SOUNDTRACK: BE YOUR OWN PET-Get Awkward (2008).
Be Your Own Pet are a bunch of young kids from Nashville. Get Awkward is their second album. According to the liner notes, two of them were born in 1988 and one of them in 1990. 1990! They play three-chord punk music which focuses primarily on having fun and partying. I like to think that Black Flag’s “TV Party” might be an influence, but really they sound more like The Muffs than anyone else. Jemima Pearl is one of those surprisingly cute punk singers who explode in a gruff gravelly voice (although never TOO rough or gravely) which makes all the proceedings quite fun.
The songs are short (only 2 songs are over 3 minutes), fast, and generally fun. Song titles like “Food Fight,” “Zombie Graveyard Party!” “Bitches Leave” and “Bummer Time” should give you some sense of what the songs are about. I’m led to believe their first album was a bit more aggressive (enough to get Thurston Moore to sign them to his Ecstatic Peace record label). But this one keeps pretty well to the three chords (and occasional guitar riff) and fun shouting and singing.
It seems like every few years there’s a new young punk band who takes up the mantle of punk rock and BYOP were the most recent (although their web site says the just broke up). And it’s cool for young kids to have a new young band to look up to. Much like the theme of the book below, if you’re over 25 you ‘ll probably just think that this band is ripping off [insert your favorite brash young punk band here] but really who wants to listen to 40 year olds singing about parties and whatnot. So, if you’re looking for a new young band, then, check them out. There’s not too much new about them, but then, that’s not the point, is it.
And according to Wikipedia, three tracks were removed because they were deemed too violent (!). Maybe the album is well suited to this book after all.
[READ: September 16, 2008] Little Brother
I have to get this out of the way: READ THIS BOOK! It is fantastic and it will motivate you like nothing I’ve read. READ IT READ IT READ IT.
Okay, I feel a little better.
I read an interview with Cory Doctorow in American Libraries, the magazine of the American Library Association. It was a short interview about this book, and he said such great things in a few paragraphs, that I immediately went to work and checked out the book. And, wow, what a fantastic book.
This may be the kiss of death for any young reader, but Little Brother is an important book. And everyone should read it. And yes, I know it is fiction, but fiction can be a very powerful tool for waking people up to injustice. Upton SInclair’s The Jungle was instrumental in the creation of the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, which established the Food and Drug Administration. Not bad for a work of fiction, eh? (more…)
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You get American Libraries magazine if you’re a member of the American Library Association. So you can see that the audience is rather specific.
And then there’s news about ALA, the organization (like their endorsement of the Public option in the Health Care debate). As the news items continue there’s a lot of items for librarians, but there’ also a lot of news about books and media in general. So, here we learn that J.D. Salinger won his lawsuit against Frederick Colting who wrote an unauthroized sequel to Catcher in the Rye. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 