SOUNDTRACK: AIMEE MANN-Tiny Desk Concert #618 (May 8, 2017).
Aimee Mann is pretty legendary at this point. Starting out in ’til Tuesday, she has since made a name for herself as a solo artist (and collaborator). Her solo albums are sweetly sad: she writes pretty melodies with rather downcast lyrics that sometimes have humor in them. She has done a previous Tiny Desk with Ted Leo–they were called The Both.
Her voice is calm and kind of deep and she casts rather an imposing figure given her height. I saw her live about ten years ago and while I don’t remember all that much from it, I know I enjoyed her.
I have a few of her albums, but I haven’t really gotten anything recently because she’s a bit to melancholy for me, and I feel like her songs tend to sound a bit the same–I keep waiting for all of these songs to end with the chorus of “I’ve Had It” (one of her earlier songs that I rather like).
Despite these criticisms, there’s no doubt that her songs are quite lovely, and when Jonathan Coulton sings backing vocals it’s pretty great.
She plays four songs from her new album, Mental Illness. On “Rollercoasters” it’s just her and Coluton. The second song is “You Never Loved Me”–“It’s another cheery, optimistic number.” For this track, Aimee plays guitar and is joined by Paul Bryan on bass and Jamie Edwards on piano. The band fleshes out the sound nicely, with a good bottom end.
The title of “Goose Snow Cone” is never explained, which is a shame. There’s a lovely guitar melody on this song. “Patient Zero” opens with a backing ooooh vocal. There’s some great deep bass notes from the piano and I love the way the end of the song features the guys singing a chorus while Aimee sings a counterpoint vocal. It’s my favorite moment in the show.
[READ: March 2, 2017] “The I.O.U.”
I didn’t think I’d read any storied by Fitzgerald (aside from Gatsby) but it turns out I had read a short story by him about five years ago. I described it as enjoyable but slight.
This story from 1920 is clever and funny and was previously unpublished.
I enjoyed the initial construct:
The above is not my real name—the fellow it belongs to gave me his permission to sign it to this story. My real name I shall not divulge. I am a publisher. I accept long novels about young love written by old maids in South Dakota, detective stories concerning wealthy clubmen and female apaches with “wide dark eyes,” essays about the menace of this and that and the color of the moon in Tahiti by college professors and other unemployed. I accept no novels by authors under fifteen years old. All the columnists and communists (I can never get these two words straight) abuse me because they say I want money. I do—I want it terribly. My wife needs it. My children use it all the time.
Interesting opening, right?
So the unnamed publisher tells his story that six months ago he contracted for a book that was going to be a sure thing. It was by Dr Harden, the psychic Research man. He had published Harden’s first book in 1913 and it was a huge success. This one promised to be even bigger. The crux was that Harden’s nephew had been killed in the war and Dr. Harden had been able to contact him with psychic powers. Harden was a distinguished psychologist–no fruitcake–and his book was neither callous nor credulous. He even mentions in the book how a man named Wilkins had comes to his door claiming that his deceased nephew owed him three dollars and eighty cents–but Dr Harden refused to ask his dead nephew about the money–that was like praying to the saints about a lost umbrella.
When the book was finally done (and it looked beautiful), they sent copies everywhere–300,000 first print run.
The book was a success already and he decided to visit Dr Harden to celebrate. He hopped on the train with some free copies of the book. He handed them out to people on the train
Before we came to Trenton, a lady with a lorgnette in one of the staterooms was suspiciously turning the pages of hers, the young man who had the upper of my section was deeply engrossed in his, and a girl with reddish hair and peculiarly mellow eyes was playing tic-tac-toe in the back of a third.
The publisher fell asleep and when he woke he saw the man reading the book seemed deeply agitated. The publisher asked him what the matter was and the man said that the value of the book depended entirely on whether the young man was actually dead or alive. The publishers said the the man must be in Paradise not–in Purgatory. The man said it would be even more embarrassing if he were in a third place.
Like where?
Like Yonkers.
For, it turns out that the man reading the book was in fact Cosgrove P. Harden: “I am not dead; I have never been dead, and after reading that book I will never again feel it quite safe to die.”
I loved this joke:
The girl across the aisle was so startled at my cry of grief and astonishment that she put down a tic instead of a tac.
The rest of the story concerns our publisher’s attempts to figure out what to do about this mess. Surely the not-dead boy wouldn’t spoil all of the fun (and money). They wind up going to the doctor’s house where the publisher meets Thalia, the woman who was in love with Cosgrove. And she is angry at the Doctor for humiliating Cosgrove in death.
And the publisher gets an idea.
So he plays out his idea as best he can and things seem to be going along pretty smoothly but then Fitzgerald does something rather unexpected and I really got a kick out of it. It turned this story which was pretty funny into a story that was pretty funny and really clever as well.
I wonder why it was never published.
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