SOUNDTRACK: STEVE KIMOCK-Tiny Desk Concert #532 (May 16, 2016).
I’d never heard of Steve Kimock before. He is a guitar player, evidently known for his improvisational playing.
Based on that, I was doubly surprised that the first song not only had vocals, but that they were by someone else in the band (the unnamed female pianist). “Careless Love” sounds incredibly familiar. Even on the first listen, it sounded like I’d heard it before–the vocal melody and her voice, the bass riff, everything seemed familiar, although I’m still not sure if I actually know it.
Kimock’s guitar is metal (or aluminum). It’s quite unusual looking–all shiny and silver. It’s a hollow body but it sounds unlike an acoustic guitar. He’s joined by Bobby Vega on bass–and his bass is so smooth (even on this acoustic).
For the second song, he switches to a hollow bodied electric guitar. He says that “Tongue N’ Groove” is an oldie for himself and Vega (for whom it is also very early in the morning). The singer switches to piano for this instrumental that has a light jazzy feel. It’s quite a lovely song.
For the final song, “Surely This Day,” he switches to an acoustic guitar which he plays across his lap (and uses a slide). This is beautiful solo song with some wonderful moments.
[READ: February 15, 2016] Exquisite Corpse
I really enjoyed this First Second comic. It was translated by Alexis Siegel and it doesn’t feel translated at all.
This is the first book by Bagieu that I have read and I immediately loved her style which has simple lines but also subtle shading. It feels at time realistic and at times cartoony.
The story focuses on Zoe. She is working as a kind of model–a pretty girl who stands near things like cars or boats or whatever. She doesn’t love the job (who would) and on the second day we see a guy honks her ass. The other models are doing the work part-time to put their way through school, but Zoe is the only one with no other options. They tell her she should change jobs or stop complaining. (more…)
Eighth Blackbird is described as a “new music ensemble” from Chicago. That means they play classical music that is new and “different.” The sextet says that looking at each other–being able to communicate–is essential for playing these complex pieces, which calls for an interesting arrangement behind the Tiny Desk.
The first piece is actually two pieces called “Wave the Sea” and “Brushy Fork” from a suite called Murder Ballads by Bryce Dessner (better known as being in The National) . The piece opens with a flute solo by newest member Nathalie Joachim, and then some complex series of notes and timings from the rest of the band–this is cerebral music that you must really pay attention to.
“Pulse,” from Robert Honstein’s three-movement Conduit is a much more gentle piece, far less frenetic and more mellow. It opens with Matthew Duvall’s vibraphone, Yvonne Lam’s violin, Lisa Kaplan’s piano and Michael J. Maccaferri’s clarinet which all seem to get added in one at a time until it is all just one consistent piece. Nicholas Photinos’ cello offers some low end while the flute seems to float above the whole piece. The song seems like it could just keep going forever as a very slow, beautiful round.
The final piece is by David Lang (an artist they have played for many years). “learn to fly” returns to that frenetic tempo of the first piece . Opening with wild syncopated piano notes (it looks impossible to play) and added to by the flute, clarinet and cello. And just when you think the whole piece will remain in this style of complex syncopation, a violin solo bursts forth and soars for a few bars before returning to the melody.
I don’t listen to a lot of classical music, but I really enjoyed this Concert a lot.
[READ: March 1, 2016] Marathon
While overall I have really enjoyed the First Second books that I’ve read, this one I found really confusing and not exactly enjoyable.
The story begins in 490 BC. Unbelievably it says the temperature is 106 degrees Fahrenheit (but sure, why not). A man is running from Athens to Sparta (distance 153 miles). Then there’s the confusing title: Athens: Twelve Years ago. Which I assume means 12 years before 490 BC–where we see some young boys racing. Eucles won the race. It is shocking to everyone that he is the son of a slave. The slave defeated the Kings “own bastard son Phillipus.” And so the King cuts off Phillipus’ head.
When he fails a test shortly thereafter, Eucles’ parents are executed.
Yup it’s that kind of story.
The king is Hippias. He is exiled soon after the events of 12 years ago. (more…)
Florist is a quiet band–they remind me a bit of Kimya Dawson from the Juno soundtrack. There are four members of the band–lead singer/guitarist Emily Sprague and a drummer who has only one drum and plays very sparsely. And then there are two guys who switch between bass/guitar and keyboards. In this Tiny arrangement, the keys are right next to the guys which makes it very easy for them to switch back and forth–I wonder if it works so well on a bigger stage.
I knew the first song, “Vacation” from an earlier All Songs Considered show and this live version sounds pretty much like the recorded version. Sprague has a very gentle voice–almost a whipser (but not mumbling or anything). And her guitar playing is really pretty. I remember Bob Boilen talking about how much he liked her lyrics like:
Like when I used to ride roller coasters with my dad / When a swimming pool in a hotel / Was a gift from God / Like, love, we’re like a family / I don’t know how to be
The song is mostly just her singing until the end when the bassist sings (also very quietly) a duet with her
At least I know that my house wont burn down down to the ground / or maybe it will / if I’ve been in love before and I’m pretty sure I have / I’m pretty sure that my house could burn down down to the ground tomorrow.
Between the first and second song the bassist/keyboardist holds down some notes while the others tune and get ready to play. They’re the most un rock n roll looking band I’ve seen, with them dresses in cozy clothes as they calmly prepare for the second song.
“Cool and Refreshing” sounds that way. The melody is really pretty once again. And Sprague’s vocal line is quite lovely. And the lyrics:
Think of me by the creek in cutoff jeans holding onto / Something that has meaning to me / I don’t really think my life will ever make me / As happy as Kaaterskill Creek
I like the middle of the song when everything drops away except for the lone synth note.
The notes ring out after the second song when Emily finally looks up and says “Thanks everybody” before looking sown and starting the third song, “1914.” This vocals are a duet, and musically it is just the two guitars. It’s a very simple song, sparsely conveying the idea of a farewell letter from 100 years ago:
Please remember to feed the cat. Please remember that I’m never coming back. I was born in 1994 / I as born in the 70s / I was born in 1823 and you were born right next to me.
Florist was touring recently. I imagine it must be the quietest show you could ever go to. But also a very pretty show.
[READ: December 13, 2012] “The Foosball Championship of the Whole Entire Universe”
The premise of this piece is very simple–it is indeed the foosball championship of the whole entire universe. And the players are eleven-year old Nathaniel Rich and seven-year old Simon Rich.
This “joke” more or less tells itself, but Rich is able to add wonderful details to the story of it to make it much funnier than just the title. Nathaniel’s Blue team has won all 83 matches, but this game–the last of the summer vacation–is for all the marbles.
Rich has broken the “story” down into analyses of Keys to the Game.
Like Coaching, in which we learn all about Coach Simon’s style (as told by the “players”): “Coach cries a lot” or “the last time we lost, coach attacked us. It was scary because even though he’s just a boy, he’s also a giant–fifty to sixty times our height.” (more…)
I was intrigued by the name of this band, but I was so disappointed to find out that they were another soul/blues band fronted by a woman who sounds like Bonnie Raitt. Between Bonnie Raitt’s new album, Tedeschi Trucks Band, Lake Street Dive and now this band there’s just too much of this music that is basically the same. And then there’s the song titles: “Sugar” “Catch Me if You Can” and “Mama Said.”
I also had to laugh at the men in the band each one of the six has a beard. And I got a big kick out of the harmonica player who looks like he’s trying to be bad ass, but it’s really hard to look like a bad ass when you are blowing harmonica. And the lead singer does all of those bluesy things that drive me nuts—”sing it with me, “can you play that thing for your mama, now,” etc.
Having gotten that out of the way, the band is really quite good. The sax player has some great solos and the trumpet player sounds good too. And, while I mocked the harmonica player, he is really good—especially on the second and third songs where he plays an electric harmonica and really wails (he is also the brother of the lead singer). Speaking of the lead singer, her voice is great. She’s a tiny little thing but man can she belt out notes. And she’s got the great ability to “sing” mmm hmmms and have them be really loud—a good bluesy front woman. The lead guitarist is really good too whether he’s playing with a slide or doing some lengthy solos, the band really rocks. Frankly you’d have to be a corpse not to tap your foot along to the rhythm or smile at this skinny redhead belting out these notes.
But I would never be able to tell them apart from the other bands I mentioned earlier.
[READ: June 10, 2016] “Choking Victim”
This was the second story in a row that I found hard to believe (and which I didn’t understand the title of).
Karen is in her mid-thirties and has recently had a baby. She is depressed and doesn’t understand why everything is so different in her life.
The thing that I couldn’t quite get in this story was whether or not all of the people who gave her dirty looks (and there a lot) were in her head or in reality. I simply don’t believe that so many people would give her a dirty look just as she walks down the street: “When she pushed her baby through the park in a bulky red stroller, people watched her with curiosity and pity.”
Her husband was away for two weeks and she had a hard time with the baby. It was especially disconcerting to Karen because at six months old her baby wasn’t really talking–hardly even babbling. (more…)
Mothers is an unusual band. There are four members (which isn’t that unusual) but their music has a number of elements that makes them hard to classify. Their songs are slow and somewhat meandering, with a lot of ethereal qualities. There’s no drums and the bass is spare.
On “Too Small For Eyes,” lead singer and guitarist Kristine Leschper sings in a very high, delicate voice and she plays vibratoed guitar lines high on the neck of her guitar (she even holds the guitar very high on her body). There’s another guitarist who plays similarly high notes and a keyboardist who is playing single notes that sound almost like a steel drum—in the most nontropical way ever. The music is pretty and feel like it could float away at any second. But Leschper’s voice veers towards the harsh from time to time which comes as a surprise. And as the song nears the end (it’s unclear just how long this song is going to be since there’s no conventional structure—the song could go for 20 minutes longer), the guitars start playing a slightly more dissonant sound.
“Burden Of Proof” is similarly slow with washes of spooky keyboards growing louder. If they didn’t pause between songs I would have thought it was the same song. The second guitarist is on the floor playing with effects pedals.
As the song ends, the music continues as the bass player thumbs some notes to keep the sound going. The second guitarist and keyboardist switch places. When I first listened to the show without watching I thought they only played two songs.
The third song sounds a little different from the other two (it is a newer song not on their debut album). The guitar line is a little deeper. Like the first song, this one turns a little unsettling in the middle with notes that don’t quite seem t go with the music. It feels like things are slightly awry as they play. The song returns to normal and then as it reaches the end there is that slightly seasick-sounding wave of keyboards that bring the song to its conclusion.
The blurb says that, kind of like with Ane Brun, the band chose to play their most mellow songs for this show. In some ways that makes sense, but it also lost me as an audience member because I felt like their music was too samey.
[READ: April 6, 2016] “My Purple Scented Novel”
I’ve enjoyed just about everything I’ve read from McEwan, but this is by far my favorite story from him.
It is about two writers–Jocelyn Tarbet and the narrator, Parker Sparrow. Forty years ago, they went to school together and were the best of friends. They took holidays together, made love to each others’ girlfriends and even tried a homosexual relationship. That last attempt didn’t work–they were repelled by each other’s penises.
But that was fine, because they were each successful in their own way. Parker had his story published first. But soon after Jocelyn had his story published. And things were great.
Until Jocelyn wrote a TV play and made a fortune. (more…)
If you have a teen or pre-teen and you are concerned about how they will deal with bullying, sex, body issues or, heaven forbid, heroin, this performance is a must-see both for your child and you. The performers are all high school students. They wrote the pieces and they are intended for high school students (and middle school). If you can’t see them yourself, contact your school or community group to arrange for them to do their show. It is intense and really effective.
When the fifth grade completed the D.A.R.E. program at school, the ceremony included a piece by this group. The piece was called “Jack & Jill” and it told the story of how an underage party led to the death of two teens. There were a couple of moments of humor, but the message was intense and the acting was really good (they “rewound” the story and the actors did a great job of going backwards–including one boy who “fell up” the couch (he fell off it earlier).
After they were done, they said that the troupe would be doing their full hour-long show in May and that was open to anyone in 5th grade and older. I was amazed that Clark wanted to go as it’s not really his thing. And so we went. He was bummed that only a couple of kids he knew showed up. I was bummed at how few people showed up at all. And so I wanted to post about the show to get the group some recognition because what they did was really powerful and I think should be seen by just about everyone.
When we arrived, the teacher in charge of the group Miranda DeStefano-Meene told us that the show would be uncensored and pretty intense. The program says that the words on stage “may embarrass, hurt, offend, scare and anger you. That is intentional.” The second paragraph spoke of the heroin epidemic in our society which is bigger than any other drug epidemic in recorded history, which I did not know.
And so we sat back and watched this show. Now, I happen to think that Clark may not have been exposed to a lot of what was going on in this play (which I’m grateful for). So this show may have been really intense for him (I know I spent the whole show wondering what he thought). After the show the only thing he said was that it made hm sad. And we did talk a little about the messages, but he’s a tight-lipped kid, so I can only hope he’ll come back to me with more questions if they arise.
And what questions he must have. For this show tackled so many problems facing teens. (more…)
SOUNDTRACK: MARIA VOLONTE-Tiny Desk Concert #183 (December 27, 2011).
One of my plans for this calendar year was to write about all of the Tiny Desk concerts from 2016 and from 2011 (to play some catch up). This is the final tiny Desk from 2011! Huzzah.
Maria Volonte is an Argentine singer who interprets tango music in her own way. She also plays folk, Latin blues as well as more traditional music. She plays three songs here and is accompanied by the fantastic harmonica player, Kevin Carrel Footer.
“El Beso Azul” (The Blue Kiss) is a pop-folk ballad expressing menacing sadness. Volonte’s voice is beautiful–full of longing and desire, heartache and sorrow. She plays a very rich and full sounding acoustic guitar and is accompanied by a wonderful bluesy harmonica which plays some amazing lines and riffs.
“Oh Viejo Tren” (Oh, Old Train) is based on a long train ride from the outskirts into the city proper of Buenos Aires. She says, “This is about people chasing their dreams in the city and then falling into reality.” This song is slower and sadder and her voice changes appropriately, even if there is still an air of sultriness about it. The harmonica in addition to playing great “train” sounds, keeps a perfect bluesy accompaniment.
“SF Tango” is an ode to San Francisco and to tango. The song is in English. I like the way she picks her guitar at the beginning and the cool strumming rhythm that the rest of the song has.
Typically, when there’s an interesting quote from the blurb, I post it here, but Jasmine Garsd’s write up is quite lengthy, and it tells an interesting history of the tango as well as some details about Volonte. It also says she can barely listen to “SF Tango” as she finds it so moving. I didn’t find it so, but I did enjoy what she wrote. Read it here.
[READ: January 2, 2016] Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour
I also wanted to make sure I finished all of the posts I started in 2015. This is the last one (although maybe I finished the book in 2016?). So it’s nice to have that burden lifted as well!
I read Warner’s The Sopranos in 1998. I loved it. It was very funny, very raunchy and a delightful way to see girls having wild fun.
Of course, it’s nearly 20 years later and I have a daughter of my own and I can’t help but think that the girls’ behavior is so unsafe, so unwise, so irresponsible!
This play also seems (if memory is any guide) to take the wildness of the girls and condense it. Since there is no narrator to slow things down they are just wild from the get go.
So this play is about six girls. The girls are the only ones in the play–they wind up doing different characters (including men) which sounds like it would be very funny to see). All of the girls are in the choir of Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour Catholic school. And they are all heading to a competition in Edinburgh
The six girls are:
Fionnula (lives in a council house bought with the money from her grandad)
Manda (Mum fucked off, lives with her da, never shuts up about her sister)
Chell (lives up the complex, has had a lot of tragedy in her family)
Orla (diagnosed with cancer but recently returned from Lourdes)
Kylah (parents own their house and she sings in a band)
Kay (stuck-up goody-two shoes, off to university)
The girls are hardened and cynical–they say there have been several pregnancies this year already in their class and they call their headmistress Sister Condom. They are excited to go to the city for this competition not to sing but to get shitfaced and hook up with guys.
Their language is fairly shocking from the starts. It’s one of the girls who says Manda’s mum “fucked off.” And this being Scotland, the word “cunt” is thrown around all over the place.
The girls plan to separate when the get to the city. But first they get started by going to the bar (the girls are afraid to bend over to pick up their cigarettes for fear of flashing the entire bar). They drink. A lot. Even though they are underage. And they get hit on by all sorts of men. One even has the pick up line “Do you know you have 206 bones in your body? Would you like another one in ya?”
And then the girls separate.
Two go home with a guy who is divorced and very sad about it (which leads to a very wild scene–including a moment in which one of the girls portrays a man with an erection–wonder how they did that).
By the end of the night at least one girls has thrown up, at least one girl has hooked up and it sure looks like they have no chance of winning their competition.
Unlike a Hollywood production though, this story is not destined to end with them winning everything (this is no Pitch Perfect). The girls are going back to their hum drum lives after this and they will also have to deal with the realities that a night of debauchery can reveal.
So despite the fact that this play is laugh out loud funny, by the end, it’s not really a comedy. Thanks, Scotland.
Gem Club is a quiet band. During this set there are three members: Christopher Barnes on keyboards and lead vocals, cellist Kristen Drymala and vocalist Ieva Berberian (who is eerily silent and still for much of the performance).
The first song, “Animal” features Barnes on keyboards, playing a simple melody and Drymala, playing a low and loud cello to accompany (when her first note comes in, it’s really striking). She also sings a wonderful harmony vocal. Barnes’ voice is almost a whisper, but between his voice and the vibrato on the keys, it sounds really big (but still quiet). I really enjoyed the way the only “melody” she played on cello was at the very end of the song–a brief riff to signal the end.
“Breakers” opens with some rough cello playing and then a gentle echoed keyboard. Ieva Berberian didn’t do anything in the first song, she just hovered mysteriously in the background. But for the second song she hits occasional tambourine notes (which sound practically like explosions amid the delicate echoing keyboards). Perhaps the most interesting part of the song is watching Drymala tap on some colorful bells with her foot to create a lovely melody.
For the final song, “252” Barnes says it is kind of a beast, (although it doesn’t sound any more complex than the previous two to me). The piano is echoed and Ieva Berberian finally sings backing vocals. Her voice is a little haunting and it works very nicely with Barnes’ voice. The melody is beautiful.
Incidentally, the blurb says that this is the first time they’ve amplified a singer’s voice (they ran his voice through a chorus pedal to give it that otherworldly echo). I have been listening to a lot of loud music lately, and this was a perfect counterpoint.
[READ: December 20, 2015] History’s Naughty Bits
This is the kind of book that promises to be very funny. And then it turns out to be mostly funny but also rather scholarly. Which is not bad thing, it’s just not as raucous as one might have imagined.
Dolby begins by dismissing the idea that “naughty” things are a recent invention and then proceeds to go through the history of human culture to show examples of things that would certainly be considered naughty today (some are quite shocking).
She starts with Classical Greece where women were expected to remain chaste, except for hetairai, high-class courtesans, who were well-educated and respected. That’s some choice. Adultery was considered less of a sin if was committed with a prostitute. (more…)
Hospital Ships is a band created by Jordan Geiger, who was in the band Shearwater, among others. In 2011 he released his second album as Hospital Ships. The blurb describes the album as “packed with poppy folk songs and brash rockers enhanced with instrumental flourishes and bursts of guitar feedback,” but for this recording, they strip everything down to the basics: a guitar, banjo, ukulele and a drum with a towel over it to muffle the sound.
Geiger has a rather high-pitched, delicate, almost talking-singing voice and his songs are rather pretty. The band plays 3 songs in just over ten minutes. The first one, “Phantom Limb,” (once my lover, now my friend, you are my phantom limb) has a recurring motif of them saying/singing “ha ha” which is rather catchy.
“Carry On,” features a four-letter word (technically a seven letter word), which might be one of the first times on a Tiny Desk Concert that such a word is uttered. It’s especially funny given how sweet the band sounds. The sentiment of the song is nice though: “To all the women I’ve loved, When I was with you I would say I was better off…. And when I’m gone, carry on, carry on.” There were harmonies in the first song, but they are more prominent in this one (three part) and are quite nice. The banjo player also does a whistling solo.
“Let Me In” made me laugh because he uses the word baby a lot (which Ben Folds said in his Tiny Desk that he has never said in real life, so why would he put in it a song?). But this song is very gentle and sweet–just Geiger on his guitar singing “baby, let me in.”
Geiger’s voice reminds me of a few different people–Ben Gibbard from Death Cab for Cutie especially on the final track; perhaps the Mountain Goats or the Weakerthans. And his songwriting is very good.
[READ: December 26, 2015] Silent But Deadly
I really enjoyed the first Liō collection, and was pretty excited that I could find the second collection so quickly (my library doesn’t have any more collections for some reason, so I’ll have to track the rest down elsewhere). This book collects the strips from February 25, 2007 – December 2, 2007.
Not much has changed from that book to this one, but I think Tatulli’s comic chops have gotten even better.
The strip won me over immediately with the first one in the book. Lio draws a monster and it comes to life. He looks at the marker and it says “magic marker” and he gets a big grin and goes back to work. So simple yet so funny.
It is that big grin–wide open-mouthed just unfettered mischievous delight that occurs in nearly every strip. (more…)
SOUNDTRACK: JOE HENRY-Tiny Desk Concert #176 (November 21, 2011).
I had never heard of Joe Henry, so imagine my surprise to find out that he was releasing his 12th album in 2011. For this Tiny Desk, it’s just him at a stool playing his guitar. He has a very easy vibe, telling stories between songs and playing them with very little fuss.
He opens the show by saying this is, “not exactly like Woody Guthrie playing for the union members but you are working people.”
He plays four songs, “Sticks and Stones,” After the War,” “Odetta” and “Piano Furnace.”
Between the first two songs, he says he first became aware of Tiny Desk Concerts when his friend Vic Chesnutt was on the show (amusingly, he was the second person on the show). He says he has a song on his new record about Chesnutt (Chesnutt had recently died). He doesn’t play it though. At first it seems like he might not be allowed to play it, but then it seems like maybe he just doesn’t get to it.
Rather he plays “After the War” where his guitar sounds like it has an incredible echo on it. That echo is also present on the third song. After which Bob asks him about his guitar.
Joe says he’s had the guitar for 6 years. But the guitar dates back to 1932. He says that he heard things differently with this guitar. It’s got a smaller body and was actually sold as a budget guitar by Gibson (for $19 in 1932). He also jokes that it’s black and looks a bit like a World Wrestling Federation belt.
Then someone asks him about Sam Phillips. Joe says he sold her husband a guitar about 20 years ago. She and her husband have split and Sam got the guitar and has been playing only that guitar for the last 20 years. He says that he loves that she doesn’t plug in her guitar. She plays into a microphone where you can hear the whole guitar and which makes the other players lean in to hear her.
I love the chords he plays in the final song, “Piano Furnace,” even if I don’t know what the song is about. Henry’s voice is familiar. I think he sounds a bit like a number of different singers. And overall, nothing really stands out in his performance, except that everything sounds great and hiss songwriting is really solid. That’s not a bad thing.
[READ: December 20, 2015] Happiness is a Squishy Cephalopod
Mark Tatulli is the author of the Desmond books. I liked the stories, but I didn’t love the drawing style so much. Imagine my surprise to find out that Tatulli has been drawing comics featuring this little boy Liō since 2006 (going forward, I’m leaving off that line over the o, because it’s a real pain).
And even more surprising is that I like the drawing style in the comic quite a bit–it is slightly refined over the Desmond books and is all the better for it.
I am also really surprised to find out that this strip appeared in newspapers across the country. I’ve certainly never heard of it (but then I don’t read newspapers anymore, either).
So Lio is strip about a boy named Lio. Lio is a dark, dark kid. He has a pet squid, he loves monsters and he’s delighted by chaos. (more…)
SOUNDTRACK: STEVE KIMOCK-Tiny Desk Concert #532 (May 16, 2016).
I’d never heard of Steve Kimock before. He is a guitar player, evidently known for his improvisational playing.
I Just Read About That... 