SOUNDTRACK: KURSTIN x GROHL-“Mississippi Queen” (The Hanukkah Sessions: Night Three” December 12, 2020).
Producer Greg Kurstin (who I have not heard of) and Dave Grohl (who I have) decided that, rather than releasing a Christmas song this year, they would record eight covers of songs by Jewish artists and release them one each night for Hanukkah.
“With all the mishegas of 2020, @GregKurstin and I were kibbitzing about how we could make Hannukah extra-special this year. Festival of Lights?! How about a festival of tasty LICKS! So hold on to your tuchuses… We’ve got something special coming for your shayna punims. L’chaim!!”
The third night is a rocking version of a Mountain song.
Talk about making a mountain out of a mohel … named Leslie Weinstein at his bris, the singer of our next band built a wailing wall of guitar as Leslie West. Check out our take on a track from Leslie’s monolithic band, MOUNTAIN.
Unlike yesterday’s song, I know “Mississippi Queen” very well. I’ve been a fan of Mountain and even saw them live thirty or so years ago.
Kurstin plays synth and the opening guitar line sounds perfect–he gets a really good guitar sound in this session.
Grohl plays drums and sings. He’s singing in more of his screaming style for this song which works pretty well.
The joke in this one is that he is using a cup as a cowbell. The cup is duct taped all over the place and as the song opens, Grohl says “I’m fucking this cup up real bad.” Kurstin says it’s worth it. And I agree. This song rocks.
They play with split screen on this one–during the solo, there’s four shots of Kurstin’s hands.
The only bad thing about this song is that it’s so short!
[READ: December 13, 2020] “Our Humans”
This year, S. ordered me The Short Story Advent Calendar. This is my fifth time reading the Calendar. I didn’t know about the first one until it was long out of print (sigh), but each year since has been very enjoyable. Here’s what they say this year
You know the drill by now. The 2020 Short Story Advent Calendar is a deluxe box set of individually bound short stories from some of the best writers in North America.
This year’s slipcase is a thing of beauty, too, with electric-yellow lining and spot-glossed lettering. It also comes wrapped in two rubber bands to keep those booklets snug in their beds.
As always, each story is a surprise, so you won’t know what you’re getting until you crack the seal every morning starting December 1. Once you’ve read that day’s story, check back here to read an exclusive interview with the author.
It’s December 13. Meng Jin, author of Little Gods, always keeps carbon copies in triplicate. [Click the link to the H&O extras for the story].
I found this story very confusing and not very enjoyable.
It is set in some kind of futuristic society, but hat doesn’t seem to matter all that much. The narrator works at a job “in those day we still employed a number of humans.”
She was an unusual sight there–being (somewhat) young and (clearly) female. Most people assumed she was a consultant.
Once she leaves work, the story changes entirely.
On the train she sees a little girl–unsupervised: “young people are rarely seen in the city these days.”
The train breaks down in the middle of nowhere. The girl encourages the narrator to go with her.
Everyone in the story calls her jiejie (which means older sister). She seems disconcerted by this.
As they walk through the dark, the little girl tells her that they have become their shadows. They can’t walk through any unlit spaces, obviously.
She gets back to her apartment. It is pitch dark. She feels she has lost herself but then she bumps into Duowen, a man from work. Their mouths meet.
This story really lost me. I was really interested in the futuristic society and the bots (and their gradual falling apart), but the whole thing with the shadows just didn’t seem very compelling.
