SOUNDTRACK: SALLY SHAPIRO-“I’ll Be By Your Side” (Extended Mix) & “He Keeps me Alive (Skatebård Mix)” from Viva Piñata! (2008).
These two tracks also came from the Viva Piñata compilation. “I’ll Be By Your Side” has a very Euro dance-sound to me (updated ABBA, perhaps?). It sounds so incredibly 80s to me. Unlike most of the other tracks, this is an extended mix, not a remix, so I assume this is what the real song sounds like, too. It’s a fine little pop song (catchy chorus) although I don’t need an 8 minute version of it.
“He Keeps Me Alive” feels like Julie Cruise song–straight out of Twin Peaks–until the bouncy synths come in (I can’t imagine what the remix did as it sounds so much like the other song). The one possible remix element is the vocals, which get very synthesized near the end.
Both of these songs have that Europop feels that I like much more than American pop. I had been puzzled by the name of the singer, because her name clearly wasn’t coming from where I though the music came from. Well, Wikipedia tells me “Sally Shapiro is the pseudonym of a Swedish vocalist and the name of the synthpop duo composed of Shapiro and musician Johan Agebjörn.” At least I got the Abba connection right!
[READ: March 22, 2012] “The Archduke’s Assassin”
This is an excerpt from Saul’s upcoming novel Dark Diversions (it was also published in Brick, although I read it in Harper’s). What’s fun about this excerpt is that I have literally no idea what direction the rest of the novel could go. This appears to be a self-contained incident and while it seems pretty clear who the protagonist is, it’s hard to speculate how much more of the book would be about him or his friends or even the excerpt’s titular assassin.
It begins with a discussion of Yugolslav politics circa 1987–how the official inflation rate of 50% is indeed official, which means mythological. The setting is the Writers’ Union, a nineteenth century stone palace which housed the best restaurant in Yugoslavia. The food was great, as was the gossip.
The narrator’s friends were all mixed race (in other words typical Yugoslavs). But for the moment they were all Serbs. The discussion moves to the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and how the narrator should meet the man responsible. When he replies that Gavrilo Princip died in prison in 1918, his friend Dana corrects him and says she is talking about Vaso Čubrilović. Čubrilović was one of several people who conspired to assassinate the archduke. As of 1987 he was the only one still alive. [He is a real person. He got 13 years in prison, eventually became a history professor and died for real in 1990].
The narrator goes to meet the man at the University. After a brief theoretical discussion of history, Čubrilović says that he believes that technology will save the future, that software will lead the way. The narrator ponders this later over a meal and wonders if a new mythology is needed to distract people in a time of political emptiness.
There isn’t a lot to the excerpt–it’s not profound or anything, but it does what an excerpt should–it whets your appetite for more. The writing is excellent and the topic is intriguing.
I enjoyed that the story mentions some Serbian dishes like kesten-pire sa šlagom (chestnut pureé with cream and chocolate) and žito sa šlagom (crushed wheat, walnuts and dried raisins with cream).
For ease of searching, I include: Skatebard, Johan Agebjorn, kesten-pire sa slagom, zito sa slagom, Vaso Cubrilovic, pinata
I Just Read About That... 