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Archive for the ‘Magazines’ Category

Lydia Davis–“Thyroid Diary” (New Yorker, September 25, 2000)

Posted in Coldplay, Dentists, Diary, Gardens, Huh?, Lydia Davis, New Yorker, Short Story, The Flaming Lips, The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends, Translators on August 27, 2019| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: THE FLAMING LIPS AND HEADY FWENDS-“Tasered and Maced” (2012).

2012 saw the release of this very strange collaborative album.  Whether The  Flaming Lips had entered the mainstream or if people who’d always liked them were now big stars or maybe they all just liked doing acid.  Whatever the case, The Lips worked with a vast array of famous (and less famous) people for this bizarre album.  Here it is 8 years later. Time to check in.

The final song of the album features Chris Martin from Coldplay on the vinyl release.  But it’s something else entirely on digital releases.  This is the digital song.

This song is a slow echoing piano-based song that opens with some very familiar lyrics:

Imagine there’s no Heaven, it’s easy if you try

Despite the lyrics, the melody is nothing like “Imagine”  In fact he changes it to his own very Lips-ian idea:

No hell below us, you don’t go anywhere when you die
(I don’t want you to die and I don’t want me to die)

A new melody is added between verses.

Then after the second verse Chris Martin from Coldplay starts singing.  his voice is distant and echoed

And after all we’re only roses when we die, oh, I don’t want to say goodbye
After all we’re only roses in the sky, oh, I don’t want to say goodbye

He sings for all of twenty seconds before Wayne comes back.

I rather wish Chris martin was more prominent , but it is an amusing cameo.

This is such a better album-ender than “Maced and Tasered,”  I can’t imagine why they replaced it (I’ll assume it has something to do with Coldplay lawyers).

[READ: August 20, 2019] “Thyroid Diary”

I have a soft spot for Lydia Davis.  I like her sense of humor and how she works with the mundanity of existence.

But sometimes her stories are too much diary entry and not enough story.  This one is called a diary, but the New Yorker claims it is fiction.  So which is it?  It’s a mildly interesting diary entry (but not focused enough).  However, it’s not very interesting as fiction at all.

I did enjoy the first part.  They are going to a party at their dentists’s house.  The dentist’s his just earned enough credits at the local college to have graduated.  She has been taking tutorials with the narrator’s husband. (more…)

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J. Robert Lennon–“The Loop” (New Yorker, August 26, 2019)

Posted in Calexico, Huh?, Iron & Wine, J. Robert Lennon, New Yorker, NPR/PRI/PBS, Sam Beam, Short Story, Surreal, Teenagers, Tiny Desk Concert on August 26, 2019| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: CALEXICO AND IRON & WINE-Tiny Desk Concert #873 (August 1, 2019).

I saw Calexico live in 2018.  They were fantastic–even better than I hoped they’d be.  Then they put out the song with Iron & Wine “Father Mountain” is one of my favorite songs of the year.  I don’t know what it is about this song–the melody, the vocals, whatever.  I love it.  And the version here is even better.  Sam Beam and Joey Burns’ vocals are perfect together.

I have a bunch of Calexico records and they’re all terrific, so it’s surprising to realize:

Joey Burns and John Convertino (drums) had just about seen it all. Their band, Calexico, has been around for nearly a quarter-century, and in that time together they’ve churned out a long string of albums and collaborated with countless musicians on countless projects. But they’d never set foot behind the Tiny Desk until the day we recorded this performance.

By contrast, their pal Sam Beam — best known as the man behind Iron & Wine, with whom Calexico had just released a new album called Years to Burn — was already a Tiny Desk veteran. Beam recorded a solo set as Iron & Wine in 2011, then returned with singer-songwriter Jesca Hoop six years later, and he took great pains to gently tease the Calexico guys for taking so long. (“It’s fun to be back,” he noted between songs, adding, “Isn’t it, Joey?”)

Up next is “Midnight Sun.” Joey Burns sings lead (he wrote this) and there’s great slide guitar from pianist Robert Burger.  Jacob Valenzuela provides a lovely muted trumpet solo and bassist Sebastian Steinberg switches to a guitar for this song.

As Sam introduces everyone, he says, “I’m Sam.  Three timer (cough cough).  I think I’ve officially made it so they can’t invite me back.”

Calexico and Iron & Wine first made a record together back in 2005, when they released In the Reins, and took 14 years to release a follow-up.

“He Lays in the Reins” is a quieter number.  Valenzuela sings a verse in Spanish, which is a nice addition, as is his unmuted trumpet solo.

This is great.

[READ: August 29, 2019] “The Loop”

Boy I loved this story until the end.  The end which is sort of the point (or at least the title) of the story.

Bev was divorced and her only child was off at college.  She had just lost her job as an adjunct teacher.  She sold her house and bought a two-bedroom apartment.  She didn’t need money right away so she volunteered for Movin’ on Up.  The organization takes castoffs from the well to do and delivers them to those in need.

She drove the van and two teenagers (typically string men) would help to move the furniture.  The details of this situation are really interesting, particularly the attitudes of the people who receive the gifts.

On this Saturday, the teenage’ boy didn’t show up so she only had one volunteer, a girl named Emily.  Since the pickups weren’t too large, Bev figured they could handle it. (more…)

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J. Robert Lennon–“No Life” (New Yorker, September 4, 2000)

Posted in Adoption, Coldplay, Drinking, Huh?, J. Robert Lennon, Marriage Trouble, New Yorker, Racism, Sexism, Short Story, The Flaming Lips, The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends on August 25, 2019| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: THE FLAMING LIPS AND HEADY FWENDS-“Tasered and Maced” (2012).

2012 saw the release of this very strange collaborative album.  Whether The  Flaming Lips had entered the mainstream or if people who’d always liked them were now big stars or maybe they all just liked doing acid.  Whatever the case, The Lips worked with a vast array of famous (and less famous) people for this bizarre album.  Here it is 8 years later. Time to check in.

The final song of the album features Chris Martin from Coldplay on the vinyl release.  But it’s something else entirely on digital releases.  This is the digital song.

This starts as a buzzy feedback wall of noise.  Then comes a simple synth riff over which Aaron Behrens tells a story about cops busting into a party and macing everyone.

He was drunk and decided to fight the cop.  The cop turned around and maced him in the face.  So he ran.

He says Friends will stop chasing you after a while, but copes don’t stop.  They caught him and tasered him.  Hence maced and tasered.

Musically thus piece is interesting to listen to, but the story doesn’t really hold up to repeated listens.

[READ: August 20, 2019] “No Life”

This story concerns parents looking to adopt.  But it is handled in a unique (to me) way.

As the story opens we meet Edward and Alison.  Once happily married (having sex everywhere) they were soon desperate to get pregnant (sex became a chore).  Now they have given up on getting pregnant. But neither one will ever refuse sex (even if they don’t want to have it) because it means they have given up.

So they are looking to adopt.

I’ve never heard of a setup like this, but maybe it happens all the time:

Prospective adoptive parents are invited to a picnic where all of the potential adopted children are playing.  The adults are told to act natural and speak to the children casually.  Never say things like would you like to come home with us and try to keep things as upbeat as possible. (more…)

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Julian Barnes–“The Story of Mats Israelson” (New Yorker, July 24, 2000)

Posted in Death, Hospitals, Julian Barnes, Marriage Trouble, New Yorker, Short Story, Sweden, The Flaming Lips, The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends on August 24, 2019| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: THE FLAMING LIPS AND HEADY FWENDS-“Girl, You’re So Weird” (2012).

2012 saw the release of this very strange collaborative album.  Whether The Flaming Lips had entered the mainstream or if people who’d always liked them were now big stars or maybe they all just liked doing acid.  Whatever the case, The Lips worked with a vast array of famous (and less famous) people for this bizarre album.  Here it is 8 years later. Time to check in.

This song is around 3 and a half minutes.  It starts out crashingly loud with a catchy synth melody that will later be used for the vocal line.  Then it quiets down to a sneaky/spooky synth melody.  The vocals fit into the spooky sound in as it seems like Wayne is singing in a kind of strangled way.  It’s possible that the lyrics weren’t made up on the spot.  But who knows:

Girl, you’re so weird, your pain and your fear
Has paralyzed your mind, I wish you’d get high
You’re so tight, you’re always thinking right
Tonight, when it’s late, you should smile, masturbate
So, girl, you and me can watch each other pee
With holographic shirts we’ll shine under blacklights
Lights, lights, lights, lights, lights, lights

The guest on this is New Fumes.  I don’t know anything about him except that he has played with the Lips in the past.  This song feels like filler except that the sounds between verses are really cool.

It also feels pretty much like the end of a record.  But there’s one more song to come

[READ: August 20, 2019] “The Story of Mats Israelson”

This story was enjoyable but sad.  I had read the first six or so pages and then had to put it down for the night.  I was looking forward to finishing it because the first few pages were so good.  But the last couple pages really emphasized a sadness I did not expect.

The story is written as if it is from a long time ago.  In this small Swedish village, people earned their spots–in church pews, or where to keep their horses.  If you took that spot you were shunned.

This village is full of gossip. The gossip is my favorite part of the story. (more…)

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George Saunders–“Elliott Spencer” (New Yorker, August 19, 2019)

Posted in Amnesia, George Saunders, Huh?, Humiliation, Language, Lizzo, Memory, New Yorker, NPR/PRI/PBS, Short Story, Tiny Desk Concert, Violence on August 19, 2019| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: LIZZO-Tiny Desk Concert #872 (July 29, 2019).

Obviously everyone knows who Lizzo is.  I had only recently heard of her and had heard amazing things about her live show. I even tried to get us tickets when she played the TLA, but it was sold out (good for her..I’m quite certain she will never play as tint a venue again soon).

Once we opened the room, there were as many people as we’ve ever had at a Tiny Desk concert, hanging on Lizzo’s every word as she held court and waited for the cameras to roll. She literally needed no introduction; one of us usually says a few words and gets the crowd to applaud for the start of the performance, but Lizzo was master of ceremonies from the second she walked in. Naturally, she needed all of two seconds to blow everyone’s hair back once more.

She starts out saying, “I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time. So I think I’ll do it today.  At this Tiny-Ass Desk.”

Lizzo belted out “Cuz I Love You,” the title track from her wonderful new album, with nothing off her fastball; if you were standing six feet away at the time, you’d swear the gale force of her voice was blowing your hair back. She was the star and the mayor rolled into one, at once ingratiating and commanding.

Lizzo’s voice is truly amazing.  A powerful instrument in which she can hold a long powerful note for a really long time.

Lizzo usually performs with dancers and a backing track; the former, though much-missed here, stood in the crowd and bobbed along… [while the backing] band assembled, at Bob Boilen’s request, just for the occasion.

Lizzo looks back at keyboardist Devin Johnson and says “Devin’s into this shit.”

After the song she says,

I’m crying cuz I love you but sometimes I’m crying cuz you get on my fuckin nevres.  Niggaz ain’t shit sometimes.  Bitches ain’t shit sometimes too and all the nonconforming genders in between you can be ain’t shit too.

There’s some great funky bass (Vernon Prout) and drums (Dana Hawkins) during “Truth Hurts.”  Walter Williams adds some quiet but nice melodies throughout.  And her singing the deep bum bum bum dad bum bum is really fun.

Then came

the literal and figurative show-stopper, “Juice,” which gave her the opportunity to pick up the flute she’d been waiting the whole set to bust out.

I had no idea Lizzo played the flute but she plays an awesome solo that adds so much to a song that I’ve heard so many times.

Lizzo was a lot of fun and very funny and wow, did she impress me wit her voice.  I now wish more than ever that I’d gotten a chance to see her in the tiny club.

[READ: August 18, 2020] “Elliott Spencer” 

George Saunders tends to write things in rather unique ways.  Sometimes it’s just in the concept that he is working worth.  Other times it is the way he presents it.  In this case it is both.

This story starts out in a very hard-to-read fashion:

Today is to be    Parts of the   Parts of my

Sure, Jer  Please do  Point at parts of me while saying the name of it off our list of Words Worth Knowing

Agespot

Finger

Wrist

What the hell is going on?

It is clear that whoever the narrator is, he or she or it is learning.

Next, Jer teaches the narrator Bellow and then the words to below: bastard, Turd, Creep, Idiot.

Then Jer informs 89 that from now on, 89 will be known as Greg.

Then Greg is on Job One.  They go to trees, but something is wrong

Our tree.in our HandiPic has squirrel No squirrel at all near these trees!

Greg and the others line up to shout the four words at the others.  They are across the river.  This river is actually police looking nervous. (more…)

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Elizabeth Strout–“Motherless Child” (New Yorker, August 5 & 12, 2019)

Posted in Colin Greenwood, Jeff Buckley, New Yorker, NPR/PRI/PBS, Parenting, Radiohead, Short Story, Tiny Desk Concert on August 5, 2019| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: TAMINO-Tiny Desk Concert #871 (July 26, 2020).

Tamino is a 22 year-old singer of Belgian, Egyptian and Lebanese descent.

I didn’t know anything about him.  But the blurb mentions his voice.  As soon as I read Jeff Buckley and I heard it in the middle part of the first song I knew it was right on.

His voice is powerful and can really soar.  For “Habibi,” (a song about a sweetheart) it starts with just him and his guitar.  He plays a simple, quiet, repeating guitar melody.  After a few verses, he adds the low strings on his guitar.  The song has been so devoid of bass up until now that it’s hard to imagine it coming from that guitar. Vik Hardy adds repeating piano lines that create a tension that continues throughout the song.

Tamino fills this song with yearning in his voice, much the way Buckley did.  And the end of the song has him hitting some gorgeous ethereal high notes.

His use of that falsetto had some faces in the NPR audience gasping in astonishment.

The songs performed at the Tiny Desk by the 22-year-old singer come from both a 2018 EP titled Habibi and later that year an album titled Amir.

The second song, “Indigo Night” (about despair turned to joy) stars in a similar way–quietly with just a little guitar and Tamino’s amazing, deep vocals.

Colin Greenwood (yes, of Radiohead) plays bass on this song, adding some nice lines to the moody piece.  There is definitely a Radiohead feel.  The blurb lets us in on a bit of personal humor:

The Radiohead bassist shared a brief text exchange with his son, basically telling his hugely accomplished dad that playing the Tiny Desk was “the coolest thing he’d ever done!” That made us all smile.

Midway through the song, as Tamino’s voice wordlessly soars along with the guitar melody, it feels even more like a Radiohead song, except with a more impressive voice than Thom Yorke’s (sorry, Thom).

Tamino’s grandfather was Muharram Fouad, a well-known Egyptian singer known as “The Sound of the Nile.”

The final song, strangely called “Tummy” starts with Tamino’s almost plucked guitar style.  He learned on his grandfather’s guitar.  He gets such an interesting sound out of the instrument.  Ruben Vanhoutte adds some simple drums to flesh out the sound.

It’s a truly impressive set and he has a truly impressive voice.

[READ: August 5, 2020] “Motherless Child”

Olive Kitteridge is an older woman with a grown son.  The son is married with children of his own.  They have been rather estranged for the last few years.

But Christopher was finally coming to visit his mother with his wife and children. But they were late.  In fact, Olive had lunch set up for them, but Christopher had just called to say they were going to eat lunch on the road (it was two P.M.) and that they wouldn’t be there for a few more hours.

Olive had been taking things down in her house–it looked almost bare.  Her husband had died three years ago and she was ready to move on.  She just hadn’t told Christopher yet. (more…)

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Samantha Hunt–“Three Days” (New Yorker, January 9, 2006)

Posted in Cab Calloway, Death, Drinking, Drugs, Easter, Horses, Lorenzo Cromwell, Masego, New Yorker, NPR/PRI/PBS, Samantha Hunt, Short Story, Thanksgiving, Tiny Desk Concert on August 4, 2019| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: MASEGO-Tiny Desk Concert #870 (July 24, 2019).

Naturally when I saw this guy’s name, I assumed Massive Ego.  And he does seem to have a massive ego.  But he totally earns it.  And I’ll agree with this allusion:

Imagine for a moment if Cab Calloway, the Cotton Club’s exuberant bandleader, was reincarnated in the 21st Century. Now imagine if he was dropped in the middle of the music world of today. He’d no doubt be a tall and slender, silky-wearing goof ball with a moisturized braid-out, instruments inscribed as knuckle tattoos and a penchant for genre-blending. Yes, the spirit of Cab lives on in Masego, the singer, producer and multi-instrumentalist who surprised NPR’s Tiny Desk audience with a zany sense of showmanship and a demonstration of his own genre, TrapHouseJazz.

Masego gets five songs (and over 20 minutes…come on!), but the whole set is fun and flows really nicely with Masego acting as the great frontman he is.

First, before opening with the jazzy “Tadow,” Sego pulled off a quick, mini-prank by sending his friend, comedian Lorenzo Cromwell, up to the mic before stepping forth himself.

Cromwell wears a Michael Jackson glove and plays a fake saxophone (the credits state: comedic saxophone).  But Masego plays a proper saxophone, smooth and jazzy.  Then he starts singing and he has a nice smooth voice too.  Lex Nelson adds some nice call and response backing vocals.

Throughout the song, Maxwell Hunter plays some excellent grooving sliding five string bass.

This next song, “Nayhoo” he says “white people love it.”  It opens with some fantastic guitar work from Melanie Faye–she plays amazing guitar licks throughout the show.

Next, Sego tossed up 100 dollar bills with his face on it and beckoned the crowd into a call-and-response of “hi-di-hi-di-hi-di-ho.”  (There’s the Cab Calloway).

Up next, is “Queen Tings.”  He points to Jon Curry and says “You.  Show me that junk you showed me yesterday.”  Curry stars playing a nice beat.  Masego says, “Now gimme that shoulder” and Curry starts swaying his shoulder into it.

Midway through the song Masego plays a saxophone solo.  Then keyboardist Dan Foster picks up a saxophone and plays a solo as well.  Then the two play together and it sounds fantastic.

Before the fourth song he says, “there’s black people here, I got a song called ‘Black Love.'” Then he points to the keyboards.  “You.  Play some keys for me.  This is Dan Foster.  He has a flower tattoo.”  The melody of this sounds a lot like the melody for “Careless Whisper.”

All these instruments you see here are tattoos on my knuckles because I can play them all.  That’s why he wrote this song, “I Do Everything.”  This song is pretty good but the best part is when he introduces Melanie Fay and she plays a ripping guitar solo.  I wonder what else she’s been in.

Finally, to have a few more moments of fun after “I Do Everything” — and to prove he really does do everything — Sego juggled water bottles to the rhythm of the luscious music his band providing.

Masego is a lot of fun and I enjoyed his set a lot more than I expected to.

[READ: July 31, 2019] “Three Days”

I enjoyed the way this story started but hated the way it ended.  I hope it’s an excerpt, because there’s so much more that could be done with all of this and yet so much was wasted on a dead horse.

Beatrice is walking to her mother’s house from the bus station.  The house is actually a farm, but not a working farm. It is the only remaining farm in the area, since all the other farms sold out to to the box stores.

The farm is in disrepair.  I like this detail:

There are some withered Duane Reade Easter decorations–a hip-high bunny rabbit and a bright-green egg–wired to the front porch.  It is Thanksgiving.

Her parents weren’t farmers and as soon as they both agreed they didn’t want to farm, they gave up and got proper jobs.  Beatrice’s mother loved her work.  She was employed by “Mythologic Development, which turned myths and sometimes history into marketable packages used for making new products and ideas more digestible to the consumer public.”

I love this idea and want to learn more about it. Although the examples her mother gives about Atlantis and Montezuma are disappointing. (more…)

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Colin Barrett–“The Alps” (Harper’s, August 2019)

Posted in Colin Barrett, Drones, Funny (ha ha), Futility, Harper's, Jacob Collier, NPR/PRI/PBS, Short Story, Tiny Desk Concert, UFOs, Violence on August 3, 2019| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: JACOB COLLIER-Tiny Desk Concert #869 (July 22, 2019).

I’ve never heard of Jacob Collier, but wow is he an impressive figure.

the North London 24-year-old can hardly contain his creative energy. It comes out in his wardrobe and most definitely in his music, but it’s not misdirected or out of control. These are intricate and precise compositions, like a ship in a bottle made of thousands of planks of wood, yet light enough to sail in a breeze.

He starts with “Make Me Cry.”  Collier plays a fascinatingly deep-sounding acoustic guitar (with amazing flourishes).  But the biggest shock comes when he sings.  He has such a deep sonorous voice.  The backing vocals (from Becca Stevens–who also plays the charango–and MARO on the acoustic guitar) are high–a real contrast to his voice. That is until he switches to piano (while still holding the guitar) and then his voice reaches the high notes as well. Drummer Christian Euman adds some nice xylophone bells to the song as Collier’s voice soars impressively.

After the first song he says “I’ve spent the last year or so making four full length albums [called Djesse].  I don’t know why, its quite exhausting. But its fun.  Each is it’s own musical universe.”  All three songs today are from Vol 2.

But another example of his excess is this:

This year he covered Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer’s “Moon River” by recording himself 5,000 times and working in 144 other vocal submissions, and then he printed and sold signed copies of his Logic Pro audio session for fans while on tour.

“Feel” opens with a simple drum pattern and everyone giving some gentle oohs before Jacob plays a slow piano motif.  Robin Mullarkey switches from acoustic to electric bass.  This song is a more jazzy composition with some lead vocals from MARO (Collier sounds great doing backing vocals as well).

Before the final song,”It Don’t Matter” he explains that he wrote this song about five days ago specifically for this event.  It starts with him making a fascinating array of sounds with his mouth–clicks, hisses and water droplets–and then adding percussive elements like the top of the piano. Then he plays a funky bass line on the tiny acoustic bass.   Becca Stevens gets a lead verse.  And the middle of the song has a melodica solo.

Virtually every combination of band members harmonizes at some point in the show. It’s reflective of his philosophy on music as a connecting tool, to use the instrument we all possess, which drew me to his art in the first place. And as if to make good on those beliefs and bring all of us into one moment, he invited the crowd to sing the final lyrics of the concert together.

The NPR employees are always good sports (and have good voices) so the end of the show is a good one.

[READ: August 1, 2019] “The Alps”

I noted the last time I read a story by Colin Barrett that he writes about Ireland and drugs.  This story was also about Ireland.  But not about drugs.

It’s also not about the Alps as you might expect.

In this story, The Alps are three brothers: Rory, Eustace and Bimbo.  Bimbo was 37, the other two in their fifties.  They claimed to be tradesmen, but none of them have a trade.  Rather they painted, wired, tiled and plumbed at a competitive rate.  They ate too much take out, and downed vats of Guinness.  They traveled together, they worked together, they drank together.

As they pull into Mikey’s pub, Bimbo sees a light up in the sky. It’s behaving strangely and for a minute I thought this story was going to be about UFOs.  But instead, Bimbo realizes it’s a drone surveying the landscape.  Its owned by Landry, a rich man with a lot of land. (more…)

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Lydia Davis–“New Things in My Life” (Harper’s, August 2019)

Posted in Flash Fiction, Harper's, Lydia Davis, Memory, NPR/PRI/PBS, Priests, Short Story, Tiny Desk Concert on August 2, 2019| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: PRIESTS-Tiny Desk Concert #868 (July 19, 2019).

[UPDATE: Priests effectively broke up in December 2019, which is a major bummer].

I saw Priests live back in April and they were fantastic.  This Tiny Desk Concert was no doubt filmed around this time (although singer Katie Alice Greer’s hair wasn’t blue when I saw them).

This Tiny Desk really shows how different a band can sound in this setting.  When I saw them, they were loud and slinky, with a real punk flair.

This show is so much calmer.  The addition of their accompanist Mary Voutsas on piano really changes the whole sound of these songs.

Indeed, the request of an upright piano was the last thing I expected when singer Katie Alice Greer and guitarist G.L. Jaguar talked about doing a Tiny Desk Concert. But we wheeled the Yamaha upright in place and they invited their accompanist Mary Voutsas to join bandmates Daniele Yandel and Alexandra Tyson. What we have is a kinder, gentler and starker version of this great band.

Priests played only songs from their personally groundbreaking, genre-stretching album The Seduction of Kansas.

“Jesus’ Son” starts with Alexandra Tyson’s deep rumble of a bass.  She’s not their original bassist, but she fit in perfectly when I saw them and here.  Katie Greer’s voice sounds great and you can hear the lyrics more clearly here.  The biggest surprise is the subdued sound of guitarist G.L Jaguar.  He can play quietly but he also roars at times. But here, most of the melody comes from the delicate piano rather than his guitar.  Although he does get a quiet guitar solo.

“The Seduction of Kansas” sounds the most different here. It still opens with the great bass line, but the recorded version is very electronic and seductive.  This stripped down version sounds so much more clean, it’s odd but cool.

I’m glad that drummer Daniele Yandel was invited to come out from behind the kit to sing “I’m Clean” (with Greer on drums).  This song is slower with echoing guitars.  Yandel doesn’t sound dramatically different from Greer.  In fact, Yandel’s singer voice sounds a lot like Greer’s lower register.  In fact, when Greer sings the backing vocals (call and response), they sounds almost exactly the same.  It’s cool.

I’m so glad that I got to see them, and that they did this Tiny Desk before they broke up.

[READ: August 1, 2019] “New Things in My Life”

This is another of Davis’ short pieces that seem so much like Lydia just telling us her thoughts that I’m not even really sure what to call it (short story, memoir, thought.

Davis says it takes her a long time to get used to new things in her life.  So much so that, if she is tried, she will inevitably call her new husband by her old husband’s name.  And when she is very tired she can hardly remember the new husband’s and son’s names. (more…)

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Caleb Crain–“Talkin’ ‘Bout a Revolution” (Harper’s, August 2019)

Posted in 99%, Activism, Caleb Crain, Canadian Music, Excerpt, Harper's, Occupy, Positively Stompin', Protests, Rheostatics on August 1, 2019| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: POSITIVELY STOMPIN’-“Jump on My Wheels” (Moose: The Compilation, 1991).

Back in the 1990s, it was common to buy a compilation or soundtrack or even a band’s album based on one song.  Only to then find that you didn’t really like anything else on it.

Maybe that single sounded like nothing else on the album.  Maybe the movie was almost entirely one genre, but they had that one song that you liked over the credits.  Or maybe the compilation was for something you didn’t know, but a song you really wanted was on it, too.

With streaming music that need not happen anymore.  Except in this case.

I bought this compilation, used, recently exclusively for one song, Rheostatics’ “Woodstuck.”  It’s a goofy song and this is the only place you can get the studio version.  The actual compilation was not well documented, so I didn’t know what the other bands on it might sound like.  It turns out to be a compilation for Ontario based Moose Records which specialized in Rock, Folk, World & Country.  They put out another compilation in 1992 and that’s all I can find out about them.

Positively Stompin’ certainly sounds like a certain kind of music.  So it’s a little surprising how quietly this song starts out with just acoustic guitar.  The song picks up with some slower stomping about midway through although a ripping guitar solo really activates the buzz in the song.

It’s a short lived buzz though as the song more or less settles into a kind of Southern Rock, which is a bit ironic coming from a band from Toronto.  I cant find much out about this band, although they did have an album out called Junk Drawer.

[READ: August 1, 2019] “Talkin’ ‘Bout a Revolution”

This is an excerpt from Crain’s novel Overthrow. which is about the Occupy movement and protests.

Lief and Matthew were together when Lief’s phone started buzzing.  Lief read the text–its happening. police were everywhere.

They decided to go check it out–many of their friends would be going as well.

They brought earplugs–the police have some kind of sound weapon that they bought after 9/11.

The city was sleepy and quiet. So quiet and still, that it felt abandoned. (more…)

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