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D.B.S. Maxwell–“Beer Cans: A Guide for the Archaeologist” (Historical Archaeology, Vol 27, No. 1 1993)

Posted in Austin City Limits, Band of Horses, Beer, Broken Bells, D.B.S. Maxwell, Essays, Gogol Bordello, Historical Archaeology, History, LCD Soundsystem, Muse, Scholarship, Sonic Youth, Spoon, The Flaming Lips, Vampire Weekend, Yeasayer on November 24, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: AUSTIN CITY LIMITS FESTIVAL 2010 (on Palladia TV 2011).

Recently Palladia broadcast some highlights from the Austin City Limits Festival in 2010.  The bands they showed were Phish, The Flaming Lips, Vampire Weekend, Muse, LCD Soundsystem, Sonic Youth, Spoon and Slightly Stoopid.

There were so many good bands at this festival (why is Richard Thompson in such small print?) that I won’t really complain about the inclusion of Slightly Stoopid and LCD Soundsystem on this best of (but they could have included Band of Horses, Yeasayer, Broken Bells, Gogol Bordello (the list goes on!).  (I’d never heard of Slightly Stoopid and although I like LCD Soundsystem, live they were less than stellar).  Although I am glad they didn’t include the Eagles, thank you very much.

I’m trying to get actual set lists of these airings (they mentioned the song titles during the show but I didn’t write them down).

This was a 2-hour broadcast and it was really good.  If they re-air the episode, it’s worth watching.  The quality of the broadcast is excellent (even if the HD format does take up way too much space on a TiVo).

[READ: November 6, 2011] “Beer Cans: A Guide for the Archaeologist”

A while back I read a few old articles that I got from JSTOR, the online archiving resource.  This month, I received some links to three new old articles that are available on JSTOR.  So, since it’s the holiday weekend, I thought it would be fun to mention them now.

And to start of the holidays, I present you with this–a loving history of the beer can (for archaeologists).

This is a fairly fascinating look at the development of the beer can from 1935 to the present.  The selling point of the article is that archeologists could use beer cans to date the timeframe of an excavation.  I agree with this; however, since they only date back to 1935, I’m not entirely convinced of its long-term usefulness.

The problem with the article is that page two shows a chronological timeline.  This in itself is not a problem (although it is odd that it goes from present to 1935 instead of chronologically forward); the problem is that the article itself more or less sates exactly the same thing as the timeline.  For although this article is 20 pages long, there are tons of photos and very little in the way of text beyond what was in that (very thorough) time line.

Nevertheless, you can see the morphing of beer cans from ones that you had to pop open with a can opener to ones that finally had self opening cans.  See the switch from tin to aluminum, and even learn why the tops of cans are a little narrower than the sides (called a neck-in chime, it evidently saves a lot of money). (more…)

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Sam Lipsyte–“The Climber Room” (New Yorker, November 21, 2011)

Posted in Decadence, Funny (ha ha), Grinderman, New Yorker, Sam Lipsyte, Set at School, Short Story on November 23, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: GRINDERMAN-Grinderman 2 (2010).

The first Grinderman album was a sleazy delight.  And this Grinderman is much of the same sleazy heavy rock, although it’s slightly different.  It opens with “Mickey Mouse and the Goodbye Man” which lets you know that Grinderman are still dirty and sleazy.  The song just rocks.  Screaming blistering rock.

Now, fans of old Nick Cave and The Birthday Party know that Nick is no stranger to noise and dissonance.  Some of these songs harken back to those days–the music (on”Worm Tamer” is crazy–feedback squalls and trippy organ) and yet they never veer into chaos.  They are tightly controlled but with wonderfully loose edges.   It also features the wonderful lyrics: “My baby calls me the Loch Ness Monster–two big humps and then I’m gone”).  “Heathen Child” is a loud, raucous, blasphemous treat, one of the best on the disc.

“When My Baby Comes” slows things down a bit and actually veers terribly close to Bad Seeds territory (which isn’t a bad thing by any means, but Grinderman is supposed to be an escape from that, right?).  The song loudens up, though and a really cool slippery bass propels it for the rest of its 7 minute length.  “What I Know” is like a slow prose poem, but it is followed up by the blast that is “Evil!” a wonderfully brash 3-minute blast of noise rock.  The chanting backing vocals are wonderfully evil.  “Kitchenette” ups the sleaze factor nicely.

“Palaces of Montezuma” is another mellow song–also very Bad Seeds like.  It seems like it would be long (like it would keep building), but it’s only 3:30.   “Bellringer Blues” ends the disc with some cool backwards guitar and more chanted vocals (definitely the signature sound of Grinderman).  It ends this awesome disc on a very high note.

[READ: November 18, 2011] “The Climber Room”

I really enjoyed Lipsyte’s The Ask, so I ‘m delighted to see him with a new short story.   This one concerns a young (but no longer that young) woman named Tovah.  She has taken a job at a daycare center called Sweet Apple.  As the story opens, Tovah meets the other main character of the story, a man whose name she (hilariously) mishears as Randy Goat.  It turns out that Randy Gauthier is a rich man whose children have all gone to Sweet Apple and his new girl Dezzy is now enrolling.

Tovah isn’t trained for this job–she’s just there part time–and either despite or because of this, Dezzy takes to her immediately.  On a day that Tovah is not there and Dezzy fell off the Climbing Room (a jungle gym) she cried and cried for Tovah.   Mr Gauthier spies Tovah the next day and informs her that he has switched her schedule so that she will only be there when Dezzy is there.  Tovah is (understandably) freaked and a little pissed.  But when he tells her to Google him, she learns why he can have such sway over things.  (more…)

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Junot Díaz–“Apocalypse: What Disasters Reveal” (Boston Review, May/June 2011)

Posted in Boston Review, Death, Decadence, Dominican Republic, End of the World, Environmentalism, Essays, GQ, History, Junot Díaz, Natural Disasters, Ulver, Until the Light Takes Us on November 22, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: ULVER-Bergtatt (1994).

Ulver has some music in the soundtrack to Until the Light Takes Us and my friend Lar pointed me to a location where you could download a bunch of their music (this was before Spotify of course). 

So I grabbed a few of their albums expecting to hear some brutal death metal.  And I kind of did, but I also heard classical guitar, flute solos and chanting.   So this album’s full title is Bergtatt – Et eeventyr i 5 capitler (“Taken into the Mountain – An Adventure in 5 Chapters”) and it comes in at a whopping 35 minutes–not bad for an epic.

The opening track (“I Troldskog faren vild” (“Lost in the Forest of Trolls”)) is fascinating–a kind of chanting vocals over a quietly-mixed-in-the-background black metal.  The music is so quiet (and yet clearly black metal) that it almost comes across as ambient noise, especially over the multilayered chanting (I have no idea what language they are singing in).  It ends with a pretty acoustic guitar passage that segues into a very traditional sounding heavy metal section–with a catchy solo that takes us to the end.

“Soelen gaaer bag Aase need” (“The Sun Sets Behind Hills”) opens with, of course, a flute solo.  It’s a minute long and quite melancholy before blasting into the fastest of heavy black metal complete with growling vocals and nonstop pummeling.  But after a minute of that it’s back to the layered chanting like in the first song.  The song ends with a conflation of the two–the chanting metal with the growling black metal underneath.  It’s quite a sound.

Track three “Graablick blev hun vaer” (“Graablick Watches Her Closely”)opens with a lengthy acoustic guitar intro–not complicated, but quite pretty and unlike the poor recording quality of the metal, it seems to be recorded with high quality equipment.  After about 45 seconds that gives way to more black metal.  In a strange twist, the black metal section just fades out, replaced by more acoustic guitar and what seems like the end of the song.  But instead, there is a strange quiet section–not music, but sounds–like someone walking around in the cold forest with crunchy noises and little else.  For almost two minutes.  Until the black metal comes back with a vengeance.

Slow guitar with slow chanting opens track 4 “Een Stemme locker” (“A Voice Beckons”) (the shortest at only 4 minutes).  And the amazing thing is that it doesn’t change into something else.  It is a nice folk song.

The final song “Bergtatt – Ind i Fjeldkamrene” (“Bergtatt – Into the Mountain Chambers”) has a blistering opening followed by some of the most intricate acoustic guitars on the record.  It morphs into a very urgent-sounding black metal section which lasts about 5 minutes.   But just to keep us on our toes, the song (and the disc) end with more classic acoustic guitar.

There is a story here (allmusic says it is a Norse legend about maidens being abducted by denizens of the underworld) and that might help explain the music madness.  But as a musical composition it works quite well.  The chanting over the black metal is really effective and the acoustic instruments bring a nice sonic change from the pounding metal. 

This is not for everyone obviously, but the diversity makes this an interesting introduction into the black metal scene.  Baby steps. 

[READ: November 4, 2011] “Apocalypse”

This is the final non-fiction essay of Junot Díaz that I could find online.  The other one comes from GQ and is called “Summer Love”, but there’s no access to it online. 

In this essay, Díaz looks at the impact of the earthquake that devastated Haiti now that it has been over a year.  Díaz was born in the Dominican Republic which has a long and very brutal history with the people of Haiti–they share a land mass after all.  But rather than looking only at Haiti and how it was devastated, Díaz takes this as an opportunity to see what the earthquake reveals about our country and the state of the world.

The essay is broken down into eight parts.  The first revisits what happened.  The second discusses the meanings of apocalypse, which sets up the “theme” of this essay.  The First: the actual end of the world (which for the thousands of people who died, the earthquake was); Second: the catastrophes that resemble the end of the world (given the destruction of Haiti and the devastation that still lingers, this is certainly applicable); Third: a disruptive event that provokes revelation.

Díaz is going to explore this third option to see what this earthquake reveals. 

What Díaz uncovers is that the earthquake was not so much a natural disaster as a social disaster–a disaster of our creating.  The tsunami that hit Asia in 2004 was a social disaster because the coral reefs that might have protected the coasts were decimated to encourage shipping.  Hurricane Katrina was also a social disaster–years of neglect, the Bush administration’s selling of the wetlands to developers and the decimation of the New Orleans Corp of Engineers budget by 80 percent all contributed to a situation where Katrina could be so devastating.

Then he talks looks at the history of Haiti.  I had known some of this story, but not as much as he provides here–the constant abuse of the citizens, the constant abuse of their finances (both from simple theft and from French and American planning that changed their economy).  There’s also the story of “Papa Doc” Duvalier.  Basically Haiti was a disaster waiting to happen. 

Díaz goes into great detail about the global economy and how it impacted the poor in Haiti and he shows that it doesn’t take a lot of extrapolation to see it reflected in the rest of the world as well.  With the constant rise in standards for the wealthy and the constant abuse that the poor take, it’s not hard to see that Haiti could easily happen here.  If not in our lifetime, then certainly in our childrens’.

But Díaz has hope.  (more…)

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Eric Idle*–“Who Wrote Shakespeare” (New Yorker, November, 21, 2011)

Posted in Bidiniband, Books about writers, Canadian Content, Canadian Music, Dave Bidini music, Eric Idle, Essays, Herman Melville, Monty Python's Flying Circus, New Yorker, William Shakespeare on November 21, 2011| 2 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: DAVE BIDINI-“The List” (2007).

This song appears as a bonus track on the Bidiniband album.  But I’ve been aware of it since 2007 when he played it on his solo tours.  It is essentially a list of 4 Canadians who are “killing us, killing us now.”  The list includes Tim Horton’s (purveyor of delicious donuts), Chad Krueger (from Nickelback), Zack Werner (a judge on Canadian Idol), and Stephen Harper (I shouldn’t have to tell you).

But the key to the song is the chorus: “where are the angry young ones….”  This song should become the unofficial song from Occupy Wall Street.  It would be very easy to modify.  Hey Dave, if you’re free you should head on down and serenade these angry young ones.

Here’s a great live version done in a record store in which he is close enough to have a casual chat about the very song he is singing in the middle of the song.

He also ends it a little differently than the original.  It’s catchy and easily adaptable.  Good on ya, Dave.

[READ: November 19, 2011] “Who Wrote Shakespeare?”

No one has traded off of his Monty Python fame as much as Eric Idle.  All of the other Pythons have moved on in one direction or another, but Eric keeps the torch alive (see Eric Idle Sings Monty Python and Spamalot).  He even has a little nod to MP in this essay with the asterisk next to his name which leads to (*Most likely Michael Palin, really).  This refusal to let go of Python has at least kept his wit sharp, as we see in this Shouts & Murmurs.

My main problem (as I’ve said before) with the Shouts & Murmurs is that they are usually too long.  But, as Python knew, keep it short and funny and you’ll succeed.  So this two-column piece never really flags in its simple premise.

Which is that everyone knows that Ben Jonson really wrote all of Shakespeare.  Idle presents a list of all of the famous books that were really written by someone else.  For example, “Simone de Beauvoir wrote all of Balzac and a good deal of ‘Les Misérables,’ despite the fact that she was not born yet when she did so.”   And my favorite: “‘Moby Dick’ was written not by Herman Melville but by Hermann Melbrooks, who wrote most of it in Yiddish on the boat from Coney island.”  The joke about Henry James is very funny and too good to spoil. (more…)

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Five Dials Number 21: Rock School (5 November, 2011)

Posted in Beirut, Book Reviews, Brendan Connell, Fantasy, Fears, Five Dials, Geoffrey Trease, Great Lake Swimmers, Heathecote Williams, Herman Hesse, History, J.K. Huysmans, Jonas Hassen Khemiri, Kid Koala, Kurt Vonnegut, Lionel Shriver, Lizzy Stewart, Los Campesinos!, Marriage Trouble, Moldy Peaches, Raymond Chandler, Rebecca Delgado, Roberto Bolaño, Shirley Jackson, Short Story, Virginia Woolf, W.G. Sebald, War, William S. Burroughs on November 19, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: HELIUM-The Dirt of Luck (1995).

Mary Timony fronted Helium for a few years.  In that time she was recognized as something of a guitar wizard–not in her speed and flash, but in the weird sounds she conjured from the instrument.

She also had very peculiar musical sensibilities (these songs are quite odd) and a cool feminist attitude.  This album features the amazing song “Superball” (one of the best songs of the mid 90s–check out the video and watch the guitarist playing the strings with a screwdriver!  Man I miss the 90s) as well as a number of unpolished gems like “Medusa” and “Pat’s Trick” (the dual vocals are very cool and the dispassionate “oh oh oh” is very interesting, plus I love the lyric about “long-ass curly hair”).

Her singing style is often quite slacker-y, like in the opening of “Medusa”–she’s not always audible, and she often seems like a kind of buzzy sound more than a voice.   She sounds like she’s singing from very far away–seemingly powerful and yet quiet at the same time.

But combine that with the cool scratchy/noisy guitar sounds she gets and she’s pulling off a very cool combination (think Dino Jr without the hooks and killer solos).

Like “Baby’s Going Underground” features some crazy shoegazer guitar washes for most of its 6 minutes which really changes the pacing of the record.  There’s also the great “Skeleton,” a riff so cool that Sonic Youth used it for “Sunday.”

She also has a way with haunting melodies as on the piano  instrumental “Comet #9” and on “All the X’s Have Wings” which sounds very medieval. I think of Timony as a guitarist and yet there is there are lots of keyboards on the album too–mystical keyboards that are fascinating and seem out of character with the guitars, but actually work quite well.   But the prettiest song is “Honeycomb.’  It’s a sweet song with a wonderful melody.  It is followed by the ender “Flower of the Apocalypse” a guitar-based instrumental that is mostly feedback but is also surprisingly melodic.

Helium had mild accolades back in the 90s.  They released a couple of albums and then Mary Timony went solo.  It’s nice to have her playing now with Wild Flag.

[READ: November 11, 2011] Five Dials Number 21

This is the first issue of Five Dials that I was ready to read when it was sent to me (I’ve been all caught up for a while now).  So that’s pretty exciting!

I was tempted to say that i enjoyed this issue more than other issues, but I have enjoyed most Five Dials issues equally.  But this one is definitely a favorite.

CRAIG TAYLOR–A Letter from the Editor: On Turning 21 and Thinking About Rock Stars and Greece.
The magazine introduction jokes about them now being legal to drink in the U.S. and also about now being old enough to run for M.P. in England.  He also tells us about their “new” section Our Town, which has vastly expanded in this issue.  He also explains that there are many rock stars on hand to give the magazine tutelage (authors that the rock stars enjoy) and three short stories.  He ends with a notice that they have gone to Greece where they are gathering material for Issue 22. (more…)

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Ben Marcus–“The First Venom” (Harper’s, December 2011)

Posted in Ben Marcus, Disease, Fears, Harper's, Helium, McSweeney's, New Yorker, Sleater-Kinney, Wild Flag, World Cafe Live on November 17, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: WILD FLAG-World Cafe, November 10, 2011 (2011).

I’ve been really enjoying Wild Flag’s debut album.  Wild Flag consists of Carrie Brownstein and Janet Weiss of Sleater-Kinney, Rebecca Cole, who I don’t know but who has been in a few different indie bands, and Mary Timony from Helium.

This World Cafe episode is a brief interview (mostly with Carrie, although all four women are present), in which they talk about the origins of the band and what it’s like to play as a foursome. 

There are three songs and the band sounds tight and perfect.  In fact they sound so perfect I almost wondered if they were really playing live (but there’s one keyboard flub that proves that humans are involved).

It’s a great sample of the record, which is all great, and it’s a good chance to get caught up with these rocking women. 

[READ: November 15, 2011] “The First Venom”

This is an excerpt from Marcus’ forthcoming novel, The Flame Alphabet.   I’ve read a number of Marcus’ things in the past and I realized that most of his McSweeney’s pieces I do not like.  Some of the short stories in the New Yorker I have enjoyed, although usually not right away.  So, clearly Marcus and I don’t see eye to eye on fiction.

And that’s the case with this excerpt.  It’s hard for me to say I wouldn’t read a longer piece based just on an excerpt because who knows what else the rest of the book contains (this could be a small fraction of a much different story), but this excerpt absolutely didn’t make me want to read any more.

In the excerpt, a married couple is sickened by their daughter.  Literally.  All of the words that she says and whispers and scribbles wash a sickness over her parents.  They cringe and try to get away but she keeps talking and talking.

At first this seemed like a metaphorical sickness–who hasn’t grown tired of their kid’s incessant chatter, but it soon becomes clear that this is very real. (more…)

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Joyce Carol Oates–“The Good Samaritan” (Harper’s, December 2011)

Posted in Субито, Fears, Harper's, Joyce Carol Oates, Marriage Trouble, Rammstein, Short Story, Threats on November 16, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: СУБИТО (Subito)-“Du Hast” (2011).

Субито (pronounced Subito) is from the Ukraine.  They’re a bunch of miners and they play music.  In addition to this cover, which is generating some meme buzz on the internet, they have a few other songs (and videos) of note.

This cover is notable in that the only real difference between this song and the original is the prominence of the button accordion.  The vocals are nearly identical (he’s got his German goth down perfectly), and the rest of the band plays quiet heavily (I love the triangle instruments!).  But the accordion changes the entire texture and tone of the song.   It’s still ominous (I mean, those vocals!) but the accordion adds an air of whimsy that undermines the menace and yet also somehow makes the rest of the song seem even more menacing.

Of course the video is quite silly which leads one to assume that they’re not taking their version too seriously and yet their playing is impeccable and their backing vocals are right on.

So, yes, I rather like this song, and I like being able to include the word Субито in my post.

[READ: November 10, 2011] “The Good Samaritan”

Joyce Carol Oates has a wonderful way of turning her stories into something dark.  Even if it starts out in a rather innocent light.

This story is set in 1981 on a train coming from Utica, NY.  The narrator, Sonia, finds a woman’s wallet stuffed into the seat of the car.  The story begins with Sonia thinking about the woman, wondering what she’s like, looking at the photos of herself and her family and sort of daydreaming what it would be like to be older and married.  It’s only after a brief reverie that she, a poor college student, checks the money to see what’s there.  (About $25).  She hopes that the woman is old enough to give her a reward, but assumes she is not.

Sonia is to be heading home to help her mother with her ailing grandmother, something she’s not looking forward to.  So she decides that she will return the wallet to the woman who, after all, lives only a few blocks from the station.

What is wonderful about this story is that this innocent setup masks the real story, which is never fully explored, but is hinted at enough to keep us all guessing.  When Sonia arrives at the house, the woman’s husband is home and he seems….surprised that Sonia has brought this wallet home.  She feels sympathy for him when he begins to explain that his wife ran off and must have dropped this wallet on this train while she was fleeing.  Sonia wants to help the man in some way.  He invites her inside and she thinks of all the things she could do for him–stupid things like make dinner or maybe even look at her things to see is she can help figure out where her wife went.  She suggests this last idea and he accepts. (more…)

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Junot Díaz–“He’ll Take El Alto” (Gourmet, September 2007)

Posted in Crosby Stills Nash and Young, CSN&Y, Culture Shock, David Foster Wallace, Dominican Republic, Essays, Food, Gourmet, Junot Díaz, Neil Young, Stephen Stills, The Eagles, The Stills-Young Band on November 15, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: THE STILLS-YOUNG BAND: Long May You Run (1976).

I’ve known the song “Long May You Run” for a long time, but I never really realized it came from a non-Neil Young album.  The album is by The Stills-Young Band and the history of the album may be more interesting than the album itself (in sum: CSN&Y broke up, C&N made and album so S&Y made an album.  C&N were supposed to be on the S&Y album but they fought and S&Y removed their vocals).

So what we get is nine songs.  Five written by Neil Young and four by Stephen Stills.  The songs are played by Stills’ solo backing band and while the credits suggest that they played on each others’ songs, it doesn’t really seem like it.  It seems like you get 5 Neil Young solo songs and four Stephen Stills solo songs.

It’s also odd that the cover of the album shows buffalo running in the plains (nod to Buffalo Springfield, I’m sure) but so many of these songs are about water.  Maybe that disconnect feeds the whole thing.

By the way, “Long May You Run” is a catchy little country number that I never realized was about his car until recently.

Stephen Stills’ first song is the utterly unsubtle, possibly seductive in the 70s but hilariously outre in 2001 “Make Love to You.”  It’s full of 70s synths and has a very serious tone (despite the 70s synth).  And the lyrics, hoo boy:

Girl your body said everything and I know you knew/I wanna make love to you, make you feel all right/I wanna make love  to you, yes, it’ll take all night

Which is about as long as the shower you need to take after hearing that song.

“Midnight on the Bay” is a pleasant enough song from Neil.  It’s a bit too much into the 70’s-lite music genre for my liking, but it’s not too terrible.

The thing about Stephen Stills is I like his voice.  It’s unusual and unique and I like hearing him sing.  But man his lyrics are crazy.  I like the opening riff of “Black Coral” with its staccato piano.  Yet it seems like he’s got but one thing on his mind.  The song is ostensibly about being underwater:

Got to move slow/Take it easy down there/You’ve only so much air/When you get a little deeper/If you slow down/You might keep her/The sea, unforgiving and she’s hard/But she’ll make love to you/Show you glimpses of the stars.

But maybe that’s metaphorical.  Because when you go deeper, “I saw Jesus, and it made sense that he was there.”

“Ocean Girl” is sort of Neil’s answer to that song.  It’s got a very 70s wah wah sound and a very easy to sing chorus.  Consider it a catchy but inessential Neil song.  “Let It Shine” is also Neil’s song (and there’s more stuff about his cars here–so you know he’s really into it).  It’s a more substantial song than most of the rest although it has a very easy feel.

“12/8 Blues” (love the title) feels like an Eagles song (“Life in the Fast Lane” to be specific, although they both came out in the same year.  Hmm).  It’s fairly generic (like the title) but I like it (crazy time signatures are my thing, man).

“Fontainebleau” is an interesting angsty Neil song that I think would have done very well with CSN&Y.  I never really paid attention to the lyrics before, but it’s fairly interesting and the guitar solos are soft but cool.

The final song goes to Stills.  “Guardian Angel” feels like a combination of all of his other songs, and it’s probably his best on the disc.   It’s got the slinky 70s vibe of  the first song, the staccato piano and, interestingly a chorus that would sound great with the 4 part harmony of CSN&Y.  It also rocks harder than anything on the record (which isn’t saying all that much).  The end has a cool extended instrumental section which I rather like as well.

So this is a weird little hybrid record.  There’s some good stuff for Neil Young fans, although it’s far from essential.  I actually don’t know much about Stills’ solo work so I don’t know how this compares, but he does seem a little one-track here.

[READ: November 4, 2011] “He’ll Take El Alto”

I don’t read Gourmet magazine.  I’m not a foodie and it seems like it’s just a food magazine.  But here’s the second article in Gourmet by a writer that I really like.  The first of course would be David Foster Wallace’s “Consider the Lobster.”  Is Gourmet more than just recipes?  Does it often have contributions from respected authors?  Am I missing out?

This issue is the Latino issue, so it deals with food from Cuba, El Salvador, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.  And Junot Díaz is our resident Dominican, so he’s given the task of talking up the cuisine.

Unlike Wallace’s essay, which was about a trip to the Maine Lobster Festival, Díaz’s essay is about how upper Manhattan (known as El Alto) has become a hotbed for Dominican food.

Díaz explains how when Dominicans first arrived in New York, there were no restaurants.  Dominicans had to eat Cuban food to approximate their home food.  But now that there are vast enclaves of Dominicans living in El Alto, there are excellent restaurants everywhere (the sure sign that a culture has made it is when you have people from other cultures as your waitstaff).

Díaz revel as his own and his friends’ and acquaintances’ preferences for favorite Dominican restaurants.  As this article is four years old and most of the places seem to be holes in the wall (which everyone knows serves the best food, even if they don’t last very long), I’m not going to bother saying which places they are or checking to see if they are still extant).  Okay, well, Malecon is still around, anyhow. (more…)

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McSweeney’s #9 (Late Summer Early Fall 2002) [We Feel This One is More Urgent]

Posted in A.M. Homes, Adventure, Culture Shock, Death, Denis Johnson, Doug Dorst, Ellen Moore, Essays, Eugene O'Neill, Fears, Funny (strange), Gabe Hudson, Gods, Harper's, History, Humiliation, Isaac Babel, Jeff Greenwald, K. Kvashay-Boyle, Liudmilla Petrushevskaya, Masturbation, McSweeney's, Mikhail Zoshchenko, Military, Nathaniel Minton, Nikolai Leskov, Play (Drama), Political Humor, Racism, Religion, Roy Kesey, Scott Greene, Sex, Short Story, Skaz, Sufjan Stevens, Threats, Translation, Travel, Val Vinokurov, Violence, War, William T. Vollmann, Yuck! on November 14, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: SUFJAN STEVENS-The Age of Adz (2010).

Sufjan Stevens has released a bunch of albums of beautiful orchestral rock.  It is multi-layered and complex with classical elements and all kinds of cool instruments.

And this album starts out with a beautiful acoustic guitar melody and Sufjan’s delicate vocals.  Although it is a far more stripped down song than usual, “Futile Devices” seems like it is heading in the standard direction.  But anyone who heard Sufjan’s Christmas album number VIII knows that he has been having some fun with electronics.  And they show up with a vengeance on track two, “Too Much.”

All of the multilayered noise that was once orchestral and (some might say) precious has been replaced by a cacophony of gorgeous electronic noises.  The beginning of the song reminds me of the sounds in Skinny Puppy’s “Stairs and Flowers” (how many Sufjan Stevens reviews mention Skinny Puppy?).  The song is nothing like Skinny Puppy once the vocals kick in–it’s catchy and delicate–but those electronics underpin the whole thing, bringing his pastoralia into the twenty-first century.  When I first reviewed this song I didn’t like it but once you get absorbed by Sufjan’s world, it’s an enticing place to be,

“Age of Adz” takes this electronic nonsense even further with an 8 minute brew of strange sounds and choral voices.  But he always manages to throw in some catchy parts, no matter how strange the song gets.

For me one of the highlights of the disc is “I Walked” it features one of my favorite Sufjan things–falsetto vocals in a beautiful but unexpected melody.  And this song has them in spades.  “Now That I’m Older” has a very disconcerting sound–his voice is slowly warbled and mournful.  It’s a beautiful melody that is alienating at the same time.

“Get Real Get Right” returns to his earlier style somewhat (there’s more layers of music, although the electronica is still in place).   “Vesuvius” is a beautiful song and “All for Myself” is another of those great falsetto tracks that I like so much.

“I Want to Be Well” eventually turns into a manic electronic workout in which he repeats the chorus “I’m not fucking around.”

But nothing compares  to “Impossible Soul” a twenty-five minute (!) multi-part suite of electronic chaos.  It’s a fantastic song complete with autotune (used to very cool effect), repeated swelling choruses (it’s like a Polyphonic Spree tribute), electronic freakouts, and acoustic comedowns.  All in a positive, happy message.  I can’t stop listening to it.  “It’s not so impossible!”

Sufjan continues to impress me.

[READ: November 10, 2011] McSweeney’s #9

After the excesses of McSweeney’s #8, I was excited to get to the brevity (and urgency) of McSweeney’s #9.  This one is a paperback and looks like the first couple of issues.  The cover is mostly text with a hodgepodge of phrases and pleas.  You get things like: Thankful, Emboldened, The (Hot-Blooded/Life-Saving) Presumption of (Perpetual/Irrational (or More Likely, Irreducibly Rational) Good Will, Efflorescence, Our motto this time: We Give You Sweaty Hugs,” Alternative motto: ” We Are Out Looking,” GEGENSCHEIN (no more), and the promise: “We will Do Four This Year.”

This is the kind of issue that makes me love McSweeney’s.  There are some wonderful short stories, there are some nice essays and there are some dark moments all centered vaguely and tangentially around a theme.  There are some great authors here, too.

The back cover image is called Garden Variety by Scott Greene and it’s a fantastic painting.  You can see it here (navigate through the 2000-2004 paintings, but I have to say I really like the style of all of his work.

There are no letters and no nonsense in this issue.  So let’s get to it. (more…)

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Eugene O’Neill–“Exorcism” [from 1920] (New Yorker, October 17, 2011)

Posted in Drinking, Eugene O'Neill, Marriage Trouble, New Yorker, Play (Drama), Semisonic, Suicide on November 13, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: SEMISONIC-Feeling Strangely Fine (1998).

In my mind, Feeling Strangely Fine is the pinnacle of Semisonic’s pop greatness.  I mean, it’s got “Closing Time” on it.  And while I am now pretty tired of the song (can it really be 13 years old?), when it came out it was pretty awesome.  And so I tend to think of The Great Divide as being in the shadow of this record.  But in retrospect, I think I have to favor Divide over Fine.  This album has a bit too much polish, a bit too much smoothness for my liking.  And while there are some great songs on it, I’m not entirely sure it matches up to The Great Divide.

“Singing in My Sleep” is a supremely catchy song–a simple riff, mellow verses and an urgent chorus.  It should have been huge too.   And “Never You Mind” has that Semisonic quality in spades–simple accents that make a song catchy (a little guitar riff) and really catchy choruses.  Plus lyrically, it’s rather clever.  “Secret Smile” is one of their few ballads that I really like.  I guess they have just mastered pop hooks for this record.

But to me the rest of the record pales a bit compared  to The Great Divide.  “DND” is a similar slow song although it’s a bit slinkier.  And there’s some very mild funk on “Completely Pleased” which is a welcome return to the rockier songs but which doesn’t quite reach the heights that they have hit before.

“California” is a fun track.  It could use a bit of oomph but it shows off some fun noises at the end.  And the last two tracks just kind of fade the disc out.

Nothing on the album is really bad.  And indeed, in the right frame of mind these songs are all really enjoyable, but i think after comparing them to some of the earlier tracks and even the earlier tracks on this record overall this one comes up a bit short.

[READ: November 6, 2011] “Exorcism”

This is a Eugene O’Neill play that was believed to be lost forever.  He staged the play in 1920 but after a brief run, he destroyed every copy, possibly to assuage his dying father.  But this copy was recently found amongst a friend’s papers.

So that’s pretty exciting that a new Eugene O’Neill one-act play is now available.  I believe the whole thing is printed here–it’s so hard to tell with the New Yorker.  But they also say that Yale University Press will be publishing the play in the spring.  If the whole thing fits onto 7 New Yorker pages, how are  they going to publish it as a book?  Well, that’s Yale’s problem.

I don’t know that I have read many, if any, O’Neill plays.  I’ve never really taken any drama classes, although I know about O’Neill’s mastery of drama.

So this is probably as good a place to start as any.

This is the classic “nothing happens” kind of story which proves to be a powerfully emotional story (especially as it resonates so closely to his own life). (more…)

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