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Archive for the ‘Morrissey’ Category

Roland Smith–Shatterproof [The 39 Clues: Cahills vs. Vespers: Book Four] (2012)

Posted in Adventure, Death, Fears, Greed, History, Iestyn Davies, John Dowland, Morrissey, Roland Smith, Short Books, Thomas Dunford, Threats, Tiny Desk Concert, Travel, Violence on June 1, 2014| Leave a Comment »

shatterSOUNDTRACK: IESTYN DAVIES-Tiny Desk Concert #357 (May 17, 2014).

falsettoIestyn Davies (pronounced YES-tin DAY-vis) is a countertenor, which means he sings in s striking falsetto (especially when you hear his deep speaking voice).  Davies sings three songs from  Elizabethan composer John Dowland. Joining Davies is Thomas Dunford, who has been affectionately dubbed “the Eric Clapton of the lute” by the BBC.  They play this early music and it sounds amazing (I am super impressed by his voice, but the lute blows me away).

The songs are very melancholy about lost love.  Like this wonderful line that would make Morrissey jealous: “I sit, I sigh, I weep, I faint, I die/In deadly pain and endless misery” (all done is in a staggering falsetto in a beautiful ascending melody).

He plays three songs (none of which had I heard before) “Come again, sweet love doth now invite,” “Now, O now I needs must part” and “Can she excuse my wrongs.”

I loved listening to these and to watching the lutist wail on that instrument.

[READ: May 25, 2014] Shatterproof

Much to my discomfort, this series is getting darker and darker.  I’m almost not sure if my 9 year old is ready for the intensity (and the death) in this book.

While there was real danger in the first series, people we know have actually died in this one.  And there is another (shocking) causality in this book as well.

As soon as the four kids (Amy and Dan Cahill and their friends Atticus and Jake Rosenbloom) land in Germany, they are set upon by police.  Since the four of them are wanted by Interpol, they assume that they are caught, done.  But it turns out that these are not real police, they are employed by Vesper One, to let them know that he knows exactly where they are.  And to give them their next clue.

Which is that they must steal a diamond from a heavily guarded museum that is about to close in two hours.

Meanwhile Hamilton and Phoenix are still tailing Luna Amato.  They are being assisted by Erasmus who is really calling the shots and using the boys as a kind of decoy.  Luna seems oblivious to the pursuit, which makes Erasmus even more suspicious.  So while the boys follow her, Erasmus sneaks in to what he believes is a Vesper stronghold.

The other real plot in the book coes from the prisoners.  The clever Cahill clan has devised a way to get out of their prison cell.  And it works–at a price.  Although their story evolves over the book, suffice it to say that they do escape, but at the risk of losing one of their number and at Nellie getting bitten by attack dogs.  By the end of the book, some of them have been brought to new facility where the consequences are all the more severe.

But back to the diamond heist. (more…)

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Shelagh Delaney–A Taste of Honey (1959)

Posted in Absolutely Fabulous, Babies, Charles Dickens, LGBTQ, Marriage Trouble, Morrissey, Parenting, Play (Drama), Pregnancy, Prostitution, Racism, Shelagh Delaney on July 20, 2013| Leave a Comment »

honeySOUNDTRACK: HORRIBLE HISTORIES-“Charles Dickens” (2013).

dickensHorrible Histories is a British children’s show.  They tell you histories of people and things in fun ways. Like this.  (It sounds awesome).

This biography of Charles Dickens (which lyrically is amusing as well as informative) is done in the style of The Smiths.  The music is very clearly The Smiths and of course the singer hits all of the Morrisseyisms that he can.  In addition to some actual Smiths lines (Dickens take a bow, heaven knows I’m miserable now), the song more or less mashes up “Heaven Know I’m Miserable Now” and “This Charming Man.”

It’s very funny and catchy as well.  Check out the joy:

[READ: June 30, 2013] A Taste of Honey

I discovered this play because it was mentioned in a documentary about The Smiths,  It was one of Morrissey’s favorite movies; he quoted a line from it in “Reel Around the Fountain” (I dreamt about you last night and fell out of bed twice”) and the song “This Night Has Opened My Eyes” is basically a summary of the play (with lines from it).

It’s a fairly modern story for 1959 England (Delaney was 18 when she wrote it), but it seems like rather a downer to be a favorite film/play.

It is the story of Jo, a young girl who is stuck in the dreaded life of living poor in Manchester (The river the color of lead).  She has no father around and her mother, Helen, (described as as a semi-whore (!), is quite unpleasant). Indeed, the opening scene of the play is the two of them bickering in a hole in the wall flat that feels dirty just by reading it.

Eventually a man comes along who promises to take Helen away from all of this.  He may be her pimp (specifics are not really given in the story and I wondered if they would be more obvious if it was 1959 (or in the movie).  But it’s clear that he has money and seems to be willing to bring Helen home.  At the same time, he is terribly mean to Jo–treating her worse than her mother does.  By the end of the scene, he takes Helen away, leaving Jo on her own. (more…)

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Kurt Vonnegut–The Last Interview and Other Conversations (2011)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Biography, Book Reviews, Books about writers, David Foster Wallace, Free Speech, Funny (ha ha), George Orwell, George Plimpton, History, In These Times, Interviews, Jacques Derrida, Jill Krementz, Joe Perro, Jorge Luis Borges, Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut, Marriage (Happy), Martin Amis, Morrissey, Norman Mailer, Playboy, Politicians, Ralph Ellison, Religion, Roberto Bolaño, Short Books, Sports, Stop Smiling, Surfer Blood, The Nation, The Paris Review, U.S. Airways Magazine, Violence, War on March 28, 2013| 1 Comment »

vonlastintSOUNDTRACK: SURFER BLOOD-“Demon Dance” (Live at SXSW, March 27, 2013).

surfer blood

I’ve liked Surfer Blood since I first heard them.  They write catchy, mostly short, poppy songs.  And usually after a few listens, the hooks really grab you.  The strange thing about the band is that the hooks aren’t always readily apparent, which makes their songs sound kind of samey sometimes.

Of course, samey isn’t a bad thing, necessarily.  Surfer Blood is quite distinctive and I tend to enjoy everything they do.  This new song sounds like their other stuff, which is fine.  But the most distinctive thing about the band of probably their singer who sounds like a less-affected Morrissey.

Having also listened to the song from the album I can say that the singer is far harder to understand live, so maybe live is not the best way to hear a new song from them, but for an old favorite, Surfer Blood has a great energy live.

Watch the show here and hear the studio version here.

[READ: March 27, 2013] The Last Interview and Other Conversations

Melville House has published a number of these “Last Interview” books, and as a completist I feel compelled to read them.  I have read criticisms of the series primarily because what the books are are collections of interviews including the last interview that the writer gave.  They don’t have anything new or proprietary.  The last interview just happens to be the last one he gave.   So it seems a little disingenuous, but is not technically wrong.

There’s so far five books in the series, and I figured I’d read at least three (Vonnegut, David Foster Wallace and Roberto Bolaño–the other two turned out to be Jorge Luis Borges–who I would be interested in reading about and Jacques Derrida (!) who I have always loved–I guess this series was tailor made for me).

At any rate, these interviews are from various times and locations in Vonnegut’s career.  There are six in total.  I don’t know if the titles they give here were the titles in the original publications but here’s what’s inside:

  • “Kurt Vonnegut: The Art of Fiction” from The Paris Review, Spring 1977 (by David Hayman, David Michaelis, George Plimpton, Richard Rhodes)
  • “There Must be More to Love Than Death” from The Nation, August 1980 (by Robert K. Musil)
  • “The Joe & Kurt Show” from Playboy, May 1982 (by Joseph Heller and Carole Mallory)
  • “The Melancholia of Everything Completed” from Stop Smiling, August 2006 (by J.C. Gabel)
  • “God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut” from U.S. Airways Magazine (!!!), June 2007 (by J. Rentilly)
  • “The Last Interview” from In These Times May 9, 2007 (by Heather Augustyn) (more…)

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Colm Tóibín–“Summer of ’38” (New Yorker, March 4, 2013)

Posted in Babies, Cocteau Twins, Colm Tóibín, Deftones, Duran Duran, Helmet, Irish Writer, Morrissey, New Yorker, Sex, The Cardigans, The Cars, The Cure, The Smiths, War on March 5, 2013| Leave a Comment »

CV1_TNY_03_04_13Chast.inddSOUNDTRACK: DEFTONES-B-Sides & Rarities (2005).

220px-Deftones_-_b-sides

Deftones released this B-sides collection after Deftones.  It contains mostly covers.  They also later released an album called Covers which has all of these covers and some new ones.  Covers was released on Record Store Day and is really hard to get now.  The covers that are extra to that CD are: “Drive” (originally by The Cars), “Caress” (originally by Drive Like Jehu), “Do You Believe” (originally by The Cardigans), “Ghosts” (originally by Japan) and “Sleep Walk” (originally by Santo & Johnny).   Despite those interesting songs, B-Sides and Rarities is no slouch.

“Savory” is a cover of a song by Jawbox.  Chino’s voice sounds so utterly different here, I completely don’t recognize him.  It’s not the most impressive start to the collection as even after a lot of listens the song still hasn’t really stuck for me, but it’s also one of the few songs I didn’t know beforehand.  (It turns out the cover was actually by the band Far (with the members of Deftones playing as well)).  But it was the Cocteau Twins cover that really blew me away.  The Cocteau Twins, an ethereal lighter than air band get a very respectful treatment here.  “Wax and Wane” has a pretty heavy bass line which Chi produces (with cool effects on it), and while Chino doesn’t try to ape Elizabeth’s Fraser’s voice, he does a great job in her register (how he figured out the words, I can’t imagine). Lynyrd Skynyrd’s  “Simple Kind of Man” gets the Deftones treatment with whispered/creepy vocals in the first verse and a big loud chorus.  The cover of Helmet’s “Sinatra” is very heavy (I don’t know the original but I know other Helmet songs) but it doesn’t sound quite like Helmet–a perfect Deftones take on the band, with very low tuned bass strings.  The second biggest surprise comes from their cover of Sade’s “No Ordinary Love.”  I don’t know the original, but I do know about Sade and this song keeps all of the funky bass and the slinky sexiness of a typical Sade song.  But it adds an interesting slightly sinister vibe that really makes the song stand out.

The band performs a great spooky gothy cover of The Cure’s “If Only Tonight We Could Sleep” (at what I gather is a live tribute show) complete with that weird Middle Eastern sounding guitar and the cool splash cymbal.  It’s followed by a great cover of The Smiths’ “Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want” and he does a surprisingly good Morrissey.   Their cover of Duran Durans “The Chauffeur” was the first cover that I had heard by the band and it was the first time I thought about how cool a Duran Duran song could sound: win-win.

There are some reinterpretations of Deftones originals as well.  “Change (In the House of Flies)” works very well in the acoustic format–sounding somehow more dramatic.  “Teenager” has a trippy Twin Peaks vibe when it opens.  This is the “Idiot Version” with guys from Idiot Pilot joining the Deftones.  It doesn’t sound all that different from the version on White Pony and yet I really didn’t recognize it out of context.  “Crenshaw Punch/I’ll Throw Rocks at You” is the heaviest thing on the album, with loud abrasive guitars.  It was a B-Side from Around the Fur.  My least favorite track is “Black Moon” which is a sung by B-Real from Cypress Hill.  I liked Cypress Hill a lot back in the day, but there’s something unsatisfying about this pairing–or maybe it’s just that this songs really sticks out on the disc.  The acoustic “Digital Bath” is trippy and very cool–it’s amazing when they strip down their songs, which are usually so abrasive and heavy and they still manage to sound great.  “Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away)” is another acoustic piece with a remix by DJ Crook.

More than just a stop gap or a collection of misfit tracks, this is a really cohesive Deftones album and actually a great place to start for people trying to ease their way into the band.

[READ: March 3, 2013] “Summer of ’38”

This story is about Montse.  Montse is an old woman with three children.  Her husband died some time ago and she is by herself.  Her daughters come to visit her but she doesn’t like to be a bother to them.  On this occasion, her daughter Ana says that she met a man who is writing a book about the war and he would like to talk to Montse to see if she has any recollections of the time (she was a teenager in 1938).

Montse doesn’t want to talk to the man, she says she won’t remember anything and why doesn’t he write the book without her.  But the man arrives anyway.  When he asks her questions, she says she knows nothing about the war.  But he says that a retired general (for Franco) is coming to their town to show the writer war locations.  The general says he remembers Montse’s name and would like to meet with her.  His name is Rudolfo Ramirez.  She says she barely remembers him and that maybe she’s even thinking of someone else.

The writer says it’s not a big deal but is she would like to meet with him he will be at the cafe on Saturday for a casual lunch. She gives a reluctant maybe and the writer leaves. (more…)

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George Saunders–“My Chivalric Fiasco” (Harper’s, September 2011)

Posted in Anachronisms, Corporate skewering, Culture Shock, From the Basement, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), George Saunders, Harper's, Humiliation, Morrissey, Sex, Sparks, Technology, The Smiths on September 12, 2011| 1 Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: SPARKS-“Good Morning” (From the Basement) (2008).

I’ve enjoyed Sparks for a long time.  But I never got around to getting the album that this song comes from (Exotic Creatures from the Deep–which has two wonderful song titles: “Lighten Up, Morrissey” and “I Can’t Believe That You Would Fall for All The Crap In This Song.” 

“Good Morning” was the first single from the album.  It features a very bouncy keyboard opening which reminds me of Strangeways-era Smiths.  And then Russel Mael’s crazy falsetto comes pounding in on top of the whole thing. 

Visually, Sparks are fascinating because Ron Mael looks exactly the same as he has since day one: slicked back hair, thick glasses and a crazy little moustache.  This band is doubly fascinating because the two guitarists and bassist all have shoulder length hair and are wearing T-shirts with the new album cover on them.  In fact, the bassist and one guitarist look like they could be twins (the other guitarist is wearing a hat, so he messes with the identical-ness).  It’s an amusing scene to see.

This is a strange song, it’s catchy in its repetitiveness, but it’s got a cool bridge that breaks up the song into different parts (and the backing guys hit the high falsetto notes perfectly–I think I would have assumed they were women!).  This seems like a strange choice for a single and I can see wh it wasn’t a big hit.  (Most Sparks songs are kind of strange, so who knows which of their songs will catch on).  Of course, I don’t know the rest of the album so I don’t know if there was a more likely choice.  Nevertheless, I may have to investiagate this disc a bit more.

[READ: August 31, 2011] “My Chivalric Fiasco”

This is the second Saunders piece in a couple of weeks in two different publications (this seems to happen to him a lot–do I smell a new book coming out?).  This is one another of Saunders’ more corporate-mocking pieces.  He plays around with name brands and has a lot of trademarked and capitalized words.

But it starts off very unlike that whole realm. It seems to be set at a Ren Faire or some such thing.  On TorchLightNight the narrator sees Martha running through the woods saying, that guy is my boss.  Don Murray comes out of the woods after her, and it clear that something has gone on between them.  When Ted, the narrator, asks them what’s going on, they admit to a “voluntary” fling.  Then Don tells Ted that he has been promoted out of Janitorial; he is now a Pacing Guard.

The next day, Ted is given some KnightLyfe, a pill that helps him with medieval improv.  Until the pill kicks in, Ted is horrible in his role, but once it does, he (and the story) switch into a  kind of crazy Ren Faire “Olde” English: “Quoth Don Murray with a glassome wink, Ted you know what you and me should do sometime?” (more…)

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David Foster Wallace–[Week 3] Infinite Jest (1996)

Posted in Allstonians, Big Books, Books about writers, Boredom, Boston, MA, Canadian Content, Consumerism, Corporate skewering, David Foster Wallace, Drinking, Drugs, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Infinite Summer, James Joyce, Morrissey, Pearl Jam, Postmoderism, Prison, R.E.M., Racism, Religion, Russell Brand, Set at School, Smarty Pants, Suicide, The Smiths, WYYY 109 FM: The Largest Whole Prime on the FM Band on July 10, 2009| 2 Comments »

jesySOUNDTRACK: MORRISSEY-Years of Refusal (2009).

years ofI’ve been a fan of The Smiths for years.  And I think that Morrissey’s debut, Viva Hate, is on par with much of the Smiths’ catalogue.  Over the years his output has been mixed, but with Years of Refusal he comes fighting back with a really solid disc.  The disc is so good that if one had no idea of who he was, one could easily get into it with no preconceived notions of Morrissey, The Smiths or any of that glorious past.

From the start, the disc rocks out. That’s right, Morrissey totally rocks, with a real attitude.  “Something is Squeezing My Skull,” in addition to being quite funny, has one of Moz’s most loudly sung choruses in like, forever.  The martial beat of “Mama Lay Softly on the Riverbed” showcases Moz’s “political” songwriting without ever losing its catchiness.  “I’m Throwing My Arms Around Paris” is a pretty classic Morrissey song, complete with a simple picking guitar riff.

“All You Need Is Me” has some great squeaky guitars and recalls Morrissey’s own “I Don’t Mind If You Forget Me”), while “When Last I Spoke to Carol” has a Mexican feel, which is different for him.  And “That’s How People Grow Up,” the single, has one of those classic Morrissey lines in which he subverts expectations with a left-field word choice: “So yes there are things worse in life than never being someone’s sweetie.”

The end of the album is full of longer songs which tends to skew the rollicking feel of the disc. (In the first 8 songs only 3 are over 3 minutes while the last 4 songs are each over 4 minutes).  Nevertheless, “It’s Not Your Birthday Anymore” is a wonderfully caustic song and the album closer, “I’m OK By Myself” is just fantastic, and I find myself singing “I don’t need you, or your morality” because they way he sings it gets stuck in my head for days.

There’s also a bonus disc which includes an interview with Russel Brand which is very funny indeed.

Welcome back Morrissey.  Well done, sir.

[READ: Week of July 6, 2009]  Infinite Jest (to page 227).

While looking for this cover of Infinite Jest (the one that I most associate with the book even though I never owned a copy with this cover), I noticed that Powell’s Books is selling a first edition hardcover copy of IJ for $450. The copy that I am currently reading is also a first edition hardcover.  If anyone wants to send me like $400 for it, just let me know!

On my Week Two post, I had a comment that criticized me for giving out spoilers.  While I disagree, I will preface this and future posts by saying that I will certainly be discussing what has happened in the week’s read (including footnotes endnotes and future footnotes endnotes if they are referred to in current footnotes endnotes), I will not intentionally reveal any spoilers.

On to Week 3 of Infinite Summer.  And at this point I not only feel good about the book, I feel somewhat refreshed. This whole week’s worth of reading has been fairly easy and often very funny.  We’re past the initial shock that you’re running a marathon, and are into that 3rd or 4th mile where you just start to feel good and enjoy the scenery.  I also hate to admit this, but I really want to peek ahead into the next week’s reading.  But no, I am going to pace myself!

I also have a question for faithful readers who are actually trying to map the location of the book.  I lived in Brighton, MA, very close to Boston College as well as in a location nearer to Allston, MA.  I have a vague sense of exactly where Enfield is supposed to be located, but if anyone has used the details in the book to map out where Enfield would be, do pass it along (someone has probably created a Google Map for it, but I haven’t actually checked).

This week’s reading had a lot of lengthy sections that focused on one person/issue for multiple pages which is either great or terrible depending on how you like this book broken up.  And TA DA!  The Chronology is spelled out very clearly! (more…)

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