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Archive for the ‘New Yorker’ Category

Jonathan Franzen–“Hissing of Summer Lawns” (New Yorker, October 11, 2010)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Essays, Funny (ha ha), Jonathan Franzen, New Yorker, Summer, The Fun Years on January 20, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: THE FUN YEARS-“Breech on the Bowstring” (2010).

This album (with the awesome title), God Was Like, No came in at number 5 on Viking’s Top Ten.  It is a kind of ambient music, except that the notes are a fast staccato instead of long-held notes.  According to the radio show, the band consists of just guitar effects and turntables (another duo!).  In the beginning of the song, it’s impossible to tell which is which with these noises.

The music is quite pretty if slightly unsettling.  Over the 7 minutes of the track, you can feel it building and building, getting louder and louder, without really changing the dynamic all that much (except you can hear more and more details in the music).  Although by the 6 minute mark, the noise tends to overpower the nicer earlier music and the wall of sound become more and more ominous.

It takes a couple of listens, but it gets better and better with each one.

[READ: December 30, 2010] “Hissing of Summer Lawns”

Just when I think I’m done with Franzen, he drags me back in.

This one page anecdote in the Something Borrowed category is actually the shortest of all of them.  It continues with my favorite aspect of Franzen’s writing: his young adulthood.

In this case, he talks about his struggling years, when he would borrow people’s houses.  He house sat for a professor who was on vacation and wanted someone to make sure their son didn’t party while they were away.  The son, who showed up after a couple of days, put Franzen in his place with a blistering stare.

But the main part of the story comes when he agrees to house sit for friends.  His only real duty was to mow their lawn which he immediately neglects to do.  Soon the lawn is out of control.  And worse, when he finally goes to cut the jungle, the lawn had been infected by earth-burrowing hornets. (more…)

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Jennifer Egan–”Dealing with the Dead” (New Yorker, October 11, 2010)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Death, Essays, Jennifer Egan, New Yorker, The Body on January 19, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: THE BODY-“Empty Heath” (2010).

This is Viking’s fourth pick for album of the year.  (I skipped number three because it is an acoustic finger picked-instrumental album which I liked fine but which wasn’t anything special to me).  The Body is a fascinating band, and they are hard to learn anything definitive about online.   But if you’re looking for the album, All the Waters of the Earth Turn to Blood, you can get it on Amazon, or (cheaper) from At a Loss Recordings.

This song opens quietly with a person saying “together.”   It’s followed by a fascinating chorus singing what sounds like possibly Peruvian throat singing.  And then the guitars bash in.  Heavy droning guitars (with a screaming “lead” vocalist buried in the mix).  The song often stutters to a halt only to pick up the doom and mysterious gloom.

The notes about this album say that it is a duo (why is some of the heaviest, most menacing music made by duos?)  At some point in the song, the music stops and you hear just the chanting (which now sounds like it’s reversed vocals).  I have no idea what to make of this song or if the rest of the disc sounds like this, but I’m really intrigued by it.  Viking calls it “the most surreal doom-metal record of 2010” and I agree.

[READ: December 30, 2010] ”Dealing with the Dead”

Jenifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad is on my short list of books to read this January so I was intrigued to read this little piece by her.

Her Something Borrowed article (the third in the series) is quite different from the others.  It begins with a fairly shocking account of her mother’s robbery at gunpoint. She had been working in a gallery and the robbers thought they would have cash on hand (they didn’t).  There was talk of shooting them until they were inadvertently rescued by a delivery man.

This rather exciting story mellows out pretty quickly in to a far more reflective and mellow story. (more…)

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Rohinton Mistry–“Empire Records” (New Yorker, October 11, 2010)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Books about music, Harvey Milk, New Yorker, Rohinton Mistry, Swans, The Beatles, The Melvins, Travel on January 18, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: HARVEY MILK-“I Did Not Call Out” (2010).

This album is #2 on Viking’s Metal and Outer Sound list of 2010 CDs (from NPR).  During the radio show when Viking revealed his Top Ten albums, he mentioned that Harvey Milk is his favoirte band of all time.  I’d never heard them before, so this was eye opening (confusing them with Harvey Danger is a big mistake).  This song comes from the album A Small Turn of Human Kindness.

The melody is dark (pretty but in a bleak sort of way), but the instrumentation is sludgy and menacing.  It is very slow-paced with occasional “riffs” that run through the “verses.”  It has a sort of Melvins meets Swans kind of vibe, but run through the menace of a black metal band.

The lyrics are sung/growled, but unlike a lot of growled vocals, there are only a few words and they are stretched and held for several beats.  It’s a weird thing to hear the demon voice hold notes and actually sound like it is singing!

Interspersed within the ponderous heaviness are some beautiful if not uplifting guitar melodies and soaring solos.  Until, that is, the very end when the song slows to a crawl… deep notes and ambient noise stretch out and the track ends with crackling silence.

It’s menacing, but after several listens, I’m hooked.

[READ: December 30, 2010] “Empire Records”

This is the second of the one page articles labelled “Something Borrowed.”  I have also never read anything by Mistry before.

A few months before leaving Bombay for Toronto, Mistry loaned a friend his LP of A Hard Day’s Night (this was circa 1975).  Albums were very important to him because his father ritualized the playing of the gramophone.  When they eventually progressed to 45s and LPs the family got into pop music and from there, obviously, The Beatles. (more…)

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Henry Bromell–“Honor Bound” (New Yorker, October 11, 2010)

Posted in Agalloch, All Songs Considered, Henry Bromell, Library Related, New Yorker, Set at School, Short Story on January 17, 2011| 2 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: AGALLOCH-“Into the Painted Grey” (2010).

For this week’s music I ‘m going to look at the Top Ten albums picked by  Lars Gotrich (Viking) on NPR’s All Songs Considered.  Viking loves black metal and drone music, so most of these albums aren’t on a lot of Top Ten Lists.

Agalloch’s Marrow of the Spirit was his number one album of the year.  This is a fascinating song full of ambient guitars and rather beautiful melodies (in the intro).  It is a song of longing and distance.  The guitars intertwine and are quite nice.  Then at almost 2 minutes in (of a 12 minute song), the drums kick in and work as an introduction to the dark metal chords that are forthcoming.

At almost 3 minutes, the vocals come in and this is where they’ll lose most listeners.  The vocals are barely audible demon growls.  And yet they are low in the mix and don’t overpower the song (I have no idea what he’s singing about).

Indeed, the vocals are almost spoken (sounding not unlike Gollum) setting more of a mood than an actual story.  It’s a shame that the vocals are going to turn people off because the rest of the song is rather majestic in scope and tone.  Back when black metal first started, vocals like these were matched to equally sludgy music, but when they’re matched to this kind of progressive, epic music, they feel like another instrument, another addition to the melody.

And the rest of the song is so much more than just standard black metal.  Especially at the five and a half minute mark when all of the noise pulls back and a beautiful guitar riff comes to the fore.  Another great melody break comes again at the 10:30 mark.  They really transcend the genre.

I’ve never heard Agalloch before, but their sense of melody and composition is really top-notch, and even with the vocals, this is a pretty stunning piece of music.  Not for everyone, obviously, but a good choice for Viking’s song of the year.

[READ: December 29, 2010] “Honor Bound”

This is the first of five one-page anecdotes/stories/histories in this issue of The New Yorker that come under the heading of “Something Borrowed.”  I read all five because two of them are by Zadie Smith and Jonathan Franzen.  I haven’t read Henry Bromell before, so I don’t know how representative this story is of his other works.

This anecdote concerns Bromell’s time at a boarding school in Wales.  The school was an old castle (it sounds awesome).  Their library was structured around an honor system; the boys were supposed to write their name down on the list, keep the book for two weeks and then return the book to its place on the shelf.  Since his life had very little structure (he was an army brat and didn’t have a “home”), Bromell began keeping the books from the school’s library (carefully hidden on…the shelves in hid bedroom(!)).  He even put his name on the title page of some of them.

(more…)

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Alice Munro–“Corrie” (New Yorker, October 11, 2010)

Posted in Alice Munro, Canadian Content, New Yorker, Radiohead, Sex on January 14, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: RADIOHEAD-Amnesiac (2001).

It’s with Amnesiac that I basically stop remembering any titles to Radiohead songs.  This album came out quickly after Kid A and was talked of as being something of a return to form after the experimentation of Kid A.  However, it is more of the same kind of Kid A experimentation.

But as with Kid A, just when you think there’s no hooks to grab onto, you get the compelling line from “Packt like Sardines in a Crushed Tin Box”: “I’m a reasonable man, get of my case.”

With “Pyramid Song” the disc shows signs of more conventional songwriting (a piano opens the track!).  There’s some wild electronica over the top of the piano, but it’s still a piano-based song.  Of course, just when you think things are fairly standard, you get the oddly titled “Pulk/Pull Revoloving Doors” a stuttering electronic track with distorted vocals that just sort of meanders.  Of course, the more you focus, the more you get out of it (especially with headphones).

There’s some great guitar work on “I Might Be Wrong” but the highlight of the disc has top be “Knives Out,” the most conventional song on the disc and an absolute knock out.  “Morning Bell” reprises itself from Kid A in a slightly more twisted way  It’s rather less satisfying than Kid A‘s version.  And the rest of the album, including the very cool and creepy “Like Spinning Plates” contains more of that electronic bizarreness from Kid A.  The disc ends with the cool clarinet of “Life in a Glass House”

To my mind, Amnesiac is a far more experimental disc than Kid A, and while I enjoy it and I like it in theory, I don’t find it as satisfying to listen to.   And indeed on the In Rainbows show, they didn’t play anything from it.

[READ: December 30, 2010] “Corrie”

Chalk up another great story for Alice Munro.

This one is very simple.  A not-so-young anymore woman, set to inherit a lot of money must take care of her ailing father.  He desperately wants to see her married, but she is simply not interested.

As the story opens, she is having dinner with her father and a church architect named Mr Ritchie.  Mr Ritchie is married, but he seems grateful to Corrie’s father for the work, so he lingers around, working on the church and also helping Corrie as her father worsens.

When her father dies, they begin an affair. (more…)

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E.L. Doctorow–“Assimilation” (New Yorker, November 22, 2010)

Posted in Arranged Marriage, E.L. Doctorow, Gangsters, Marriage Trouble, New Yorker, Radiohead, Short Story on January 13, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: RADIOHEAD-Kid A (2000).

After the rocking brilliance of OK Computer, Radiohead released Kid A.  And the world hushed.  The opening song “Everything in Its Right Place” begins with keyboard notes and what-the-hell vocals by Thom Yorke.  Once the song proper starts, though, it turns into a cool, electronically detached Radiohead song.  And even though it never lifts beyond that state, the melody is captivating.  Next, the title track is downright bizarre, a quiet electronic ticking and bleeping song with distorted vocals and, eventually, electronic drums.  It’s a statement of purpose if nothing else and shows that you’ll not be hearing any guitar anthems here.

And then comes “The National Anthem,” one of my favorite Radiohead songs ever.  It reasserts them as songwriters (even if its a really weird song).  It features a great bass line and then–about 3 minutes in–it devolves into a noisy skronky horn filled mess.

After the moody near-instrumental “How to Disappear Completely” and the mellow actual- instrumental “Trefingers”, “Optimistic” comes back with some wonderfully clear moments amidst the beautiful murk of the song.  It is followed by “Idioteque,” which is probably the perfect encapsulation of the new Radiohead: full of disorienting electronic distorted noises and yet utterly catchy and captivating.  “Morning Bell” the next track is equally stunning.

It’s odd of course that the disc ends with two minutes of silence, but that’s surely not the oddest thing on this disc.  And yet for all my seeming criticism, the disc is genre-breaking and mind-bending.  It’s an extraordinary piece of music.   And it virtually smashed all communication with their earlier selves.

Oh, and I even managed to score the limited edition disc with the booklet behind the tray!

[READ: December 31, 2010] “Assimilation”

Although I have met E.L. Doctorow (and he signed his then latest book–which I have yet to read), I have not read a lot by him.  I’m not sure why exactly, as I regard him highly, he’s just another writer who has slipped through my fingers.

As such, I have no idea if this story is in any way representative of his work.

It is a fairly straightforward story.  A hispanic man, Ramon, who is an American citizen and has gone to college, finds himself busing tables in a restaurant owned by a Russian immigrant.

One day the boss asks him, basically, if he would marry a Russian woman so as to get her legally into America.  He agrees.  They do.  And she treats him like dirt, because really, she has no reason to be nice to him.

She is such an unlikable (almost unbelievably so) character that I considered not finishing the story.  I also felt that Ramon may have been to gullible.  And yet, Doctorow writes so wonderfully, that I kept reading even though I didn’t really care about them. (more…)

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George Saunders–“Escape from Spiderhead” (New Yorker, December 20 & 27, 2010)

Posted in Consumerism, Corporate skewering, Death, Depression, Drugs, Dystopia, Fears, George Saunders, New Yorker, Prison, Radiohead, Technology on January 12, 2011| 5 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: RADIOHEAD-OK Computer (1998).

The Bends showed amazing maturation for Radiohead, but OK Computer was like going from black and white to color.  It opens with “Airbag” a blast of music, oddly off kilter and unsettling but which immediately brings you into a great riff.  About midway through, the song splits in stereo with two competing solos vying for attention.   It ends with a loud stretched out chord.  And then comes one of the most bizarre singles around.  A nearly 7 minute multi-segmented song which, the first time I heard it, I couldn’t even find a melody.  I rather wish I could go back to that naive time, because my mind was blown away by the outlandishness of the song.  Now I know all the melodies and I think it’s just brilliant.

The minor chords of “Subterranean Homesick Alien” are accented with outer space sounds and yet despite its subject (alien abduction), the song is pretty well grounded: a simple, easy rocking track.  It’s followed by “Exit Music (for a Film)”, a gorgeous building minor chord song that opens with simple acoustic guitars and slowly builds to a scorching rocker (when the drums kick in at nearly 3 minutes, it’s like a wake up call).

“Let Down” is another slow builder, although it features a much more singable verse and chorus structure (it’s incredibly catchy).  It’s followed by “Karma Police” another catchy monster of a song.  It starts with a pleasant enough piano riff and features the politely sung threat: “this is what you get when you mess with us” and the beautiful falsettoed apology: “for a minute there I lost myself.”

It segues into the odd 2 minute computer-voice-recited (and barely listed as a track) “Fitter, Happier.”  This song foreshadows future Radiohead experiments.  It seems like a blow-off track, a filler, and yet like so many of the newer Radiohead songs, it works like glue holding the big hits together.  Check out how weird, wild and intricate the music behind the voice is.

“Electioneering” is one of the noisiest, most raucous songs in the Radiohead catalog.  It opens with this steel guitar sounding riff and crashes in with loud, distorted guitars and all kinds of drums.  Thom Yorke’s vocals are really loud in the mix, so when he gets to the bridge it’s practically a wall of noise, but listen to the great ascending and descending guitar riffs behind his vocals.  They’re really intriguing.  As is the skronking noisy guitar solo.

“Climbing Up the Walls” has all kinds of insane sound effects going on in the background of one ear (as befitting the title).  It’s a drum-heavy track with eerie almost unadorned vocals (until the very end when Yorke goes berserk).  It segues into the most delicate track on the disc, “No Surprises.”  The chorus of “no alarms and no surprises, please,” has always been very affecting.  And the delicate bells that adorn the verses are a very nice touch.  The penultimate track, “Lucky” is a sort of optimistic track, despite its mellow music and, I suspect, really not very optimistic ending. But the utterly uplifting scream of “it’s going to be a glorious day, I feel my luck could change” is spine tingling.

I feel like “Lucky” is such a great ending song that I tend to forget the final track, “The Tourist”.  It’s a slow, drawn out  track…”idiot, slow down.”  It’s probably my least favorite song on the disc, but it’s kind of a good ending after all of the high points of the disc.

And with the final bell of the final song, Radiohead became untouchable.

[READ: December 29, 2010] “Escape from Spiderhead”

George Saunders must live in a dark, dark world.  His comedy is dark (but very funny) yet I feel he is often quite under-served when people refer to his as a funny storyteller.  This story, which actually has many funny elements, is incredibly dark.  And even though I laughed out loud at a few things, no one comes away from this story happy.

One of the great things about Saunders is his almost obsessive mockery of corporate/medical culture.  He has more trademarks in his story than anyone I’ve ever read (even if they are all for things he has made up).  Now to me, that’s funny in itself (especially the names he gives them), but it serves a much more telling purpose: a portent of a very dark future.

This story is set in a lab, where the main character, Jeff, is being communicated with by Mr Abnesti (a very hard name to keep straight).  Jeff is in a room with Heather, and both are being fed the experimental drug ED556, a shame inhibitor.  And so they rip off their clothes and have at it (he was obviously given some Visistif™ because they do it three times).  They are also given some Verbaluce™ which helps them elucidate their experience (from more than just grunts and moans).  This Verbaluce™ is essential to all of their experiments because without their comments, the proceedings are undocumented. (more…)

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Tessa Hadley–“The Trojan Prince” (New Yorker, November 15, 2010)

Posted in Adventure, New Yorker, Radiohead, Tessa Hadley on January 11, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: RADIOHEAD-The Bends (1995).

This album catapulted Radiohead out of alt-rock awesomeness into pop rock ubiquity.  It opens with “Planet Telex” which sounds like a continuation of the grungy noise of Pablo.  And yet from there, the album pushes stylistic envelopes but also works within the convention of rock songs to make fantastic singles.  The title track is still being played in concert today (which is funny since it wasn’t a single).

But it was “High and Dry” that was the first monster hit.  It was everywhere (and still sounds fresh fifteen years later).  And then “Fake Plastic Trees” basically gave a blueprint for the amusing label “mope rock” (thanks Clueless).

The album fleshed out the sound that Pablo Honey established with far more dynamic instrumentation.  But the strangest thing about the disc is that it is recorded mostly on a platform of acoustic guitars.  Even the rockingest tracks like “Just” (which gets wild and screamy by the end) is still built upon a very simple acoustic guitar motif.   “(Nice Dream),” for instance, features some screaming guitar solos over the acoustic backdrop.   Of course, the brilliant “My Iron Lung” doesn’t have acoustic guitars, it is built on a simple guitar riff until the chaos descends on it.

It’s interesting to see conventional things on the disc, like the fade in intro of “Black Star” which would be totally abandoned (often shockingly so) on later discs.  And then the disc ends with the gorgeous “Street Spirit (Fade Out)” a fairly conventional song that shows what great songwriters the bands have always been.

Despite all the high points on the disc, I tend to overlook it because of how much I love their follow-up.   But that in no way diminishes the greatness of The Bends.

[READ: December 28, 2010] “The Trojan Prince”

I was never entirely certain when this story was set, and so I have settled on the relatively distant past.  It concerns a young man and his first and future attempts at wooing a young woman.  James is a working class fellow who is on the verge of “going to sea.”  But before he leaves, he decides to visit his distant cousin Ellen.  Ellen comes from a very well off family, and James’ first steps in her house are nervous ones (he didn’t wipe off his boots before coming in and he’s afraid to see if he tracked in mud).

While he is waiting for Ellen to come downstairs, he is greeted by Connie, a girl who is slightly older than him who he grew up with.  She was a pest to him then and he is more than a little disappointed to see her here.  (The short explanation for her presence is that Connie is now orphaned and Ellen’s family has taken her in).   Despite the initial teasing she does, she quickly invites him up to the girls’ room and when he (sort of) sneaks in, he is almost overcome by the smells of a sealed-up room where to young women spent the night.  Ellen is embarrassed when he walks in, but Connie soon settles things out (blindfolding him while the girls get dressed).

The remainder of the story sees the three of them as virtually inseparable.  Although James works (and the two women don’t) he winds up spending most of his free time with them.  He resents Connie’s presence because he is interested in Ellen, but he does enjoy the time the three of them spend together.  He just can’t seem to get any time alone.  Until they all go on a picnic. (more…)

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David Means–“The Tree Line, Kansas, 1934” (New Yorker, October 25, 2010)

Posted in Boredom, David Means, New Yorker, Radiohead, Short Story on January 10, 2011| 2 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: RADIOHEAD-Pablo Honey (1993).

I haven’t listened to Pablo Honey in years.  I think of it as an almost proto-Radiohead release with one huge single.  But as I was listening to it again recently I remembered that I used to listen to this disc a LOT, and I know all the songs very well.  I’m also really impressed with how well the album stands up to the mayhem that they unleashed later on.  It’s also pretty crazy that the album is named after a Jerky Boys skit (and not a particularly inspired one at that).

True, the album is very simple: a guitar band in the grunge era.  And yet, despite the grunge inflections of “Creep,” it’s quite apparent that there’s a lot more going on here than slacker anthems.

On first listen (17 years ago (!)), a song like “Thinking About You” sounded like a conventional ballad that goes along with this type of album, revealing a softer side to a grungy band.  But really, it’s a complicated mellow song placed right in the middle of the album and the break in styles is very nice.  Conversely, a quick rocker like “How Do You?” is certainly a simple song, and yet it shows another dimension that the band would later investigate (it also samples the Jerky Boys deep in the mix, which I never noticed before).  Even the opener “You,” is intricate and complex, with wonderful guitar riffs and solos, easily foreshadowing some of the great stuff that Jonny Greenwood would produce later on.

The more memorable songs also reveal things all these years later.  “Stop Whispering” has a real Pavement feel to it (and who knows if Radiohead had even heard Pavement (who only had one album out) at that time, but it’s some cool foreshadowing of their indie rock style).  And “Anyone Can Play Guitar,” a truly great song, is like a stripped down version of “Paranoid Android,” but with a really really catchy chorus.

By the end of the disc, it seems like Radiohead has run through its tricks although the oddly titled “Lurgee” points to future greatness as well.  It’s easy and lazy to say that this album is a blueprint for the future Radiohead, and yet it’s surprisingly true.  Not the techno stuff, obviously, but the song structures and intricacies easily foreshadow what was to come.  Yet who would have ever guessed that the “you’re so fucking special” band would turn into what they did.

It’s also foolish to dismiss this record as an early version of the band, because although the album has some slow moments, it holds up very well, and actually revealed somethings that I’m sure I missed a decade and a half ago.  Oh, and “Creep” is still awesome.

[READ: December 21, 2010] “The Tree Line, Kansas, 1934”

This is the story of two FBI agents on a stake out.  The story gets into the head of the older agent (Lee) as he listens to the endless droning of the younger agent (Barnes).

The two have been on the stake out for several days waiting for the criminal Carson to come back to his uncle’s farm, where a boot full of loot is waiting him.  They have been keeping utterly still, noting the uncle plow the barren field, taking occasional smoke breaks and really just watching the grass grow,

Barnes says t the whole stake out is futile, there’s no way that Carson is coming back here, he’ll know there are agents there, etc.  Lee, on the other hand, believes the Bureau is correct, believes that Carson will return.  I enjoyed the digression into Lee’s head about how a feeling in your gut turns into a hunch. (more…)

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Samantha Hunt–“The Yellow” (New Yorker, November 29, 2010)

Posted in AC/DC, Death, Funny (strange), Led Zeppelin, New Yorker, Phish, Prince, Samantha Hunt, Sex, Short Story, Supernatural, Yuck!, Zombies on January 5, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: PHISH-LivePhish 10.21.95 Lincoln, Nebraska (2007).

This Phish show is pretty unusual, even for a band whose live sets are by definition unusual.  It opens with a reprise (“Tweezer Reprise”) which is basically the end of a song.  There’s also a song that is not itself unusual but it’s one that I’ve never heard before:  an all acoustic guitar song called “Acoustic Army.”

But aside from those minor oddities, it also features the craziness of “Kung” which is more or less just nonsensical screaming.  Then Set One ends with a great cover of “Good Times Bad Times.”

Set Two is where the madness comes full bore.  After some great versions of “David Bowie” and Lifeboy” we get a 24 minute version of “You Enjoy Myself.”  After about twenty minutes the song devolves into a vocal extravaganza, with each of the four guys trying to outdo themselves with weird noises and vocals sound effects for 5 minutes.  And just when you think the nonsense is over, the band covers Prince’s “Purple Rain.”  Fish, the drummer, sings the song (rather poorly, it must be said), but the “highlight” is his vacuum cleaner solo.  Yes, vacuum cleaner solo.

I have included a video from this portion of the show to see just how odd this concert must have been (although I believe that other concerts featured similar nonsense too).  If you get bored by the noise in the beginning of the video, remember that it’s out of context and not really representative of the rest of the  show, but do fast forward to when the guy in the dress pulls out the vacuum cleaner and tell me that that’s not the best damn vacuum cleaner solo you’ve ever heard.

The set ends with Trey noodling the riff from “Beat It,” although they never play the full song.   Then there’s an encore cover of “Highway to Hell” (which rocks).  The disc comes with a bonus track, a twenty some minute soundcheck where you can hear the band experimenting with sounds and ideas for the show.  Not essential but interesting.

Lest you think this whole show is weird, there’s some great renditions of “Chalk Dust Torture” and “Guelah Papyrus.”

[READ: December 15, 2010] “The Yellow”

This story opens with a forty-something year old guy who has moved home with his parents.  To the consternation of his father (“have you turned faggot?”), he paints his attic bedroom yellow.  Who would have guessed that this (four-page) story about a sad middle-aged man would end with casual sex and zombies?

Roy is frustrated with his life (obviously).  He gets out of his parent’s house and goes for a drive.  While scanning the classic rock stations looking for the next great thing, he feels a thump and realizes that he has hit an animal.  He’s fairly certain it’s a dog. (more…)

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