virtual music festival: Tiny Desk Meets globalFEST. The online fest includes four nights of concerts featuring 16 bands from all over the world. 

Given the pandemic’s challenges and the hardening of international borders, NPR Music and globalFEST is moving from the nightclub to your screen of choice and sharing this festival with the world. Each night, we’ll present four artists in intimate settings (often behind desks donning globes), and it’s all hosted by African superstar Angélique Kidjo, who performed at the inaugural edition of globalFEST in 2004.

The second artist of the fourth and final night is First Nations singer Elisapie.

Elisapie returns to Tiny Desk for a show-stopping performance from Montreal, with the disco globe of our dreams helping to light her set. Elisapie, in both her songs and work, is a resounding advocate of First Nations culture in Canada. In her set, she harnesses an incredible energy with electrifying, emotive vocals.

I had really enjoyed Elisapie’s previous Tiny desk.  I found her to be a less extreme, but no less dramatic performer than Tanya Tagaq.  Her band is outstanding creating all kinds of textures to surround her voice.

The first song is “Qanniuguma.”  It starts quietly with a single ringing guitar note from Jean-Sébastien Williams and little taps of percussion from Robbie Kuster.  Joshua Toal adds some quiet bass as the guitar plays some higher notes.  After a minute Elisapie starts singing.  Another 30 seconds later the drums get louder and Jason Sharp start sprinkling in some raw bass saxophone.  As the song grows more intense, Elisapie adds some breathing and chanting–throat singing.  Things quiet down and then build again with the sax and the guitar soloing as the drums and bass keep things steady

Behind her you can see Mont Royal, which has a lot of history.

The second song “Wolves Don’t Live by the Rules” is “a small song” but very meaningful.  It starts in a similar way with ringing notes an thumping drums.  She sings this one in  English and it feels like a much more conventional sounding song.  It’s pretty quiet but the instrumental breaks adds huge guitar chords and the end is really loud.

Introducing the final song, “Arnaq” (which means Woman) she says women tend to forget that we have a lot of strength and we should celebrate it loud and clear.  This one opens with a loud raw sliding guitar like an early PJ Harvey song.  The song’s chorus builds with an “ah ya ya ya” as the instruments add chunky noises–scratches from the guitar and skronks from the sax and all kinds of precious.  It’s a cool noise fest, although the guitar could be a smidge louder.

I’d really like to see her live.

[READ: February 25, 2021] March Book 2

Book Two picks up John Lewis’ life.

Like the first, it starts with Lewis’ preparations for the inauguration of Barack Obama.

Then it flashes back.  Lewis was in college and had moved to Nashville where the growing student movement was gaining strength.

The visuals are even more striking in this book.  The panels of the white woman pouring water and then soap (or flour) on the quietly sitting Black diners and then hosing them down is really arresting.  As is the sequence (which is almost entirely black) of a room full of peaceful protestors being locked in a room when the fumigator was set off.

I couldn’t believe that a man couldn’t really left us there to die.  Were we not human to him?

Then next round of protesta was at the segregated movie theaters.  I love that they chose the Ten Commandments to protest (the irony was lost on the whites in Alabama).  The Black protesters would line up and would be refused seating.  Hundreds of people who would then get back on line and be refused seating again.  Whites would throw things at them and hurl abuse at them. (more…)

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John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, Nate Powell–March: Book One (2013)

Posted in Activism, Andrew Aydin, Barack Obama, Black Lives Matter, Coronavirus, Cuba, Death, Dominican Republic, Fascism, Free Speech, Genocide, GlobalFEST, Graphic Novel, Guns, History, Humiliation, John F. Kennedy, John Lewis, Law, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Memoirs, Morality, Murder, Nate Powell, Poverty, Propaganda, Puerto Rico, Quarantine, Racism, Rosa Parks, Supreme Court, Tiny Desk (Home) Concerts, Tiny Desk Concert, Universities, Violence on March 2, 2021| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: EDWIN PEREZ-GlobalFEST Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #136/155 (January 14, 2021).

Edwin PerezGlobalFEST is an annual event, held in New York City, in which bands from all over the world have an opportunity to showcase their music to an American audience.  I’ve never been, and it sounds a little exhausting, but it also sounds really fun.

The Tiny Desk is teaming up with globalFEST this year for a thrilling virtual music festival: Tiny Desk Meets globalFEST. The online fest includes four nights of concerts featuring 16 bands from all over the world. 

Given the pandemic’s challenges and the hardening of international borders, NPR Music and globalFEST is moving from the nightclub to your screen of choice and sharing this festival with the world. Each night, we’ll present four artists in intimate settings (often behind desks donning globes), and it’s all hosted by African superstar Angélique Kidjo, who performed at the inaugural edition of globalFEST in 2004.

The first artist of the fourth and final night is Edwin Perez.

From the basement of the Bowery Electric in downtown Manhattan, composer and vocalist Edwin Perez and his 10-piece band come together to put on a show. With a strong backbeat and enough room to move around, Perez’s up-tempo energy brings the party and keeps it going. The theme of the night is salsa dura music, which originated in New York in the 1970s and gained acclaim thanks to acts like the Fania All-Stars and Spanish Harlem Orchestra.

This set is a lot of fun (even with the seriousness of the second song).  Cuban music is so full of percussion and horns it’s hard not to want to dance to it.  And this band has three percussionists: Nelson Mathew Gonzalez: bongo, cowbell (from Puerto Rico); Manuel Alejandro Carro: timbales (from Cuba); Oreste Abrantes: (from Puerto Rico).  The horn section is also pretty large: Leonardo Govin (from Cuba) and Michael Pallas (From Dominican Republic): trombone; Jonathan Powell (from USA) and Kalí Rodriguez (from Cuba): trumpet.

They play three songs. “La Salsa Que Me Crió” has lots of percussion and a great trumpet solo.  Perez even dances during the instrumental breaks.  And throughout, Jorge Bringas (from Cuba) keeps the bass steady.

After introducing the band, he says “Say her name Breonna Taylor.  Say his name Philando castile.  Say his name George Floyd.  End the abuse.”  This is the introduction to the quieter “No Puedo Respirar” (I Can’t Breathe).   Despite the subject, this song is not a dirge.  I don’t know what the words are but there is joy in the music as well.  There’s a jazzy keyboard solo from Ahmed Alom Vega (USA).

Yuniel Jimenez (From Cuba) opens the final song “Mi Tierra” with a fantastic introductory solo on the Cuban tres guitar.  The rest of the song brings back the Cuban horns and percussion. There’s even a drum solo (or two) in the middle.

[READ: February 25, 2021] March Book 1

I had heard amazing things about this trilogy of books.  I don’t know why it took me so long to get around to reading them.  Now that John Lewis is dead for almost a year, it was time to read them.

This is essentially a biography so it’s not easy to write about.  It’s also an incredible story of selflessness, fortitude and unbelievable courage.

The framing device is very well executed.  After a brief prologue that shows John and is marchers getting attacked by police, the book shows us Washington D.C. January 20, 2009, the day that Barack Obama is being inaugurated President.  Since John is (in 2009) in office he will be attending the ceremonies.

As he is preparing and getting ready to leave, a woman and her two children walk into his room hoping to look at Mr. Lewis’ office–a inspirational moment for her young boys.  But it happens that John (or Bob as he is called) is still in his office. They are embarrassed to interrupt, but he welcomes them warmly and shows them some of the things around his office.

Like photos of him meeting President Kennedy when Lewis was 23.  And from the March on Washington in 1963, where Dr King gave his “I have a dream” speech.

Then the boy asks him why he has so many chickens in his office.

The story then flashes back to young John (called Bob by his parents).  His father purchased 110 acres in Pike County, Alabama for $300. John was incharge of the chickens on the farm.  He also loved preaching.  He learned to read at 5 and began preaching to the chickens (they never said Amen or anything).

He also loved going to school.  He would even away from his house on the days his father insisted all the children work in the field because he didn’t want to fall behind.  (Even if it meant getting in trouble).

One of the first being moments in his life wa when his Uncle Otis drove him North.

Otis knew which places offered colored bathrooms and the ones where you would never get out of the car: “Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky.  These were the states we had to be careful in as we made our way North.”

It wasn’t until they got to Ohio that his uncle relaxed.  They arrive in Buffalo 17 hours later and John was amazed to see white and black people living next door to each other. (more…)

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Jason Reynolds–Long Way Down: The Graphic Novel with Art by Danica Novgorodoff (2020)

Posted in Coronavirus, Danica Novgorodoff, Death, Gangsters, Graphic Novel, Guns, Jason Reynolds, Mulatto, Quarantine, Racism, Tiny Desk (Home) Concerts, Tiny Desk Concert, Violence on December 28, 2020| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: MULATTO-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #117 (November 25, 2020).

Most of the Tiny Desk (Home) Concerts have been live (or slightly edited).  This one is clearly not.  There are many times when as she crosses her leg one way, a quick cut shows her with her legs crossed the other way.  So I’m not sure what’s going on–if it’s multiple takes or just her lip-syncing, but it’s very disconcerting.

Mulatto, known as Big Latto has released her debut album, Queen Of Da Souf,

At a time when women in hip-hop are running laps around the guys without so much as shifting their lace fronts, Latto is finding her footing in the new rap canon with Gold-charting singles and standout freestyles.

Also, who knew this was a thing:

As the inaugural winner of the Lifetime reality show The Rap Game and someone who’s made music since the age of 10, the personality that Latto brings to her bars is goofy, assertive and steadfast.  Latto rocks an aqua wig and raps perched from her throne.

I really like that the first song features a live violin (Joy Black).  It’s such an interesting idea and she plays some fast, intense strings.  It works perfectly.

“Blame Me” is a slower sone.  The melody sounds more than a little like “The Way It Is.”

It’s not until “He Say She Say” when Latto rises up from her seat to put extra emphasis behind this reminder: “Self-made b****, hell you talkin ’bout? / Yea, I got it out the mud, no handout.”

“He Say She Say” has a cool off-kilter almost horror movie melody from keyboardist SK.  Her singing and rapping is really good, but I get really bored of all the bitches and f-bombs and n-words.  I realize that that’s the street and the way young people talk, but it gets really monotonous.

[READ: December 20, 2020] Long Way Down: The Graphic Novel.

Jason Reynolds wrote the novel Long Way Down in 2017.  This graphic novel adaptation has some great artwork by Danica Novgorodoff

This is the story of William Holloman–Will.

The story starts out with Will and his friends on the basketball court.  His friend Tony is a great player but he is short and he knows you can’t go pro if you’re short. Will’s brother Shawn comes over to say hi to them.  Then there is a gunshot. Everybody

Did what we’ve all been trained to do.  Pressed our lips to the pavement and prayed the boom, followed by the buzz of a bullet, ain’t meet us.

But this time it hit Shawn.

When bad things happen, we can usually look up and see the moon big and bright shining over us.  But when Shawn died the moon was off.

Novgorodoff does some wonderful color work in these scenes–really creating a range of emotions in a small space. (more…)

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David Rabe–“Suffocation Theory” (New Yorker, October 12, 2020)

Posted in David Rabe, donald tRUMP, Fears, Guns, Huh?, Matthew Caws, Myths, Nada Surf, New Yorker, Politicians, Short Story, Violence on October 26, 2020| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: MATTHEW CAWS-“When History Comes” (2020).

Recently Rough Trade released an online album Talk – Action = Zero, Vol. 2.  It was a collection of songs with the intent of giving money to get out the vote organizations like Spread The Vote.  There were some 90 songs on it.  One of them was from Matthew Caws from Nada Surf.

On the most recent Nada Surf album, the song “So Much Love,” featured a lengthy spoken sort of rambling section.  Caws’ voice works quite well for that fast spoken section and when I saw them play it live, he was able to recite (or read, he had the lyric sheet in front of him) the whole thing while still playing which was pretty cool.

So this new song follows in that model.  The song is a simple riff that repeats.  And the lyrics are probably not spontaneous, but are pretty close.  There’s also a chorus.  It’s really catchy, just like all Nada Surf songs tend to be.

My contribution is a protest song; a get out the vote song. Will any Republicans hear this song outside of my liberal music bubble?  I don’t know.  I want them to.  Maybe there is a way.

What should a protest song say?

I protest the dismantling of the Postal Service which right now means the dismantling of democracy.

I protest the denial and protection of systemic racism.

I protest the dismantling of regulations that protect public land.

I protest the dismantling of the trust between a country and its media.

Am I naive enough to think that naively expressing these things can change anyone’s mind?  YES

I’m naive and a dreamer but also ambitious.  I believe in people.  I believe in change.

I’ll say this I vote Democrat but I don’t hate republicans.  I just hate this administration.

When history comes and sticks out its thumb / asking you for a ride / I hope that you see how fast it can be / it goes by in the blink of an eye.
We’re stuck in this boat / it’s barely afloat / we’re watching the water rise / History’s ill / it needs some good will / and we’re so tired of the lies

We’re all canaries in the coal mine.  We have to say what we see.  We’re all the band on the Titanic.  Don’t stop when the ship goes down.

Let’s be cheerleaders for postal workers.   Cheerleaders for voters for braving the long lines of the maskless.

We implore that you nurture your inner artist.  That you make something for yourself so that you have fulfillment.  So that you don’t seek satisfaction in the hot flame of mockery, the perversity of trolling, the thrill of baiting and phishing.

I believe that we’re all made out of love and good things.  We just get sick

When history comes and sticks out its thumb / asking you for a ride / I hope that you see how fast it can be / it goes by in the blink of an eye.
We’re stuck in this boat / it’s barely afloat / we’re watching the water rise / History’s ill / it needs some good will / and we’re so tired of the lies
Come out of your shell / the country’s unwell / we really need you to fight.

[instrumental break]

I’m an atheist and I had a friend in college who was Christian.  He belonged to a Christian group, I can’t remember which one but he wore a lapel pin with his name on it.  Anyway, really lovely guy.  We were both in film class and we’d get together once in a while to study.

Then one day we were saying goodby before winter break in front of the library.  The sky was dramatic, a whirlwind of leaves was nearby.  He gave me the hard sell. He said, “think about it… eternal life.”  It was moving.  I knew he wanted the best for me and in that spirit I’d like to say to you:

Imagine that the left don’t want to destroy America, because we don’t.  We just want it to be more fair. We want it to live up to its promise and that’s because we love it so much.  Don’t be afraid, we;re all right.  I’ll tell you what’s fake news… it’s that we’re bad people.   We’re not.   [It’s] that we want trump to fail.

I didn’t want him to fail. I wanted him to do great.  He didn’t.  But I wanted him to.

He makes me feel bad.  He makes other people feel bad too.  That doesn’t set a good example.  Sometimes it just comes down to that: don’t make people feel bad. And for every decision think about how it affects poor people the most.  Think about how it affects children.

You know…

Alright go register go vote.

So simply stated.  so true.  What a great song.  I hope people outside his bubble hear it.

[READ: October 21, 2020] “Suffocation Theory”

This story started out rather strange and I thought it was going to coalesce into something enjoyable.  But it never really did.

Out of the blue Amanda told the narrator they were moving.  He liked their apartment just fine and don’t want to move, but she told him the movers were already outside.

He watches a lot of news and everything is terrible.  Killings with guns, bombs and cars.  He is amazed that people have the irresistible idea “that killing a bunch of strangers would solve whatever problem they thought they couldn’t solve any other way.”

The new place is terrible.  It feels like a giant warehouse with rooms and lots of empty space. The bathroom doesn’t have a shower.  The neighborhood is terrible.  They also have a roommate.

The roommate is a jerk.  He jokingly points a gun at the narrator. (more…)

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Ann Beattie–“That Last Odd Day in L.A.” (New Yorker, April 16, 2001)

Posted in Ann Beattie, Aoife O'Donovan, Art, Bicycles, Chris Thile, Coronavirus, Deer, Edgar Meyer, Goat Rodeo, Guns, New Yorker, Possum, Quarantine, Short Story, Stuart Duncan, Thanksgiving, Tiny Desk (Home) Concerts, Tiny Desk Concert, Violence, Yo-Yo Ma on September 3, 2020| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: GOAT RODEO-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #73 (September 1, 2020).

Classical music is for serious people.  Yo-Yo Ma, probably the best known cellist in the world, must surely be a very serious fellow.  False!

Yo-Yo Ma is a hoot.  How do we know?  The first song of this set is called “Your Coffee Is a Disaster.”  And the name of the group is Goat Rodeo, after all.

Yo-Yo man formed this assemblage known as Goat Rodeo nearly ten years ago.  It consists of Yo-Yo Ma, Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer and Chris Thile and many other folks.

You’ve probably heard Stuart Duncan playing fiddle on albums with Dolly Parton, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, and he was named the Academy of Country Music Fiddle Player of the Year numerous times. Edgar Meyer has played bass with Joshua Bell, Béla Fleck and Christian McBride, and the Nashville Symphony commissioned his first orchestral work in 2017. And you’d most likely recognize Chris Thile’s vocals and mandolin in the music of Nickel Creek and Punch Brothers.

I really enjoyed their wild (yes wild) Tiny Desk Concert back in 2011.

Fast forward a decade and this collaboration channels that same spectacular frenzy, separately captured in the gorgeous homes of the artists and mixed to perfection.

Thile introduces the song by saying the band is often in the midst of a a coffee war: Yo-Yo, Stuart and Edgar prefer beans that were roasted in a volcano for maybe millions of years, while Aoife and I prefer beans that taste as though the were fashioned by angels.  We like good coffee.”

Up next is one of many inappropriate (not scandalous or anything) titles.  When we are not arguing about coffee we are punning.  This: “Waltz Whitman.”  It is a slow piece that feels a lot like the kind of music Punch Brothers play–where it is a fiddle, not a violin.  Although the middle section which has some gorgeous slow cello from Yo-Yo Ma makes this song transcendent.

They’re accompanied by songwriter Aoife O’Donovan, who lends her pitch-perfect vocals to close out the set. Chris Thile … explains that “The Trappings” is about work/life balance, a timely sentiment.  How the things you are doing impact the ones with whom you do them.  How your partners aide and hinder your efforts (and the humorous variations he describes).

“The Trappings” is a faster song and it’s got vocals!  Thile sings lead and there is wonderful backing vocals from O’Donovan and Duncan.  There’s fantastic cello trills from Yo-Yo Ma throughout.

It’s good til the last drop.

[READ: September 1, 2020] “That Last Odd Day in L.A.”

This story was really interesting.

We meet a man who goes by his last name, Keller.  His girlfriend calls him that, his ex-wife called him that, even his teenaged daughter calls him that.

His wife left him after she had a bit of a nervous breakdown–the squirrels had dug up her bulbs and that was the last straw.

The woman Keller has been seeing, Sigrid, is a travel agent.  She has a son and an ex-husband who has gone deep into animal rescue.  Keller and Sigrid recently had a first date and it was a disaster.  Although they are planning another date after Thanksgiving. (more…)

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Marisa Silver–“Gunsmoke” (New Yorker, June 4, 2001)

Posted in Coronavirus, Film & TV, Guns, Marisa Silver, Quarantine, Tiny Desk (Home) Concerts, Tiny Desk Concert, Tiwa Savage on September 1, 2020| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: TIWA SAVAGE-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #72 (August 31, 2020).

I don’t know who Tiwa Savage is.  Although apparently she is quite well- known.  Savage is

a veteran R&B and Afrobeat singer who began her career at age 11.  For her Tiny Desk (Home) Concert, Tiwa Savage returned, from London, to her birthplace of Lagos, Nigeria. She and The Alternative Sound band set up at the beautiful Jazzhole, a historic vinyl shop well-regarded among record collectors for the rarities within.

After Billie Eilish’s fake backdrop of the NPR office, this backdrop does have an NPR office feel, too.

With floor-to-ceiling shelves packed with books and albums as a backdrop, it certainly seems familiar to us, too — reminiscent of our performance cubicle at NPR HQ.

She plays four songs.  I really like Kenneth Ogueji’s bass sound throughout–very fluid and grooving.

On “Dangerous Love” she “speaks to matters of the heart.”  The song has a lot of high guitar notes from Phillip Akinkuande–fills and trills that flesh out the song nicely.  I also really like how a few times the song seems to smooth to a halt, just to pick up in unison again.

She says “I want you to vibe with us a little longer. I want to bring some Afrobeat to your screens.”

“Attention” has a nice, complex drum opening from Stanley Unogu and some very cool bass fills and runs.  There’s a lot of piano on this song, although I don’t know if it’s from Gospel Obi or Orowo Ubiene.

She sings the Reekado Banks single “Like” that she featured on.  This song is kind of odd as she keeps singing “Go go shorty it’s your birthday.”

She ends the set with “Koroba,” her newest single.  The song “blends her native Yoruba language with Nigerian Pidgin English, underpinned by a catchy, feel-good rhythm.”

This is the danceyest and most fun song of the set.

[READ: August 31, 2020] “Gunsmoke”

I really enjoyed this story.

It begins with the narrator, Alice, saying that her father has a gun and won’t come out of his house.

She received a call from a policeman telling her that her father has not made payments on his house recently and he is about to be evicted.  And yet there he sits with his gun, pointing it at the cops.

It turns out that this particular policeman, Bobby, is someone she slept with in high school. So they have a bit of a history.  She messes with him a bit (her dad has always been eccentric), but Bobby is serious.  He asks if she will get involved. She says she’ll call him.  But he has cut the phone lines.  Shit.

Alice’s father was a stunt man in the movies.  He worked mostly in Westerns in the fifties and sixties.  I love this insight into the world of the stunt man.  He could fall off of a horse, or a building or just about anything.  His only flaw was that he was quite short, but that didn’t stop him from getting work–make up and camera angles could make up the difference.

In one movie there was a battle between the Indians and the Army.  He dressed as a Comanche for one of the shots then changed into a lieutenant’s uniform for the other.  In the final product, “there was a scene of a heavily made up Indian pulling a soldier off a horse.  The Indian stabbed the soldier in the chest with a knife at close range.  The final two closeups of the victor and the vanquished revealed them both to be my father.

Alice also works in films, although when people ask her about it they are inevitably disappointed.  She does post-production voice over work.  She was in Titanic–she was the screams of some people drowning and the chewing in the eating room scenes.

She arrives at her father’s house.  The police are still there.  She knocks on the door and immediately has to tell her dad it’s her so he doesn’t shoot her.

She only visits her dad once a year and he looks a lot older each year–desert rats don’t age well.   She offers to help him pack up and move but he won’t put the gun down.  She’s not really afraid of him, just concerned.

Later she heads out to the store to get some decent food for dinner (he only has soup).  She sees Bobby in the store and they catch up.  He says he’s on his night off from his wife–she says they are in rut so they need to bring new experiences to the marriage. He is supposed to go to the movies and come home and talk about it with her.

So Alice and Bobby go to the movies together.  They watch a movie in which she is the laughter of a girl on screen and then later: “That’s my kissing sound…tongue and everything.”  When he shouts to the crowd that she is the kisser in the movie, she covers his mouth with her hand.  When he licks her skin, they of course end up making out in his car.

The next morning, Alice’s father has to make a decision.  When the police tell him to vacate, he cocks his gun.  Is this a stunt?

I really enjoyed that there were so many great details in this story–some of them didn’t really pertain to the plot but which fleshed out the story really nicely.

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David Thorne–That’s Not How You Wash a Squirrel (2019)

Posted in Australia, David Thorne, Essays, Fire, Food, Free Speech, Funny (ha ha), Guns, Humiliation, Parenting, Smarty Pants, Squirrels, Technology, Teenagers, Tennis, The Flaming Lips, Threats, Toilets, Unlikable main character, Uri Geller, Video Games, Yuck! on August 4, 2020| Leave a Comment »

download (76)

SOUNDTRACK: THE FLAMING LIPS-“My Religion is You” (2020).

download (75)This is another new single from The Flaming Lips’ new, more mellow album American Head.

This song starts as a piano ballad about various religions.

It’s not the most profound song but it’s chill

Yeah, Buddha’s cool
And you’re no fool
To believe anything
You need to believe in
If Hare Krishna
Maybe it’s the
Thing for you
Hey, that’s cool

The chorus kicks in with big fat synth notes that almost feel sinister, but really aren’t.  Wayne explains that he doesn’t need religions, because his religion “is you.”

I don’t need no religion
You’re all I need
You’re the thing I believe in
Nothing else is true
My religion is you

There’s a pretty guitar solo and the end of the song is an interesting mix of scattered drums and quite synth noises.  It’s not their best song for sure, but it grows on you.

[READ: June 2020] That’s Not How You Wash a Squirrel

David Thorne is an Australian smart ass.  This is his fifth collection of previously unreleased emails and essays.

The foreword of this book is written by Holly Thorne, David’s wife.  And it is hilarious.  The Foreforeword is him arguing with her about whether she will write the Foreword–but only if she doesn’t say something mean about him.

So she writes things like

Davis does have a stressful job but let’s be honest, he’s not clearing landmines.  Even on my worst days I’m not half the diva David is.

After writing some more hilarious paragraphs, you see in a different font:

David is very brave, I once saw him flick a snake off the patio furniture with a stick.

In the Postforeword, he complains about her foreword.  That he comes off like a fuckwit and that there is no mention of the snake.  (more…)

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