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Archive for the ‘NPR/PRI/PBS’ Category

P.G. Wodehouse/The Goodale Brothers–Jeeves & Wooster in Perfect Nonsense (2013)

Posted in David Goodale, Funny (ha ha), Hugh Laurie, Julieta Venegas, Marriage Trouble, P.G. Wodehouse, Play (Drama), Robert Goodale, Stephen Fry, Tiny Desk Concert, Unreliable narrator on March 11, 2016| Leave a Comment »

woosterSOUNDTRACK: JULIETA VENEGAS-Tiny Desk Concert #126 (May 9, 2011).

julietaJulieta Venegas has a sweet voice.  She plays accordion and guitar and, for this show, is accompanied by a clarinet and flute.  The whole concert is delicate and lovely.

She sings threes songs in Spanish but describes them in English.

“Si Tú No Estas” features her on the accordion.  She plays a delightfully simple riff that sounds jaunty on the little accordion.  The clarinet is a fitting accompaniment to her on this quiet song.  I love that it feels vaguely French, even though it is sung in Spanish.  This is about the people you leave at home when you travel.

“Debajo De Mi Lengual” (Under My Tongue) is a bit more folk sounding because she plays the song on guitar and is accompanied by a flute.  The song is about being insecure to talk to others.  The melody is simple, but the flute adds some lovely notes.

For “Bien O Mal” she stays on guitar but this time is accompanied by the accordion.  This song is the most rollicking (not very rollicking at all, of course, but the tempo is much faster.  The accordion mostly plays chords to flesh out the song.  The song sounds lovely, which is why it’s especially funny that at the end she seems unsure of just how good it was.

[READ: December 14, 2015] Jeeves & Wooster in Perfect Nonsense

I have never read any of P.G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Wooster stories, although I have seen most of the series starring Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie (incomparably played).

This play is a “new” story written by the Goodale Brothers.  It is based on a bunch of Wodehouse’s pieces, particularly The Code of the Woosters (1938).  Robert and David Goodale were asked to put the above story on the stage.  So they worked on it and modified it and came up with this version.

They came up with the idea of Wooster telling one of his tales and Jeeves “helping” as only Jeeves can.  So in this production, there are only three actors.  But they play multiple parts each trying to flesh out Bertie’s story.  Wooster is Wooster, Jeeves is Jeeves and several others, and their friend Seppings plays many many roles, including some women and a nine foot tall man.

The story itself is intentionally convoluted and hilarious.  It involves an expensive creamer, a police officer, Bertie’s aunt and the ghastly woman Bertie might jut have to marry. (more…)

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Jesse Eisenberg–The Spoils (2015)

Posted in Beer, Drinking, Drugs, Fraud, Funny (ha ha), Gaby Moreno, Jesse Eisenberg, Kunal Nayyar, Sex, The Big Bang Theory, The Spoils, Tiny Desk Concert, Unlikable main character, Work on March 8, 2016| Leave a Comment »

spoilsSOUNDTRACK: GABY MORENO-Tiny Desk Concert #149 (August 15, 2011).

gabyGaby Moreno surprised me in this set.  Her first song “No Regrets,” begins like a gentle bossa nova sung in Spanish.  The song switches to English about midway through, but it retains that lovely bossa nova feel.  Morena’s voice is lovely and clear. She plays guitar and sings and is accompanied by Adam Levy, also on guitar.

So far, so good.

The second song, “Ave Que Emigra” begins as a gentle ballad, but quickly morphs into a kind of upbeat folk song also sung in Spanish (Moreno is from Guatemala).  It is a lovely song with some beautiful oooohs.

It’s the third song the surprised me.

“Sing Me Life” opens in a much darker vein–rough strummed guitars and a blues solo from Levy.  Even Moreno’s voice has gotten deeper and bluesier.  The song is sung in English and although she sounds like herself, she also sounds really different–not exactly angrier, but less sweet, more intense.  The “Hey hey hey’s” are a far cry from the sweet “ooooohs” of the previous song.  Levy plays a nice bluesy solo on this song as well.

Moreno has a great deal of diversity in her set and she handles it all really well.

[READ: October 20, 2015] The Spoils

I have enjoyed Eisenberg’s writing in the past.  But this was the first full play I had read by him (he has two others). It is very funny (and surprisingly vulgar).

There are five characters. Ben (played by Eisenberg when it was performed) owns the apartment where the action is set. He is the son of a wealthy man, going to college for “film” and basically enjoying himself as much as he can. He drinks, he smokes pot and he picks on his roommate (who might just be his only friend). His language is shockingly vulgar, dropping curses left and right.

His roommate is Kalyan (who in the performance was played by Kunal Nayyar (from The Big Bang Theory). Kalyan is from Nepal. He has come to NYU to study business and has even written book about economic conditions in Nepal. Kalyan is a bit dorky (he loves PowerPoint, which is used to great comic effect throughout the story). And he is trying to win over Reshma.

Reshma is Indian, but she has lived in the States all of her life, so she is really American.  She has high hopes for Kalyan, but it seems she fears he might not live up to his potential.

In the opening scene Kalyan is showing her a PowerPoint and being incredibly sweet to her.  When Ben walks in he is all crass and vulgar—funny but very unlikable.  He essentially makes Reshma leave (although as soon as he shows up we know she wants to leave anyhow) and then begins his tale. (more…)

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Fiona McFarlane–“Buttony” (New Yorker, March 7, 2016)

Posted in Bob Dylan, Fiona McFarlane, Laura Marling, New Yorker, Noah and the Whale, Set at School, Short Story, Surreal, Tiny Desk Concert, Tom Petty, Violence on March 7, 2016| Leave a Comment »

march7SOUNDTRACK: NOAH AND THE WHALE-Tiny Desk Concert #147 (August 10, 2011).

noahI know Noah and the Whale a little.  I don’t think I realized they were from England, especially since the lead singer/guitarist looks so much like Ben Stiller (with a big fro).  I’ve enjoyed what I’ve heard from them, although I can’t say I know that much about them (although  see that Laura Marling was briefly in the band).  For this Tiny Desk, there are just two men (one Noah, the other the Whale, perhaps?  No, Charlie Fink (vocals, guitar), and Tom Hobden (violin, vocals).

Evidently they had a drummer but he left the band to pursue academic success so they enlisted a dreaded drum machine.  (In the blurb, Stephen Thompson talks about how shocked everyone as to hear it).  The one bad thing about the machine of course is that it limits then from playing anything spontaneously.  But they sound very good even with the machine.

There’s a sort of Tom Petty/Bob Dylan vibe to the first song with the super catchy spelled out chorus of “L.I.F.E.G.O.E.S.O.N.”  When the violinist sings harmonies, the  song sounds especially good.

He ends the first song by saying, “It’s most peculiar, this event.”

“Blue Skies” does not have the drum machine.  It is a mellow, pretty song with Fink’s delicate voice singing a breakup song.

“Waiting for My Chance to Come” is a upbeat song (with drum machine).  Fink switches to acoustic guitar giving this a bigger more vibrant folk sound.  It’s really catchy and fun to sing along to.

I remember the last time I listened to Noah and the Whale (from an NPR show covering the Newport Folk Festival), I wanted to hear more from them.  And once again I do, although perhaps with a full band (and yes, they have broken up).

[READ: March 3, 2016] “Buttony”

I re-read what I had written about McFalane’s previous story which I read in 2013. I enjoyed the first section (which was very short) but felt a little less grand about the second half.

This story (although it was much shorter) had a similar quality.

The story is only two pages and the first part is so charming.  It is set in a school.  The teacher allows her students to go outside to play “buttony.”

The game is a simple one, but it has some kind of near magical significance for the kids. (more…)

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Luke Mogelson–“Total Solar” (New Yorker, February 29, 2016)

Posted in Amanda Shires, Culture Shock, Death, Luke Mogelson, New Yorker, Short Story, Tiny Desk Concert, Translators, Violence, War, Yuck! on March 6, 2016| Leave a Comment »

2292015SOUNDTRACK: AMANDA SHIRES-Tiny Desk Concert #146 (August 3, 2011).

shiresAlthough the blurb suggests that I might know Amanda Shires, in fact I do not.

Shires has a powerful non-vibratoed voice and she plays several different instruments–what looks like a giant ukulele as  well as the fiddle.  She’s accompanied by Rod Picott on the guitar.  He really seems to flesh out her instruments very well.

As to her sound, she explains before the final song, “I do have one happy song, we’re just not going to do it.”

The most remarkable thing about the first song, “Swimmer…” is her excellent whistling of the main melody.  It is piercing and very catchy.  Actually the whole song is quite pretty

Before starting the second song she asks if they are in a fast mood or slow mood.  When the answer is fast, she immediately says they’ll play “Shake the Walls.”  I really liked how the opening notes were plucked and strummed on the violin.  The song is pretty simple and quiet until she plays a noisy violin solo in the middle which really livens things up.

Before the final song she asks if they’d like a song about suicide.  Someone whoops in assent and they laugh.  So she says they’ll play a song about trains. (“when you need a train, it never comes”).  I really like the chord progression in the chorus.

Despite the downer music, the duo clearly had a fin time.  Picott ends by saying “Its hard playing for smart people instead of our usual crowd.”

[READ: March 6, 2015] “Total Solar”

The protagonist of this is a journalist in Afghanistan.  He has been speaking with a researcher from the United Nations Ornithological Department, who keeps introducing conversations with “If you really want something to write about…”

But rather than taking notes, he is drawing pictures of himself committing suicide in various gruesome ways.  This relates to his writing a story about a contractor who’d been executed in a new way–using wire rather than a knife.

Yes the story is pretty brutal. (more…)

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Don DeLillo–“sine cosine tangent” (New Yorker, February 22, 2016)

Posted in Don DeLillo, Excerpt, Julien Baker, Marriage Trouble, New Yorker, Parenting, Tiny Desk Concert, Torres on March 5, 2016| Leave a Comment »

CoverStory-2-22-16-879x1200-1455509711 SOUNDTRACK: JULIEN BAKER-Tiny Desk Concert #513 (March 7, 2016).

julienI had never heard of Julien Baker before this Tiny Desk Concert.  Indeed, she looks young enough that perhaps this is her first concert (it isn’t).

Baker plays a lovely, slightly echoey, but otherwise very clear electric guitar.  Her tone is so clear and quiet.  And her voice is also incredibly delicate.  Watching her play and sing it’s amazing you can hear anything at all, and yet she does not wilt in any way–her music is delicate but not whispered.

As with many players these days, she uses a looping pedal to great effect.  For the first song, “Sprained Ankle” she loops the lovely harmonics at the beginning of the song and then allows for the multiple layers to play.  Her vocals are as gentle as the harmonics, and yet, again, not whispery.  At barely 2 minutes, the song leaves you wanting more.

She talks about doing a new song for them called “Sad Song #11” since “I already have ten sad songs.”  She thanks everyone for their “courteous laughter.”  And then plays another beautiful song now officially titled, “Funeral Pyre.”  She has a very nice way with words: “Ash for a decorative urn you keep on your mantelpiece like a trophy for everything.”  There’s a beautiful layered guitar solo at the end too.

The introductory guitar lines from “Something” are really lovely–her sound is just so clear–and once again, the song is beautiful and haunting with her repeated lyrics sounding more powerful with each go around.

The blurb about the show references Torres, and I totally see the deference.  They don’t sound anything alike in that Torres is brash and loud, but they have that same up-close and intimate vibe.  For Baker, it makes you want to lean is as she sings.

[READ: February 17, 2016] “sine cosine tangent”

I have always meant to read more from DeLillo, I just never do.

And while I have enjoyed all of the things I have read by him, I didn’t love this story so much.  Okay, I’ve since found out that this is an excerpt, which changes things.  I’ll keep my review the same but with bracketed realizations pertaining to the novel.

This is the story of a young man (his age in the story is unclear to me, and I’m not sure how much distance separates the present from the past [presumably this is covered in the novel]) and his relationship with his father.  His father is a successful businessman but the son says that he “shaved a strip of hair along the middle of my head, front to back, I was his personal Antichrist.”

His father left when he was 13, although he never found out why.  Years later, he sees his father, Mr Ross Lockhart on the TV, discussing the ecology of unemployment in Geneva. (more…)

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George Saunders–“Mother’s Day” (New Yorker, February 8 & 15, 2016)

Posted in Death, Funny (ha ha), George Saunders, Monsieur Periné, New Yorker, Parenting, Sex, Short Story, Tiny Desk Concert on March 4, 2016| Leave a Comment »

282016SOUNDTRACK: MONSIEUR PERINÉ-Tiny Desk Concert #512 (March 4, 2016).

perimne I feel like it’s been a while since NPR’s Felix Contreras has had a Tiny Desk for a band playing Latin American music.  And Monsieur Periné (French name and all) plays some really fun Latin American music.  They are from Colombia, which is evidently known for its Afro-Colombian cumbia.

But they don’t play strictly cumbia.  Their long set plays around with tempos and styles.  It is fun, fun, fun with a lot of swing and big horns.  There’s some great electric guitar and electric upright bass and two fantastic drummers. There’s even a 1920s jazz feel to some of their music (the guitars especially)

This is all set behind the lead singer’s beautiful voice (and the guys’ harmonies).  And the great riffs from the saxophone nad trombone.

The first song “Nuestra Canción” (Our Song) opens slowly with several different tempos.  I love that once the singing starts,  the two guitars play very different things that works so well together.  I like watching the drummer and percussionist playing the same rhythms.  And it’s especially interesting when this six-minute, very jazzy-feeling song (albeit it sung in Spanish) takes a turn in the middle of the song to sound very cumbia.

“Sabor A Mi” (Taste of Me) is a bolero–very dancey.  The guitarist has switched to a twelve string instrument with a very small body.  I assume it’s a guitar but who knows. The lead guitar is actually played on an acoustic guitar outfitted with a pick up.  The sax player has switched to clarinet and the clarinet and trombone y play a great melody together.

“La Muerte” is 7 minutes long with a spoken introduction.  This made me very curious because the introduction is in Spanish for a song that she sings in part in French (and in Spanish).  The horns sound great on this song.  And the guitar solo comes in it a has very surf guitar sound while still saying very Latin American.  There’s a long instrumental section that slows things down and then they come blasting out with their great riffs.

This band is a lot of fun and would be great at a party.

[READ: February 4, 2016] “Mother’s Day”

I have really been enjoying the work of Saunders lately.  I particularly enjoy his darker comic pieces, but there’s something about his non funny pieces that is also pretty grand.

It’s never clear if you’re going to get funny Saunders or not when you start a story.

This one even seems like it might be funny as we slowly learn more and more about one of the Mothers featured this Mother’s Day.

The story is told in that strangely detached way that Saunders has where it seems like what seems like a third person may actually be the inner monologue of the narrator.  But told at a distance?  “Paulie had flown in and Pammy had taken her to Mother’s Day lunch and now was holding her hand.  Holding her hand!  Right on Pine.  The girl who once slapped her own mother for attempting to adjust her collar.” (more…)

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Adam Erlich Sachs–“The Philosophers” (New Yorker, February 1, 2016)

Posted in Adam Erlich Sachs, Carole King, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Lake Street Dive, New Yorker, Short Story, Time Travel, Tiny Desk Concert on March 3, 2016| Leave a Comment »

216SOUNDTRACK: LAKE STREET DIVE-Tiny Desk Concert #511 (February 29, 2016).

lsdLake Street Dive are a trendy band all of a sudden (they’ve been around for ten years, evidently).  And what’s not to like about them?  Lead singer Rachael Price has a powerful soulful voice and she’s really pretty.  Their harmonies are really excellent.  And their songs are fairly simple and easy to follow.

And I can’t stand them.

They push all of my button.  I don’t like Price’s soulful voice (even though it is really powerful and sounds great–I just don’t like it).  I don’t like the way their backing vocals are vaguely do-wop, a sound I don’t like in general.  And I don’t like the way they veer towards country.

I should like them–this set is fun and the crowd is really into it.  Price sounds rather like Carole King, I love that the drummer uses brushes and that he wrote the first song.  I love that the bassist plays an upright bass and that she wrote the second song and sings lovely harmonies.  And I like that the guitarist plays a trumpet solo on the final song.

I even like the lyrics to the final song, “thank the good lord for those godawful things that brought you right back to me.”  Except that they sing that line about 50 times in the song.

I’m already tired of them and I expect that I’ll be even more sick of them before the year is out.

[READ: January 27, 2016] “The Philosophers” 

I don’t know Adam Ehrlich Sachs at all, and I have to say I was pretty surprised by this story.

It seemed like it would be pretty serious, what with that title and all.  It also seemed to have three “sections.” So I was expecting something pretty intense.

But instead, it was three humorous short stories called “Our System,” “Two Hats” and “The Madman’s Time Machine.”

“Our System” plays off the story that a person who loses the ability to use his muscles is still able to communicate through a blink or a tap or something.  And it follows the life story a of a philosopher who is so afflicted.  The man tries to communicate his life’s philosophy to his son.  But since the disease is hereditary, his son gets it too.  Then he has to learn a way to communicate with his own son.

It seems rather ponderous at first but then it quickly grows absurd as we see multiple generations trying to transcribe those initial thoughts.

“Two Hats” explores the idea of a person who wears two hats and how maybe the hats themselves are essential for him to be able to keep his jobs separated.  Again, it starts out somewhat reasonable but grows more and more absurd, with bigger and bigger hats.

The final story is “The Madman’s Time Machine” which was my favorite.  It is indeed about a time machine and whether the man who made it is crazy or not.  I really enjoyed the way it was written and the way it did so much in such a little space.  The conclusion was really well done.

I can see enjoying short pieces from him from time to time.

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Tatyana Tolstaya–“Aspice” (New Yorker, January 25, 2016)

Posted in Anya Migdal, Aspic, New Yorker, Short Story, Tatyana Tolstaya, Tiny Desk Concert, Translation on March 2, 2016| Leave a Comment »

1252016SOUNDTRACK: BRUSHY ONE STRING-Tiny Desk Concert #510 (February 27, 2016).

brushyAlthough I don’t know where the “Brushy” part comes from, the “One String” part of Brushy One String’s name comes from the fact that he plays a guitar with one string.  A low E string.

Obviously, then, the songs are pretty simple.  Most of them are just one or two notes.  They are more or less bluesy and the main selling point of his music is his voice.

“Destiny” is the first song. I really like the middle of it where he scats in a cool accented…something.  The song begins as a fairly simple blues riff with Brushy’s vocals.  But when he gets to the chorus, he does some great things with his voice to make it really powerful.

“Chicken in the Corn” is a YouTube sensation with nearly 9 million views.  It’s fast and wild.  This song has a bit more of percussive quality as he keeps a beat on the guitar while playing his one string.  This song also has a cool scat section and multiple single styles.  It’s pretty fun.

“No Man Stop Me” is a slow song.  It’s a spiritual song and it’s way too long.  There’s a lengthy recitation and a lot of repetition, and or a song this much, it’s just too much.

[READ: January 19, 2016] “Aspice”

This is a very short story (one page translated by Anya Migdal) that is all about making Aspic.

The narrator is a woman who dreads making the annual aspic for the holiday dinner. “It’s a special kind of religion, making the aspic.  It’s a yearly sacrifice though we don’t know to whom or for what.  For some reason it must be done.”

And then in first person present she talks about the steps involved. (more…)

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Emmanuel Guibert, Didier Lefevre, Frederic Lemercier–The Photographer: Into War-Torn Afghanistan with Doctors without Borders (2003, 2004, 2006) [translation 2009]

Posted in #10yearsof01, Adventure, Alan Cope, Alexis Siegel, Death, Didier Lefèvre, Emmanuel Guibert, First Second :01, Funny (ha ha), Graphic Novel, History, Morality, Religion, Tiny Desk Concert, Translation, Travel, Violence, War, Wilco, Yuck! on February 29, 2016| Leave a Comment »

photoSOUNDTRACK: WILCO-Tiny Desk Concert #509 (February 23, 2016).

wilcoAs far as I can tell, Wilco is the first band to be invited back for a Tiny Desk Concert (there was a stated rule that no one would come back twice, with some people skirting that by coming with another band).  Laura Gibson was invited back since she was the very first attendee, but since Wilco’s newest album has been so successful, it seems somehow fitting that they get invited back.

And perhaps in honor of that, while their last performance was noisy and raucous, this one is decidedly more mellow—with all acoustic instruments.  But that doesn’t mean it’s quiet and calm either.

For the first song “The Joke Explained” from Star Wars, they used banjo, acoustic bass, hollow bodies electric guitar (w/ slide), the ever-present melodica and muted drums (w/shakers).  And it sounded great.

For the second song, the older “Misunderstood” everybody seemed to switch instruments.  Tweedy switched guitars, the acoustic bass became an acoustic guitar, the hollow body became a slide guitar.  Nels Cline’s slide guitar brings so much to the song by doing seemingly so little.  I love how this simple, sweet song has a wild middle section–a crazy breakdown with noisy cymbals and drums–drummer Glenn Kotche is fantastic–and everyone else playing some crazy high-pitched notes until it all settles back down again.

Tweedy has another guitar for the third song “I’m Always In Love” and the melodica is back.  There’s xylophone keeping the melody.  And as with all of these songs, Tweedy sounds great and the backing vocals add wonderful harmonies.  Cline plays a wonderful slide solo, too.

Before the final song and there’s another guitar change for Tweedy, and he says that after this song, “you guys need to get back to work solving this Trump problem. Figure it out! Its weird!”  They play “Shot in the Arm,” another great old song.

The band sounds excellent—a wonderfully full sound even without amplification. I am really excited to see them his summer.

There’s also a nifty video showing “Misunderstood” with two 360 degree cameras so you can see what goes on in the audience during a Tiny Desk Concert.  Check it out.

[READ: February 7, 2016] The Photographer

I loved Guibert’s book Alan’s War, in which he took the words of Alan Cope and put them to an amazing graphic novel.  Well, he is back again doing the same thing with the words of famed photograph Didier Lefèvre.

Didier Lefèvre died in 2008, but before he died he left a legacy of amazing photojournalism.  That includes this trip to Afghanistan which he took with the team from Doctors without Borders.

Alexis Siegel translated this book again, and he offers an excellent introduction which not only explains Lefèvre’s life, it also gives context for everything tat these men and women were up against in that war-torn region.

As mentioned Guibert draws out the story that Lefèvre told him.  But this book is different from Alan’s War in that it also uses the photos that Lefèvre took.  Guibert fills in the gaps where Lefèvre, didn’t or couldn’t, shoot.  And there was a lot he couldn’t shoot. (more…)

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Nick Bertozzi–Lewis and Clark (2011)

Posted in 19th Century, Ben Folds, Explorers, First Second :01, Graphic Novel, Guns, History, Live from Daryl's House, Memoirs, Meriwether Lewis, Native Americans, Ocean, Sacagawea, Thomas Jefferson, Tiny Desk Concert, Travel, Violence, William Clark, YA Books, yMusic on February 28, 2016| Leave a Comment »

SlewisOUNDTRACK: BEN FOLDS-Tiny Desk Concert #508 (February 16, 2016).

benfolds I’ve liked Ben Folds for many many years.  He’s funny, he’s amazing live and he plays a mighty good song or two.  He’s the kind of artist you say, Has he really not done a Tiny Desk Concert before? (He did an episode of Live from Daryl’s House after all).  But he’s finally here to bang the hell out of their piano and curse up a storm.

He plays several songs from his new album So There, which is  a collaboration with the sextet yMusic.  I haven’t actually listened to the record much because I gave it to Sarah and haven’t grabbed it from her pile yet.  Since there’s no strings for this Tiny Desk, these songs sound just like normal Ben Folds songs–clever lyrics, fun piano and unexpected twists.

The first song is “Phone in a Pool,” one of his rollicking stompers.  It’s catchy and fun to sing a long to and after one listen, you’re right there with him in New Orleans throwing a phone in a pool.  Midway through the song, he forgets the words and just starts laughing: “In a world where you get applause for fucking up.”  And then he makes up a verse about forgetting the words.

“Not a Fan” is a slower song with a beautiful piano melody and biting, funny lyrics (get your T-shirt signed, fangirl).

“Capable of Anything” is a fast, romping song.  He says on the record the vocals are very quiet, so he’ll see what he can do.  After a run through a verse he stops and realizes that he has knocked the piano out of tune.   And when he bangs on the keys at the end, its easy to see how.  There’s some really fast piano work (and you can hear him stomping along).

he says he’ll play some old songs.  He asks for a song and someone shouts “Emeline,” which he immediately starts playing.  And then about a verse in, he gives some story behind the song.  He says that when he was a kid 8 or 9, he wrote earnest songs, but when he was a teenager he wrote “cool”s songs like “Having Two Dicks is Cool.”

And then he started using songwriter vernacular, words you only use in pop songs, “why’d you make me cry, girl?”  Why do people do that? When he was 18 or 19 he started to write songs that were more natural, like Emeline, the first song he was proud of–using the word “stupid” or a money analogy–and which he still loves playing.

He’s willing to do more songs and asks for requests saying which ones he can or can’t do.  And then Bob points out that he’s going to miss his plane if he does more than one song.  So he chooses for everyone and plays an amazing version of “One Angry Dwarf And 200 Solemn Faces.”  he says it can probably be done and will put the rest of the piano out of tune.  And he’s not kidding.  He really pounds the heck out of that thing–how does his own piano manage?

The song is bouncy and fun and he even jokes with the lyrics near the end.

It’s an amazing, invigorating set and has me really excited to see him this summer.

[READ: February 28, 2016] Lewis and Clark

In 2014, Bertozzi made the excellent Shackleton graphic novel.  But three years earlier he had created another historical graphic novel, this one about Lewis and Clark.

Like Shackleton, it aims to be truthful but not comprehensive.  Bertozzi himself explains that it is not meant to be a replacement for the scholarly recounting of the journey.  Rather, he hopes to show the “experience” of the journey.

The book doesn’t really include any historical context, so in a brief summary:

Shortly after the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, President Jefferson commissioned a group of U.S. Army volunteers under the command of Captain Meriwether Lewis and his close friend, Second Lieutenant William Clark to explore the territory.  Their journey lasted from May 1804 to September 1806. The primary objective was to explore and map the newly acquired territory, find a practical route across the Western half of the continent, and establish an American presence in this territory before Britain and other European powers tried to claim it.The campaign’s secondary objectives were scientific and economic: to study the area’s plants, animal life, and geography, and establish trade with local Native American tribes.

(more…)

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