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Archive for the ‘LGBTQ’ Category

Colm Tóibín–“Stories” (New Yorker, June 9 & 16, 2014)

Posted in Colm Tóibín, Destroy Tomorrow 666, Essays, Funny (ha ha), History, LGBTQ, New Yorker, Patrick Pentland, Romance, Sloan on September 26, 2014| Leave a Comment »

jun9SOUNDTRACK: DESTROY TOMORROW 666-“Distortasaur” (2005?).

6666Destroy Tomorrow 666 is a DJ project from Sloan’s Patrick Pentland.  I had never heard of it until reading about him recently (Sloan has a new album out).  It is Pentland’s Alternative / Electro / Punk outlet that he’s been doing since 2005.

Pentland is known for writing gorgeous pop songs with wonderful harmonies.  But he grew up listening to hardcore punk, so his musical tastes are all over the place.  This track (I love the name) is, like the others here, a distorted fuzzy “dance” song that is all instrumental and not poppy at all.

While I’ll stick with Sloan, I imagine this was a lot of fun to whip together.  And yes, I think it’s very good dark dance music.  Although surely if he was going to use 666 he could have turned Pentland into Pentagram.

You can check it out at ReverbNation.

[READ: June 17, 2014] “Stories”

This year’s Summer Fiction issue of the New Yorker was subtitled Love Stories.  In addition to the two graphic stories, we have a series of five personal essays which fall under the heading of “My Old Flame.”  I liked that all five writers have slight variations in how they deal with this topic.

Colm Tóibín is a prolific writer whom I know very little about.

In this essay, Tóibín flashes back to 1978 when he was 23 and living in Barcelona.  He had been there for a few months when he heard about a cheap charter flight back to Ireland.  So he packed up and got out of Barcelona and returned to his home.

He often wonders what would have happened had he stayed in Spain.  He most likely would have stayed with the guy he was seeing, spending days on the beach and nights in the boy’s apartment in the city.  He even thinks he might never have gone home.

After he left, they kept in touch for a time, then inevitably, they lost touch.  (more…)

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Miranda July–“TV” (New Yorker, June 9 & 16, 2014)

Posted in Bikini Kill, Essays, Funny (ha ha), History, Humiliation, LGBTQ, New Yorker, Riot Grrrl, Romance, Sex on September 24, 2014| Leave a Comment »

jun9SOUNDTRACK: BIKINI KILL-Revolution Girl Style Now (1991).

rvolBikini Kill was one of the most memorable bands from the Riot Grrrl movement.  And frankly, twenty years on, these song still sound incendiary–no one has picked up the torch that bands like this lit in the 90s.

Bikini Kill were confrontational–Kathleen Hannah took no shit, and sang however she felt–sometimes screaming, sometime howling, sometimes singing right on key.   But the most important thing about Bikini Kill was their lyrics–they addressed women’s issues in ways that few bands dared to before (or even since).  As in the title “Suck My Left One.”  Or the premise of “Carnival,” a song about 16 year old girls giving carnies head to go on rides.

While it’s not always clear what the lyrics are, occasional lines are crystal clear. “Daddy’s l’il girl don’t wanna be his whore no more.”  “As a woman I was taught to always be hungry / Now women are well acquainted with thirst”  Or the addressed-to-all-girlfriends, “Double Dare Ya”

Hey girlfriend
I got a proposition goes something like this:
Dare ya to do what you want
Dare ya to be who you will
Dare ya to cry right outloud

Their music, especially on this early self released tape was raw and edgy, abrasive and confrontational.  And yet at the same time they didn’t completely shy away from melody, as this album’s “Feels Blind” has a simple but catchy melody.

[READ: June 17, 2014] “TV”

This year’s Summer Fiction issue of the New Yorker was subtitled Love Stories.  In addition to the two graphic stories, we have a series of five personal essays which fall under the heading of “My Old Flame.”  I liked that all five writers have slight variations in how they deal with this topic.

Miranda July’s take on My Old Flame is set back when she was living in Portland. While her story isn’t exactly happy (how many stories about old flames ever are?), this particular old flame had a major impact on her life.

July noticed that there were two women who were always walking together and who loved together.  She was intrigued by them and their cool house and eventually made friends with them.  She was especially interested in the person called TV.  “She, if she was a she, was every boy from every childhood book.”  July had tried to date boys like that but they often turned out to be assholes. But TV had those boyish qualities and a girl’s point of view. (more…)

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Rachel Kushner–“The Adolescents” (New Yorker, June 9 & 16, 2014)

Posted in Essays, Ex-Cops, Funny (ha ha), History, Humiliation, LGBTQ, New Yorker, Prefab Sprout, Rachel Kushner, Romance, Sex, The Replacements on September 22, 2014| Leave a Comment »

jun9SOUNDTRACK: EX-COPS-“Ken” (2014).

excopsIn this song, I get a vibe of Prefab Sprout singer over a swirly indie band (at least for the verses).  The chorus is bigger–swirling guitars and fast drums, with Ooohs building and building.  And yet the song never quite launches the way “Black Soap” did.

Amalie Bruun doesn’t really contribute to this song.  And while I wouldn’t say she is crucial to the band, something is definitely lacking without her sharing vocal duties.

I wanted this song to be a bit…more, somehow.  I’m not quite sure about Ex-Cops after two songs.  We’ll see if I get blown away by something else later on.

The whole reason I checked out this song was for the video, which is a tribute to The Replacements’ “Bastards of Young” video.

[youtbue=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgRil7yidDg]

[READ: June 17, 2014] “The Adolescents”

This year’s Summer Fiction issue of the New Yorker was subtitled Love Stories.  In addition to the two graphic stories, we have a series of five personal essays which fall under the heading of “My Old Flame.”  I liked that all five writers have slight variations in how they deal with this topic.

Kushner presents a series of past boys that she had crushes on when she was young.  Each one is presented with a “random initial.”  First there was B who looked like an angel.  He asked to carry her books in sixth grade.  It is a sweet introduction until the conflict: an eighth grade girl, she was stridently white, says something about his race.  And in the span of one paragraph, “many things were new to me that day.  B and I never reconnected.”

Next there was D.  D was white and proclaimed that he would hurt others (presumably those who were black).  The race issue was complicated then.

She once kissed M, who was black, although R would have been a better match.  R flirted with her on the playground and treated her like a sexy woman.  (more…)

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Alison Bechdel–“Gradual Impact” (New Yorker, June 9 & 16, 2014)

Posted in Alison Bechdel, Ex-Cops, Graphic Novel, History, Humiliation, LGBTQ, Myrkur, New Yorker, Romance, Sex on September 20, 2014| Leave a Comment »

jun9SOUNDTRACK: MYRKUR-“Nattens Barn” (2014).

myrkurMyrkur is a black metal band whose sole member is a woman–Amalie Bruun, a Danish model who co-leads the Brooklyn indie-pop band Ex-Cops.

This six-minute song has elements of black metal (loud guitars, fast drums) and elements that transcend the genre (the first entire minute of beautiful choral voice).  As the song opens, multilayered voices sing (presumably in Danish) about what I imagine is the heavens (I’m curious about a translation, but won’t look for one).  After a minute the heavy guitars kick in–loud, but not scary loud (a kind of pleasant black metal, if you will).

Until 1:43 when she creams, the drums kick in, and it becomes black metal as we all know it is meant to be.  The song is loud fast and heavy.  But unlike most black metal, there are no vocals (at least that I can hear).  So the song cycles through a few sections.  After returning to the more melodic style, that heaviness keeps pushing its way back in.  It all ends rather suddenly after that five minute buildup.  Although there is a return to the choral voices of the beginning.

I’m intrigued by this and I love that the choral voices (something black metal has done in the past) are done (I assume) by Bruun herself, rather than a male band tacking on the ethereal voices.   Her new release is an EP, and I would like to hear some more of it, just to see what kind of vocals she uses.

[READ: June 17, 2014] “Gradual Impact”

This year’s Summer Fiction issue of the New Yorker was subtitled Love Stories.  And thus, we have a series of personal essays which fall under the heading of “My Old Flame.”  There are several short pieces.  And this year there are two illustrated stories by two wonderful artists.

The first is by Alison Bechdel.  Although I honestly don’t know if Dykes to Watch Out For is still an ongoing concern (which is a shame since i have so many of the early books), I love that Bechdel’s “self” character looks an awful lot (bit not identical to) DTWOF‘s Mo.  It brings a sense of comfort to the story (which I know is not her intention, but still).

In this story, the main character talks about falling for a woman in her karate class.  As it opens, the narrator berates herself for breaking off an affair with a woman who was “kind, beautiful, smart, interesting, sane and available.”  She asks, “What the fuck was my problem?” (more…)

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Diane Obomsawin–On Loving Women (2014)

Posted in "Weird Al" Yankovic, Canadian Content, Cat Stevens, Diane Obomsawin, Graphic Novel, Helge Dascher, LGBTQ, Nostalgia, Religion, Romance, Sex, Short Books, Virginity (Loss of) on August 6, 2014| Leave a Comment »

oloveSOUNDTRACK: “WEIRD AL” YANKOVIC-“Jackson Park Express” (2014).

jpaThe final song on Mandatory Fun is a nearly 9 minute epic which is a parody of Cat Stevens’ style of music.  I would never have guessed that without having read this information online.  However, on listening to it more and more I can hear a lot of Cat Stevens-isms (piano lines and style of chord progressions, although definitely not in the singing style).  I also don’t know if the content is meant to be in reference to the Cat (well, a twisted version of the Cat, of course).

I typically love Al’s longer epic songs, but this one didn’t grab me at first.  Yet after a few listens, I’ve really come to appreciate the twisted humor going on here.   The song starts with some simple pretty acoustic guitars but quickly turns epic with swelling strings and backing vocalists.

The story is about two people on the Jackson Park Express bus in Chicago.  The entire relationship that unfolds is entirely in the narrator’s head.  He bases everything that happens upon the looks she gives him and implies everything through his own looks to her.  As with many Al songs, it starts not just mundanely, but actually sweetly.

I was riding to work on the
Jackson Park Express
Seemed like any other day
Then my whole world changed
In a way I never could have guessed
Cause she walked in
Took the seat right across the aisle
I knew we had a special connection
The second I saw her smile

Pretty nice, right?  And so we see the two communicate (in his mind) nonverbally

She smiled as if to say
“Hello, Haven’t seen you on this bus before”
I gave her a look that said
“Huh, Life is funny, you never know what’s in store
By the way, your hair is beautiful

Again, pretty sweet, until we get to the first wonderfully odd Al line (about her hair)

“I bet it smells like raisins”

And it just gets funnier as it goes on:

Then, she let out a long sigh
Which, I took to mean, “Uh”
“Mama, What is that deodorant you’re wearing?
It’s intoxicating
Why don’t we drive out to the country sometime?
And collect deer ticks in a zip-lock baggie”
I also really enjoyed this punchline:
I gave her a penetrating stare
Which could only mean
“You are my answer, my answer to everything
Which is why, I’ll probably do very poorly
On the written part of my driver’s test”

The song gets really dark and creepy, with (hilarious) lines like:

I gave her a look, that said
“I would make any sacrifice for your love–
Goat, chicken, whatever

And the far more creepy:

Whoa-o-Oh, “I’d like to rip you wide open
And french-kiss every single one of your internal organs
Oh, I’d like to remove all your skin, and wear your skin, over my own skin–
But not in a creepy way”

This is also Al’s most “sexual” song ever, with a line about french kissing (true, it is her organs, but whatever), and this hilarious dramatic pause:

Then, I glanced down, at her shirt, for a second
In a way that clearly implied–
“I like your boobs”

and this other hilarious dramatic pause:

I want you inside me…
oh, like a tapeworm”

But the romance was not to be.  She leaves the bus, despite his nonverbal pleading

Think of the beautiful children we could have someday
We could school them at home, Raise them up the right way
And protect them from the evils of the world
Like Trigonometry and Prime Numbers, oh no
Baby, please don’t go”

There is to be no romance on this bus line.

This is truly a love it or hate it song, but as with most of Al’s epic songs, the more I hear it, the more I love it.  And I can’t wait to see if he plays it live.

[READ: August 3, 2014] On Loving Women

This book is a collection of brief stories about women’s first crushes on other women.  I don’t know how the collection was compiled exactly, but it appears that various women told Obomsawin their stories and she made these fun little comic strip panels out of them.  (Helge Dascher translated them into English–she also did Pascal Girard’s book, that I posted about yesterday).

Each story is named (presumably) after the woman who related it to her.  And each one becomes a simple (but not overly simple) version of the attraction.

Mathilde is obsessed with horses and falls for girls with horse faces (the drawing that accompany this are funny because Mathilda is drawn like a kangaroo or something and the girls she likes are horses.  The ending of this one, about how she learns sign language was very touching.

Indeed, in all of the stories, the women have animal heads and human bodies (but not weird hybrid creatures, just cute cartoony creatures). (more…)

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Ross Campbell–Water Baby (2008) [Minx #8]

Posted in All Things Considered, Boredom, Graphic Novel, Greed, LGBTQ, Minx, Morning Edition, Revenge, Ross Campbell, Sex, Sharks, Surfing, Tiny Desk Concert, Tracy Silverman on July 13, 2014| Leave a Comment »

waterSOUNDTRACK: TRACY SILVERMAN-Tiny Desk Concert #368 (June 28, 2014).

Ttracyracy Silverman is an electronic violinist. In addition to playing the violin, he uses loops to build his sound (I love how many people are using loops these days).  Not only that, he has created his own violin–a six string with frets on the three low strings.  (It’s also shaped more like a guitar than a violin). He gets an incredible breadth of sound out of it (and he is an amazing violinist as well).

He plays three tracks. The first is “Matisse: La Danse,” which really shows off the breadth of his instrument and the effects that he uses.

The second piece he introduces by saying how much he loves listening to NPR and composer BJ Liederman.  So for the second song, which he calls “Sonata No. 4, Opus 37 “All Notes Considered”” he uses pieces of the themes from All Things Considered and Morning Edition.  It’s at once familiar and new, and it’s quite pretty.  He then takes a video of the studio for his Facebook feed.

The final song “Axis And Orbits/Mojo Perpetuo” opens with a trippy pizzicato section, which sounds echoey and almost underwater.  As that section loops, he plays slow, long bowed notes that seems to bring you into outer space.  By the end, after some interesting scratchy guitar-like sounds, he moves into a much faster solo section which really shows of his chops.

I’d never heard of Silverman before but I was pretty impressed with his technique and technology.  It’s a pretty wild ride of music–such diversity and unexpected sounds our of a simple (or not) violin.

[READ: July 5, 2014] Water Baby

I recognized the art from Ross Campbell immediately.  He writes and draws Wet Moon and I find his style (he draws women who are very powerful and very sexual) arresting and confrontational.  This book almost seems like it doesn’t belong at Minx, which tended to skew a little younger.  Even though these girls prove to be younger than I thought, their dress (or lack of—there’s a lot of underwear and tight shirts) is quite risqué (although it proves to be less explicit that Wet Moon).

The story itself was rather unexpected as well.  Brody is a surfer girl. She has cool punky hair and a rocking bod.  But in the first few pages, she is out on the water when she is attacked by a shark and loses a leg.  When she wakes up her best friend Louisa is there, taking care of her.  Since Brody’s mom is working full time, she asks if she can stay with Louisa —the answer is yes, and Louisa becomes an essential part of Brody’s life.  Many of Campbell’s stories focus on the young people, rather than the parents.

Brody soon learns to use a prosthetic leg (and crutches when necessary), but she can’t stop dreaming about the shark (which gets bigger in her dreams and sometimes has legs or comes through walls—it’s pretty terrifying).

Brody gets a call from Jake, and old boyfriend.  Brody hates Jake now and even says she’s off of boys for good.  But he shows up anyhow—he’s blond and hot and maybe a little stupid.  Stupid or not he is a total mooch and he asks to crash with them for a few days.  Jake is clearly crushing on Brody, but he is also making moves on Louisa (who has bigger boobs and tighter shirts).  He even brings a third girl over to fool around with (which freaks out everyone else in the house). But it’s not until the girls wake up one morning to see that Jake has thrown up all over their house that they evict him—which means an immediate drive to Rochester NY. (more…)

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Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki–Skim (2008)

Posted in Canadian Content, Death, Graphic Novel, Jillian Tamaki, LGBTQ, Lowland Hum, Mariko Tamaki, Set at School, Suicide, Tiny Desk Concert, YA Books on July 3, 2014| Leave a Comment »

skimSOUNDTRACK: LOWLAND HUM-Tiny Desk Concert #341 (March 6, 2014).

humLowland Hum are the husband and wife duo of Daniel Levi Goans and Lauren Plank from North Carolina.  He plays guitar and she plays (snare) drum and percussion.  They tour with a few homemade wooden platforms that have small metal jingles, so when they stomp on them, they get great percussive sounds.

They play three songs.  The first is “War Is Over,” a sweet folkie song with tambourine. Their voices meld very nicely (interestingly, her voice which I think is doing harmonies sounds stronger here–but that may just be a trick of the microphone).  There’s something interesting and compelling about they way the song starts–the verses are slightly unconventional, but when the “war is over now” chrous kicks in it sounds like a very different song.  It’s a good combination.

Before the second song, “Pocket Knife,” Daniel explains that this is the first song they wrote together.  It’s a funny story about wanting to write together but being afraid that their voices or styles would be incompatible and how would a husband and wife deal with that?  (Fortunately, they felt very compatible). The song is surprisingly short.  The verse is very quiet, especially his voice. Then the song gets loud–but there’s no vocals during the loud part.  She takes a verse and then it’s over.

Then they open it up for questions.  They explain that they are on stage together and in the van together and so with audiences basically staring at them, they decided to  open up a dialogue on stage.  So they often ask people for questions and comments.  Someone asks about the lyrics books.  They have made lyric books and passed them out before the show (something they do at all of their shows).  They like having something tactile or the audience.  The previous song was number 19 (which reminded me of a hymnal).

“Four Sisters, Pt. One” has many parts and is really interesting.  It has dynamic sound changes.  And when they harmonize on the “use your voice” section, they sound great.  I like the duo and would enjoy seeing them opening for someone, although I don’t think I like them enough to get a record.

[READ: June 29, 2014] Skim

In Skim we meet Kimberley Keiko Cameron who is called Skim (because she isn’t).  She is a heavyset Japanese woman into the goth scene and a wannabe witch.  Her best friend is Lisa, already a witch and, despite her blonde hair, also kinda gothy.  The witchcraft is wiccan lite.

As the story opens, we see that Skim has broken her arm tripping over the makeshift wiccan altar in her room.  But trumping that is the news that Katie Matthews, a super popular girl in school was dumped by her boyfriend, John.  She has drawn a broken heart on her hand with a Sharpie.  Lisa hates Katie and Skim does too, sort of (she doesn’t really hate anyone), but it is still super annoying.

The other principal character is Ms Archer.  Ms Archer is a hippie with red hair and flowing dresses who teaches drama and English.  Skim likes her because she feel a kindred freakishness. (more…)

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Laura Miller–“A Study in Sherlock: How the detective escaped his creator” (Harper’s, May 2014)

Posted in Arthur Conan Doyle, Bob Dorough, Elementary, Harper's, LGBTQ, Mystery, Nicholas Meyer, School House Rock, Sherlock, Sherlock Holmes on April 18, 2014| Leave a Comment »

may20014SOUNDTRACK: “Elementary, My Dear” (1973).

elemYou have to have a particularly cruel heart if you don’t love School House Rock.

All of the songs, well, most of the songs, are super catchy and by golly if you don’t learn a lot.

And they attack problems in an interesting way.  The premise of using Noah’s Ark to show how to multiply by 2 is genius.

You’ll get that “elementary, my dear” section stuck in your head.  But I’m also impressed at the way the song goes into unexpected chords for “you get an even number.” And I love the way Bob Dorough really gets into it (whooping it up at the end).

Few people would think that the 2 times table is hard, but man is it fun to sing along to.

This song is not as popular as some of the other ones, but it’s still great

[READ: April 14, 2014] “A Study in Sherlock”

A while back I wrote a post about Sherlock Holmes on TV (Sherlock and Elementary) and in the movies (Sherlock Holmes).  I had read a few stories and so I did a brief comparison of the shows.  Since then while I have continued to believe that Sherlock is the better show, I have really grown to appreciate Elementary a lot more.  They almost seem incomparable because they are so very different in structure and intent.  Elementary has actually been a little more satisfying lately because it has so many more episodes that it allows the characters to develop and fail in interesting ways–something that the three episodes of Sherlock simply won’t do.

Laura Miller has done a similar thing with this article.  Although in fairness she did a lot more research than I did and talks a lot more about the original books and stage and early film adaptations, and she talks a lot less about the TV shows.  And no she doesn’t cite my post.

This was an enjoyable piece because it goes beyond the commonly known elements of Conan Doyle–how he did not like Holmes and tried to kill him off twice, that he wanted to write more important fiction–and into what Holmes was like after Doyle was finished with him.  Holmes has entered the public domain in both England and America, and so he is basically free for everyone to use, much like a classic myth or a fairy tale.  The big difference is that we know his origins.

What I especially enjoyed was that so many things that we think of as quintessential Holmes are actually not from Doyle.  His deerstalker hat was added by a book illustrator but is never mentioned in the text.  The calabash pipe came a decade later when a stage actor used it so that the audience could still see his face.  Conan Doyle was still alive while these changes were being made.  Indeed, when a play of Sherlock Holmes was written, the playwrite called and asked if he could give the man a love interest and Conan Doyle replied, “Marry him, murder him or do what you like with him.” (more…)

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Hilton Als–White Girls (2014)

Posted in Acting, America's Next Top Model, André Leon Talley, Beck, Books about music, Books about writers, Buddy Ebsen, Death, Eminem, Essays, Feist, Flannery O'Connor, Gender, Gone with the Wind, Hilton Als, LGBTQ, Louise Brooks, Malcolm X, Marriage Trouble, McSweeney's, Michael Jackson, Nels Cline, Pornography, Primus, Prostitution, Record Club, Richard Pryor, Sex, Sexism, Skip Spence, South, Truman Capote, Wilco on March 28, 2014| Leave a Comment »

hiltonSOUNDTRACK: BECK/RECORD CLUB-SKIP SPENCE: Oar (2010).

skipOf the four Record Club discs, this is the only one I don’t own.  Although I do have a different covers collection called More Oar (which Beck also appears on). I may have never heard any of the original songs on this disc, so I can’t even compare them.

For those who don’t know (as I didn’t), Skip Spence was one of the founders of Moby Grape, a band who was vaguely successful in the late 60s and then sort of fell apart (especially when Spence tried to kill his bandmates and was put in an asylum for a year).

Beck doesn’t have anything special to say about why they picked this album.  But he must have been very excited that Wilco and Feist were around to play on it.  He says

This one took place last June when Wilco was in town for the release of their new eponymous album. They came by after a long day filming a TV appearance and still managed to put down 8 songs with us. Jamie Lidell was in the studio with me working on his new record. Leslie Feist happened to be in town editing her documentary and heard we were all getting together. Recording took place at Sunset Sound Studios in the room where the Stones did a lot of Exile On Main Street (and looking at the records on the walls it appeared that the Doobie Brothers recorded most of their output there too). Sitting in on drums, we had James Gadson, who’s played on most of the Bill Withers records and on songs like ‘Express Yourself’ and ‘I Will Survive.’ Jeff Tweedy’s son Spencer played played additional drums. Also, Brian Lebarton, from the last two Record Club sessions is back.

And if you don’t know what Record Club is, see the summary on yesterday’s post.

Wilco plays on 8 tracks (of 12) and they sound great.  Indeed, overall this is the most “professional” sounding recording.  Which is not to say that they don’t have fun. It sure sounds like they do.

Little Hands (2:59).  This has a traditional folk band sound.  It’s a great recording.
Cripple Creek (4:14).  This is not THAT “Cripple Creek,” by the way.  “Jamie takes the lead and Gadson gets behind the kit, while Beck and Brian back them.”  There’s a funky drum breakdown in the middle.
Diana (3:48).  Another good sounding song.
Margaret/Tiger Rug (2:27). This song is a little boppy and slightly silly sounding, but not really that silly.
Weighted Down (The Prison Song) (4:58) “Feist takes the lead this week with Nels Cline arpeggiating some ridiculous 64th notes on a toy guitar.”  Feist adds some beautiful vocals to this song.
War In Peace (5:04).  This begins a little slow and shambolic but it soon builds into a full band that gets even crazier when they start playing “Sunshine of Your Love.”  It was fun to hear them let loose.
Broken Heart (3:39).  This sounds like a traditional song.  A little drunken and fun–a nice duet with Feist.
All Come To Meet Her (2:02).  This is a simply beautiful harmonized a capella rendition.
Books Of Moses (7:21) “Gadson lays down the heaviest RC beat ever, while Jamie loops his voice into a voice army and Brian plays some kind of octagon shaped synth.”  This had a kind of Primus-y weird synth opening.  But as Jamie loops his voice over and over it sounds really good, although it is too long.
Dixie Peach Promenade (Yin For Yang) (3:56).  This is a synthy bouncy song.  It’s a little silly, especially with th Ace of Base coda at the end.  But it sounds good.
Lawrence of Euphoria (5:17).  The lyrics of this song are very silly. This version has a fake cowbell and  funky bass but is otherwise just electronic drums and vocals.
Grey/Afro (7:35).  This has echoed vocals and noisy bass.  It’s hard to figure out what’s going on here, especially at the chaotic ending. But it’s nice to hear them all let loose a bit.

As I said, I don’t know how this compares to the original, but I really enjoyed it.

[READ: March 23, 2014] White Girls

This book was madly hyped and I was pretty excited to read it (even though to be honest I didn’t know if it was fiction or non-fiction–and wasn’t even entirely sure as much as half way through the first piece).  I knew Als’ name from the New Yorker, although I wasn’t really conscious of having read anything by him.  It turns out I read one of these essays in McSweeney’s 35 about four years ago.  The fact that I didn’t remember reading that essay does not speak all that well about it.  But overall I enjoyed most of the essays in the book quite a lot; however, the two longest ones I found, well, way too long.  And I honestly don’t understand the title.

Overall the book is a collection of essays (often told from an interesting perspective, like from the dead person’s first point of view).  The problem with pretty much every essay in the book at least for me was that Als presupposes a base knowledge of these people.  Without that, the essays can be frustratingly vague and unclear.  But again, these people are all famous enough that it seems likely that one would have that base knowledge (even if I don’t).  I do wish there was a small bio or even a photo with these essays (as there was with the Truman Capote one) as I feel that grounded me nicely.

I was a lot more confused by his essays that were more personal.  I didn’t really understand the context for what he was talking about, since i know very little about him.  And as you’ll see from the first essay, he covered a lot in a very un-straight way. (more…)

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Judy Blume and Lena Dunham In Conversation (2013)

Posted in Advice, Books about writers, Children's Books, Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, Judy Blume, Lena Dunham, LGBTQ, McSweeney's, Nostalgia, Sex, Short Books, Small Books, The Believer, Tiny Desk Concert on February 11, 2014| Leave a Comment »

   judySOUNDTRACK: EDWARD SHARPE AND THE MAGNETIC ZEROS-Tiny Desk Concert #32 (October 26, 2009).

I haedve recently begun to really enjoy Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros (watch those e’s people).  Interestingly, I have gotten into their song “Home” which is actually from 2009 and is included in this Tiny Desk Concert.

There is no Edward Sharpe. Sharpe is the alter ego of singer Alex Ebert.  Ebert and Jade Castrinos form the core of this expansive ensemble.  There are ten people in the band making this the largest (and judging from their appearance, smelliest) Tiny Desk Concert to happen yet.  There are a few guitars, accordion, bongos, drums, keyboards and lots and lots of singing

Everyone seems very happy in the band, especially Castrinos, whose bliss is either delightful or disturbing to watch here.

“Janglin'” opens with the whole lot of them bopping along to the janglin song.  Alex Ebert has a folky, husky voice.  There’s lots of shouted “heys” and a fun, nearly-bass vocal section where they all sing “Mag-ne-tic-zeros.”  “Home” is a wonderful song with a catchy whistle and a fun horn section.  The catchiness of the chorus is undeniable.  And this live version is infectious.  The final song, “40 Day Daydream” is a big rambling piece.  There’s a moment near the end that allows Ebert to sing unaccompanied and you can hear that his voice is quite nice.

I always enjoy seeing performers having fun and it’s clear that these Zeros are doing just that.

[READ: January 3, 2014] Judy Blume and Lena Dunham In Conversation

I considered the idea of writing only about tiny books in February.  (I have a number of tiny books that have come along recently and I thought February would be a good time to read them all).  Of course, it’s already the 11th, so there goes that.  But I can still do some, right?

So this little book (6.5 x 4.5 inches, 77 pages) is the full (and enhanced) interview with Judy Blume and Lena Dunham.  The excerpted version appeared in the January 2014 issue of The Believer.  For this book we have the full interview (I assume) and the authors were given a chance to add comments to the interview afterward.

What we get here is Dunham, more or less a fangirl of Judy Blume, talking to her idol.  But Dunham is not just fawning, she is direct and inquisitive and they seem to hit it off immediately, which makes for a great interview.  Blume talks about her phobias (thunder, loud noises).  And their fear of the blank page.  And we also learn of Blume’s writing and daily routines (which are very different from Dunham’s). (more…)

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