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Archive for the ‘Nostalgia’ Category

Science News Letter for Febraury 2, 1952

Posted in Essays, History, Nature, Nostalgia, Rafflles Bulletin of Zoology, Research, Science News Letter, Tokyo Police Club on April 7, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: TOKYO POLICE CLUB “Cheer It On (Trey Told Em Remix)” and “Cut Cut Paste” from Viva Piñata! (2008).

Tokyo Police Club released one of the best LPs of short blasts of rock in a long time.  “Cheer It On” is a great song that name-checks the band and which I could listen to over and over.  It’s a hot punk blast.  This remix totally changes the song (which is better than just tweaking it or repeating the chorus over and over).  Trey makes it a discoey song (with the wah hoo! from “Celebration,” I believe) and big rubber disco bass lines over the music.  It really changes the sound. I like the original a lot better, but I enjoy a remix that actually remixes.

“Cut Cut Paste” is a studio release and it shows TPC in their element–a short fast song.  I love the way it starts out with a shifting guitar sound.  It has a great manic intensity.  Tokyo Police Club is definitely one of my favorite new bands.

[READ: March 20, 2012] Science News Letter

I’ve mentioned before when my company sends out links to articles that are interesting or cool.  Most of the time they are highly academic (that’s the kind of work I’m in), but they also do more general information as well.

So this particular page was sent to us because of the article “Marriages Are Seldom Higher in Leap Year” (since this is a leap year).  There was a tradition in Britain and Ireland that on a leap year, women could propose to men (see the postcard below).

But this article (really only three paragraphs) which is addressed to “Marriage Shy Bachelors” says that only twice since the Civil War has the marriage rate been higher in a leap year (1896 and 1920) in America. And that in 1952 the supply of available unmarried persons has been depleted by the spurt in marriages following World War II.  Rest easy single guys! (more…)

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Jonathan Franzen–The Discomfort Zone: A Personal History (2006)

Posted in Biography, Birds, Death, Essays, Humiliation, Jonathan Franzen, Marriage Trouble, Mogwai, Nature, New Yorker, Nostalgia, Political Humor, Pranks, Religion, Virginity (Loss of) on November 7, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: MOGWAI-Batcat (2008).

“Batcat” is one of my favorite Mogwai songs.  The melody is intense and the drumming is wonderful.  I picked up this single for the B sides (which will undoubtedly be collected somewhere one of these days anyhow, but that’s okay. 

It was very hard to pass up a song called “Stupid Prick Gets Chased by the Police and Loses His Slut Girlfriend”  Given that the song has “Chased” in the title, this is a surprisingly slow tune.  It builds slowly over a series of keyboard waves.  There’s also a slow guitar melody that keeps the piece grounded.  It’s one of their more subtle songs, which again, is rather surprising given the title.

“Devil Rides” is quite jarring in that it features vocals by Roky Erickson.  I don’t really know anything about Roky.  I picture him as a large, unkempt man with crazy hair and a beard.  His voice is otherworldly and seems to be maybe just a wee bit off from what the music is playing.  It’s a strange track and works very well with Mogwai’s history of slightly off-kilter vocalists. 

[READ: November 3, 2011] The Discomfort Zone

After reading The Corrections, I planned to read one of Franzen’s earlier novels.  But they were all quite long (even his debut!) and I wasn’t ready to get so immersed yet.  Then I found The Discomfort Zone in the biography section of the library.  It was less than 200 pages and seemed like just the thing.  It turns out, however, that I had read most of it already.  Three of the pieces were published in slightly different form in the New Yorker: “The Retreat,” (here as “Then Joy Breaks Through”) “The Comfort Zone,” (here as “Two Ponies”) “Caught” (Here as “Centrally Located”) and one “My Bird Problem” (here as “My Bird Problem”) which appears to be unchanged. 

That leaves two essays that were new to me: “House for Sale” and “The Foreign Language.”

The collection works as something of a biography, although really it’s not–it’s a collection of essays about his life, but I don’t think I would go so far as to say biography.   The book also doesn’t follow a chronological order. (more…)

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Jennifer Egan–“Archeology” (New Yorker, June 13 & 20, 2011)

Posted in AV Club, Biography, Essays, Jennifer Egan, Josh Caterer, New Yorker, Nostalgia, Smoking Popes, The Onion, Travel on July 29, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: JOSH CATERER-“Ask” (2011).

Josh Caterer is the main guy behind The Smoking Popes, whose first album, Born to Quit, Morrissey has said was his favorite –and which is also not only no longer in print, it’s not available on Spotify! (the first album that I have looked for which was not available).

Anyhow, this cover comes from The Onion’s A.V. Club’s Undercover series.  (The current series offers a list of 25 songs from which the bands can choose to cover–but each time a song is chosen, it is removed from the list.  Soon, bands will cover songs they may not even like!)

Anyhow again, this cover is delightful.  I was going  to say that “Ask” is one of my favorite Smiths songs, but I think they’re all my favorite songs.  Nevertheless, this one is pretty high on my list.  And this version is, indeed delightful.  Caterer is accompanied by a guitar, a violin and a viola.  The strings cover most of those catchy melodies, while the guitars keep the song propulsive (you don’t even miss a rhythm section).  Caterer’s voice, while not as distinctive as Morrissey’s is perfect for the song.

Overall, an excellent cover.  Watch it here.

[READ: July 20, 2011] “Archeology”

This was the first of five “Starting Out” pieces in the New Yorker’s fiction issue.  The Starting Out pieces are one page (or less) and are a look into the author’s childhood/adolescence.

Egan, who wrote  A Visit from The Goon Squad, talks about what she wanted to be as a child.  First, she wanted to be a surgeon.  She saw blood and that was the end of that.  Then she thought that maybe she could be an archaeologist.  She desperately wanted to become one, even sending her resume (which was: high school and a desire to dig) to every place she could think of (only one even bothered to write back). (more…)

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2011 Fiction Issues (The Walrus, July/August 2011 & New Yorker, June 13 & 20, 2011)

Posted in Aleksandar Hemon, Alexi Zentner, Alexisonfire, All Songs Considered, Canadian Content, City and Colour, Damian Rogers, Death, Edward P. Jones, Fishing, Five Dials, Food, George Saunders, Jeffrey Eugenides, Jennifer Egan, Jhumpa Lahiri, Junot Díaz, Kathleen Winter, Lauren Groff, Marriage Trouble, Michael Lista, New Yorker, Nostalgia, Poetry, Salvatore Scibona, Summer, Téa Obreht, The Walrus, Vladimir Nabokov on June 19, 2011| 3 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: CITY AND COLOUR Live at the Sasquatch Festival, May 29, 2011 (2011).

City and Colour have a new album coming out soon.  So it’s kind of surprising that this seven-song show is three songs from their previous album, two from their first album, a cover, and only one new track (“Fragile Bird”).

This is the first time I’ve heard City and Colour live with a band (most of the recordings I have by them are just Dallas Green solo).  It’s nice to hear how powerfully they work together (giving some of those songs an extra push).

Despite the brevity of the set (and the amusing banter about airport etiquette) you get a pretty good sense of what the “pretty-voiced guy” from Alexisonfire can do on his own.   I found the cover, Low’s “Murderer,” to be a really perfect choice–one that suits the band and their slightly-off harmonies, rather well.

I’m looking forward to their new release–“Fragile Bird” is another beautiful song.  But in the meantime, this is a good place to hear what they’ve been up to.

[READ: early June 2011] 2011 Fiction Issues

Five Dials seems to always generate coincidences with what I read. Right after reading the “”Summer’ Fiction” issue from Five Dials, I received the Fiction Issue from the New Yorker.  A few days later, I received the Summer Reading Issue from The Walrus.

I’m doing a separate post here because, although I am going to post about the specific fictions, I wanted to mention the poetry that comes in The Walrus’ issue.  I have no plan to write separate posts about poetry (I can barely write a full sentence about most poetry) so I’ll mention them in this post.

The main reason I’m drawing attention to these poems at all is because of the set-up of The Walrus’ Summer Fiction issue.  As the intro states: “We asked five celebrated writers to devise five guidelines for composing a short story or poem. They all traded lists–and played by the rules.”  I am so very intrigued at this idea of artificial rules imposed by an outsider.  So much so that I feel that it would be somewhat easier to write a story having these strictures put on you.  Although I imagine it would be harder to write a poem.

The two poets are Michael Lista and Damian Rogers.  I wasn’t blown away by either poem, but then I don’t love a lot of poetry.  So I’m going to mention the rules they had to follow. (more…)

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Douglas Coupland–Polaroids from the Dead (1996)

Posted in Big Dirty Band, Books about writers, Canadian Content, Canadian Music, Consumerism, Corporate skewering, Dead Kennedys, Die Mannequin, Douglas Coupland, Essays, Fables, Flash Fiction, Grateful Dead, Greed, James Rosenquist, Nostalgia, Photo Essays, Rheostatics, Rush, Short Story, The Clash, The Future, The Inbreds, The Tea Party, Threats, Travel, Video Games on February 28, 2011| 2 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: BIG DIRTY BAND-“I Fought the Law” (2006).

I just found out about this “supergroup” which was created for the Trailer Park Boys Movie.    The group consists of Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson from Rush, drummer Jeff Burrows from The Tea Party and three people I don’t know: the singer from Three Days Grace, the singer/guitarist from Thornley and on lead vocals Care Failure from Die Mannequin.

I have to say that I’m not that excited by this cover.  The song has been covered so many times (some very good: The Clash, some very clever: The Dead Kennedys, and some terrible: many others).  And frankly there’s not much that you can do with this song.  It’s simple in structure with potential for shouting (which everyone likes), but little else.

For Rush fans, you can’t tell that Geddy or Alex are even on it.  So really it’s just a kind of metal-ish version of this old song.

Oh well, they can’t all be zingers.  You can hear it here.

[READ: February 1, 2011] Polaroids from the Dead

After reading Shampoo Planet, I wanted to see if I remembered any of Coupland’s books.  So I read this one.  It’s entirely possible that when I bought this book I was disappointed that it was not a new novel and never read it.  Because I don’t remember a thing about this book.  (This is seriously calling into question my 90’s Coupland-love!).

But I’m glad I read it now.  It’s an interesting time-capsule of the mid-90s.  It’s funny to see how the mid 90s were a time of questioning authority, of trying to unmask fame and corporate mega-ness.  At the time it seemed so rebellious, like everything was changing, that facades were crumbling.  Now, after the 2000s, that attitude seems so quaint.   Reading these essays really makes me long for that time when people were willing to stand up for what they believed in and write books or music about it (sire nothing changed, but the soundtrack was good).

So, this collection is actually not all non-fiction.  Part One is the titular “Postcards from the Dead.”  It comprises ten vignettes about people at a Grateful Dead concert in California in 1991.  As Coupland points out in the intro to the book, this was right around their Shades of Grey album album In the Dark, and huge hit “Touch of Grey”, when they had inexplicable MTV success and it brought in a new generation of future Deadheads.  He also points out that this is before Jerry Garcia died (which is actually helpful at this removed distance).

These stories are what Coupland does best: character studies and brief exposes about people’s lives.  The stories introduce ten very different people, and he is able to create a very complex web of people in the parking lot of the show (we don’t see the concert at all).  As with most Coupland of this era, the characters fret about reality.  But what’s new is that he focuses on older characters more (in the first two novels adults were sort of peripheral, although as we saw in Shampoo, the mother did have millennial crises as well).  But in some of these stories the focus is on older people (Coupland was 30 in 1991, gasp!).  And the older folks fret about aging and status, just like the young kids do. (more…)

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Richard Powers–“To The Measures Fall” (New Yorker, October 18, 2010)

Posted in Funny (strange), History, New Yorker, Nostalgia, Richard Powers, Short Story, Swans on December 19, 2010| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: SWANS-“I Crawled” (Live in Dublin 22 October, 2010) (2010).

My friend Lar posted this video on his blog (he was lucky enough to see the show in question).  I have yet to fully digest  the new Swans album, although I found it to be slightly less abrasive as their earlier work (but more abrasive than their later period stuff–it’s as if they picked up just before when Jarboe joined the band).

I wondered how intense a Swans show would be these days.  Well, this video goes a pretty long way to showing that it is pretty intense (although I’m sure it was more intense actually being there–Lar’s review of the show is pretty great).

So, “I Crawled” comes from their 1984 EP Young God, back in the day when they were heavy and slow and scary.  The original is slow, ponderous and whispered (I’d love a beats per minute calculation on this one).  As the song continues, the intensity picks up, even if the speed doesn’t.  And after 5 minutes you’re ready to submit.  (And that’s only the first song).

The live version is a bit more lively.  It’s not quite as heavy, and the vocals are a bit clearer, but it is no less menacing.

It’s telling that the cameraperson keeps going back to the two drummers, as they are really the most intense action in the song.  Between the kit drummer keeping the beat (with a maraca on the largest tom drum I have ever seen) and the by now beloved shirtless, long-haired percussionist named Thor who adds dimensions of noise to the proceedings.  He also adds an amusingly tiny melodica which, contrary to expectations, adds a portentous eerieness that is not present in the original version.  Swans are back and they are not mellowed out at all.

Check out the video here.

[READ: November 7, 2010] “To The Measures Fall”

This is a strange little story.  It opens with a girl riding a bike through Cotswold (and begins with the words “First read through”.  She is a young literature student studying abroad in England.  While riding her bike she stops at a used bookstore and buys a copy of To The Measures Fall by Elton Wentworth (the book/author is not real, I checked–although there’s some great blog posts about him already).  The book costs more than what she could pay for 6 LPs, but she decides to buy it anyway.

The rest of the story shows this woman grow up through the sixties and Vietnam, a failed marriage, a new marriage, a failed PhD and a new career.  The story arc finally ends around the present time.  And all through that time she has kept this book with her, whether intentionally or not. (more…)

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Jonathan Franzen–“The Retreat” (New Yorker, June 6, 2005)

Posted in Dar Williams, Drugs, Essays, Funny (ha ha), Jonathan Franzen, New Yorker, Nostalgia, Religion on December 10, 2010| 1 Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: DAR WILLIAMS-“Teen for God” (2005).

Dar Wiliams has a new disc in which she revisits her old songs (by herself and with guests) and which includes a bonus Greatest Hits disc.  I have listened only once to the disc, but it includes this song which fits perfectly with this story.

Williams has always been an excellent lyricist.  Her rhymes are strong and her descriptions and ideas are first-rate.  Normally, her songs are emotional and intimate, although this one is less so.  It’s serious and funny at the same time.

It begins with a teen at the Peach Branch Horse and Bible Camp where she’ll “pray for the sinners and their drunken car wrecks and vow that I’ll never get high or have sex.”  It’s interesting to compare this song and the implications of the teens for God circa 2005 vs what Franzen is talking about circa the early 1970s.  And it’s fascinating, and rather depressing frankly, how much more conservative times have gotten since then.

What really sells “Teen for God” are the final few verses, where we realize that we shouldn’t take too much of what the teens pledge to be long-lasting (like so many things that teens believe). “You gotta help me, God. Help me know four years from now I won’t believe in you anyhow and I’ll mope around the campus and I’ll feel betrayed all those guilty summers I stayed”

And all of this existential religiousness is set to a perky folk rock song.  The “Teen for God” chorus hits a perfect delayed chord, and is a wonderful singalong.  Perhaps even at a campfire.  On a retreat.

[READ: November 18, 2010] “The Retreat”

This essay is about Franzen’s childhood (always a good source for his stories) when he joined the hippie “Fellowship” at First Congregational Church.  Franzen is older than I am by a  few years, so a lot of things that he writes about from his childhood are things that I knew a little about or caught the tail end of.  So, in this case, I recall my church having Saturday night folk masses, where everyone played acoustic guitars.  I loved it and my parents hated it; when I recently asked a neighbor if they still do that she laughed at me and said they’d stopped it like 25 years ago.  Which explains a lot.

Anyhow, the article discusses an upcoming retreat that the ninth graders would be taking with the other older Fellowship students.  Franzen was a big fish in the 8th grade Fellowship but was a little nervous about the older group.  He loved retreats and wanted to go but didn’t think his parents would approve.  Luckily for him, his parents were in Europe at the time.  [This seems to be some kind of thing that parents did in the 70s–go to Europe for an extended period while the kids stayed home.  My parents never did, mind you, but some seemed to.] (more…)

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Aleksandar Hemon–“Borscht” (New Yorker, November 22, 2010)

Posted in Aleksandar Hemon, Essays, Food, New Yorker, Nostalgia, Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All, Sasha Frere-Jones on November 26, 2010| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: DOMO GENESIS-“Super Market” (2010).

The other band that Sasha Frere-Jones mentions in the New Yorker article is Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All a ten-member collective from L.A.  They have released a slew of albums (all available for free on their website), but none are released under that collective name.  This song seems is released by Domo Genesis on the album Rolling Papers.

This song is really bizarre.  It’s a silly story of two guys fighting because one of them cut in line at the grocery store.  The two guys argue throughout the track with ever-escalating threats.

But the really interesting thing about the track is the backing music.  It sounds like a march from some kind of 70s TV show.  It is almost menacing but mostly it’s comical.  And when you couple that with the crazy threats: “I’m a fucking ninja and a Jedi and I’m from Compton”;   “I’ll push you into an old lady bagging plastic”;  “I’ll stab you with this fucking rocket launcher” (!), it’s hard to know what to think of them.  (I think it’s funny, but I fear that they’re serious).

It’s utterly juvenile (but then all the members of the band are teenagers, so that’s expected).  The musical choice for backing tracks is pretty inspired though, and I like to think that if the guys get some real ideas to rap about, they could really be an ungrounded sensation.

[READ: November 19, 2010] “Borscht”

It’s interesting that there is another article from an Eastern European writer in this collection.  Hemon’s family is from Bosnia (via western Ukraine), where the family developed the perfect borscht.

As with Bezgemos’ family, the recipe was never written down. Mostly, this is  because there was no recipe, it included lots of things that were in the garden, and usually at least one surprise ingredient.  But whatever the ingredients, the results were always wonderfully, vinegary tarty goodness.

The article mentions a family dinner where 42 people were counted at the table.  And borscht is a poor people’s food, where you can reasonably make enough for 42 people.  It is designed “to ensure durability.” (more…)

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America in Color 1939-1943

Posted in Depression, Funky Web Sites, History, Military, Newspapers, Nostalgia, Photo Essays, Set at School, Technology, Work on August 8, 2010| Leave a Comment »

[VIEWED: August 5, 2010] America in Color 1939-1943

The Denver Post recently published 70 color photographs from the Depression.   You can see them all here.  The photographs are part of the Library of Congress’ collection of photos.  The Library of Congress’ collection houses 1,600 color and over 160,000 black and white photos from this period in American history.  It is a bit more for scholars, as you can’t just browse the pictures like in the Denver Post site, but for completeness, you really must check out the LOC prints.  They’re available here.

But back to the Denver Post.  The Post’s collection of 70s prints come from the Library of Congress’ 2006 Exhibit Bound for Glory: America in Color.  These Post’s pictures are very large and very clear (they are reproduced from slides).  And they are all downloadable.

They include photos from New Mexico, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, Georgia, Oklahoma, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, California, Texas, Nebraska, Ohio, Montana, South Carolina, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, Washington D.C., Illinois, Iowa, Virginia, Kansas, Kentucky and Michigan.

And, they show the amazingly diverse makeup of the country.  From a peach farmer to a railway worker.  From kids fishing, to kids playing in the snow.  From women at a fair, to women welding.  From men on horseback to men in front of bomber.  Not to mention, the creation of the Shasta Dam!  (It’s amazing — #28)

The thing that amazes me most about these pictures is that although some things have changed quite dramatically in sixty years, other things haven’t.  Kids still fish, stores still sell fruits and veggies, and people still love pictures of scenery and interesting faces.

You can obviously tell that these pictures are old.  Even the ones without people just look old, why is that?–see #2 in particular for one that looks old even though nothing in the picture is dated.  Or picture #11: the women’s faces simply look like the were photographed 60 years ago.  Or this one, which I’m including.  There’s nothing particularly dated about the picture, and yet you can tell this didn’t just happen in 2010.

(more…)

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Eli Kochalka–“The Pie” (2010?)

Posted in Comic Strips, Eli Kochalka, Magic Garden, Nostalgia, Sesame Street on June 9, 2010| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: THE MAGIC GARDEN (1970s).

When I was growing up in the 1970s one of my favorite shows was The Magic Garden. Even though I enjoyed Sesame Street and The Electric Company, Carole and Paula were my favorites.  And it was the songs that were so memorable.  Thanks to the Web, here’s four of their original songs, all of which I loved (although I understand the opening credits only ran on a few episodes).  So, travel back in time to The Magic Garden: Opening Credits, Story Box, Goodbye Song and this Theme Song which I seem to remember most of all.

The one song I can never seem to find is one that was for Sherlock, the squirrel.  There were lines like: Today is Monday…Monday peanuts…all you hungry squirrels we wish the same for you.  I’ve had the melody in my head for what seems like decades now, but I can’t find the lyrics anywhere.  Can anyone help out?  Oh, and if you were a fan Carole and Paula have a website where you can get some stuff.

[READ: June 8, 2010]

Kochalka is the son of James Kochalka, the Vermont based cartoonist/comic strip guy and leader of James Kochalka Superstar.   Sarah’s brother (who live sin Vermont) sent her some Kochalka books for her birthday and included in the set was this book by his son (who has several webcomics). (more…)

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