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Archive for the ‘Metallica’ Category

B. J. Novak–“”The Man Who Invented the Calendar”” (New Yorker, November 4, 2013)

Posted in B.J. Novak, Funny (ha ha), Metallica, New Yorker, Rodrigo y Gabriela, The Office, Tiny Desk Concert on February 9, 2014| Leave a Comment »

CV1_TNY_11_04_13Brunetti.inddSOUNDTRACK: RODRIGO Y GABRIELA-Tiny Desk Concert #30 (October 19, 2009).

Iryg have seen the names of Rodrigo y Gabriela for quite some time, but I never knew what they were about.  I assumed they played world music or something (shame on me).  They are a Mexican couple living in Dublin and they have several albums out.  When the Concert opens, Bob Boilen says that the first time he heard them, he was blown away.

And I was too.

Holy crap.  Rodrigo and Gabriela play nylon string acoustic guitars, and they play them like nobody I have ever heard before.  Gabriela plays a lot of percussive sounds with her strings and the body of her guitar.  And Rodrigo is all over the map–doing heavy metal chords (they play Metallica’s “Orion” on their debut album), and flying solos in addition to flamenco notes and even sound effects.  It is a  stunning display of virtuosity and melody.

My only complaint about this Tiny Desk Concert  is that it is too short!  I need to hear more.

They play two songs in about 12 minutes and each one is amazing.  They dazzle your ears as they play, and watching them do it is even better.

[READ: January 5, 2014] “The Man Who Invented the Calendar”

B.J. Novak wrote for and acted on The Office.  This comic piece is about the man, well, who invented the calendar.

The tone of the piece is contemporary with lots of current phrasing–fun with anachronism.

But it is also a funny idea of him deciding to make the calendar starting January 1st. He says he came up with the idea way back on Day After Day After Very Cloudy Day.  His initial plan: one thousand days a year, divided into twenty-five months, forty days a month.  Easy.

At first, the man is enjoying the compliments he’s getting–a guy who says he’s going to organize his life around it.  And Alice says she doesn’t know if she’s busy, she’ll have to check her calendar (wink).

But of course, complaints start to build.  By January 30, people are sick of January.  So all the months will just have 30 days instead.  Or maybe 31.

Soon enough, Alice is his biggest supporter.  Then things get weird on February 14th.  (more…)

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Tessa Hadley–“Bad Dreams” (New Yorker, September 23, 2013)

Posted in Concert, Dreams, Kiss, Marriage Trouble, Metallica, New Yorker, Pink Floyd, Short Story, Tessa Hadley on October 7, 2013| Leave a Comment »

CV1_TNY_09_23_13Brunetti_spine.indd 220px-Alive_IV_KISSSOUNDTRACK: KISS SYMPHONY-Alive IV 2/28/03 (2003)

This CD is a bit out of order in the Kiss chronology, but since I’ve just looked at a few live Kiss albums and looked at “Atom Heart Mother,” the ultimate orchestra rock, it seemed like a good time to throw this in.

This is from a Kiss concert in Melbourne Australia.  The disc (and I assume the concert) is broken into three sections: regular Kiss, Kiss with the Melbourne Symphony Ensemble and Kiss with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.

The first six songs rock pretty hard.  It’s an interesting collection of songs from throughout their career.  “Deuce” and “Strutter” sound good.  “Let Me Go, Rock n Roll” is a surprise and one that I like a lot, (although I find it weird that Peter Criss says exactly what he said at the end of the song on Alive! –it was in audible then and it is inaudible now).  Of course I wish they hadn’t chosen “Lick It Up” but it is better than on Alive III (I like the way he turns the “I want you, I need you” into a simple plea “to clap your hands”).  It makes me laugh that Paul is still using the “rock and roll pneumonia” schtick thirty years after I first heard it to open “Calling Dr. Love”.  And then there’s the new song, “Psycho Circus,” I haven’t mentioned that album yet but it’s a new song and they play it with verve.

The one thing about the disc that is especially obnoxious is how proud of themselves they are about doing this tour with an orchestra.  Paul says, ““Some people said we were crazy to attempt this Maybe we are crazy but that’s what makes us Kiss.”  And yet, clearly it’s not an original idea (I mean even Metallica, the most obvious comparison did theirs three years earlier).

When the Ensemble comes out, they play 5 mellow songs.  The first (and most obvious) is “Beth”.  But man does it sound lousy here. Peter doesn’t seem to have any of the oomph to make it sound any good.  (The orchestra sounds good though).  The next obvious song is “Forever.”  What I find odd about these “Ensemble” songs is that it sounds like the band is using acoustic guitars which just add a strange percussive sound (since you can barely hear the guitar over the orchestra).  I understand being unplugged for the Ensemble, but it sounds weird.

The huge surprise comes with “Goin’ Blind” in which Gene sings in a quite pretty falsetto.  He sounds old (for sure), but it’s a surprisingly pleasant voice.  Another huge surprise is the inclusion of “Sure Know Something “ from Dynasty.  And then the craziest surprise of all is “Shandi.”  “Shandi” is one of those songs that I used to joke asking if Kiss played it live.  I cannot believe they played it (even with an orchestra)  I wonder if Australia especially liked the Dynasty/Unmasked era.  Of course, I love that era as well and am thrilled to hear this song live (even if Paul sounds a little stilted singing it).

Then comes the bloat.  Disc two brings in the full orchestra and the sound is…weird.  The orchestra is sort of playing along with the band (mostly like added strings to pop songs and swells as needed). The big surprise is that the strings don’t play the iconic solos—which would be frankly amazing–imagine the whole string section playing the solo to “Detroit Rock City.”  Rather, the sounds that we hear most from the orchestra are the horns, which make it sound kind of like a marching band playing Kiss.  But the real problem is that the band seems to be fighting with the orchestra.  Since the guitar and entire orchestra are playing the same thing, you can’t really hear one or the other very well.  Worse yet, by the end, both Paul and Gene seem to be screaming to be heard over the orchestra, which makes them sound quite bad.

It’s not a total disaster.  Some songs work just fine.

“King of the Night Time World” had orchestration on the album, but in this version, they just seem to be throwing in strings everywhere.  “Do You Love Me?” works great in this setting for the exact opposite reason that I didn’t work in Unplugged—the orchestra brings up the chorus to higher levels.  “Shout It Out Loud” is pretty successful with the orchestra although Gene seems really flat.  The orchestra works well on “God of Thunder” probably because the music itself is so spare that the orchestra fills in the gaps nicely.

I’m always disappointed when Paul plays around with the vocal styling in popular songs—he does it a lot in “Love Gun.”  I’m not saying that every song should sound just like the record, but it’s weird unsettling when he mixes things up in weird ways as he does here. The orchestra is good for this one though.  And, the strings work great with “Black Diamond.”

On the other side of things, It is very creepy to have a children’s choir sing to the groupie-anthem “Great Expectations” but it does sound good—until the end when Gene doesn’t even seem to care a bout the spoken words.  “I Was Made for Lovin’ You” gets less disco and a bit more rock here.   And the set ends with “Rock n Roll All Nite” which is something of a throwaway here.  It’s the inevitable conclusion to the show, with the orchestra being little more than accents.

So the orchestra is not really a very successful addition to the set.  It may have been great to see live (the orchestra in Kiss makeup and all), but the recording leaves something to be desired.  The set list, on the other hand is pretty great and I would love to have these songs in any future show that I see.

[READ: September 25, 2013] “Bad Dreams”

I’ve enjoyed most of the Tessa Hadley stories I’ve read in the New Yorker.  And most of them have had similar themes.  But this one is quite different.

I’ve been finding with a lot of stories lately that I really like the way a story starts out and that I kind of wish it would keep doing whatever the story is doing, but that the author has something else in mind.  It’s hard to complain about that because it is the author’s story, not mine, but it still bums me out a little even if I ultimately like where the author went with the story.

So in this one, a child wakes up in the dark.  We get a glimpse of the house and where she is at, but the crux of her waking up is that she had a dream about her favorite book, “Swallows and Amazons.”  The really cool and spooky thing about the dream is that she dreams an epilogue to this story that she has read so many times.  And the epilogue is disturbing—not horrifically, but just enough to freak out a young girl.  She dreams that that one of the boys drowned, that her least favorite girl, the plainest girl went on to a long happy life, etc.

This is such an interesting idea tha I couldn’t wait to see where it went.  Of course, I can’t even imagine where you could go with that, and maybe Hadley couldn’t either.  Because instead we leave the girl’s room and head to her father’s study.

We learn about her father but during her visit she decides to upend all of the furniture in the room.  Not out of malice, but in a dreamlike state.  And then she imagines her parents’ reaction to this and thinks it will be very funny.   She vows to never admit that she did it.  Then she goes back to sleep. (more…)

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H.P. Lovecraft–“The Call of Cthulhu” (1926) and “The Whisperer in Darkness” (1930)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Culture Shock, Death, Demons, Dogs, Fantasy, Fears, Futurama, H.P. Lovecraft, Horror, McSweeney's, Metallica, Michel Houellebecq, Pinkish Black, Short Story, The Birthday Party, The Sisters of Mercy on June 23, 2013| Leave a Comment »

hpl;oveSOUNDTRACK: PINKISH BLACK-“Razed to the Ground” (2013).

pinkishblackAfter playing No Age, Lars Gottrich came in to show what real heaviness is with a new song from Pinkish Black.  Unlike most of Lars’ songs, this was neither death- nor speed- metal.  Rather it has a very 80s goth sound.  But it’s more Birthday Party than Sisters of Mercy.

There’s no guitars, just loud drums (with a lot of cymbals), a pulsing bass keyboard riff and some spacey high keyboard notes thrown along the top of the song.  There are elements that I liked about the story.  However, the synths in the solo give it a very cheesy horror movie feel and I have to admit that although I like a lot of bands from the era, this feels like a pale imitation.

[READ: June 20, 2013] “The Call of Cthulhu” and “The Whisperer in Darkness”

Both of these stories appeared in Michel Houellebecq’s H.P. Lovecraft book, but I wanted to treat them separately for ease of searching and discovery.

After my long history with Lovecraft and after reading Houellebecq’s book, I anticipated being blown away by these stories.  And so, with my expectations so high, I was naturally disappointed.  I was especially disappointed with how normal these stories seemed.  Houellebecq made me think the stories were practically non-narrative in form—that they eschewed all manner of conventional storytelling.  That his writing was so weird that no one would publish it.  But in these two stories everything seems completely normal.  Psychologically these stories are different, but aside from content, they are fairly conventional stories.

Maybe they aren’t mind blowing because they were written nearly 100 years ago and the entire world has changed drastically since then.  It may also be because I have read all of the derivatives of Lovecraft enough that there’s nothing new in his work.  And it may also be that in the past 80 years, we have thought of things that are much scarier than these, in part because of Lovecraft himself.  Or maybe I would have been into them a lot more had I read them when I was a teenager.

“The Call of Cthulhu.” (more…)

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Michel Houellbecq–H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life (1991) [translated 2005]

Posted in All Songs Considered, Biography, Culture Shock, Death, Demons, Dorna Khazeni, Dungeons & Dragons, Fantasy, Fears, H.P. Lovecraft, Horror, Marriage (Happy), Marriage Trouble, McSweeney's, Metallica, Michel Houellebecq, Morality, No Age, Oddities, Racism on June 22, 2013| Leave a Comment »

hpl;oveSOUNDTRACK: NO AGE-“No Ground” (2013).

An ObjectI’ve been hearing a lot about No Age lately, but I don’t really know much about them.  I keep thinking they are a different, older band (although I can’t think of which one for some reason).  Anyhow, this new song from their new album is a simple, propulsive rocker.  It starts out with some echoing guitar notes until the fast, fast bass comes in.

It’s followed by some quickly strummed guitars and low sung, almost chanted vocals.

The song feels like it builds speed throughout, although I don’t think it actually does.  I didn’t realize that there were only two guys in the band—and that explains their limited musical sound.  But unlike a number of other two person bands that I’ve really enjoyed as of late, this song feels a little flat.  There is some appeal to it, but overall I want a little bit more.

[READ: June 16, 2013] H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life

I have been “into” H.P. Lovecraft for about thirty years.  Interestingly, I had never read anything by him in that time.  I got into him via Dungeons and Dragons which had a whole selection of monsters from the Cthulhu mythos.  And then Metallica did a song called “The Call of Cthulhu” and even though I bought several of his paperback collections and proudly displayed them, I never read them.  When McSweeney’s imprint Believer Books published this little title by the practically Lovecraftianly named Michel Houellebecq, I was excited to read it, too (because at this time I had assumed that I had actually read some Lovecraft).  But like my Lovecraft books, it languished on the shelf.

Until now.

I decided that it was time to finish off some of those McSweeney’s books that have been sitting on my shelf for years.  And this was on the top of my list. (more…)

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Tony Abbott–The Weird Zone series Books 1-8 (1996-1997)

Posted in "Weird Al" Yankovic, Children's Books, Funny (ha ha), Get Smart, Metallica, Nirvana, R.E.M., Short Books, Supernatural, Suzanne Vega, The B-52's, The Beach Boys, The Future, Threats, Tony Abbott, Wayne's World, Yuck!, Zombies on March 31, 2013| Leave a Comment »

wz1 SOUNDTRACK: “WEIRD AL” YANKOVIC-Off the Deep End (1992).

Weird_Al_Yankovic_-_Off_the_Deep_EndIt was this “Weird Al” album that brought me back into the fold.  His parody of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” (“Smells Like Nirvana”) was hilarious.  And the video was even better.  It was enough for me to get this album (the cover of which even parodied Nevermind) and was a huge seller for Al.  This great cover makes the rest of the parodies seem so strangely one-hit wonderish (which is, of course Al’s bread and butter), but when you read the other parodied songs, it’s so amusingly “who?”

We have  “I Can’t Watch This” (“Can’t Touch This,” MC Hammer).  This parody is pretty funny as his TV stuff is usually very good.  “The White Stuff” (“The Right Stuff” New Kids on the Block–really??) is very very funny.  It works on a parody level and it works so well internally including the way the O-O-O-OREO fits in in both respects.  It’s probably his best overall parody for a song whose original I dislike.  “Taco Grande” is a parody of Rico Suave” (does anyone remember that song?).  This song also happens to be a favorite of mine–the way he says “Taco” in an oddly sexy way makes me laugh every time.  And, internally it works really well, too.  “The Plumbing Song” is a parody of Milli Vanilla.  While the plumbing  jokes are good, the actual chorus, the “punchline,” really doesn’t work.  Just like Milli Vanilli.

The originals are quite strong on this disc, too.  “Trigger Happy” is a Beach Boys style parody which actually is quite relevant in the big gun debate of 2013.  “I Was Only Kidding” is one of his anti-romantic songs, in which he says all of these romantic things and then takes it back.  It’s pretty funny, even with the Wayne’s World joke.  Wikipedia suggests that it’s a style parody of Tonio K, but I don’t know who that is or what he sounds like.  “When I Was Your Age” sounds a lot like a song from the UHF soundtrack–that same musical style, I wonder if the band works on the music together. It’s a funny song that’s all about old people yelling about how easy young people have it.  It’s a good one.

“Airline Amy” is an original song about a stewardess which doesn’t really do much for me.  But the final song on the disc “You Don’t Love me Anymore” is just outstanding.  It’s a funny acoustic ballad, an anti-romantic song with some very funny lines.  The video parodies Extreme’s “More Than Words,” even though the original song wasn’t a parody of that song (but since people thought it was he made the video reflect it). The video is awesome.

And of course, the polka medley is wonderful.  There’s such a weird mix of songs, and this one really dates the record (not in a bad way).  The previous medleys mixed a lot of different eras, but the songs in this one are of a very specific time: “Cradle of Love,” “Tom’s Diner,” “Love Shack,” “Pump Up the Jam,” “Losing My Religion” (the second R.E.M. nod from Al), “Do Me” (I don’t know the original but I love that he throws in a yodel at the end of it), “Cherry Pie,” “I Touch Myself,” “Dr Feelgood” and the unforgettable “Ice Ice Baby.”  It May be the only place where Metallica and “The Humpty Dance” play next to each other, too.

In a final nod to Nirvana, Al tossed in a 5 second piece of noise after ten minutes of silence which he called “Bite Me” (because Nevermind had a very noisy song called “Endless, Nameless” after some 30 minutes of silence).  My friend Matt has a very funny story about not knowing that “Bite Me” would come on and getting the crap scared out of him by it.  Al makes us laugh in many different ways.

[READ: February and March 2013] The Weird Zone series

wz2Readers will know that Clark and I love Tony Abbott.  We keep looking for his older, somewhat harder to find series, and this past month the library came through with The Weird Zone, eight books set in the small town of Grover’s Mill.  There’s a Secret Government UFO testing base at the north of the city, a dinosaur graveyard to the west of the city and Humongous Horror Movie Studio to the east.  Living in this weird triangle between these oddities can mean only one thing–Grover’s Mill, is known to the kids as the Weird Zone (their school is even call W.Reid Elementary).  The adults in town don’t seem to realize what’s going on (although, clearly they must) are called Zoners.

The Humongous Horror Movie studio is run by Mr Vickers.  His kids, Sean and Holly, are two of the five protagonist.  Although it’s a little funny that in book one, Sean is away at camp.  Mr Vickers makes a horror movie every week–they are terrible  but he shows them at the drive in and people come (perhaps because of the huge searchlights he waves around through the sky).  But having this crazy creature shop in town means that things are very rarely normal anyway.

In Book One, Zombie Surf Commandos from Mars!, Liz Duffey, Holly Vickers and Jeff Ryan are enjoying a day at the beach of Lake Lake (named after someone named Lake) when a tidal wave surges forth from the water.  Riding that wave are a bunch of Martian zombies.  They march after the kids looking for brains! (more…)

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William Trevor–“The Women” (New Yorker, January 14, 2013)

Posted in Culture Shock, Deftones, Marriage Trouble, Metallica, New Yorker, Short Story, Tool, William Trevor on February 28, 2013| Leave a Comment »

CV1_TNY_01_14_13Mattotti.inddSOUNDTRACK: DEFTONES-Deftones (2003)

defTypically when a band has a self titled album in  the middle of their career a change is taking place–a re-imagining, perhaps or a return to roots.  Deftones is something of a return to roots.  Since I loved White Pony’s diversity so much that’s a little disappointing for me, and yet while there aren’t as many interesting sonic ideas, the songwriting is still top notch and there are some really catchy and clever ideas too.  The first song, “Hexagram” is a very heavy (and very screamy) song.  And although the guitars during the verse are bright and ringing (nods to alt rock) this song is all about being heavy (the vocals seems like Chino Moreno’s throat is literally shredding as he songs).  “Needles and Pins” has a cool complex drum patter (Abe Cunningham, fabulous) and the guitars (Stephen Carpenter, also fabulous) are staggered and interesting.  And when the bass really comes in on counterpoint (Chi Cheng, doing some amazing stuff on the bass), the song is far more complex than the screamed heavy chorus might indicate.

“Minerva” has all of the trappings of a hit–a big chorus in a major key, and great verses.  And yet, the song’s production is very claustrophobic (it kind of has a Tool feel).  That doesn’t detract from the song at all, but it’s interesting that they would take something that could have easily been huge and yet made it a little less user friendly.  “Good Morning Beautiful” has some really heavy guitars (especially in the chorus) but the vocals are kind of soaring here–more of that contrast adding up to something wonderful.

After the heavy onslaught of these songs, “Deathblow” slows things down.  The guitar and bass are slow and kind of stretched out(and sound great together).  They really let Chino’s voice show off.  “When Girls Telephone Boys” is a heavy blast from the start.  And like a lot of these songs the distortion might actually be a little too much–it kind of makes the song less pleasant than it might be–which is obviously intentional.  “Battle-axe” opens with a mellow guitar intro (not unlike Metallica’s “One”) but the verses immediately introduce the heavy guitars again.

And yet, just as this albums seems like it will be all heavy and relentless, the band throws in “Lucky You” a song with electronic trip hop drums and effects.  It is a creative song and quite interesting, it just seems so odd to throw this in almost all the way at the end of the disc.  It stays moody throughout with layers of vocals and guitars.  But “Bloody Cape” snaps you out of that with a pummeling guitar intro, although as with White Pony, the verses open up with some interesting guitar sounds making this song more than it seems at first.  But make no mistake, this is a punishing, pummeling song by the end.  “Anniversary of an Uninteresting Event” throws another curveball, though. It opens with a slow piano riff and stays as a slow ballad (complete with gentle percussion and washes of sound).

The disc ends with “Moana” probably the most conventional (which is not a bad thing) song on the record.  It doesn’t have the heavy downtuned riffs, just big guitars and Chino’s whispering voice.  So in some ways this album is a disappointment–especially coming after the experiments of White Pony.  And yet the album is not un-experimental it is simply experimenting within a much smaller genre pallete.  I’d read that it seemed like this album came before White Pony, and it does, as if they were stepping back from their crazier impulses.  But the quality of the songwriting is till strong.

[READ: February 28, 2013] “The Women”

I had started this story last month and then lost the magazine.  I thought that maybe I could pick up where I left off, but it turned out I only remembered the part about the two women, not the main character, so I had to start over again.

The story is about Cecilia Normanton who grew up in the 1908s with her father but didn’t know her mother.  Mr Normanton and his wife had a happy, laughter-filled marriage for two years and then she was gone (which in this case means she left–not that she died).  The first section of the story talks a lot about Cecilia in her daily life–she was very pretty for her age but also very naive and she was permitted a rather carefree life.

Until she was sent to boarding school.  Which she hated at first.  Then she grew to like it and her father was relieved about that.  The school is nice, she is well treated and she makes good friends   Although she hates being forced to go to the field hockey games–especially since her least favorite person is on the team (and the team never loses).

At one game, two older women are watching–Cecilia noticed them at one previous game as well.  She can’t figure out who they are–they’re not former students, they’re not for the other team, their presence is weird.  And at that game they almost interact when Cecilia drops her watch and the women narrowly avoid stepping on it, but really there is no connection.

Nevertheless, the narrative follows the women as they return from the game by train.  We learn about their lives and their history together–they used to work together and call each other by their last names.  (more…)

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Metal Evolution

Posted in Anthrax, Arthur Brown, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Deftones, Dream Theater, Faith No More, Genesis, Helloween, Iggy Pop, Iron Maiden, King Crimson, Korn, Marilyn Manson, Mastodon, MC5, Megadeth, Mercyful Fate, Metallica, Motorhead, Queensrÿche, Rage Against the Machine, Raven, Rush, Saxon, Sepultura, Slayer, The Dillinger Escape Plan, The Stooges, Tool, Venom, Yes, Yngwie Malmsteen on December 15, 2012| Leave a Comment »

[WATCHED October-November 2012] Metal Evolution

metal evolutionVH1 aired this series last year and I was intrigued by it but figured I had no time to watch an 11 hour series on the history of heavy metal.  Of course, this being VH1, they have since re-aired the series on an almost continual loop.  So, if you’re interested, you can always catch it.

This series was created by Sam Dunn, the documentary filmmaker who made the movie Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey.  I had heard good things about the movie, but never saw it.  After watching the series, I’m definitely interested in the movie.  Dunn is a keener–A Canadian heavy metal fan who is really into his subject.  He knows his stuff and he knows what he likes (heavy metal) and what he doesn’t like (glam metal, nu metal).

The sheer number of people he interviews is impressive (as are the number of locations he travels to).  Part of me says “wow, I can’t believe he was able to interview X,” and then I remember, “X is really old and is nowhere near the level of fame that he once had.”  Given that, the few hold-outs seem surprising–did they not want to have anything to do with VH1?  Are they embarrassed at how uncool they are now?  Just watch the show guys, you can’t be as low as some.

The only mild criticism I have is that the show relies a lot on the same talking heads over and over.  Scott Ian from Anthrax, whom I love, is in every episode.  Indeed, he may be a paid VH1 spokesman at this point.  There are a few other dudes who show up a little more than they warrant, but hey, you use what you got, right?

What is impressive is the volume of music he includes with the show.  I assume that he couldn’t  get the rights to any studio recordings because every clip is live.  This is good for fans in that we get to see some cool unfamiliar live footage, but some of it is current live footage which often doesn’t compare to the heyday.  Having said that, there’s a lot of live footage from the early 80s–of bands that I never saw live anywhere.  And that’s pretty awesome.

With an 11-part documentary there’s the possibility of exhaustion and overkill, but Dunn is an excellent craftsman  he jumps around from old to new, talks about how the history impacts the current and, because of his own interests, he makes it personal rather than just informative. (more…)

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Jonathan Franzen–How to Be Alone (2002)

Posted in Book Reviews, Books about writers, Culture Shock, Death, Essays, Harper's, Jonathan Franzen, Lou Reed, Marriage Trouble, Merzbow, Metallica, New Yorker, Nicholas Negroponte, Paula Fox, Prison, Psychiatry, Research, Scholarship, Sex, Smarty Pants, Sunn O))), Technology, Unlikable main character, War, William Gaddis, Word usage on November 20, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: SUNN O)))-Flight of the Behemoth (2002).

I hadn’t really heard Sunn O))) until this record (which may not be typical as they collaborated with Merzbow on this one).  I knew that Sunn O))) played loud droney “music.”  And so it is here.  On “Mocking Solemnity” (9 minutes) and “Death Becomes You” (13 minutes) (which meld into each other seamlessly), the songs are mostly slow drones on electric guitar.  The chords are heavy and heavily distorted and they ring out for a few bars–not until the chords die naturally, there is a kind of pacing involved, but for a few bars until the chords are played again (often the same chord).  This is for those who thought Metal Machine Music was too complicated.

On paper this sounds unimpressive (or downright awful, depending) but in reality it is a very physical experience (if played loud enough).

The staticy noise of “Death” melds into track 3 “O))) Bow 1” which adds what sounds like radically modified piano playing a kind of melody.  It’s about 6 minutes and it really changes the tone of the record to suddenly add an atonal racket to the almost calming drone of the bass.  But by the middle of the song, the piano becomes what sounds like a chainsaw.  Merzbow mixed that track and  “O))) Bow 2” which is 13 minutes of the same slow pulsating noise.  It’s not exactly soothing.

The final track is “F.W.T.B.T.” a “remake” of “Metallica’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls.”  I can’t hear a thing that sounds like the original, but that’s what makes a cover interesting.  Although admittedly around the four and a half minute mark there’s some faster chords (for this band anyhow) that could be Metallica-like.  There are also drums (and vocals, although I have no idea what they are saying) on this ten-minute workout.

Not for the faint of heart (or fans of melody).

[READ: November 17, 2012] How to Be Alone

I read most of the articles in this book already.  But I read them over two years ago, so I thought it would be safe to wade into the world of Franzen again.  What I find most interesting about the title of this book is just how many of these articles are about being alone, wanting to be alone or feeling like you are alone.  Obviously that is by design but it seems surprising just how apt the title proved to be, especially given the variety of subjects  his father’s brain, being a novelist, the US Postal Service, New York City.

I’m not going to go into major detail about each article this time, although I am providing a link to the earlier review–my feelings didn’t really change about the pieces (except that from time to time I got a bit exhausted at his…whininess?  No, not that exactly…maybe his persecution complex.  But I will give a line summary about each one just to keep everyone up to speed.  The four pieces that I hadn’t read before I will give a few more words about.

One overall feeling is that when Franzen isn’t writing about the state of the novel (which he is very passionate about) his articles are well researched well documented which is kind of surprising given the state of panic he seems to be in the novel articles.  It’s also kind of funny how out of touch these articles seem (some are almost 20 years old and are kind of laughably outdated), but it’s also funny to see how poorly his predictions panned out.  The death of the novel is rather overrated (just see the success of his own Freedom.

So the book contains: (more…)

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Simon Garfield–Just My Type: A Book About Fonts (2011)

Posted in Anthrax, Fonts, Megadeth, Metallica, Research, Simon Garfield, Slayer on September 18, 2012| 3 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK:  SLAYER-Live from Sonisphere 2011 (Palladia TV 2012).

Did I get into heavy metal because I loved typography or was it the other way around?  All metal bands love creating logos, and images that resonate with their music.  Nearly every metal band that I liked had a logo, easy to identify from a distance.  Perfect for marketing.The Metallica logo is pretty iconic, but the Slayer logo moves it up a step–crazy lettering with swords that almost make a pentagram.

When I was a young metalhead, Slayer was like forbidden fruit–so evil it was scary.  I love how this video dispels this image of the band.  Kerry King talking about “the kids,” and look how much Tom Araya is smiling through the whole set.  Never has anyone been happier singing the word “eviscerated.”

This show was during the Big 4 tour–Megadeth, Anthrax, Slayer and Metallica.  So Slayer performs a few of their more popular songs.  I actually don’t know how long their set was, but this thirty show must have contained about half of it.

And the band sounds really good–still playing really fast (Dave Lombardo on drums is a madman).  It also makes me laugh to think of Kerry King back in the early days having a leather bracelet with 4 inch ten-penny nails sticking out of it.  Now he’s just got a huge chain hanging from his belt (and a shaved, tattooed head and a very very long goatee).  Gary Holt from Exodus is replacing Jeff Hannemann for this tour because Jeff has Necrotizing fasciitis (which sounds like a Slayer song anyhow)

The Palladia show isn’t online, but there’s another show from this Big 4 Tour recorded in Chile that’s online.  And the interview with Tom Araya at around 11:30 is amazing,  Tom is such a nice, soft-spoken guy–and he was given the key to the city!  Incredible to hear him scream like that.  (And I see that Kerry has the nail bracelet on for the first song in this show too).

I’m also very pleased to see how many fans are wearing earplugs.  Not metal, but sensible.

[READ: September 10, 2012] Just My Type

A few months ago, Karen wrote posts about this book (links are below).  All I need to do was to read her first paragraph to know that I wanted to read this book.  I love typography.  I took a typography class at the School of Visual Arts and I have always been fascinated by logos and text.

This book is an awesome book for anyone who loves fonts but who doesn’t want anything too heavy.  There is some history of the various type creators, but for the most part this looks at type faces in the past and in popular culture.   Chapter 1, for instance, is called “We don’t serve your type” and is ll about the overused and much derided Comic Sans.

Karen wisely spread her review over five posts because there was so much in the book.  Looking at her review now, I had already forgotten these two things that she mentions: “the quandary Westminster Abbey was in when it was discovered the designer of the signage at the Stations of the Cross was an incestuous pedophile (among other things).  Or the story of the font that was drowned to keep it out of the wrong hands.”

Each chapter (about 8-10 pages) follows the adventure and misadventure of a font,  a series of fonts or the creator of said fonts.  In between chapters we got Fontbreaks, two or three pages about a specific font. (more…)

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Junot Díaz–The Sun The Moon, The Stars” (New Yorker, Februray 2, 1998)

Posted in Culture Shock, Dominican Republic, Funny (ha ha), Junot Díaz, Metallica, New Yorker, Short Story, The Prodigy, Travel, Ulver on November 29, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: ULVER-Metamorphosis EP (1999).

After Ulver’s first CD, they jumped around in genres (their second was a kind of folk CD and their third CD was more black metal–I have not heard either one).  Their 4th CD was the William Blake CD of crazed experimental music.  And then they released this EP.  And I can’t think of too many bands who keep their fans guessing as much as these guys do.  This EP is full on electronica.  Dark electronica, yes, but still, it’s all electronic.

There are four songs.  The first one, “Of Wolves and Vibrancy” is like  rocking dance song from the 90s (like The Prodigy).  The drums are quite intense.  While the second song, “Gnosis” is a slower, more ambient track. There are still loud drums, but the pace is slower and less manic. At around the 6 minutes mark vocals come in.  They sound like some of Metallica’s chanting voices on later albums.

Track three, “Limbo Central (Theme from Perdition City)” is less than 4 minutes long.  It’ s another dark electronic soundtrack with more great drums. 

The final song, “Of Wolves and Withdrawal” is almost 9 minutes of very quiet noises that grow louder in pulses. It seems to be three sections of different pulsing sounds.  The first time I listened to it, the opening was so quiet that I thought it was just all silence so I fast forwarded through the whole thing.  But because the pulses are so mechanically timed it didn’t even register as noises while as fast forwarded.  I finally had to turn it up pretty loud before I heard all of it. 

I was tempted to say that going from that first Ulver album to this one is a massive change.  But it seems that every Ulver record is a whiplash of stylistic changes.  Nevertheless, this is about as far from black metal as you can get and still be dark and scary.

[READ: November 4, 2011] “The Sun, The Moon, The Stars”

This is one of Díaz’s short stories that does not appear in Drown (it came out about two years after Drown).  It has been frequently anthologized, however, which makes it a pretty important story.

There’s a reason why I like to read author’s works in chronological order, and reading this story now confirms that for me.  The story, written in 1998, is the fictionalization of the essay, “Homecoming with Turtle” that I reviewed a few weeks ago (the one that I said pertained to Oscar Wao because of the turtle).  Well, there’s no turtle in this story, and there’s no dentists, but the rest of the story is pretty much the same as his nonfiction account.

After saying all of that though, what’s fun about reading this out of order is that since I know what the “truth” is about this situation, it’s fun to see what he has massaged into fiction.

So in this story, Yunior has been dating Magdalena for some time.  Magda is a good girl: wouldn’t sleep with him until they had been dating awhile, took him to church, introduced him to her parents, the whole bit.  And he really loves her.  The problem is that they only see each other once a week.

So, when a hot girl starts working at his office and she tells him that her man doesn’t treat her well and Yunior confides that the sex with Magda isn’t very good, well, things happen.  But they didn’t happen very often or for very long and Yunior tried to forget it.  Until the girl sent Magda a letter.  A very detailed letter. (more…)

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