SOUNDTRACK: COSMO JARVIS-“My Day” (2011).
I learned about Cosmo Jarvis through NPR. The DJs called it a love it AND hate it song. But I find that I mostly love it. The video is a blast to watch, but even without the video, the song is quite catchy and fun. It’s a half punk song and half folkie/trad song.
So who the hell is Cosmo Jarvis? Well, he was born in NJ, but is really from England. He’s a filmmaker and musician and he’s had a hit with the song “Gay Pirates” that Stephen Fry raved about on his Twitter feed! “Gay Pirates” is a fun shanty, but “My Day” is a full-on punk blast.
The song laments the state of things today and talks about how things were back in “my day” (which is of course funny since he’s 21). The verses are a kind of folkie/storytelling style (but with electric guitars) and the end of each verse has a guitar riff that sounds traditional to me. But when the chorus jumps in, it’s heavy, rocking, screaming punk.
Okay so the song is nearly 8 minutes long, which is probably overkill. There’s a fairly lengthy instrumental bridge about 5 minutes in which features guitar and tin whistle solos. And then the final 2 minutes are just fast metal screams of “My Day” with some wild soloing. Yes, it’s too much (I’ll bet the single mix is awesome), but it’s still an enjoyable song. Even without the video.
But you should watch the video, if only because it’s what the guys from Jackass would do if they were in a band and lived in the English countryside.
[READ: July 15, 2011] The Corrections
My company recently asked us if we had read any books over the summer. I was able to pony up this review for our company newsletter. I’ll be fleshing it out, but it’s pretty apt.
I’d put off reading this for a number of years, and I wish I had read it sooner. It’s a very detailed look at one family: Elderly parents, thirty-something kids, and a few grandkids. The depth of character development is amazing (and includes even depth of characters that the main characters interact with). It’s a long book but it is very rewarding—comic scenes, moving scenes and one or two shocking moments. It’s also the first time I’ve read a book where I thought, “even though I like this character, I think it would be better for everyone if he died.” It’s an unnerving thing to think, but Franzen really makes you think about how family members impact one another.
It took me forever to start reading this book, obviously. I wasn’t really interested in Franzen when all of the Oprah commotion came out, so I blew off this book entirely. I’ve recently grown more interested in him. But rather than reading his novels, I had decided to read all of Franzen’s New Yorker pieces. (And even though I wanted to read Freedom when it came out, I felt that I should read this one first). I wasn’t hesitant about reading it, I think I just wanted time to devote to it. Much like I needed time to devote to writing up this post. It’s been well over two months since I finished the book.
The Corrections is a wonderful, engaging story about three generations of the Lambert family (and many of the people they interact with). The matriarch and patriarch of the family, Enid and Alfred, live in the midwestern town of St. Jude. They have three children: Gary, a banker in Philadelphia who is (more or less unhappily) married with three children; Chip, a former school teacher and current playwright who sponges off of his younger sister while he tries to live the high life in New York City; Denise, a very successful chef who also lives in Philadelphia. She has no children. Gary’s children play a small but significant part in the story, keeping the three generations aspect working very well.
I found the first chapter a little slow and somewhat off-putting. I read an excerpt from the novel in the New Yorker, which was a piece about Chip. So I was surprised that the book opened with an older couple. The chapter deals with Alfred and Enid. Alfred’s dementia is hitting their household quite hard but Enid just feels that Alfred isn’t trying very hard. Because Enid has very little in her life, she wants nothing more than to have her whole family together “one last time” for Christmas. Enid and Alfred are long-married and this chapter picks up in the middle of a typical day. So it takes a few pages to get up to speed. Of course, once I did, I felt that the whole family was completely real and believable. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 