SOUNDTRACK: JASON ISBELL-Tiny Desk Concert #645 (August 28, 2017).
Everybody seems to love Jason Isbell. I’d heard the songs that people liked and I didn’t really think all that much of them.
This Tiny Desk Concert made Isbell sound much more country than I’d realized (I didn’t know he was with the Drive-By Truckers, either).
I was a little resistant initially, but the first song “Chaos and Clothes” really won me over with the words and melody. By the end of the song when the fiddle and violin are in full swing and the bassist is playing a cool bass line on that weird tiny fake-looking bass guitar the song really takes off.
But it was Isbell’s playful and funny side that made me rally enjoy him and his band.
He asks the drummer how he is dong and then comments on the hat that they wished they could have worn (they point to tiny top hats).
Isbell says, “Abraham Lincoln had a tiny head, it turns out. Where’s you’re novel about that, George Saunders.”
Then he jokes about the bass guitar: “that’s’ why you need the hat, your bass is so small. Abe Lincoln played a tiny bass.
When they finally get going, the second song “Molotov” has a false start-“I spent so much time on that word and then I said the wrong one.” The violinist says its alright she didn’t do the best either. I love the dramatic melody and delightful swing to this song. It’s really good.
They have a lengthy amusing discussion about babies’ defense mechanisms. The whole banter section between the second and third song is really funny. Jason leans into his guitarist who jumps and says “thank you.” This makes Isbell laugh, “if you scare Sadler, he says ‘thank you.'” Sadler says it’s a defense mechanism from when he was a baby. Isbell looks at him: “Why would you have o defend yourself when you were a baby?” They talk about baby defense mechanisms and Isbell determines that saying thank you is a good idea: if you were going to kill someone and they said thank you, you’d pause–wondering if you fell into their trap.
He jokes, “we shouldn’t have taken all that acid before Tiny Desk.”
There’s a lot of laughter and then Amanda worries that she has boogers. It’s quite light-hearted (she doesn’t, by the way).
There’s another false start for “Last of My Kind.” He pauses the song and then invites an audience member up on “stage” to play. He says that when he was younger he always imagined that this would happen to him–that someone would have once just asked him to come up and play.
The final song is really good, with a lot of great details in the words, and Ashwin, “a guest in the building who got more than he’d likely expected from his visit to NPR headquarters,” makes good use of his special performance.
His band is The 400 Unit: Sadler Vaden (guitar); Amanda Shires (fiddle, backing vocals); Jimbo Hart (bass); Derry deBorja (keyboards); Chad Gamble (drums); Ashwin Wadekar (guitar on “Last of My Kind”).
[READ: March 15, 2015] Ms Marvel: Generation Why
This book collects issues 6-11 of the Ms. Marvel series. I really enjoyed the first collection a lot, but I hadn’t seen any of the follow ups. So I was pretty excited to see that my library had gotten all of the published volumes.
In addition to having a great story line about a Pakistani-American teenager who received superpowers, Ms Marvel has a lot of fun with inside-Marvel jokes (which I know some people get tired of, but which I like and which I think works very well here). Ms Marvel is Kamala Khan. She is a huge fan of the Marvel Universe (which of course is real), and she had taken the name of Ms Marvel in honor of Carol Danvers, the first Ms Marvel.
Jacob Wyatt drew books 6 & 7 and Adrian Alphona did 8-11.
The book opens with Kamala’s parents–god-fearing Muslims, sending her to Sheikh Abdullah. She is obviously concerned with talking to this religious leader. Her new career as Ms Marvel has kept her from doing most of the things she should be doing as a decent Muslim girl. But the Sheikh is surprisingly cool. She doesn’t reveal her secret but he senses that she is doing good and perhaps she just needs the help of someone–a teacher? She heads downtown where suddenly there is a sinkhole in the ground. As Ms Marvel, she jumps in and discovers gigantic crocodiles. The person who has carted these gigantic creatures proves to be a human-cockatiel hybrid who IS NOT A BIRD. He is bad guy named The Inventor. And just as things start to get really intense, a teacher of sorts comes to help out–Wolverine! It cracks me up that she takes a selfie with him. (more…)
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I’ve enjoyed Kathleen Edwards’ music for years. Her album Voyageur is just stunning.
