SOUNDTRACK: MARGO PRICE & JEREMY IVEY-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #2 (March 26, 2020).
Since the quarantine began, many many many musicians have been playing shows at home. There are so many online home recordings that it is literally impossible to keep up with them. I have watched a few, but not many. I’m not sure how many of the online shows are going to be available for future watching, but at least these are saved for posterity.
The Tiny Desk is working from home for the foreseeable future. Introducing NPR Music’s Tiny Desk (Home) Concerts, bringing you performances from across the country and the world. It’s the same spirit — stripped-down sets, an intimate setting — just a different space.
I respect Margo Price’s lyrics and attitude. But her music is just too country for my tastes. I don’t know anything about her husband Jeremy Ivey (turns out he released his first album this year at age 41).
In this concert, Margo’s accent is subdued and her songs sound great. Plus, she says what we are all thinking between the first and second song.
Margo Price and her husband, Jeremy Ivey, performed a Tiny Desk (Home) Concert from their Nashville attic. Behind them are two handmade signs inspired by John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Bed-In For Peace that simply reads “Stay Home” and “Save Lives.”
They play three songs
They played “Stone Me,” a song they co-wrote and included on Margo’s upcoming album, That’s How Rumors Get Started.
Maybe it is best is Margo stays in the country world, because her lyrics really stand out against the status quo:
Love me, hate me
Desecrate me
Call me a bitch
Then call me baby
You don’t know me
You don’t own me
Yeah that’s no way
To stone me
Plus it’s really catchy.
After the song Ivey jokes that you can hold your applause until the end. But then Margo gets serious saying the last time they did Tiny Desk trump had just gotten elected and didn’t think things gcould ever get worse…here we are.
The second song, “Just Like Love” is from an EP. It’s a minor key song, less catchy but more affecting with Ivey’s excellent backing vocals and guitar solos.
Margo and Jeremy dedicated this concert to all those that are struggling right now and thank “all the people still out there working, the doctors, all the sanitation people, everybody out there just doing what they have to do to so we can survive, all the people working in grocery stores. And to everyone who has lost their job, we feel you.” In addition to the rapidly spreading virus, Nashville was recently ravaged by tornadoes.
The video cuts to black and Margo returns saying Take 25, while carrying a hand drum.
They ended the set with a premiere, a song called “Someone Else’s Problem,” that they wrote together on an airplane while Margo was pregnant. It’s a song dealing with the guilt many of us have, being part of a problem instead of part of a solution.
This is another minor key song and it’s quite long (about 7 minutes). It’s almost like a Bob Dylan story song (including a harmonica solo).
She ends the set by looking at the camera and asking, Where’s the ventilators” if only the stereotypical country fan would listen to her and maybe change their minds about the impeached president.
[READ: March 30, 2020] The Adventure Zone 2
I loved this book. It is a graphic novel realization of a Dungeons & Dragons campaign. It is based on a podcast called The Adventure Zone. The podcast is fun and is a real scenario of friends (in this case brothers) playing D&D. The podcast is pretty funny if a little unedited.
Book Two picks up more or less where the last book left off. Our heroes Taako the elf mage, Merle the dwarf cleric and Magnus the fighter meet with the leaders of the Bureau of Balance, a volunteer organization dedicate to finding and eliminating weapons of magical destruction.
They are given new gear, they level up, they shop at Magic Costco. Then they are to board the Rockport Express train and retrieve the Oculus, a magical object. The person who had it, Leeman Kessler, was killed for it.
The train is pretty cool with a crypt safe that can only be opened if the engineer’s hands are on it for an hour.
There a bunch of hilarious NPCs in the game including the engineer, Hudson, and the guy who is there to help them, Jenkins. Jenkins brings their food and shows them the magic portal room (it’s not-only-a sex thing). The fun that the characters have at Jenkins’ expense it totally worth the reading of the book.
Also on board is a young boy (I’m ten, not eight) Angus McDonald the self-proclaimed world’s greatest detective who offers to help him (and sound snotty doing it). Angus knows about Leeman Kessler’s death and he is out to find “The Rockport Slayer.” The three adventurers agree to help him. As they go snooping around they discover another dead body. His hands and head were cut off.
Coincidentally also on board is the professional wrestler, Jess the Beheader (Magnus loves her and has both her action figures, the regular one and the rare one). But Merle snarks: “Don’t you know wrestling is made up fantasy bullshit?”
The rest of the book becomes kind of a mystery story–finding the Rockport Slayer and eventually getting the magical oculus out of the cryptsafe. There’s magical spells, serious hit point damage, a large crab, preposterous story lines and a nice plot twist.
The fun part at the end comes when our heroes hand over the oculus (come on that’s not a spoiler) but the head of the BOB reveals that there are a total of seven magical items that they must retrieve and thanks to our heroes, they now have two.
So you’re telling us that you and your big organization and secret moon base and flying snow globes have been doing this for however long and your score is zero?!
Two?
No that’s our score…BOB Incorporated has a big old goose egg.
As the book ends a mysterious hooded figure who has been lurking throughout the book crosses out the oculus on a list. The phoenix fire gauntlet is already crossed out. That leaves Five to go.
I really enjoyed this story even if it was more of a mystery than a good old D&D story. Although honestly I haven’t looked at D&D since the 70s so maybe it’s different now.
Although, more specifically there is no way this is how a D&D story could work. The repartee and the battles are too clean cut and plotted. Now I realize that the book borrows liberally from various things to create the story line. So maybe they have taken the podcast and taken the highlights and best quips and made this story from it I mean, it works as story but it doesn’t work at all as a campaign. Which is fine, since this is a story not a campaign.
I’m just curious how the actual campaign worked.
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I enjoyed watching the saga of KT Tunstall’s shows getting scheduled and postponed and reschedule and postponed again. Not because I want her (or anyone to be unhappy), but because it was a good bellweather as to what was going on. Unlike most artists, KT was really game to get out there.
I’ve been aware of Bill Frisell for decades. He has played with just about everyone that I like, and I’m sure I have his guitar on about a dozen albums. And yet I don’t really know all that much about him. I certainly didn’t know what he looked like and, honestly, I wasn’t sure what to expect from this Tiny Desk Concert. I feel like most of the places I know him from are noisy avant-garde music. So I was pretty surprised to hear that this would be a concert of delicate reworkings of John Lennon songs.