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Archive for the ‘Tiny Desk Concert’ Category

Guillermo MartInez–“Vast Hell” (New Yorker, April 27, 2009)

Posted in Alberto Manguel, Death, Guillermo MartInez, John Moreland, New Yorker, Sex, Short Story, Thirty Called Arson, Tiny Desk Concert, Translation on April 27, 2018| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: JOHN MORELAND-Tiny Desk Concert #733 (April 20, 2018).

I don’t know John Moreland, but the blurb says he was in a metal-core band.  That band was Thirty Called Arson.  The blurb also says it’s hard to believe that he was in such a band, but I can hear the gravel in his voice, as sweet as it may seem.

Moreland falls into that Steve Earle kind of alternative country that I begrudgingly like.  I especially liked the first song.

Moreland and his musical partner John Calvin Abney kick off the Tiny Desk Concert with “Sallisaw Blue,” a song originally recorded in a bar in Moreland’s hometown of Tulsa.

“Down for the count, along for the ride
Sipping cold medicine, ruining our lives
Slumming I-40 with American songs
They can bury our bodies in American wrongs”

This is one of those funny situations where the main guy’s sidekick is the far more musically talented fellow.  John Calvin Abney plays a wild harmonica and some cool solos as well as adding all kinds of grace notes to the song.  Of course, it is Moreland’s voice that is the centerpiece.  And really, I love the chorus of this song.  I love the chord progression and how unexpected it is coming from those verses.

“Old Wounds,” is a slower song.  It’s got the disturbing lyric, “if we don’t bleed, it don’t feel like a song.”

It’s a style of storytelling and image-painting that John Moreland has been making with his guitar for at least the past ten years, over seven albums. His songs are filled with characters and tales of broken love and broken people.

“Cherokee” continues with those broken people: “I guess I’ve got a taste for poison / I’ve given up on ever being well. / I keep mining the horizon / digging for lies I’ve yet to tell.”  The melody is pretty and the accompanying guitar is quite lovely.

Moreland would be a treat if he opened for someone I wanted to see.  I would enjoy a 30 minute set from him.

Especially if he plays a Thirty Called Arson song

[READ: April 12, 2016]: “Vast Hell”

This was a short story (just a couple of pages) but it was packed with so much.  And I loved how by the time it was over I had more questions than answers.  I also loved the very strange way it was constructed.

With such a great opening sentence

Often when the grocery store is empty and all you can hear is the buzzing of flies, I think of that young man whose name we never knew and whom no one in town ever mentioned again.

(more…)

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Jospeh Nazel–The Iceman #2: The Golden Shaft (1974)

Posted in #RESIST, Africa, Death, Gambling, Holloway House Publishing Co, Joseph Nazel, Murder, Naia Izumi, Racism, Sex, Sexism, Tiny Desk Contest, Violence on April 26, 2018| 2 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: NAIA IZUMI-“Soft Spoken” (TINY DESK CONTEST WINNER 2018). 

I didn’t pay much attention to the Tiny Desk Contest this year (even though there were lots of opportunities to watch various front runner videos).  But this year’s winner was just announced.

Naia Izumi is a 34-year-old musician from Georgia who regularly busks on the streets of Los Angeles, where he now lives.  And now he has gotten some national exposure.

Naia starts the song with a simple percussion loop and then he sets out on some amazing finger tapping jazzy guitar playing.  It’s impressive and pretty at the same time.  And then he starts singing on top of it!

The bridge or chorus (I haven’t figure doubt what’s what yet) is strummed with some cool fluid soloing and then it’s back to the tapping–such a great melody.  There’s a short but pretty solo in the middle and then a quiet section before he resumes the drum loop again.

He starts singing some great falsetto notes (a good vocal range too, this guy) and then the song returns to the fingertapping before it abruptly ends.

I have no idea how it compares to anything else, but it’s pretty darn good.

Watch it here.

[READ: January 15, 2018] The Iceman #2

A whole bunch of books from Holloway House Publishing Co. came across my desk recently.  Interestingly, in 2008

Kensington Publishing has acquired most of the publishing assets of Holloway House Publishing in Los Angeles, the original publisher of such classic black crime writers as Donald Goines, adding an historic trove of gritty African American popular literature to its publishing program. The acquisition includes about 400 backlist titles which will become part of a new imprint at Kensington called Holloway House Classics. Holloway House also publishes a range of popular fiction and nonfiction titles including biographies of famous African Americans.

So this book and many other are likely to be reissued.

But this particular book (and the ones that came with it) were originals gifted to the library from someone.  There were quite a few books written by Joseph Nazel and I decided I’d read this one because it looked awesome.  And it was.

The premise of this series is:

Henry Highland West – he rose up out of the streets of Harlem to become one of the richest, most powerful Blacks in the world, earning the nickname Iceman due to his cold, calculating will to survive. He owns The Oasis, a multi-million dollar pleasure palace glistening in the desert of Las Vegas. And his success is a thorn in the side of those who envy the phenomenal success of the Black man! He’s already fought one battle. One vicious, backstabbing betrayal that left the desert stained with Mafia blood. And now he’s challenged again as modern-day carpetbaggers, hungry for the glitter of gold and the merciless exploitation of slave labor in Africa, waste an old friend in hopes of getting the very land that The Oasis is built on! He’s not alone in the fight. Besides his old street friends he’s got his own private army of voluptuous women trained in the martial arts. And he’s going to need them all, as his survival is threatened by the gold greed of men out to take what he’s so desperately earned! It’s high-stakes action on chopped Harleys and dune buggies as Iceman pulls all the stops just to keep the honkies from giving him the shaft!

And it was just as good as that description sounds. (more…)

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Yiyun Li–“A Flawless Silence” (New Yorker, April 23, 2018)

Posted in Arranged Marriage, Digging In the Crates Crew, Fears, Hillary Clinton, Marriage Trouble, New Yorker, O.C., Parenting, Racism, Short Story, Soul'D U Out, Tiny Desk Concert, Yiyun Li on April 23, 2018| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: O.C.-Tiny Desk Concert #732 (April 18, 2018).

This is where I get to complain again that The Breeders had three songs when O.C. [Omar “O.C.” Credle], whom I have never heard of (although he is apparently a classic) gets five songs in nearly 19 minutes.  Bogus.

As a member of Brooklyn rap collective Diggin’ In The Crates, Omar Credle, aka O.C., helped shape what was known as the golden age of 1990s rap. Marked by loops sourced from jazz recordings and lyrics rooted in one-upmanship, O.C’s two ’90s albums made him a rapper’s rapper, an underground star.

I’ve never heard of him but he is sure confident in his crew’s impact (which seems about right I guess.  It’s interesting that they were known for sampling, but they have a live band.  The band sounds fantastic by the way.

O.C. was joined at his Tiny Desk by Soul’D U Out, a jazz ensemble led by Grammy-winning trumpeter Maurice “Mobetta” Brown. The live instrumentation replicated the sample-heavy original recordings perfectly.

They mostly play old songs, but they start with a new one: “New Day,” from O.C.’s 2017 album which features young R&B singer Tay Bell on the hook.  Bell’s vocals are quite high-pitched.  I thought he was a woman at first (just hearing him, not seeing him).  But his voice adds a great fullness to the song.  That live trumpet is amazing, as is the quiet fuzzy guitar from Marcus Machado that runs throughout the song.

He says he wants to get into the old stuff.  He asks, “How many over 45?”  A woman replied, “Oh, that’s wrong.”  He laughs and says, “I’m only 23.”

The rest of the set was vintage cuts from O.C.’s heyday. “Day One,” a D.I.T.C. posse cut, featured emcee and producer Lord Finesse.

Robert “Lord Finesse” Hall gets a verse, which he delivers with a great style I actually like his more than O.C.).  I also love the vibes even if they are only on keys (by Chris Robs).,  He says that the song is about “20 years of history.”  Referring to other rappers, he says, “we birthed a lot of them, they might not say it, but I will. without D.I.T.C, there’d be no digging n the record crates. ”  I seriously doubt that statement, but whatever.

Then O.C. treated the crowd to a version of “Return of the Crooklyn Dodgers” (the one and only song by him, Jeru The Damaja and Chubb Rock).

I was more impressed by the trumpet than anything else.  The sounds he gets at the end are amazing.

He had to fit in his seminal banger and arguably most popular song, “Time’s Up,” from Word…Life.

He says “I hated this record when I made it but people convinced me to do it.”  Huh.  I like the cool bass from Parker McAllister that runs through the song.

The finale got personal when O.C. relayed the importance of the song “Born 2 Live.” “This is dedicated to a friend of mine who got killed down in Baltimore,” he said. “Every time I do this record, it’s somber. … But it’s a celebration at the same time. So I’m a just party it out and have a good time with it.” With a little help from Soul’D U Out, we did, too.

I’m only a little disappointed that the drummer (Camau “Klutch” Bernstine, whose hair is awesome) didn’t get to show off a bit more. He was really solid but there was nothing fancy.

I’m not bummed that he got 20 minutes, because I enjoyed his set, but let some other folks go over time too!

[READ: April 17, 2018] “A Flawless Silence”

Yiyun Li is perhaps the most consistently enjoyable New Yorker author for me.  I love the pacing of her stories and I love the way she tackles large and small personal issues sometimes at the same time.

This story is about a woman, Min.  She grew up in China but moved to America when her now husband proposed to her. As the story begins, she is with her twin daughters in the car.  They are fighting , of course, until one of them says that Kevin, a boy in their class is a Republican.

How do they know?  Because the teacher instructed them to write to either presidential candidate and while everyone class wrote to Hilary Clinton, he chose to write a supportive letter to the male candidate (Yiyun Li uses his name but I don’t feel compelled to). (more…)

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Keith Gessen–“How Did We Come to Know You?” (New Yorker, April 16, 2018)

Posted in Hospitals, Keith Gessen, New Yorker, Russia, Short Story, Summer, The Breeders, Tiny Desk Concert on April 16, 2018| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: THE BREEDERS-Tiny Desk Concert #731 (April 16, 2018).

Gah!  The Breeders do a Tiny Desk Concert and you only get 3 songs in 11 minutes?

I understand that three songs is accepted for the Tiny Desk, but come on!  Other bands have been eking out nearly 20 minutes, you’ve got Kim Deal and the original line up in front of recording devices having a grand old time and you don’t ask for a fourth song. Well, perhaps they just didn’t want to.

The Breeders play three songs. Two new ones and one old one (which comes not from one of the albums with this original line up, but from Title TK).

What’s most notable about this Tiny Desk is just how goofy they all (especially Kim who is laughing almost throughout the whole show), it seems.

“MetaGoth” seems to open in the middle of the song, like they just started recording while they were jamming.  Josephine Wiggs is on lead guitar, Kim Deal is on bass and Kelley Deal is making some fascinating noises on her guitar (this is especially true later in the song when she seem to be simply scratching up and down the strings with her blue gloves).  Kim and Josephine are duetting lead vocals with Josephine speaking and Kim delicately singing over her.  About midway through the song we cam see that drummer Jim MacPherson is hitting heir roadie in the head with his brushes and the roadie is going “chhhh” to be a cymbal.  The song is weird and cool and very Breeders.

As they set up for “All Nerve” Josephine switches to bass, Kim takes acoustic guitar. Kelley stays on electric guitar but takes over as the spoken vocal  underneath Kim’s quiet leads.   Kelley’s voice is echoed pretty heavily and almost creepily.  It’s got a very cool sound, but is quite short.

“Off You” is a nearly 6 minute delicate, surf rock-feeling song.  The song begins with “Kim Deal’s faux-exasperation at Josephine Wiggs for starting a wind-up toy just before a song.”  Kelley says “you guys can sing along if you know the words.”  Kim chides, “no they’ll be out of pitch, Shut up Kelley.”  They start the song, “1, 2, here we go. fuck, shit, 1, 2, here we go” (Kim apparently messed up but it’s unclear to me what she did.  For this song Kelley switches to bass (and is apparently reading the sheet music).  She has taken off the blue wrist guards she had on.  Kim is on electric guitar and is playing it in a fascinating way–holding it almost vertically and strumming gently on the neck–laughing as she sings the vocals.  Jim doesn;t have anything to do and Josephine isn’t doing much for the first minute or so.  She is sitting up front on a desk but when the time comes she plays bass as well–doing some lead bass lines.  The roadie who was the cymbal is now playing the more lead guitar parts while Kim strums.  There’s a lot going on for such a quiet song.

As the Concert ends, Kim apparently stands at attention just repeating thank you, thank you.  Maybe they didn’t want to do four songs after all.

[READ: April 12, 2018] “How Did We Come to Know You?”

This was a fascinating story that went more or less around the world to talk about family.

Arkady left the Soviet Union with his mother and brother when he was 4.  He now finds himself back in Moscow looking after his elderly grandmother, who is nearly ninety.  As the story opens, he has grown a little tired of “babysitting” her and has let her go out by herself–where she falls on the stairs and needs a hospital.  The ambulance takes her nearly an hour away to a national hospital.

When they left the Soviet Union, Arkady’s brother Dima was 16.  Dima remained Russian in outlook and when the Soviet Union collapsed, he returned to Moscow.  Dima lived with his grandmother and was involved in all kinds of businesses.  He called Arkady to look after their grandmother because he was going to London for (no doubt questionable) business and he didn’t want anything to happen to his grandmother (or her apartment) while he was gone.

As it turns out, Arkady was happy to get out of New York for a time as well. (more…)

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Rahul Bhattacharya–“An Accidental Place” (Harper’s, May 2011)

Posted in Excerpt, Harper's, Jorge Drexler, Rahul Bhattacharya, Tiny Desk Concert on April 14, 2018| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: JORGE DREXLER-Tiny Desk Concert #730 (April 13, 2018).

Jorege Drexler’s music is utterly arresting.  He has a kind of a storytelling delivery but with fascinating instrumental accents.

“Movimeinto” opens with so much percussion–the guitarist scratching at the guitar with drummer brushes, the drummer (Borja Barrueta – from Bilbao) and percussionist (Carles “Campi” Campon, Electronic beats, acoustic guitar and from Barcelona and Matías Cella from Argentina) tapping along–the drummer is even tapping a resonator guitar with his sticks.  The drummer also has a vast array of other sounds to make including some little metal hands drums and a small hollow guitar body (no strings).

Drexler sing/speaks hies beautiful poem, he is playing some very simple but arresting chords.  When the song starts in earnest, there is excellent use of electric guitar accents (by Javier Zarember from Argentina) and a fascinating acoustic bass (by Martín Leiton from Barcelona on either leona or guitarrón).  Midway through, he to an electric bass which changes the dynamic quite a bit. By the end of the song everyone is playing everything.

So who is Jorge Drexler?  He is

is a poet with a gift for song. The Uruguayan singer-songwriter, like the iconic Latin American lyricists of the past (Mercedes Sosa, Victor Jara and Silvio Rodriguez, to name just a few), has that rare ability to surround multi-layered prose with music that lends an even deeper resonance to the words.

Drexler has his share of fans here in the U.S., mostly Latin American expats and others whose grasp of the language allows them to appreciate the nuances of his storytelling. But, as if often the case with music performed in languages other than English, audiences here sometimes miss out on an emotional connection with artists they would otherwise celebrate if they only knew what they were singing.

So, we decided to do something about that with Jorge Drexler’s appearance at the Tiny Desk. With the cooperation of the artist, we translated Drexler’s thoughtful and playful ruminations on the human condition, and included them as subtitles.

That’s right, this is the first Tiny Desk Concert with subtitles!

Those clever lyrics wouldn’t hit as hard if not for Drexler’s backing band of magicians. The mix of guitarists and percussionists conjured a stunning cloud of sound that allowed Drexler to take flight, like the existential dreamer that he is.

The first song has this cool lyric:

we are a species in transit we don’t have belongings we have baggage
and
what I dream of is more intimate than what I touch / I’m not from here, but neither are you

For “Silencio” Jorge switches to  electric guitar.  He says, “I must warn you that it contains actual seconds of silence in it.”  As he is saying this a phone rings. “That shouldn’t happen.”  “Don’t be afraid of silence.”  The song opens with a very cool seven rhythm that includes some silence.  And the pauses before he says “Silencio” are long…sometimes six seconds–far longer than most songs allow.   detente!    the drummer is using what looks like fluffy paint brushes on a piece of cardboard to really muffle the sound.  During the final silence he does bird calls awhile and the guitar then winds up playing a really loud solo which is a great counterpoint to the music so far.

There’s a beautiful sentiment:

I can’t find anything more valuable to give you / nothing more elegant than an instant…..of silence

“Asilo” means asylum but this song is not about refugees, it is about seeking one night outside the problems of reality.  He asks, “Can you sing in Spanish?” and they play  a slow bluesy number.

“Telefonia” beautiful chords in a song about means of communication.   It has a kind of smooth rock feel, but with a nifty Latin twist especially when the backing singers all sing along in Spanish.

I found this lyric surprising probably because I associate this kind of music with older songs.  Even though it makes perfect sense as a modern song

Long live the phone system in all its variations / I thought you might be ghosting on me until I saw your name on the caller id.

I really enjoyed this set a lot.

[READ: January 30, 2018] “An Accidental Place”

This is an excerpt from The Sly Company of People Who Care.

The narrator has moved to Guyana and had to make fiends.  The first one was Mr. Bhombal who was, like the narrator, an Indian national.  He wore polyester trousers and his watch was palmside up.  He had the appearance that one was always on the verge of making a huge mistake

But this is an excerpt and the bulk of the excerpt does not have to do with Mr Bhombal (funny as his introduction was). (more…)

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Julie Otsuka–“Whites” (Harper’s, August 2011)

Posted in Culture Shock, Death, Excerpt, Harper's, Humiliation, Japan, Julie Otsuka, Racism, Tiny Desk Concert, Tyler Childers on April 13, 2018| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: TYLER CHILDERS-Tiny Desk Concert #729 (April 11, 2018).

I didn’t expect to like this set–I’ve really had it with country music encroaching on my radio station.  So when Childers was described as having “a coarse and soulful Kentucky drawl,” I wasn’t interested.

Especially when the songs were “about hard lives and hard love with direct heart.”

But he surprised me because it’s the coarseness that comes to the fore more than the drawl.  At least on the first song “Nose on the Grindstone” a song about a miner and the consequences of addiction.  I like his delivery and the intensity of the song.

The second song “22nd Winter” is a little less aggressive and his drawl does comes out, but he keeps it on the side of folk, in fact I would say more like English ballads than American folk.  He describes:

“This is a song about the first time I got snowed in with my in-laws,” he says, expecting a laugh, and giving it a beat. “It’s not a blues song, it’s a love song”)  “I’m pretty partial to my in-laws.  If you see my in-laws tell ’em I was talking good about then.

The final song is about the love of his life, “Lady May.”  It also has the feel of an old English ballad with the interesting chords and melody that opens the song.  I won’t be a huge fan or anything but I’d take him over many of the alt-country artists that I hear these days.

[READ: February 26, 2018] “Whites”

This is an excerpt from The Buddha in the Attic.

This excerpt is written entirely in the second person plural and it is about Japanese women coming to America–the first wave of migrant workers

It tells all of their stories in a sort of continuous forward motion.

The women settled at the edges of “their” towns. Unless “they” wouldn’t let them.  They moved from labor camp to labor camp.  They learned the word for water or they died from heatstroke.

In the beginning they wondered about the white men–why did they mount their horses from the left, why were the always shouting, why did they drink cows milk?

We were told to stay away from them to say yes sir no sir or nothing at all.

Some worked quickly, to impress, and they were admired for their tiny fingers and stature.

Even if their husbands were layabouts

Sometimes the bosses would proposition them with money or threats

Other times they shot holes at their shacks.

Some went to the suburbs and worked as maids, “we sang their children to sleep ever night in a language not their own.  Nemure. Nemure.”

We were taught how to light a stove, use a faucet, light a cigarette.

Some were inept and easily dismissed. Some made stupid errors and may have been fired or not

Some were seduced by the husbands.

Some went to J-Town which was more like Japan than Japan.

We promised ourselves we would leave and go to some other place.  Argentina or Mexico.  But eventually we’d go back home.

But for now we stayed.  What would they do without us?

This was an interesting excerpt–a realistic look at an overlooked subject.

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Max–Vapor (2014)

Posted in Carol Gnojewski, Cyclops, Death, Dinosaur Jr., Foreign Books, Graphic Novel, Herbert E. Crowley, Lara Bello, Max, Tiny Desk Concert, Translation on April 12, 2018| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: LARA BELLO-Tiny Desk Concert #728 (April 10, 2018).

I was quite taken with the instrumentation on this Tiny Desk Concert.  Although Lara Bello sings in Spanish and the main instrument is flamenco guitar, the addition of the clarinet (Jay Rattman), was a real treat.  It was a sweet surprise in the beginning of the first song “Nana de Chocolate y Leche” and then it was like the addition of a new culture in the main body of the song when it had a more klezmer sound.

I love the percussion that Arturo Stable is playing.  In addition to the box drum, he’s got a wooden bowl with clattering stuff in it that he is manipulating with his foot.

I’m glad to note that the instrumentation was a deliberate choice and an eccentric one:

Lara Bello occupies the space between genres where magic happens. Born in Spain, she was raised with not only Spanish traditions like flamenco and canto but also pop music and jazz. The instrumentation she assembled for her Tiny Desk reflects that elastic approach to genre: acoustic classical guitar, clarinet, violin and a percussionist who didn’t keep time so much as color the proceedings.

None of this should detract from the amazing work of Eric Kurimski on guitar. It’s only about midway through the first song that you realize that all of the music that’s not clarinet or violin is coming from him.

Bello says that “Nana de Chocolate y Leche” is a lullaby for her friend who had twin babies one born with skin more the color of chocolate and one with skin more the color of milk. The na na na section was a lot of fun and felt like it could be any language especially as that section seems to drift every so slightly from flamenco.

“Suave” (soft) is about a butterfly that wants to reach the moon.  It opens with a beautiful violin (Janet Sora Chung) melody and a delicate clarinet addition.  The middle section of just guitar and violin is gorgeous.  I love hearing her sing the word “suave” at the end of the song.

“Sola” means “on my own” and is dedicated to everyone who has fallen deep and had to learn again how to fly again and once they did it, they flew higher.  It’s a pretty song with an extended clarinet solo.

After just three albums, Bello has become a noteworthy presence in the community of Spanish musicians who deftly mix jazz, classical and other traditions from Spain. That world can seem like a secret society to those who don’t understand Spanish, but you’ll see during Bello’s performances that the lyrics double as another flight of exploration as they float like wisps of smoke through the sonic spaces carved out by her collaborators.

[READ: January 2, 2018] Vapor

Max is an illustrator from Spain (his full name is Max Bardin).

I really enjoy Max’s works.  Although not too many have been translated into English (this was translated by Carol Gnojewski), his visuals are pretty striking and “simple” and are easy to enjoy even if you can’t read the words (usually of dialog).

Max’s stories and pictures are usually pretty surreal.  I enjoy his pictures as much as the stories, although the stories are often quite funny and enjoyable even if they don’t always make perfect sense.  The fact thar the epigram is from Dinosaur Jr is pretty awesome: “I feel the pain of everyone / and then I feel nothing”

The main character of this story is a man with a crazily long, boomerang-shaped nose. He is lying in a desert saying he feels like he is floating.  Up walks a cat with a similarly large nose.  The cat says the man is just hungry.  The man says he is not.  The cat asks if he’s one of those self-righteous people.  The man says no, he is just looking for meaning.  The cat asks if he means God.  “No , God is only a contaminated and infectious idea.  I don’t pursue ideas, I seek experiences.”

Then he goes on to talk about Absolute and Transparent things, vacancy, silence, paradoxes. (more…)

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Protect Yourself: Venereal Disease Posters of World War II (2014)

Posted in #ITMFA, #RESIST, Arthur Szyk, Ben Sahn, David Stone, Glen Grohe, Jim Heimann, John Atherton, Marriage (Happy), Martin Blum, Military, Rhye, Ryan Mungia, Sex, Stan Lee, Tiny Desk Concert, War, World War I, World War II, WPA on April 11, 2018| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: RHYE-Tiny Desk Concert #727 (April 9, 2018).

Rhye is one of those bands that the guys on All Songs Considered just love.  But I find that his songs are completely insubstantial from his delicate falsetto to the restrained music.  It just puts me to sleep.

As such:

It seemed only fitting that when Rhye performed the band’s Tiny Desk Concert that it be at night, illuminated by flickering light. The music Mike Milosh sings and writes conjures the evening and a swaying, romantic vibe.

It was five years ago nearly to the day that we filmed Rhye by candlelight in New York City as the band toured for its enigmatic album Woman. Mike Milosh requested that Rhye’s members be filmed “only in silhouette, with the lights dimmed low” at Le Poisson Rouge show.

This time around the hundred or so flickering lights set the tone for the sextet of strings, keyboard, guitar, bass and drums to perform music from 2018’s Blood. The sound is warm and velvety, all the instruments gently pulsing, as Mike Milosh softly sings with that high-pitched yearn.

Tiny Desk Concerts are often awkward by nature — bands playing in the middle of an office in the daytime for musicians used to playing in the evening, with stage lighting. But there was a special transformation that took place at this Tiny Desk the moment the music kicked in. I’m a sucker for a vibe in music — that feeling when a sound completely shifts the mood of a room. This vibe was more like a house show than an office, which put me in a pensive, pleasant place. Sit back and enjoy.

“Please” is just so soft that it seems to float away.  The only cool parts are the guitar and bass lines.

“Taste” I like the instrumentation of this song, especially the violin and bowed upright cello.  And when the guitar solo comes out its like the loudest thing you’ve ever heard (in comparison). But when you think the song is over it’s still got about 5 more minutes of blandness to go.

“Song For You” is seven minutes of slow moodiness.  I like the trombone solo.  And the end is very pretty.   In fact, most of the songs are pretty if they were either shorter or if those songs were actually just the ending of a song.  Otherwise it’s all kind of samey.

[READ: January 5, 2018] Protect Yourself

This short book looks at the brief history of venereal disease posters that were created during WWII.  It was edited by Ryan Mungia with an essay by Jim Heimann.

The essay has the great title “VD posters: propaganda to the penis” is short.  Mostly this is just a collection of posters.

The premise is that commanders have had to fight venereal disease and the enemy simultaneously.  During WWI, 18,000 American military personnel were incapacitated with sexually transmitted diseases each day!  By WWII it was reduced to about 600 per day.

Protection certainly helped and graphic posters were there to spread the word. (more…)

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Boris Starling–Haynes Explains Americans: Owners’ Workshop Manual (2017)

Posted in Baseball, Basketball, Boris Starling, Dan Auerbach, Food, Football, Funny (ha ha), John Prine, Language, Manuals, South, Sports, The Arcs, The Black Keys, Tiny Desk Concert, Unfunny on April 10, 2018| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: DAN AUERBACH-Tiny Desk Concert #726 (April 4, 2018).

Everybody loves Dan Auerbach, but I’m just lukewarm on him.  I could never get into The Black Keys and the Arcs were okay.  I will say that I absolutely love the final song they play here today and didn’t realize it was him.  But I think I dislike the style of music he makes not the quality of the songs.

Dan brings his Easy Eye Sound Revue to the Tiny Desk. It’s an abundance of gifted musicians who have all played with a long, long list of legends, including Elvis, Don Williams and John Prine. …  The small band for this stripped-down version of the “Revue” is fleshed with Dante Schwebel on guitar and Russ Pahl’s resonator guitar sounds.

Midway through the four-song set (that includes tunes from his 2017 album Waiting on a Song), Dan introduces a powerhouse: the seasoned but relatively unknown blues-and-soul singer Robert Finley. The husky voiced gentleman, with a giant smile and magical charisma, is heart-winning and heart-warming. It’s remarkable that this legally blind singer is only now getting the attention he deserves….  Robert Finley and Dan Auerbach released [an album] at the end of 2017 called Goin’ Platinum.

In the recent Tiny Desk Concert from fellow Nashville musician John Prine, [he told a tale] of writing songs with Pat McLaughlin in the morning, going to town for some meatloaf and then recording the song by day’s end. Well that’s Pat on the mandolin here in this Tiny Desk set. His playing is both astonishing and low-key.

The Review plays four songs

“Waiting On a Song” is a folk song with a country feel and a slide guitar solo on that resonator guitar.

“Never In My Wildest Dreams” feels like an old cowboy song complete with what is almost cowboy yodelling from Schwebel.

“Get It While You Can” features Robert Finley on vocals.  It is the traditional song and Finley does a great job, singing with gusto and making clear some lyrics that I never heard before.  His voice is pretty great too.

“Shine On Me”  This song is irresistible even if it sounds exactly like a Travelling Wilbury song.

It’s just a matter of time before he hits on a genre that I really like, I’m sure.

[READ: January 5, 2018] Haynes Explains Americans

This book came across my desk and it looked pretty funny.

There was no author name on the cover, but inside it mentions that it is written by Boris Starling.  I’d never heard of him, but I looked him up and found that he has written seven crime novels and that his first, Messiah, was notable for its fast pace and high levels of gore.  He has written a bunch of other stuff too, including several (at least 12) of the popular ‘Haynes Explains’ series of tongue-in-cheek mini-manuals.

So this is written as a manual (based on a stripdown and rebuild).

It is written very much like a car manual: “the aim of this manual is to help you get the best value from the American.”  It includes lots of pictures of car parts with labels for other things.  It’s a good mockery of the manuals .

Normally I enjoy a good mockery of Americanisms.  We are ripe for parody.  But this book feels just too easy. (more…)

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Camille Bordas–“The State of Nature” (New Yorker, April 9, 2018)

Posted in Advice, Camille Bordas, Cats, Fears, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Futility, New Yorker, Nilüfer Yanya, Short Story, Thieves, Threats, Tiny Desk Concert on April 9, 2018| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: NILÜFER YANYA-“Baby Luv” NPR’S SOUTH X LULLABY (April 6, 2018). 

Sometimes I wonder if I should automatically know a featured artist. So it’s comforting when you find out that an artist is “relatively new” like Nilüfer Yanya.

For our final lullaby recording during South by Southwest 2018, we meet the London-based singer Nilüfer Yanya for her performance in the memory-filled world of Uncommon Objects. It’s a shop in Austin, Texas dedicated to sentimental curiosities of a world gone by. With that in mind, the relatively new musician with a bright future tackles a tune about something old and familiar: fond memories overwhelmed by the pain of love gone wrong.

“Baby Luv” can be found on Nilüfer Yanya’s 2018 release Do You Like Pain?. The EP’s title is a line she repeats multiple times on “Baby Luv,” while her choppy guitar punctuates a weary, clock-like rhythm. That ticking beat is then amplified by the saxophone of her bandmate, Jazzi Bobbi while a camera pans a literary world of books that all seem blood-red. Objects once shiny and proud are worn and somewhat torn, with a future as uncertain as the love in this song.

The song is a simple up and down melody with her startlingly staccato singing style–in which words are somewhat audible but not always clear.  Like the strange, repeated chant of gain again again.

I love that Jazzi Bobbi is visible, but how on first viewing, you gloss over her as she sort of blends in with the curios.  It’s when her sax comes in that you realize she’s there.  In fact it’s her sax that is the most compelling part of this song.  It’s the strangely amorphous notes that seems to burst from nowhere that are more compelling that the repeated guitar.

[READ: April 5, 2018] “The State of Nature”

I enjoyed Bordas’ previous story quite a lot.  I loved how it was structured and the surprising twists it had.

This one was also enjoyable but for different reasons.  It opens with the narrator admitting to us that she had slept through a burglary.  A cop asked if she was unemployed since she was napping on Thursday afternoon.

She tells them that she is an ophthalmologist  with a varied schedule who can sleep through just about anything.

A varied assortment of things were stolen–a rug, some jewelry and an optometrist case.  It was quite old and has sentimental value (she told the cops).  An average person wouldn’t have thought much of it but it could have fetched about $1,200.

When she returned to her apartment her cat, Catapult, seemed to be vocally distressed.  She believes the cat is sad because her favorite napping place is now gone: “You could have summoned some of that bitchiness earlier, when they came to steal your bed.” (more…)

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