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Archive for the ‘Natural Disasters’ Category

Zadie Smith–“Moonlit Landscape with Bridge” (New Yorker, February 10, 2014)

Posted in Ages and Ages, Anarchy, Death, Natural Disasters, New Yorker, Short Story, Tiny Desk Concert, Zadie Smith on June 18, 2014| 1 Comment »

CV1_TNY_02_10_14Hanuka.inddSOUNDTRACK: AGES AND AGES-“Divisionary (Do the Right Thing)” (2014).

agesagesI’ve enjoyed this song in a couple of formats so far–studio version and Tiny Desk version.  Now here’s another one. Here’s how it was set up according to front man Tim Perry:

“We surrounded ourselves with friends, family (my mom is one of the violinists), and all of our favorite musicians from all of our favorite Portland bands,” says Perry. “We reached out to people who’d inspired us over the years: other artists, activists, organizers. We reached out to Northwest Children’s Choir. We reached out to PHAME, a choir of adults with disabilities. We reached out to a lot of other people we didn’t know but wish we did. It was all over and done in four short hours. And it was one of the best days of my life.”

If the song was inspirational before, it’s crazy emotion-inducing now.

[READ: June 10, 2014] “Moonlit Landscape with Bridge”

This title is surprisingly calm and pretty for what the story is really about.  The previous story of hers that I read was set in a kind of dystopian land.  And this one is set in an unnamed country after a life-altering storm.  Either she is writing a post apocalyptic type of novel, or she is exploring very dark themes indeed.

As this story opens we see the Minister of the Interior packing his things.  Slowly it is revealed that the country has been decimated.  He thinks to himself that he was prepared for crippling winds, but not for the water that came with the winds.  Consequently, most of the country is apparently underwater (the details of the storm and the details of the aftermath are incredibly vague).

There is no more Ministry, so his title is superfluous, but because of his title he is given an opportunity to flee the country in a government jet (all other airplanes have been grounded).  On his way to the airport, he sees people struggling, crying, looking for… anything.  They crowd his car and he longs to help them.  His driver, Ari, tells him to ignore them, there’s nothing that he can do for all of them.  But the Minister insists that they pull over so he can dole out the bottles of water he has in the trunk. (more…)

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Tom Bissell–“A Comet’s Tale: on the science of Apocalypse” (Harper’s, February 2003)

Posted in Death, End of the World, Environmentalism, Essays, Harper's, History, Laura Gibson, NASA, Natural Disasters, Scientists, Threats, Tiny Desk Concert, Tom Bissell on November 15, 2013| 1 Comment »

feb2003SOUNDTRACK: LAURA GIBSON-Tiny Desk Concert #1 (April 22, 2008).

gibsonI have enjoyed many of NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts over the years.  And while I was listening to an All Songs Considered show, it was mentioned that there have been over 200 shows (I believe it is now over 300).  And I realized that I had missed dozens of good ones.  So, being the kind of person I am, I decided to start watching/listening to them all.  I don’t typically watch most of them as they’re usually not very visually interesting–they’re fun to watch for a minute or so, but most of the artists are there to sing, not to do visual entertainment.  So usually I just listen while doing something else.

I toyed with the idea of writing about one a day until I was done.  But the logistics of that made my head hurt.  So instead, I will write about them all over the course of however long it takes.  (And since they don’t post one every day, I will catch up eventually).

Laura Gibson had the first ever Tiny Desk show, and there’s some notable things about the show itself.  First, look how empty Bob’s shelves are!   And the camera work is a little wonky, I think.  I also enjoy how they introduce this performance without a clue as to whether there would be more of them!

I had never heard of Laura Gibson before listening to this.  She plays simple but beautiful guitar (I enjoyed watching how confidently she played the chords and individual strings).  But the big selling point is her voice.  Her voice is very quiet (this was the impetus for the Tiny Desk concept–they saw her in a club and the crowd was too loud for them to enjoy her so they invited her up to their office).  But her voice is also slightly peculiar (in a very engaging way), which you can especially hear on “A Good Word, An Honest Man,” where she is practically a capella.

She sings four songs: “Hands in Pockets,” “A Good Word, An Honest Man,” “Come by Storm,” “Night Watch.”  The sing-along at the end of the last song is really pretty–shame the audience wasn’t mic’d.  All four songs are beautiful and slightly haunting–her delivery is so spare you kind of lean in to hear more.  She currently has three albums out, and I’d like to investigate her music further.

[READ: October 31, 2013] “A Comet’s Tale”

Despite the fact that this article talks about and more or less guarantees the end of the world by asteroid or comet it was incredibly enjoyable and staggeringly informative.

Bissell begins by talking about the Biblical Apocalypse and how in 1862 Premillennial Dispensationalism (premillennialism is the belief that Christ will return before setting up his millennial kingdom and dispensationalism divides up the Bible and human history into various eras or dispensations, based on how God deals with humanity) was smuggled into the Americas and it has never left.  Fully 59% of Americans now believe that Revelations will come to pass (although what that could possibly literally mean is another question).  [Incidentally the book is not called Revelations, it is Revelation or more specifically Revelation to John.  And all of that numerology (666) must mean something right?  Well, yes, it means that the Ancient world was obsessed with numerology. The bible makes great use of the trick of predicting the future by describing the past.

Bissell pulls back from the bible to look at planet Earth “the most ambitious mass murderer in the galaxy.”  He then lists all the atrocities that have happened from natural causes to all species in the history of the planet.  But even recent tragedies (which seem to only happen to people in far off countries says the westerner) are only by happenstance happening there.  Between overpopulation and global warming we are preparing for our own apocalypse.  Although we also mustn’t look too crazy like in The Late Great Planet Earth (which still sells around 10,00 copies a year).  In that book Hal Lindsey predicted the end of the world but also the rise of a single world religion, a Soviet Ethiopian invasion of Israel and the obliteration of Tokyo, London and New York.  But astonishingly, Lindsey also worked for the Reagan administration, much like Tim LeHaye (famed “author” of the Left Behind series) was co-chairman of Jack Kemp’s 1988 presidential campaign.  Apocalyptos have way too much power in this country.

But even if we weren’t preparing for our own doom, there would still be space items to do it for us. Like 1950DA an asteroid that has near-missed the earth fifteen times and may just not miss us in the future. (more…)

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Hurricane Sandy

Posted in Jackyl, Natural Disasters, Paul Debraski on October 30, 2012| 1 Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: JACKYL-“The Lumberjack” (1992).

Does anyone remember this band?  Their gimmick was that the lead singer performed a chainsaw solo.  As I cut down trees that fell in my yard I kept thinking about this band, although I couldn’t remember any of their songs (which is just as well).  I had to Google this one.

It’s a stupid gimmick, but a hard one to forget.  My favorite coincidence to this song was when my friend Garry and I went to a party on a New Year’s Eve in like 1999 or so and the party house had a framed gold album of the debut album on the wall.  I never found out why.

Oh, and holy cow, they are STILL putting albums out!

Here’s the song in all of its nonsensicality:

Incidentally, if you don’t wear ear coverings when using a chainsaw, your ears will ring for about an hour after cutting down trees.

[EXPERIENCED: October 29, 2012] Hurricane Sandy

I considered live blogging the hurricane.  It would have gone like this:

October 29: 1-7PM: Wind picking up, not too much rain.

October 29: 8:15PM: Lights flickered and went out.

November 2: power restored.

November 5: Internet restored.

Gripping, eh? (more…)

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Rivka Galchen–“Disatser Aversion: The quest to control hurricanes” (Harper’s, October 2009)

Posted in Bright Eyes, Buckminster Fuller, Essays, Harper's, Magnetic Fields, Natural Disasters, Nature, Rivka Galchen, Scientists on April 13, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: BRIGHT EYES-“Papa was a Rodeo” from Score! 20 Years of Merge Records: The Covers (2009).

I don’t especially like Bright Eyes.  But, as with Ryan Adams, his covers are quite good.  The Magnetic Fields are pretty distinctive when it comes to lyric and melody.  I’ve enjoyed a lot of their recordings, and once you get into The Magnetic Field’s mindset it’s hard to imagine anyone else singing his songs (that voice!).  But if you haven’t heard a song for a while, it’s fun to hear a new interpretation.

And I really like what Bright Eyes does with this song–especially the backing vocals and harmonies at the end of “one night stand.”  And–personal preference–the covers is paced a little faster, which I like, too.

[READ: April 2, 2012] “Disaster Aversion”

This is the final article by Rivka Galchen in Harper’s.  One would never expect an article with that title to be as personal as this one was–but I think Harper’s has a way of bringing that aspect out of writers].  For instance, the opening line is, “Like many a girl with a long-dead father I refer to myself as a girl rather than as a woman, and I gravitate to place I suspect my father, dead fifteen years now, might haunt.”  Her father wa sa professor–which means that Rivka needed to go see the Whitney’s Buckminster Fuller Retrospective (which sounds awesome, frankly).  I love this comment, which feel so true: “My father either admired Buckminster Fuller tremendously or thought he was a tremendous fool.  I can’t remember which.”

Rivka doesn’t know all of the details of her father’s work, but she knows the basics, so when she started doing some investigation into storm and weather modification, she was right in her father’s area.  Her research led to a Project STORMFURY from the 1960s.  And she grew interested in modifying hurricanes.

The article basically details her attempts to speak to weather scientists and to ask them questions about current and future opportunities for reducing the damages done by hurricanes.  As with much non-fiction, it doesn’t seem worth it for me to summarize her research–just read the article, its quite enjoyable.

But the fun part comes from the scientist she had a really hard time interviewing.  She spends most of the article puzzling about why this renowned scientist won’t speak to her–won’t even see her.  She has many reasons at her disposal for why the man won’t speak to her–the man knew her father and maybe his eccentric and at times confrontational behavior put him off of her family. The true is far more amusing. (more…)

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Martin Amis–“Laureate of Terror” (New Yorker, November 21, 2011)

Posted in Book Reviews, Charles Dickens, Christian Bok, Corporate skewering, Death, Don DeLillo, George Eliot, James Joyce, Jane Austen, Martin Amis, Natural Disasters, New Yorker, Sex, Short Story, Ulver, Violence on December 13, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: ULVER-A Quick Fix of Melancholy (2005).

This EP came two years after Teachings in Silence (with a movie soundtrack and “greatest hits” collection in between).  This first track, “Little Blue Bird” is a simple soundscape with echoey keyboards.  When Garm starts singing, his most emotional side comes through (even if I really can’t understand him most of the time).

“Doom Sticks” belies its name and the EP title by being somewhat upbeat.  There are kind of squeaky keyboards that pulsate through the track.  After about a minute and a half, distorted drums keep a martial beat.  But it quickly morphs into a twinkly section that makes me think of the Nutcracker or some other kind of Christmas special.

“Vowels” is similarly upbeat (the music on both of these two tracks has a vaguely Christmastime feel somewhere in there–not that anyone would think these were in any way Christmas songs, or maybe it’s because I’m listening in mid-December).  For this, we get a return of Garm’s choral voice: deep, resonant and hard to understand (although I undertsand the lyrics are from a poem by Christian Bok).   But the poem quickly makes way for some dramatic staccato strings. 

“Eitttlane” begins with some menacing keybaords and staccato notes, creating a feel of a noir movie.  But when the vocal choir comes in, it gets even more sinister.

These Ulver EPs are really true EPs–stopgap recordings for fans.  Their larger works tend to be more substantial, but these EPs allow them to play around with different styles.

[READ: December 1, 2011] “Laureate of Terror”

Two authors I admire in one article, how about that!  In this book review, Martin Amis reviews Don DeLillo’s first collection of short stories and gives a summary of DeLillo’s work.

Amis opens the article by undermining my plans for this blog.  He states point blank than when we say we love an author’s works, we “really mean…that we love about half of it.”  He gives an example of how people who love Joyce pretty much only love Ulysses, that George Eliot gave us one readable book and that “every page of Dickens contains a paragraph to warm to and a paragraph to veer back from.”  Also, Janeites will “never admit that three of the six novels are comparative weaklings (Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park and Persusaion).  [I still hope to read all of the books by the authors I like].

Amis says he loves DeLillo (by which he means, End Zone, Running Dog, White Noise, Libra, Mao II and the first and last section of Underworld).  And he also seems to really like The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories,(well, much of it anyway), DeLillo’s first (!) short story collection

His main assement is that these pieces are a vital addition to DeLillo’s corpus.  (more…)

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Junot Díaz–“Apocalypse: What Disasters Reveal” (Boston Review, May/June 2011)

Posted in Boston Review, Death, Decadence, Dominican Republic, End of the World, Environmentalism, Essays, GQ, History, Junot Díaz, Natural Disasters, Ulver, Until the Light Takes Us on November 22, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: ULVER-Bergtatt (1994).

Ulver has some music in the soundtrack to Until the Light Takes Us and my friend Lar pointed me to a location where you could download a bunch of their music (this was before Spotify of course). 

So I grabbed a few of their albums expecting to hear some brutal death metal.  And I kind of did, but I also heard classical guitar, flute solos and chanting.   So this album’s full title is Bergtatt – Et eeventyr i 5 capitler (“Taken into the Mountain – An Adventure in 5 Chapters”) and it comes in at a whopping 35 minutes–not bad for an epic.

The opening track (“I Troldskog faren vild” (“Lost in the Forest of Trolls”)) is fascinating–a kind of chanting vocals over a quietly-mixed-in-the-background black metal.  The music is so quiet (and yet clearly black metal) that it almost comes across as ambient noise, especially over the multilayered chanting (I have no idea what language they are singing in).  It ends with a pretty acoustic guitar passage that segues into a very traditional sounding heavy metal section–with a catchy solo that takes us to the end.

“Soelen gaaer bag Aase need” (“The Sun Sets Behind Hills”) opens with, of course, a flute solo.  It’s a minute long and quite melancholy before blasting into the fastest of heavy black metal complete with growling vocals and nonstop pummeling.  But after a minute of that it’s back to the layered chanting like in the first song.  The song ends with a conflation of the two–the chanting metal with the growling black metal underneath.  It’s quite a sound.

Track three “Graablick blev hun vaer” (“Graablick Watches Her Closely”)opens with a lengthy acoustic guitar intro–not complicated, but quite pretty and unlike the poor recording quality of the metal, it seems to be recorded with high quality equipment.  After about 45 seconds that gives way to more black metal.  In a strange twist, the black metal section just fades out, replaced by more acoustic guitar and what seems like the end of the song.  But instead, there is a strange quiet section–not music, but sounds–like someone walking around in the cold forest with crunchy noises and little else.  For almost two minutes.  Until the black metal comes back with a vengeance.

Slow guitar with slow chanting opens track 4 “Een Stemme locker” (“A Voice Beckons”) (the shortest at only 4 minutes).  And the amazing thing is that it doesn’t change into something else.  It is a nice folk song.

The final song “Bergtatt – Ind i Fjeldkamrene” (“Bergtatt – Into the Mountain Chambers”) has a blistering opening followed by some of the most intricate acoustic guitars on the record.  It morphs into a very urgent-sounding black metal section which lasts about 5 minutes.   But just to keep us on our toes, the song (and the disc) end with more classic acoustic guitar.

There is a story here (allmusic says it is a Norse legend about maidens being abducted by denizens of the underworld) and that might help explain the music madness.  But as a musical composition it works quite well.  The chanting over the black metal is really effective and the acoustic instruments bring a nice sonic change from the pounding metal. 

This is not for everyone obviously, but the diversity makes this an interesting introduction into the black metal scene.  Baby steps. 

[READ: November 4, 2011] “Apocalypse”

This is the final non-fiction essay of Junot Díaz that I could find online.  The other one comes from GQ and is called “Summer Love”, but there’s no access to it online. 

In this essay, Díaz looks at the impact of the earthquake that devastated Haiti now that it has been over a year.  Díaz was born in the Dominican Republic which has a long and very brutal history with the people of Haiti–they share a land mass after all.  But rather than looking only at Haiti and how it was devastated, Díaz takes this as an opportunity to see what the earthquake reveals about our country and the state of the world.

The essay is broken down into eight parts.  The first revisits what happened.  The second discusses the meanings of apocalypse, which sets up the “theme” of this essay.  The First: the actual end of the world (which for the thousands of people who died, the earthquake was); Second: the catastrophes that resemble the end of the world (given the destruction of Haiti and the devastation that still lingers, this is certainly applicable); Third: a disruptive event that provokes revelation.

Díaz is going to explore this third option to see what this earthquake reveals. 

What Díaz uncovers is that the earthquake was not so much a natural disaster as a social disaster–a disaster of our creating.  The tsunami that hit Asia in 2004 was a social disaster because the coral reefs that might have protected the coasts were decimated to encourage shipping.  Hurricane Katrina was also a social disaster–years of neglect, the Bush administration’s selling of the wetlands to developers and the decimation of the New Orleans Corp of Engineers budget by 80 percent all contributed to a situation where Katrina could be so devastating.

Then he talks looks at the history of Haiti.  I had known some of this story, but not as much as he provides here–the constant abuse of the citizens, the constant abuse of their finances (both from simple theft and from French and American planning that changed their economy).  There’s also the story of “Papa Doc” Duvalier.  Basically Haiti was a disaster waiting to happen. 

Díaz goes into great detail about the global economy and how it impacted the poor in Haiti and he shows that it doesn’t take a lot of extrapolation to see it reflected in the rest of the world as well.  With the constant rise in standards for the wealthy and the constant abuse that the poor take, it’s not hard to see that Haiti could easily happen here.  If not in our lifetime, then certainly in our childrens’.

But Díaz has hope.  (more…)

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Haruki Murakami–“U.F.O. in Kushiro” (New Yorker, March 28, 2011)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Death, Earthquakes, Gogol Bordello, Haruki Murakami, Jay Rubin, Marriage Trouble, Natural Disasters, New Yorker, Short Story, Tiny Desk Concert, U.F.O., UFOs on May 4, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: GOGOL BORDELLO-Tiny Desk Concert #66 (June 28, 2010).

I had heard a few minutes of Gogol Bordello before this concert but it was during a TV show that I was half watching.  When I sat down and listened to this show, I was blown away by hem and immediately bought two of their CDs. Gogol Bordello is a multi-piece, multi ethic band that plays rocked-up Russian folk music (mor or less).  The sound is very traditional, with a kind of gypsy edge sprinkled onto it.  I’m not sure how many people are in the band, or how may people showed up for this concert but it sounds like about 100 in the tint room.  This is also the longest Tiny Desk show that I’ve heard (it runs almost 25 minutes).

The band plays five songs (and there’s a little chatting in between) and as the session goes on the band gets more rowdy (and more fun).  The video (also available at the same site) shows the singer sitting in the laps of the NPR folks and jumping on some desks and just having a blast.  And even though I enjoy shoegazing music, this is the kind of rollicking fun that I would love to see in concert.

The songs are political, but not overtly so, it’s more of a communal feel, of people uniting (which is indeed political).  I think they could get old kind of quickly, but in small doses the band is energizing and wonderful.

[READ: March 27, 2011] “U.F.O. in Kushiro”

This story was originally published in the March 19, 2001 issue and was inspired by the incidents of the 1995 earthquake in Kobe, Japan.  It was reprinted here to memorialize the recent earthquake in Japan.  The story is accompanied by rather devastating photos (and some surreal ones) of the aftermath of the earthquake in Kobe.

The story (translated by Jay Rubin) opens a few days after the Kobe Earthquake.  And even five days after the Kobe earthquake, Komura’s wife is still engrossed in the TV footage from Kobe.  She never leaves the set.  He doesn’t see her eat or even go to the bathroom.  When he returns from work on the sixth day, she is gone.  She has left a note to the effect that she’s not coming back and that she wants a divorce.  Komura’s wind is knocked out of him. (more…)

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Wells Tower–”Love in the Ruins” (Outside, March 2007)

Posted in Alexisonfire, Biking, Canadian Music, City and Colour, Corporate skewering, Death, Natural Disasters, Nazis, Outside, Wells Tower on September 24, 2010| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: CITY AND COLOUR-Live @ The Orange Lounge EP (2010).

City and Colour is Dallas Green from Alexisonfire (he’s the one with the good singing voice as opposed to the screamy guy).

This EP contains 6 songs, 4 from his last album Bring me Your Love and the 2 hits from his first album Sometimes.

As with his previous live release [Live CD/DVD], he sings these songs solo.  Each song is done on acoustic guitar.  But unlike that Live album, this disc does not appear to have been recorded in front of an audience.  There is no cheering, no banter, just him and his guitar.

If you’re a fan of Green (and you really like his voice) this is a great release.  There are several spots where he sings in if not acapella, then with very quiet musical accompaniment so his voice is pretty naked.  This is a limited edition EP (apparently) but it’s a really good introduction to the man and his music.

I must say though that I never noticed just how obsessed with death he is!  This recording style really highlights all the times he says death or dead.  Huh.

[READ: September 12, 2010] “Love in the Ruins”

This was the darkest of all of Wells Tower’s Outside magazine pieces.  And although it has some humor, for the most part it was a sad lost-love letter to a city that he once knew.

One year after Hurricane Katrina, Tower went back to New Orlenas to ride his bike.  He had lived in New Orleans for a short time before Katrina hit and he used to ride his bike for long stretches across the Mississippi River levee.  He decided to revisit it to see what it was like after the disaster. (more…)

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Roddy Doyle–“Ash” (New Yorker, May 24, 2010)

Posted in Drinking, Frightened Rabbit, Funny (ha ha), Irish Writer, Marriage Trouble, Natural Disasters, New Yorker, Roddy Doyle, Sex, Short Story on May 21, 2010| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: FRIGHTENED RABBIT-The Winter of Mixed Drinks (2010).

I enjoyed Frightened Rabbit’s previous disc ever so much: a twisted blend of rocking folk music and very dark lyrics.  The fact that a number of these songs were used in Chuck was a treat for me.

I’ve never heard their first disc, so I don’t know how much their songwriting changed from disc 1 to disc 2.  But there’s a pretty huge leap from disc 2 to disc 3.

The most notable track has got to be “Swim Until You Can’t See Land.”   And it’s notable for having a really rocking and catchy and undeniable chorus.  They liked it so much, they reprise it later in the disc (with new instrumentation and such) on “Man/Bag of Sand.”

The rest of the disc sounds like Frightened Rabbit, but like the full band version.  There’s just so much music, that it actually distracts a bit from the lyrics (on the previous disc, the lyrics were certainly more of the focus).  There’s even a string arrangement on “Living in Colour.”

And yet despite all of these changes, they never lose what makes FR special: that voice and that outlook.  Although I’m sure I would have enjoyed if this disc was similar to the previous one, I’m always delighted to see a band take some chances and try something different.  And here they did, and it works wonderfully.

[READ: May 19, 2010] “Ash”

On April 14, Iceland’s volcano Eyjafjallajokull erupted.  And here, barely a month later, Roddy Doyle has written a story in which that eruption plays a role.  I’m impressed enough that he could get a coherent story written in that short amount of time, but I’m amazed that it was squeezed so quickly into The New Yorker‘s fiction schedule.  Admittedly, I don’t know how The New Yorker does anything, so I don’t know if they had a slot open (doubtful) or if they had to push back other stories (unlikely) or maybe he was slotted to give them something else, and whipped this out instead?  Beats me.  Whatever the reason, I was really surprised to see this here. (more…)

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State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America (2008)

Posted in Alexander Payne, Alison Bechdel, Anthony Bourdain, Anthony Doerr, Big Books, Blue Öyster Cult, Books about writers, Carrie Brownstein, Consumerism, Corporate skewering, Culture Shock, Dagoberto Gilb, Dave Eggers, Death, Demons, Dip-in Books, Dreams, Drinking, Election, Essays, Fishing, Food, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Ghosts, Greed, Heidi Julavits, History, Holidays, Jacki Lyden, Jhumpa Lahiri, John Hodgman, Jonathan Franzen, Joshua Ferris, LGBTQ, Louise Erdrich, Lydia Millet, Marriage (Happy), Marriage Trouble, Minnesota, Myla Goldberg, Natural Disasters, Nature, Newspapers, Nostalgia, NPR/PRI/PBS, Oddities, Racism, Religion, Rick Moody, Rush, S.E. Hinton, Saïd Sayrafiezadeh, Sarah Vowell, Set in New Jersey!, Sex, Sleater-Kinney, South, Supernatural, The X Files, Travel, Violence, War, Wayne's World, William T. Vollmann, WPA on March 18, 2010| 1 Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: BLUE ÖYSTER CULT-compilations and live releases (1978-2010).

For a band that had basically two hits (“Don’t Fear the Reaper” and “Burnin’ for You”) and maybe a half a dozen other songs that people might have heard of, BOC has an astonishing number of “greatest hits” collections.

Starting in 1987 we got Career of Evil: The Metal Years (1987), Don’t Fear the Reaper (1989), On Flame with Rock n’ Roll (1990), Cult Classic (which is actually the band re-recording their old tracks (!)) (1994), and the two cd collection Workshop of the Telescopes (1995).  There’s even Singles Collection, (2005) which is a collection of their European singles & Bsides.

This doesn’t include any of the “budget price” collections: E.T.I. Revisited, Tattoo Vampire, Super Hits, Then and Now, The Essential, Are You Ready To Rock?, Shooting Shark, Best of, and the 2010 release: Playlist: The Very Best of).

The lesson is that you evidently won’t lose money making a BOC collection.

I don’t know that any of these collections are any better than the others.

The 2 CD one is for completists, but for the most part you’re going to get the same basic tracks on all of them.

And, although none of them have “Monsters” for the average person looking for some BOC, any disc is a good one.

Regardless of the number of hits they had, BOC was tremendous live.  And, as a result, there have also been a ton of live records released.  Initially the band (like Rush) released a live album after every three studio albums. On Your Feet or On Your Knees (1975) Some Enchanted Evening (1978) and Extraterrestrial Live (1982) were the “real releases.”

Then, in 1994 we got Live 1976 as both CD and DVD (which spares us nothing, including Eric Bloom’s lengthy harangue about the unfairness of…the speed limit).  It’s the most raw and unpolished on live sets.  2002 saw the release of A Long Day’s Night, a recording of a 2002 concert (also on DVD) which had Eric Bloom, Buck Dharma an Allan Lanier reunited.

They also have a number of might-be real live releases (fans debate the legitimacy of many of these).  Picking a concert disc is tough if only because it depends on the era you like.  ETLive is regarded as the best “real” live disc, although the reissued double disc set of Some Enchanted Evening is hard to pass up.  Likewise, the 2002 recording is a good overview of their career, and includes some of their more recent work.

If you consider live albums best of’s (which many people do) I think it’s far to say that BOC has more best of’s than original discs.  Fascinating.  Many BOC fans believe that if they buy all the best of discs, it will convince Columbia to finally reissue the rest of the original discs (and there are a number of worthy contenders!) in deluxe packages.  I don’t know if it will work, but I applaud the effort.

[READ: October 2009-February 2010] State By State

This is a big book. And, since it’s a collection essays, it’s not really the kind of big book that you read straight through.  It’s a perfect dip in book.  And that’s why it took me so long to get through.

I would love to spend a huge amount of time devoting a post to each essay in the book.  But, well, there’s 51 (including D.C.) and quite a few of them I read so long ago I couldn’t say anything meaningful about.  But I will summarize or at least give a sentence about each essay, because they’re all so different.

I’ll also say that I read the Introduction and Preface last (which may have been a mistake, but whatever).  The Preface reveals that what I took to be a flaw in the book was actually intentional.  But let me back up and set up the book better.

The catalyst for the book is the WPA American Guide Series and sort of Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley.  The WPA Guides were written in the 1930s as part of the Works Progress Administration.  48 guide books were written, one for each state.  Some famous writers wrote the books, but they were ultimately edited (and many say watered down) by a committee.  I haven’t read any of them, but am quite interested in them (and am looking to get the New Jersey one).  Each guide was multiple hundreds of pages (the New Jersey one is over 800).

State By State is written in the spirit of that series, except the whole book is 500 pages (which is about 10 pages per state, give or take).  And, once again, famous writers were asked to contribute (no committee edited this book, though).  I’ve included the entire list of authors at the end of the post, for quick access.

So I started the book with New Jersey, of course.  I didn’t realize who Anthony Bourdain was until I looked him up in the contributor’s list (I’m sure he is thrilled to hear that).  And his contribution was simultaneously exciting and disappointing,.  Exciting because he and I had quite similar upbringings: he grew up in North Jersey (although in the wealitheir county next to mine) and had similar (although, again, more wealthy) experiences. The disappointing thing for me was that Bourdain fled the state  for New York City (and, as I now know, untold wealth and fame (except by me))  I felt that his fleeing the state, while something many people aspire to, is not really representative of the residents of the state as a whole.

And that dissatisfaction is what I thought of as the flaw of the book (until I read the Preface).  In the Preface, Matt Weiland explains that they asked all different authors to write about states.  They asked some natives, they asked some moved-ins, they asked some temporary residents and they asked a couple of people to go to a state for the first time.  In reality, this decision makes for a very diverse and highly entertaining reading.  In my idealized world, I feel like it’s disingenuous to have people who just stop in to give their impression of an area.  But hey, that’s not the kind of book they wanted to compile, and I did enjoy what they gave us, so idealism be damned.

For most of the book, whenever I read an essay by someone who wasn’t a native or a resident of a state, I assumed that there weren’t any famous writers from that state.  I’ve no idea if that played into anything or not.  From what I gather, they had a list of authors, and a list of states (I was delighted to read that three people wanted to write about New Jersey-if the other two writers ever decided to put 1,000 words  to paper, I’d love to read them (hey editors, how about State by State Bonus Features online, including any extra essays that people may have wanted to write).

From New Jersey, I proceeded alphabetically.  And, I have to say that I’m a little glad I did.  I say this because the first few states in the book come across as rather negative and kind of unpleasant.  Alabama (written by George Packer) comes across as downtrodden, like a place you’d really have to love to live there.  Even Alaska, which ended up being a very cool story, felt like a veil of oppression resided over the state (or at  least the part of the state that Paul Greenberg wrote bout.)  But what I liked about this essay and the book in general was that the authors often focused on unexpected or little known aspects of each state.  So the Alaska essay focused on Native fisherman and the salmon industry.  Obviously it doesn’t do justice to the rest of that enormous state,  but that’s not what the book is about.

The book is meant to be a personal account of the author’s experiences in the state. (more…)

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