Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘Neurotics’ Category

Roberto Bolaño–The Return (1997/2001) [translated 2010]

Posted in All Songs Considered, bolanobolano.com, Books about writers, Chris Andrews, Culture Shock, Death, Drinking, Dungen, Fears, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), My Bloody Valentine, Neurotics, Poets, Pornography, Pregnancy, Prison, Prostitution, Roberto Bolaño, Sex, Short Story, Tame Impala, The Beatles, The Who, Translation, Unreliable narrator, Violence, War on January 16, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: TAME IMPALA-“Lucidity” (2010).

I heard this song on the NPR’s 5 Artists You Should Have Known in 2010.  The album, Innerspace, is only available in Australia (imported on Amazon for big bucks) but I guess that’s why people download music.

This song is really cool. It feels very My Bloody Valentine to me.  However, inevitable comparisons to The Beatles abound, but that’s mostly in the vocals (which is kind of funny since they are Australian).  But it’s really a very sixties British vocal sound–not unlike early Who).

The big difference comes in the music which is psychedelic and wild in ways that The Beatles never quite managed.  There are great big washes of noise, and the sound quality sounds retro, even though it obviously isn’t.  Comparisons to the great Swedish band Dungen are not misplaced either.

I’ve listened to a few more tracks by them on YouTube, and I think this album could easily be one of the best of 2010 if only more people could hear it!

[READ: January 3, 2010] The Return

With the completion of this collection of short stories, I have now caught up with all of the published works of Roberto Bolaño (in English of course).  [The next book, Between Parentheses, a collection of nonfiction, is slated for June].

So The Return contains the 13 short stories that were not published in Last Evenings on Earth.  That collection inexplicably took shorts stories from his two Spanish collections Llamadas telefónicas (1997) and Putas asesinas (2001) and combined them into one collection in English.  It wasn’t quite as evident in Last Evenings, but it seems more obvious here that the stories in Putas asesinas are grouped together for a stylistic reason.  So, to have them split up is a bit of a bummer.  And yet, having them all translated is really the important thing.  And, again, Chris Andrews does an amazing job in the translation

This collection of stories was very strong.  I had read a few pieces in Harper’s and the New Yorker, but the majority were new to me.  Bolaño is an excellent short story writer.  Even if his stories don’t go anywhere (like his novels that never quite reach their destination), it’s his writing that is compelling and absorbing.

This collection also had some different subject matter for Bolaño (it wasn’t all poets on searches). (more…)

Read Full Post »

Jim Shepard–”Boys Town” (New Yorker, November 8, 2010

Posted in Death, Jim Shepard, Kids Are People Too, Military, Neurotics, New Yorker, Patti Smith, Short Story, Violence, Wonderama, Yuck! on December 9, 2010| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: PATTI SMITH: “You Light Up My Life” (Live on Kids Are People Too) (1979).

While browsing YouTube, I found a bunch of fun videos from the kids’ programs Wonderama and Kids Are People Too.  And that’s where I found this video of Patti Smith, of all people, singing this dainty pop confection.

Her introduction to the kids is weirdly wonderful (she says she wanted to be a missionary).  And the kids ask some pretty good questions (I would think she was too scary to be on this show back then, but no one says anything remotely risqué).  And she seems to genuinely want to inspire the kids.  It’s really quite cool.

I listened to the original just now for the first time since the 70s, I’m sure.   Although the first verse doesn’t sound drastically different from Patti’s version, once the chorus kicks in, Patti transforms this song into an angst-filled song of loss.  And man, can Patti sing.

Check it out here.

[READ: November 7, 2010] “Boys Town”

When I first saw this author’s name I thought it was Jean Shepherd author of In God We Trust…All Others Pay Cash (otherwise known as A Christmas Story).  And  I thought that maybe it was going to be a quaint look at growing up.

It isn’t. (more…)

Read Full Post »

David Foster Wallace–The Broom of the System (1987)

Posted in Air, Big Books, Books about writers, Broken Bells, Danger Mouse, David Foster Wallace, Drinking, Drugs, Ennio Morricone, Fears, Fun Boy Three, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Gilligan's Island, Language, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Marriage Trouble, Nature, Neurotics, The Future, The Shins, Travel, Universities, Word usage on November 1, 2010| 1 Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: BROKEN BELLS-Broken Bells (2010).

When I first played this disc I was really disappointed by it.  I’ve grown to expect crazy magic from Danger Mouse, and I assumed that this collaboration with James Mercer of The Shins would be crazy awesome.  But it seemed very mellow to me.  Mellow in a way that just kind of sat there.  So I put it aside for a while.

Then I listened to it again a little later and I found that I really liked it this time.  In fact, it rapidly grew into one of my favorite releases of 2010.

The disc is a wonderfully paced mixture of acoustic guitars, interesting keyboard sounds and, often, downright bizarre electronic choices (subtle, yet bizarre).  The weird sounds that open the disc, a kind of backwards keyboard, are disorienting but also very catchy.  And the song itself is instantly familiar.  It’s followed by “Vaporize” a simple acoustic number that bursts out with some great organ and (very) distorted drums.  It also features a fascinating horn solo!

“Your Head is on Fire” settles things down a bit with a mellow track which, after some cool introduction, sounds like a  pretty typical sounding Shins track (ie, very nice indeed–and more on this in a moment).

“The Ghost Inside” feels like a ubiquitous single.  I’m not sure if it is or if it’s just so catchy (with dancey bits and hand claps and a great falsetto) that it should be everywhere.  “Sailing to Nowhere” reminds me, I think, of Air.  And the great weird drums/cymbals that punctuate each verse are weird and cool.

One of the best songs is “Mongrel Heart” it opens with a western-inspired sound, but quickly shifts to a quiet verse.  The bridge picks up the electronics to add a sinister air (and all of this is accompanied by nice backing vocals, too).  But it’s the mid section of the song that’s really a surprise: it suddenly breaks into a Western movie soundtrack (ala Morricone) with a lone trumpet playing a melancholy solo.  And this surprise is, paradoxically, somewhat typical of the disc: lots of songs have quirky surprises in them, which is pretty cool.

Having said all this, there are a few tracks where it feels like the two aren’t so much collaborating as just playing with each other.  And that may have been my initial disappointment.  I was expecting a great work from a combined powerhouse, and I think what we get is two artists writing great stuff while seemingly respecting each other too much to step on each others toes.

There is another Broken Bells disc in the works.  And I have to assume that they’ll feel more comfortable with each other and simply knock our socks off next time.  But in the meantime we have this really wonderful disc to enjoy.

[READ: October 21, 2010] The Broom of the System

It dawned on me sometime last summer that I had never read DFW’s first novel.  I bought it not long after reading Infinite Jest and then for some reason, never read it.  And by around this time I had a not very convincing reason for not reading it.  DFW seemed to dismiss his “earlier work” as not very good.  I now assume that he’s referring to his pre-Broom writings, but I was a little nervous that maybe this book was just not very good.

Well I need not have worried.

It’s hard not to talk about this book in the context of his other books, but I’m going to try.  Broom is set in the (then) future of 1990.  But the past of the book is not the same past that we inhabited.  While the world that we know is not radically different, there is one huge difference in the United States: the Great Ohio Desert.  The scene in which the desert comes about (in 1972) is one of the many outstanding set pieces of the book, so I’ll refrain from revealing the details of it.  Suffice it to say that the desert is important for many reasons in the book, and its origin is fascinating and rather funny. (more…)

Read Full Post »

Jonathan Franzen–“Imperial Bedroom” (New Yorker, October 12, 1998)

Posted in Consumerism, Funny (ha ha), Jonathan Franzen, Neurotics, New Yorker, Privacy, Rheostatics, Sex, The Violet Archers, tagged on October 15, 2010| 2 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: THE VIOLET ARCHERS-Victoria, BC, October 2005 (2005).

This live bootleg comes from the Rheostatics Live website.  If The Violet Archers were to become a huge internationally famous band (which, let’s face it, they’re not), this would be an awesome bootleg to have.  It’s from a show before their first album was released, and, if the stage banter is to be believed, before they’d even thought of a name for the band.  (There’s a joke that they wanted to call themselves The Gay Apparel, which is awesome).

Indeed, I assume that this show was recorded in 2004, not 2005 as listed online.

So, this show seems like it’s recorded in front of about 20 people.  The recording quality isn’t ideal (the drums sound pretty dreadful) but it conveys the spirit of the show very well.

The first two songs are just Tim and his acoustic guitar (“Simple” sounds great in this context although “All the Good” works better as a band number).  Then the band comes on.  Ida Nilsen is not with them yet, but the band sounds great together and the songs are fully formed (the album is said to be coming out in the next spring).

It’s a great show and Tim Vesely sounds a lot more like he did with the Rheostatics than he does on the regular album.  I guess the live setting brings out the old voice from Tim.  And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the guitarist with the great name: Yawd Sylvester.  Outstanding!

[READ: September 28, 2010] “Imperial Bedroom”

This piece is about privacy. It was written 12 years ago, when the fear of the loss of privacy was in its infancy.  And Franzen makes a very convincing case that we were (and I assume still are) overreacting in a big way to fears of privacy loss.

He opens by noting that the panic about privacy is all the rage, excepted that the public doesn’t seem to be genuinely alarmed.   He sets his argument on the backdrop of the Clinton/Lewisnky Starr Report. And what he bemoans is that this most private of information is coming out of the most public of offices (and the most imperial of bedrooms).  [With the valid corollary–who is ever going to run for office if this kind of shit is going to be made public on such a grand scale?]

He gives us a basic history if the “right to privacy” which he says legally is a tough concept.  Because whatever you call the various forms of invasion of privacy, legally they often fall into other areas–trespass, defamation or theft.  What’s left is emotional distress, which is always a nebulous concept. (more…)

Read Full Post »

Dave Bidini–On a Cold Road: Tales of Adventure in Canadian Rock (1998)

Posted in Books about music, Boredom, Canadian Content, Canadian Music, Culture Shock, Dave Bidini, Drinking, Drugs, Essays, Goddo, Guess Who, Neurotics, Radio, Rheostatics, Sex, The Tragically Hip, Travel, Triumph, Van Halen, Wikipedia, Zon, tagged on September 5, 2010| 1 Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: DAVE BIDINI-The Upstairs, Sydney Nova Scotia July 26 2007 (2007).

Dave Bidini recorded three shows in 2007 in eastern Canada which are all available on the Rheostatics Live website.  They were acoustic shows and featured a reading from his then new book called Around the World in 57½ Gigs.

On this particular venue, he gives two readings (and the readings are very good.  His writing has grown even more engaging since this first book).

The songs he plays are a couple from the Rheostatics: “My First Rock Show” which sounds good in this format.  “Me and Stupid” which is almost made for this format and “Horses.”  Now “Horses” is a wild and raucous song, typically full of Martin Tielli’s amazing guitar pyrotechnics.  The acoustic version is much more mellow, but no less affecting.

He’s got a number of what I assume are new songs (I haven’t heard any BidiniBand songs yet, so I don’t know from whence they come).  “Song Ain’t Good” is a kind of jokey song about how the song itself isn’t any good.  Lyrically, the song grows on you as it progresses.   “The List” is indeed a list of people and things that are killing us now: Tim Hortons, Chad Kroeger, Stephen Harper etc.  It’s a protest song and is kind of catchy.

“The Land is Wild” is a more interesting song, musically.  Lyrically it’s about Bryan Fogarty, a dead hockey player.  And the final track is “The Ballad of Zeke Roberts” the story of a Liberian singer.

The other shows feature essentially the same songs (one of them includes “Fat” instead of “Horses”).

The difference with these new songs as opposed to the Rheos songs is that these are more pointedly about something.  They are quite message driven.  And one needs to care about the message I suppose.  Bidini does not have a great voice. Or, more to the point, he has a limited voice that works great for certain things, but it’s not always at its strongest in this acoustic setting.  Nevertheless, he has great rapport with the audience, and is a very charming performer.

I’m rather interested in hearing what the BidiniBand have to offer.  There’s an interesting interview with the Bidini here.

[READ: September 1, 2010] On a Cold Road

So Dave Bidini was in the Rheostatics.  This book is a chronicle of their tour as the opening act for The Tragically Hip on their tour across Canada.

The book offers lots of insights into the ins and outs of touring–the frustration, the loneliness, the elation, the confusion, the shattering disappointments, everything.  As a fan of the Rheos and the Hip, I found this to be a really interesting chronicle of a cross-country tour.

And what I found interesting about the book itself is that the main guys aren’t a small band struggling, nor are they a headlining megaband.  They’re a reasonably small band but they are successful, and are certainly well looked after on this  tour.  So it gives the feeling of being the underdog without actually working too much about pathos.

The Rheos are simultaneously jealous of the Hip, but also very grateful to them.   It makes for an interesting read. (more…)

Read Full Post »

John Darnielle–Master of Reality [33 1/3 Series] (2008)

Posted in Black Sabbath, Drugs, Humiliation, John Darnielle, Neurotics, Short Books, The Mountain Goats, Wikipedia on September 3, 2010| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: BLACK SABBATH-Master of Reality.

I recently reviewed this album.  And in light of this book I investigated some of the things that Darnielle’s character mentions.

First: according to Wikipedia, the US release of the LP/cassette DID have “extra” tracks on it.  When you listen on CD, and see the time settings of the songs, it’s kind of understandable what they are.

I have no idea what “The Elegy” is supposed to be (as part of “After Forever”) (unless it’s the intro part…no time is given in Wikipedia).  But “The Haunting” after “Children of the Grave” times perfectly to the “Ch Ch Children” part at the end of the song.

“Step Up” which, as he mentions, is a ridiculous name for a Sabbath song can be seen as the 30 second intro riff to “Lord of This World” as it is very different from that song.

The most unlikely “extra song”  is “Death Mask” as part of “Into the Void.”  The timing claims that it is the first half of the song.  The song changes at the 3 minute mark but it also reverts back to the original, so this “song” is specious at best.

But I do appreciate the book for giving some insight into the songs that I hadn’t considered before.

[READ: August 31, 2010] Master of Reality

When my friend Andrew told me about this book (and the series), I assumed it was writers (or musicians) writing about their favorite albums.  I had no idea it would be like this (and, I don’t know if they are all like this).

Darnielle has created a fiction (I assume) about a young man in a psych ward in 1985.  As part of his time there he is told to write in his diary every day.  After the first or second day (in which he just writes Fuck You!) he learns that Gary, the man in charge of him, is reading the diary.  And soon, he begins to use his diary as a way to get his Walkman and cassettes back (they were taken from him when he entered the ward).

Specifically, he wants Master of Reality back.   (more…)

Read Full Post »

Fredy Perlman–[Week 7] Letters of Insurgents (1976)

Posted in Anarchy, Big Books, Canadian Music, Dave Bidini music, Epistolary Novel, Fredy Perlman, Funny (strange), Insurgent Summer, Marriage Trouble, Neurotics, Religion, Rheostatics, Sex, Supernatural, Technology, Violence on July 23, 2010| 2 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: RHEOSTATICS-“Horses” (1991).

I have mentioned the Rheostatics a lot.  I’ve even talked about this song in Melville.  And yet it works so well as a companion to this book.

It starts slowly enough, a simple acoustic guitar with the lyrics:

Word came down and it crashed through my door
From the twenty-first floor
I was thinkin’ about leavin’ early for lunch
When he told me to shut off my press
His face turned green and his white shirt was wet
Like he’d just seen an accident
We threw our masks into a pile, the trucks pulled away for good

The band kicks in a slow beat  as the song builds:

A bus pulled in and I waved at it
Before I knew what it was
We ran in its tracks chasing its tires
But the gates had been riveted shut
I looked for the foreman; his number was empty
Up to Red Deer to stay
We gathered some signs and we sparked up a fire
Gordie got burned on the high-voltage wire

A quick intense bridge:

The first thing she’ll ask me is: “How did it go today?”And I’ll tell her.

The song builds in intensity with some wild screaming guitars until finally settling down to the quiet beginning

I thought there was strength in a union
I thought there was strength in a mob
I thought the company was bluffing
When they threatened to chop us off
Ah, these guns will wilt the winter will seize
And all the bonfires will go out
The company knows when they can afford to be bold
I wish I could, I wish I could, I wish I could

All along the ringing repeated chorus: “Holy mackinaw Joe! (Holy mackinaw).”

I’m not sure if this references a specific event or not.  (Surely someone can tell me that).  But you can listen to it here.  Or, find any of the live renditions on youtube.

There’s an interview with Dave Bidini of the Rheos who tells the interviewer that he also used to do music interviews.  And once he interviewed Neil Peart who, after much chatter, asked Dave if he knew the song “Horses” by the Rheos.  Dave humbly said that he wrote it.  And Neil said that on their last tour he used to come off stage and listen to “Horses” at full blast.  (And that’s how they got Neil to play on the Rheos’ subsequent album).  Neat, huh?

[READ: Week of July 16, 2010] Letters of Insurgents [Sixth Letters]

Insurgent Summer is till moving along, but the insurgents have been quiet lately.  I hope the insanity of these letters and invocations of the devil will bring up the chatter.

Yarostan opens his letter with the most heartfelt emotions.  And yet, anyone who thought (as I did) that there might be some kind of rekindling of romance between the two will be sorely disappointed: (more…)

Read Full Post »

Joshua Ferris–“The Pilot” (New Yorker, June 14 & 21, 2010)

Posted in 20 Under 40, Drinking, Funny (ha ha), Joshua Ferris, Neurotics, New Yorker, Self, Short Story on July 5, 2010| 2 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: SELF-“Trunk Fulla Amps” (2000).

I bought an album by Self many years ago.  They had since released several other discs, but I hadn’t heard any of them.  Then, they came out with this fantastic and very vulgar song.  It reeks of one-hit wonder status and yet it is super catchy (and rather funny).

The lyrics, simply enough: “I got a trunk fulla amps motherfucker.”  But each verse showcases the main guy from Self’s vocal tricks.  “I gotta trunk fulla amps motherfucker, like E.L.O. (Mama!)” or “like Glenn Danzig (Mutherrr!)”.  Plus the song itself rocks like nobody’s business.

I don’t even remember of the rest of the album is any good, but this song will spruce up any mix CD (that’s not afraid of dirty words).

[READ: July 3, 2010] “The Pilot”

What a perfect time to read the New Yorker‘s 20 under 40 stories than a 4th of July holiday at Long Beach Island?

This first story, “The Pilot” is by one of my new favorite authors, Joshua Ferris.  This piece is a simple story about an invitation to a party.  But the twist in the story is that the invitation is sent by email, and the recipient of the email, a neurotic Hollywood guy, spends the bulk of the beginning of the story wondering whether he really should have received the invitation or if it was some kind of mass mailing mistake (since the invite was sent to a large group that was bcc’d).

The party is given by Kate Lovelt.  She’s celebrating the wrapping of the very successful third season of “Death in the Family,” a sitcom with an excellent premise that will no doubt be turned into a show in real life soon enough.   Really, read the story just for the description of “Death” and let’s see how quickly it comes true.  Lawrence is trying to put the wraps on his pilot, but he keeps procrastinating.  He’s also a recovering alcoholic. (more…)

Read Full Post »

The Inbetweeners (2008-2009)

Posted in BBC America, Boredom, Canadian Music, Cars, Drinking, Feist, Free Speech, Funny (ha ha), Holidays, Humiliation, Language, Marriage Trouble, Neurotics, Romance, Set at School, Sex, Smarty Pants, The Inbetweeners, Toilets, TV 2010, Vampire Weekend, Virginity (Loss of), Wikipedia, Word usage on April 17, 2010| Leave a Comment »

[WATCHED: 2010]  The Inbetweeners

I don’t often write about one TV show at a time, but I’m on vacation this week, so I’m taking it easy.

One of our favorite new shows is (big surprise) a  British comedy (that is airing in the States on BBC America) called The Inbetweeners.  There’s not much terribly original about the premise of the show: four unpopular blokes in secondary school grouse about being unpopular and hatch ways of scoring with the [insert staggering variety of vulgar words for women here] in their class.  And I’m not exactly sure what it is about the show that is so [bleeping] funny.  Perhaps it is the simply brutally vulgar humor, or the excessively horny attitudes, or maybe it is the self-awareness of the vulgarity (by the not exactly prudish but at the same time creeped-out-by-his-friends narrator (“That sounds a bit rape-y, Jay”)), but the show never stops being stomach-hurtingly funny. (more…)

Read Full Post »

Roberto Bolaño–Last Evenings on Earth (1997/2001 trans. 2006)

Posted in bolanobolano.com, Books about writers, Chris Andrews, Communists, Culture Shock, Death, Dreams, Drinking, Foreign Books, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Ghosts, History, Humiliation, Infinite Zombies, LGBTQ, Marriage Trouble, Mystery, Nature, Nazis, Neurotics, Oddities, Poets, Political Humor, Religion, Roberto Bolaño, Romance, Sex, Short Story, Suicide, The Dead Milkmen, Threats, Translation, Travel, Violence, Yuck! on April 14, 2010| 2 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: THE DEAD MILKMEN-Soul Rotation (1992).

And lo, the Milkmen grow up.

This disc is not funny (well maybe, a little funny); mostly it is  “thoughtful” (and sometimes absurd).  But what is most striking about it is how mature (mellow) it is.  For this is the first album by The Dead Milkmen on Hollywood Records (a subsidiary of Disney).  This combination raises far more questions than is worth looking at.  But suffice it to say that even though this disc is the Milkmen, its a very different Milkmen.

The most obvious difference is that the majority (10 out of 13) of the songs are sung by the artist formerly known as Joe Jack Talcum, now known as Butterfly Fairweather (perhaps Hollywood knew that “”Punk Rock Girl” was their big hit?).  Past DM records were mostly sung by Rodney Anonymous (who goes by H.P. Lovecraft on this disc).  And his were the heavier, weirder, funnier, absurdist tracks, for the most part.  So, when the first four songs here are sung by Butterfly, you know something different is afoot.  Oh, there’s horns on the disc as well!

The disc feels like a pretty typical alt-rock band from the 90s.  But it’s missing the sass, it’s missing the vulgarity.  Basically, it’s kind of dull.

That’s not to say there aren’t good songs on here, because there are.  “If I Had a Gun” is a great screamy Butterfly song, and “Wonderfully Colored Plastic War Toys” is full of Lovecraft’s snark. As is “The Conspiracy Song” a lengthy rant of absurdity.

The rest of the songs drift between mellow and alt-rock rockers.  And it works as a product of the alt rock 90s.  It’s just not much of a DM album.

[READ: April 8, 2010] Last Evenings on Earth

I have been reading Bolaño’s short stories for a while now.  And so I have read a couple of the stories in this collection already. The stories in this collection were taken from his two Spanish collections of short stories: Llamadas telefônicas (1997) and Putas aseinas (2001).  And I have looked at about a dozen sources but I can’t find which stories came from which original collection (I like  to know these hings).  I can’t even find a table of contents for the original books.  Anyone want to help out?

I enjoyed these stories more than I expected to.  I have read some of his stories in The New Yorker and elsewhere, and I’ve been okay with them, but this collection blew me away.  Whether it’s being immersed in his writings or just having them all in one place, I was thrilled by this book.

There so many delightful little things that he does in his stories that I find charming or funny or something.  Like that his narrators are usually two or three people removed from the details.  Or if they’re not, they act like its been so long they doesn’t need to get all the details right:  “U insults and challenges him, hits the table (or maybe the wall) with his fist” (“Days of 1978”).

I also get a kick out of all the stories with the protagonist named B.  Which seems a not so subtle way of saying he’s the narrator (even though I ‘m sure these things never happened to him quite like it says (despite all the biographical consistencies with his own life).

The opening story “Sensini” has the narrator working as a night watchman at a campground (much like Enric in The Skating Rink…a bit of biography perhaps?).  A number of his stories are simply biographies of interesting characters (something he went to extremes with in Nazi Litearture in the Americas): “Henri Simon LePrince” a failed writer in Post-WWII France.  “Enrique Martin” a delightfully twisted story about jealousy (aren’t they all, though?) and acting impulsively and foolishly (aren’t they all though?).  This one featured  a riddle that I’m not even sure we’re meant to get:

3860+429777-469993?+51179-588904+966-39146+498207853

which the narrator thinks is a word puzzle. (more…)

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »