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Archive for the ‘NPR/PRI/PBS’ Category

Terry Moore–Five Years #3 (2019)

Posted in Abstract Studio, Bombs, Death, End of the World, Environmentalism, Frances Quinlan, Graphic Novel, Hop Along, Russia, Strangers in Paradise, Terry Moore, Tiny Desk Concert, Unfinished series, Violence on May 16, 2020| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: FRANCES QUINLAN-Tiny Desk Concert #974 (May 13, 2020).

I Wanted to like Hop Along, but there was something about them that I didn’t.  I think it came down to Quinlan’s voice which I almost like but I think ultimately don’t.

That’s true here too, although I like it better on these quieter songs than the bopping of Hop Along.

Quinlan is a Tiny Desk veteran, having played here in 2015 with her indie-rock band, Hop Along. You could argue she has even more Tiny Desk experience than that; as Quinlan pointed out during her set, a can of Hop Along-branded beer has been sitting on the Tiny Desk shelves through numerous previous concerts, including Lizzo’s.

This time around, she performed songs from her debut solo album, Likewise. She was accompanied by two musicians who played on Likewise: her Hop Along bandmate Joe Reinhart, on bass and guitar, and Molly Germer on violin.

There’s something weird in the first song”Your Reply.”  From time to time a note rings flat or out of tune.  I can’t decide if it’s intentional or not.  And the middle of the song sounds like bassist Joe Reinhart is just messing up all over the place.  Although he does add a nice solo at the end.  I do like the melody at the introduction of the chorus though.

She tells a joke about Presidents Day that I don’t get.  I don’e even know if it can be classified as a joke.

The second song, “Detroit Lake” has a note that sounds wrong but which I is intentional–it’s part of the opening guitar melody.  This song is primarily just Frances and Molly Greene adding interesting violin textures.  Mid way through, Reinhart starts adding nice bass harmonic notes.

She tells us a fun fact that George Washington did not have wooden teeth–they were made of animals and other people’s teeth.  How about that.

“Lean” opens with a pretty guitar melody and Quinlan’s whispered vocals.  Reinhart switches to acoustic guitar to flesh out her sound nicely.  This is my favorite song of the set as it feels the most complete.

[READ: May 15, 2019] Five Years #3

The voice over for this issue is by Tambi.  She is going to Washington D.C. to meet Ivy Raven and Julie Martin, two characters from the Echo series.  Julie Martin is the living Phi bomb.

Ivy reveals that there’s an alloy in the bomb that affects those around Julie.  It messes with their DNA. If you’re a threat to her, it destroys you.  If you’re not, well, Ivy looks younger and radiant.

Turns out the Cleopatra papyrus (from SiP XXV) has gotten out and seven countries are developing their own phi weapons programs. (more…)

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Terry Moore–Five Years #2 (2019)

Posted in Abstract Studio, Antonín Dvořák, Augustin Hadelich, Bombs, Death, End of the World, Environmentalism, Graphic Novel, John Adams, Josef Suk, Kuang-Hao Huang, Strangers in Paradise, Terry Moore, Tiny Desk Concert, Unfinished series, Violence on May 15, 2020| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: AUGUSTIN HADELICH-Tiny Desk Concert #973 (May 11, 2020).

This tiny desk is another duet for piano and violin.  This pairing of instruments is always lovely.  This particular pairing is quite beautiful.

Grammy-winning fiddler Augustin Hadelich [brought] his beautiful Guarneri del Gesù, built around 1744.  The violin, once owned by the famed virtuoso Henryk Szeryng, has been called one of the finest concert violins in the world.

Hadelich has been called one of the finest concert violinists in the world. Born in Italy to German parents, he studied at Juilliard in New York. His sweep of the top awards at the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis in 2006 launched his career.

Hadelich plays a piece by contemporary composers and two older pieces.

With his discerning pianist Kuang-Hao, Hadelich put the 276-year-old del Gesù through its paces in the propulsive “40% Swing” from John Adams’ Road Movies.

This piece is fast and propulsive (“it’s all about the joys of driving on a fast highway”) with lots of super fast bowing and lots of bouncy, sometimes discordant chords from the piano.  It’s five minutes long but it seems exhausting.

He made the instrument croon sweetly in Dvořák’s “Humoresque,” a chestnut of old world charm, especially in violinist Fritz Kreisler’s beloved arrangement.

This piece is like a sweet dance.  You can just see people dresses up and dancing around a ballroom to this song.

A burst of energy returned to round out the set with the bustling “Burlesca,” by Czech composer Josef Suk, a favorite pupil of Dvořák who later became his son-in-law.

This piece has the same stately feeling of the Dvořák piece  although it feels less formal, especially with some of the very fast runs that both the piano and the violin perform.

[READ: May 14, 2020] Five Years #2

Issue #2 is very different from Issue #1.

It is narrated by a dead woman.  Although this woman died when she was ten years old, forty-five minutes later she was back.  The doctors said it was a miracle. That’s because they can’t see Malus.

We see a woman named Rachel approaching a man and then speaking in Russian.  She wants names.  When the man resists, a young girl named Zoe does something horrifying with a pair of pruning shears. (more…)

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Terry Moore–Five Years #1 (2019)

Posted in Abstract Studio, Art, Bombs, Braxton Cook, Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah, Coronavirus, End of the World, Environmentalism, Graphic Novel, NPR/PRI/PBS, Phony Ppl, Quarantine, Sex, Strangers in Paradise, Terry Moore, Tiny Desk (Home) Concerts, Tiny Desk Concert, Tom Misch, Unfinished series, Violence on May 14, 2020| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: BRAXTON COOK-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #20 (May 8, 2020).

I thought I didn’t know who Braxton Cook was, but I have actually seen him as support in three different Tiny Desk Concerts: Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah in 2015, Tom Misch in 2018 and Phony Ppl in 2019.

Braxton Cook is a Juilliard-trained, genre-jumping artist whose music feels both contemporary and timeless. This time around, Cook takes the center seat, so to speak, from the comfort and safety of his sunny New Jersey home.

He plays four songs and all kinds of instruments in this concert.

Cook says he usually performs his original work with a full band, but obviously that isn’t an option in the time of social distancing. So instead, the ambidextrous talent uses loops to support his vocals, saxophone and guitar throughout the laidback set.

“Shooting Star” is set to a backing saxophone loop as Braxton plays guitar and sings.  It’s a smooth jazz song and he plays a sweet solo over the end while the loops slowly fade.

For “We Major” he starts a saxophone loop, lays down some keys and then plays a sax solo over the top.  It’s a pretty instrumental and the saxes intertwine nicely.  I love that he manages to get the whole song to stop abruptly on time.

For his Tiny Desk (home) concert, Cook jumped around his discography, performing tracks from his 2017 album, Somewhere in Between, all the way up to his latest project, 2020’s Fire Sign.

“Never Thought” is for his wife.  He’s got a looped guitar and a live guitar.  He sings a smooth R&B love song and then lays down a sax solo at the end.

Closing out this cozy session, Cook dedicates the stirring “Hymn (for Trayvon Martin)” to everyone affected by the current pandemic.

I feel like I have heard “Hymn (for Trayvon Martin)” somewhere before. It’s anj instrumental in essentially two parts.  It begins as a fast and pretty saxophone piece.  After a bit, he stands up and begins a lengthy looping section.  It’s slow and mournful and really lovely–the sax is the perfect instrument for it.    melody.  He loops a slow part and then plays a beautiful slow solo over the top.

[READ: May 14, 2020] Five Years #1

I loved Strangers in Paradise.  I started Rachel Rising, but now realize I never finished it.  I saw that Terry was creating Five Years, but I had no idea it tied in to the rest of the stories in any way.  Apparently it brings all of his different stories together.  So, I’m glad I discovered this just as he finished Issue 10.

I clearly need to start, if not the whole series, then at least the other two series to fill in some missing pieces, because this story went from vengeance and personal vendettas to global annihilation.

This issue opens with Katchoo, Francine and their two girls on a beach.  The voice over talks about nuclear bombs including the fascinating detail that there were so many nuclear explosions in the ’50s that two new isotopes are now in the atmosphere that didn’t exist before Hiroshima.  Oil paint made since the war contains these isotopes, It has become a foolproof way of testing for forgery in the art world.

That is fascinating. (more…)

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Jonathan Franzen–“Why Birds Matter” (National Geographic, January 2018)

Posted in Birds, Caracara, Coronavirus, Crows, End of the World, Environmentalism, Essays, Gloria Steinem, Jonathan Franzen, Lyrebird, MILCK, National Geographic, Nell Zink, New Zealand fantail, NPR/PRI/PBS, Peregrine Falcons, Quarantine, Red Knot, Roadrunners, Thick-billed Murres, Tiny Desk (Home) Concerts, Tiny Desk Concert on May 10, 2020| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: MILCK-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #19 (May 7, 2020).

I only know of MILCK from NPR. They talked about her “movement-defining anthem ‘Quiet'” which she played in 2017 at the Women’s March.  It was powerful and very moving.

Aside from that song, though, I hadn’t heard anything else from her.

And now, here she is at home singing “her most recent singles, ‘Gold’ and ‘If I Ruled The World.’  She also plays an unreleased song, “Double Sided” which she says is her most personal yet.

Many artists are sincere, but MILCK might be the most sincere performer I’ve ever seen.  That sincerity comes across as she speaks between songs, but also in her lyrics.  I love this couplet from “Gold.”

Don’t mistake my confidence for arrogance / don’t mistake my self-respect for disrespect.

Then she moves on to the brand new song

For this deeply moving Tiny Desk (home) set, recorded at her home in Los Angeles, MILCK performs those two recent singles, along with an unreleased track called “Double Sided,” a gorgeous tearjerker about the necessity of loving one another regardless of our faults and weaknesses. MILCK’s songs of empowerment, unity and understanding have never resonated more.

“Double Sided” is a powerful song and she is definitely moved by the end.

For the final song, “If I Ruled The World” she introduces it by quoting Gloria Steinem.

Gloria Steinem said that dreaming is a form of planning and this song is dreaming and imagining what our world could look like.

The song a capella for the first verses.  This is significant because so far every song of hers that I’ve heard has been about the lyrics.  But it’s here that you fully realize what a great voice she has.

Having said that, the lyrics are pretty great, too.  As I said, they are very sincere.  But it’s wonderful that there are serious ideas coupled with more lighthearted ones

Jenny wouldn’t hate her figure when she’s small, or when she’s bigger
She’d be kissin’ on the mirror, and the WiFi would be quicker
Everybody would recycle, fewer cars, and more bicycles
No more fighting for survival, you would hear this song on vinyl

You’d see a doctor if you’re sick, Mary, don’t you worry ’bout it
‘Cause there’d be no crazy bill, no more thousand dollar pills

All the sexist, racist, bandits would be sent off for rehabbin’
And instead of feeding fear, we’d be feeding half the planet, damn it

If I ruled, it would be less about me, more about you

As the blurb says,

I can always count on MILCK for a good cry. … the Los Angeles-based singer digs into and bares the ugliest sides of human nature, but leaves you feeling nothing but gratitude and awe at just how beautiful life really is.

If you’re not moved by these songs, you’re not really listening.

[READ: May 8, 2020] “Why Birds Matter”

At one point I subscribed to the print edition of National Geographic.  There are so many magazines that I like but which I never have enough time to give attention to.  National Geographic was one of them.  Each issue is packed with amazing pictures and fascinating stories that go along with them.  And every once in a while I would see a dozen or so yellow spines staring at me, accusingly.

I remember when this issue came in and there was a cover story from Jonathan Franzen, which I was excited to read.  I didn’t have the time to read it when it came in.  Later, when I remembered that I wanted to read this cover story I honestly couldn’t remember what magazine it came from.  I was sure it as Harper’s, but searches proved otherwise.

Finally I did a search on his articles and this came up and that was it!

I found an online copy of the magazine through my library (it has since been published in a book) and finally got around to reading it.  So imagine my surprise when it was actually quite short.  There’s an accompanying (amazing) photo essay that makes the entire “article” some twenty pages.  But his text is barely five picture-heavy pages.

Nevertheless, he makes so many point better than I could and better than I could even try to summarize that I’m quoting extensively because I think it’s that important.

(more…)

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Kaie Kellough–“Witness” (The Walrus, March 2020)

Posted in Canadian Content, Coronavirus, Donald Ramotar, Goats, Guayana, Huh?, Kaie Kellough, Lianne La Havas, NPR/PRI/PBS, Quarantine, Short Story, The Walrus, Tiny Desk (Home) Concerts, Tiny Desk Concert, Violence on May 9, 2020| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: LIANNE LA HAVAS-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #18 (May 5, 2020).

This Tiny Desk is wonderful because you can clearly see the interesting chords that Lianne La Havas is playing.

She looks quite comfortable in her cozy space. I love the effect of the close camera placement; her essence penetrates the fourth wall like she’s singing just for me. Lianne performed the tender “Paper Thin” and “Bittersweet,” two recent singles that will be included on her self-titled new album set to drop in July. The intimacy of the performance matches the lyrics of the new songs, personal vignettes about her life and growth over the last five years.

After “Paper Thin” she says “I just felt like playing it first.”

Also included in the set is “Midnight,” a wistful gem from her 2015 album, Blood.

There’s some really wonderful guitar work here too.  She plays a complicated picking melody complete with occasional harmonics.  At one point her vocals take of and get much louder.  So loud that she kind of overloads her mic.

“Bittersweet”  continues with the quite guitar and powerful voice.  I’m curious what these songs will be like when they are fully produced.

[READ: May 3, 2020] “Witness”

This story is set in Berbice, Guayana.

Quammie had gone there to visit cousin Calib and tells the narrator his story.

Noting much happened, he didn’t buy any souvenirs.  Although that night there was to be a rally for President Ramotar.

It was rare that the Guyanese election made international ripples.  Oil had been discovered in the ocean, so Guyana and Venezuela were fighting over whose water the deposits were submerged in.

The polls were predicting a narrow loss for Ramotar who had decreed a state media blackout on all ads and coverage for his rival.

Quammie said they got out before the rally started, but on their way out of the city, they had to pull over for the President’s motorcade.

You saw Ramotar?

No, just his car. (more…)

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Sy Montgomery–The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness (2015)

Posted in Aquarium, Buck Curran, Corals, Coronavirus, Death, Electric Eels, Marion Britt, New England Aquarium, NPR/PRI/PBS, Quarantine, Science, Scientists, Scuba Diving, Sea Stars, Sy Montgomery, Tiny Desk (Home) Concerts, Tiny Desk Concert on May 8, 2020| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: BUCK CURRAN-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #17 (May 1, 2020).

I’ve never heard of Buck Curran, an American guitarist living in Bergamo, Italy, “the epicenter of the pandemic in Europe.”

Years ago, Curran met Adele Pappalardo while on tour, fell in love and started a family. They have a son about to turn three years old and another child due in August. “We’re trying to survive,” Curran says. “And be positive,” Pappalardo adds. Soon residents in Italy will be allowed to use parks, visit relatives and attend funerals.

This Tiny Desk is blurbed by Lars Gottrich (which explains why I don’t know this guy–Lars travels in the obscure).  He sums up the music of Curran perfectly:

There’s a burning darkness to these songs, as Curran’s rough-hewn voice and droning psych-folk melodies curl like smoke, but there’s also a desperate hope that cracks the surface.

His songs are slow and droney without a lot of change ups.  Adele sings backing ooohs and aahs on the new “Deep in the Lovin’ Arms of My Babe” and “New Moontide” from 2016’s Immortal Light.  I preferred this song because it opened with some lovely guitar harmonics.  Although it’s about six minutes long and most of that six minutes sounds the same.

Adele leaves and he plays “Ghost on the Hill” which is getting its debut live performance.  He ends with an instrumental, “Blue Raga.”  It has some really interesting chord progressions and is my favorite song of the set.

[READ: January 2020] The Soul of an Octopus

S. bought me this book for Christmas because she knows how much I enjoy octopuses (it’s not octopi–you can’t put a Latin ending on a word derived from Greek).

This book was absolutely wonderful.

It opens with Sy explaining that she was heading from her home in New Hampshire to the New England Aquarium.  She had a date with a giant Pacific octopus.

She summarizes some of the reasons why octopuses are so cool

Here is an animal with venom like a snake, a beak like a parrot, and ink like an old-fashioned pen.  It can weigh as much as a man and stretch as long as a car, yet it can pour its baggy, boneless body through an opening the size of an orange.  It can change color and shape.  It can taste with its skin. Most fascinating of all, I had read that octopuses are smart.

This is all so fascinating to me because when I was a kid, I feel like octopus were boring, scary, purple blobs.  Why didn’t we know they were so cool?

Probably because people didn’t know much about octopuses until fairly recently.  In fact, we are still learning a lot about them.  Like that one three-inch sucker can lift 30 pounds–and a giant Pacific octopus has 1,600 suckers. (more…)

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Georgina Beatty–“Shelter Seekers” (The Walrus, April 2020)

Posted in Argentina, Canadian Content, Coronavirus, End of the World, Environmentalism, Funny (ha ha), Futility, Gang Starr, Jeru the Damaja, Marriage Trouble, NPR/PRI/PBS, Pigs, Quarantine, Scholarship, Short Story, The Walrus, Tiny Desk (Home) Concerts, Tiny Desk Concert, Volcanoes on May 7, 2020| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: JERU THE DAMAJA-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #16 (April 30, 2020).

I’ve always liked Jeru the Damaja’s name; I find it very satisfying.  It’s amusing to me that with a name like that he raps about positive things.

He used the concert to share his inspiring philosophy of self-knowledge. Jeru drops lyrics about what it takes to achieve self-actualization in tough conditions for not just himself, but for the culture.

I don’t actually know any of his songs; this is a “medley of his classics.”  Jeru’s got a great, deep voice that adds a lot of strength to his lyrics.

Like Black Thought, Jeru sits in a chair, surrounded by his gear.  Unlike Black Thought, Jeru is in motion pretty consistently bobbing and waving his hand like he does care.

He starts with 50 seconds of “Can’t Stop the Prophet” after which he says “we need a superhero and we forget that the superhero resides within us.”  he encourages everyone to be creative in this time because idle hands do the devil’s work.  This is his lead into the 90 seconds of “Ain’t The Devil Happy.”

His prescient lyrics remain as relevant as ever as he addresses the deepening fissures of socioeconomic inequalities exposed by the coronavirus crisis.

He even updates the lyrics of “Scientifical Madness”

Mind Jah lick you with disease
So I inflict MC’s like Ebola Corona
Or some other man made cancer

He says he doesn’t want to be inside, but he’s grateful that he has a place to be because living outside is “So Raw.”  I really like the slow grooving beat of this song.

After the 90 seconds of “My Mind Spray” he says his mind is always working.  He’s always wondering if this and if that. But the old saying goes “If if’s were fifth, we’d all be drunk.”  In the song “If” he adds “If if was a spliff, we’d all get smoked up.”

He closes his set from his home in Berlin with a new song, “The Power,” and offers up a message we all need: “No matter who you are, the power resides in you…We can overcome anything if you put your mind to it, you just can’t get in your mind too much.” The prophet cannot be stopped.

“The Power” is a full song which was inspired by a things his mother used to say that he didn’t understand until he got older: “nothing matters except for how we treat people.”

[READ: May 6, 2020] “Shelter Seekers”

This story is written as a letter to the “scholarship liaison officer.”

The letter writer received a $4,000 Daniel White Foreign Study Scholarship via the Government of Canada.  The money was to fund three months in Argentina to study how the region is “adapting its approach to housing in the interest of sustainability.”

This letter is the final report which is “unconventional in form, long overdue and in excess of the stipulated two-page limit.”

The writer left her husband for three months to undertake this challenge.

On the flight to Patagonia ($1,297) she read the Award Holder’s Guide.  She imagined building clay houses and hanging out with her fellow researchers, drinking Fernet and Coke.  She even considered the idea of an affair with an attractive researcher.  (more…)

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Lisa Taddeo–“Padua, 1966” (Harper’s, April 2020)

Posted in Babies, Drugs, Harper's, Italy, Jon Batiste, Jon Batiste and Stay Human, Lisa Taddeo, Marriage Trouble, NPR/PRI/PBS, Sex, Short Story, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Tiny Desk Concert on May 6, 2020| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: JON BATISTE-Tiny Desk Concert #972 (May 4, 2020).

This Tiny Desk Concert was originally (sort of) posted on January 6, 2020 with this disclaimer

Jon Batiste’s Tiny Desk Concert was published prematurely. The new publication date is March 2020.

I don’t know if there was actually a video posted on Jan 6, but I’m curious if people got to see an unfinished version.

Regardless, here it is May (not March) and the Jon Batiste Concert is up. I now know Jon Batiste as the band leader on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, but I knew of him before that from an NPR recording with Stay Human back in 2014.

Batiste is a multi-talented musician, playing keys, and guitars.  He’s also a charming front man.  But he really lets his backing band shine here.

The New Orleans musician came to the Tiny Desk not with his late-night house band, but with an all-new cast. His all-female collaborators — Endea Owens on acoustic bass, Negah Santos on percussion, Sarah Thawer on drums, and Celisse Henderson on guitar and vocals — were an inspiration.

Batiste took us through some of the many sides of his rich musical history,

The soulful ballad titled “Cry” which features Batiste playing the Wurlitzer organ.  This is probably my favorite song of the set–I love the sound he gets.  He is a really impressive keyboard player, handling the cool Wurlitzer solo with ease.  The surprise for me came when Celisse Henderson played a great soulful guitar solo.  I just assumed he’d be doing all of the soloing, but everyone in the band had a moment to shine.

Before the song ended properly, Endea Owens started the next song with a great upright bass riff for the start of the jazz and hip-hop inspired “Coltrane.”  Batiste does an opening rap before the song slows down for the chorus where batiste jumps to the piano and the backing band sings along.

As is often the case when musicians perform in Washington (and especially blocks from the Capitol) the banter hinted at the political. Jon Batiste stopped to tell the NPR crowd, “we’re playing some music, and we’re coping. The times are in an interesting place, but music is always that universal language that can bring people in a room together.”

Then he says, “it’s the first time we’re ever playing these songs, and it’s the first time we’re playing together.”

Then Batitste picks up a square guitar to start the rocking Motown-inspired tune “Tell The Truth,” which he says is self explanatory.  Even though Batiste is on the guitar, Henderson gets the ripping solo again.    The middle of the song has a drum solo from Sarah Thawer but the real star is Negah Santos on percussion as her bongos really stand out.  Then Batiste takes out the melodica (like he uses on Colbert) and gets a terrific sound for a quick solo.

He ends the show with a bit of church.  He says “When times get weird we forget about the simple things, so I like to write a basic song to remind us of that.  That song is “I Need You.”  It opens with an amazing piano solo.  Batiste so casually plays all up and down the keys, it’s really impressive.  As is the solo he plays mid song.

[READ: May 1, 2020] “Padua, 1966”

Despite the title the story is actually set around Newark in contemporary times.  The 1966 part comes in a story told later.

I really enjoyed the way this story seemed to self-correct.

Miranda was tall and as dark-haired as they come.  I say was and not is and that is inaccurate because she is still around and I really am not.

Miranda was married to Luke, A WASP.  They had a daughter named Caroline, “a name I’ve never understood.”

How’s this for a line:

They fell out of love because they never were in love.

(more…)

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Lee Durkee–“Ride or Die” (Harper’s, April 2020)

Posted in Alexandra Sauser-Monnig, Beer, Daughter of Swords, Drinking, Excerpt, Harper's, Lee Durkee, Mountain Man, NPR/PRI/PBS, Prison, Taxis, Tiny Desk Concert on May 5, 2020| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: DAUGHTER OF SWORDS-Tiny Desk Concert #971 (April 29, 2020).

Alexandra Sauser-Monnig is part of Mountain Man (who did a Tiny Desk Concert some time ago).  Daughter of Swords is her solo project.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, it is just as quiet and delicate as Mountain Man but with a little more instrumentation.

Though she’s joined by a full band here, Daughter of Swords was originally envisioned as a solo project for Alexandra Sauser-Monnig. … With a few hushed folk songs, the music was so eerily still, you could have heard a phone vibrate.

This has to be one of the quietest four-piece bands ever on Tiny Desk.

As “Long Leaf Pine” begins, all you hear is a low rumble–the floor tom from Joe Westerlund.  Then Alexandra Sauser-Monnig begins singing quietly.  Maia Friedman supplies soft backing vocals from time to time.  Sauser-Monnig sings high and quiet and amazingly hits and even higher note before the end.

I like the sound of “Shining Woman” more. I think Alex Bingham’s bass stands out a bit more.  Or maybe it’s because Friedman plays an electric guitar accompaniment.  This song starts with a smattering of interesting percussion from Westerlund and while it is in no way loud, it moves faster than the previous song.

When Mountain Man was here, they talked about breakfast food.  Alexandra reprises that by asking what people had for breakfast.  Answers: a banana, a soft-boiled egg.  Alexandra had a green smoothie and goes on about the large piece of toast she had.  She doesn’t normally eat bread and this felt crazy to her [that should tell you all you need to know about Sauser-Monnig].  Bassist Alex Bingham says, “wild day so far.”

For the final song, “Prairie Winter Wasteland” Friedman plays the guitar to start this song–quietly ringing electric guitar.  There’s an interesting bass line from Bingham on this song and Westerlnd is using a small whisk brush on the cymbals.

[READ: April 20, 2020] “Ride or Die”

This is an excerpt from the novel The Last Taxi Driver.

Set in Mississippi, this excerpt follows a cab driver with one fare, a man just released from prison.

He says they never tell him what they were in for, only that they just got out.

This man–white dude, mid-thirties, a few missing teeth, a few prison tats–is in a fantastic mood.  He’s carrying a twelve-pack of Bud Light and asks to go to the Bethune Woods Project.

The driver says he didn’t even know these projects existed before he started driving a cab.  Most of the other cab companies shun the projects.  He knows that Uber is coming to town “I’ve never used an Uber and don’t understand how that works”), and he assumed they will shun the projects too. (more…)

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Allan Gurganus–“The Wish for a Good Country Doctor” (New Yorker, May 4, 2020)

Posted in Allan Gurganus, Anderson .Paak, Anderson .Paak & The Free Nationals, Artists, Chronixx, Coronavirus, Death, Doctors, India Shawn, New Yorker, NPR/PRI/PBS, Prince, Short Story, The Free Nationals, Tiny Desk Concert, Universities on May 4, 2020| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: THE FREE NATIONALS-Tiny Desk Concert #969 (April 20, 2020).

The full name of this concert is The Free Nationals Feat. Anderson .Paak, Chronixx & India Shawn, but that’s too many “featurings” for a headline.

Whenever you look for Tiny Desk Concerts, the top picture is always from the Anderson .Paak show (which was pretty great).  I never really gave it much thought as to why that picture is up there.  But the blurb here says that “Anderson .Paak’s Tiny Desk concert with The Free Nationals, filmed in 2016, is the most popular in the history of the series.”  Who knew?

It was a special return when The Free Nationals arrived in the nation’s capital to showcase their new tunes on March 4, before the coronavirus crisis had set in. Lots of NPR staffers showed up in the hopes that a surprise guest might be in store.

They play four songs.  First is “Beauty & Essex” It opens with opens with Ron Tnava Avant using a voice box on the keys: “Ron Avant invoked Roger Troutman of Zapp on the talk box”, followed by  some slow funky bass lines from Kelsey González.  India Shawn, radiant in a red jump suit, crooned Daniel Caesar’s “Beauty & Essex” in a sultry register.  Midway through, José Rios plays afully distroetd (but slow and very Prince-like) guitar solo.

India, formerly a background singer for .Paak and now an emerging solo artist, also sang lead on the second song,”On Sight” which is about catching the fade (punch across the face).  The end of this song features and even faster ripping guitar solo with some walloping drums from,  Callum Connor.  As the solo ends, Rios says, “It’s crazy to play so quiet.  I want to jump on this table.”

Then “Cheeky Andy,” aka Anderson .Paak, surprised the audience with his signature smile and spunky energy.  I like him a lot–he always has a mischievous smile.  He tells everyone

We spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on big budget videos just to have our biggest video be in front of a Tiny Desk.

I don’t know Anderson .Paak much aside from his Tiny Desk, but i can tell it’s him instantly by his drum beat, his drumming style is quite unique.  . “Gidget” is “a song with a groove so catchy that it makes you want to two-step in your living room.”  This song’s about another one of Rios’ exes (see the last concert for the setup to this joke).  Rios asks, “Whys it always got to be about me?” .Paak sings the song and then Avant plays a wicked talk box solo.

.Paak wasn’t the only special guest. Jamaican roots reggae singer Chronixx returned to the Desk to perform his “Eternal Light,” a song he recorded with The Free Nationals on their album.  Btu first Anderson .Paak runs out “you got my phone man?”  Connor passes it to Rios who pretends to throw it.

Chronixx seemed stunned at the number of fans in the audience this time,  “last time I was here there was like five people.”

This song has a reggae feel about positive vibes.  It’s a the most chill song for sure.

It’s fascinating to have seen this band take off from four years ago.

[READ: May 3, 2020] “The Wish for a Good Country Doctor”

This was a totally gripping story.  One that I was not expecting to hear probably as much as the narrator was not expecting to hear it.

It starts with an unusual sentence

Most kids lose or beak their toys.  I curated mine.

In 1976, the narrator was at the University of Iowa in an America Studies program.  Every month, the narrator and “some other hippie Ivy graduates” blanketed the state to find “existing folk manifestations.” They traveled to thrift shops, junk stores and Salvation Armys for tools and dolls and then wrote over-interpretive essays about the items.

They were given $100 a month to purchase things and they set off on a Friday full of caffeine.  On this particular Friday the narrator had gotten a rural mailbox made in 1946 shaped like three Scottish terriers.  And an ironic iconic Find of the Week “a handsomely lettered five-foot-long sign explaining, ‘You’ve Got to Be a Football Hero to Get Along with the Beautiful Girls.  THEREFORE, GO TECH!'” (more…)

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