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Archive for the ‘NonComm’ Category

Rick Moody–“Forecast from the Retail Desk” (New Yorker, June 12, 2000)

Posted in Cancer as plot device, Cars, Citizen Cope, Huh?, New Yorker, NonComm, Rick Moody, Short Story, The Future, Violence on May 30, 2019| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: CITIZEN COPE-NonCOMM (May 15, 2019).

I was marveling at the set lengths that various artists get at NonComm.  Most are pretty short (around 20 minutes).  So I was pretty surprised to see that Citizen Cope got 40. I thought Citizen Cope was a fairly new artist (although XPN talks about him a lot).

I was surprised to see that

Singer-songwriter Citizen Cope, otherwise known as Clarence Greenwood, has been around for close to two decades [and his fans were] ready to embrace his colorful blend of blues, folk, and rock.

I don’t especially like Citizen Cope’s music.  It’s okay and much better in small doses.  But I am especially amused at the write up of this concert because I feel like the person there was listening to a very different show than I was.  He opened

with the driving, upbeat “Let The Drummer Kick.” A fan favorite, the tune had everyone jumping.

I kind of like the song, although I would never describe it as upbeat.  His delivery is extremely drawly with him mostly him slowly rhyming words that end with “tion”: Equation / Humiliation / Reincarnation / Situation and a chorus of him repeating the title.  It’s kind of interesting but hard to believe he built a five-minute song out of that.

From there, he transitioned into “The River,” a new cut off of Heroin and Helicopters, his first release in six years. The song’s somber lyrics drifted on as the band played with grace.

This is a very funny description.  The lyrics do seem to drift on (as most of his lyrics so).  It’s hard to say the band plays with grace.  They play fine though.

“Justice” is a song that gets a lot of airplay on XPN.  It’s in the same style as his other songs–slow and kind of downbeat.  Although the chorus is pretty catchy.  I also like the psychedelic musical interludes.

“One Lovely Day” is a quieter song that begins with just him on guitar but when the band joins in, it sounds like the others.

Cope could not go without playing cuts from his 2004 record The Clarence Greenwood Recordings, of which he features “Son’s Gonna Rise” and “Sideways.” Both tracks transitioned perfectly from one another, matching the energy and vibe the crowd was looking for.

“Bullet & a Tart” picks up the pace somewhat although it’s not a very dramatic change.

As Cope finished, he shared an anecdote that inspired the title for his album — Carlos Santana warning Greenwood to stay away from the “two h’s,” heroin and helicopters, two things that historically and tragically claim the lives of musicians. The message resonated so strongly with Cope that he went on to name it his album, which was just released on his label Rainwater Recordings.

As Cope’s set drew to a close, he ended with another single off of his record, titled “Caribbean Skies.” This song’s lively beat and catchy hook moved the crowd.

“Caribbean Skies” is certainly catchy.  But again, not in any way lively.

This set is kind of monotonous, and I won’t be a Citizen Cope fan anytime soon, but clearly he doesn’t need me either.

[READ: May 20, 2019] “Forecast from the Retail Desk”

I typically enjoy Rick Moody stories, but I found this one really puzzling and hard to get into.

It begins with the (probably true) statement: “Nobody likes a guy who can foretell the future.”  The narrator, Everett Bennett works at a retail desk for some kind of investment firm.  He says he is not well liked at work and his job is surely the first to be made redundant.

His first demonstration of his prophetic skills came in school, in 1977.  He was in a lab with Bobby Erlich.  Erlich didn’t like him (nobody really did).  Bobby wouldn’t talk to him or collaborate in any way, so the narrator had to tel him straight up: “You’re going to be maimed in a horrible motorcycle accident. It’s really going to hurt too. Just remember we had this chat.”

Bobby replied, “You know what Bennett, I always thought you were a jerk. And I was right.”

Bobby doesn’t get into a motorcycle accident although he is in a car accident several years later.  He is making out with a policeman in the man’s car when it is hit by another car.  Everett had to wonder if he somehow caused the accident with his prediction. (more…)

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Alice McDermott–“Enough” (New Yorker, April 10, 2000)

Posted in Abenaki Nation, Alice McDermott, Babies, Folklife Magazine, I'm With Her, Ice Cream, Lula Wiles, Native Americans, New Yorker, NonComm, Parenting, Sex, Short Story on May 29, 2019| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: LULA WILES-NonCOMM (May 16, 2019).

I thought Lula Wiles was a person, but they are a trio.

Contemporary roots trio Lula Wiles shined brilliantly on Thursday night. The young band, consisting of Eleanor Buckland, Isa Burke and Mali Obomsawin — joined by Eli Cohen on drums — [played] a passionate mix of bluegrass, country rock and folk music.

All four members of the group grew up in Maine, and they met while taking lessons at Maine Fiddle Camp, “which I know is, like, disgustingly adorable,” Buckland remarked during the show.  All three singers are also songwriters and instrumentalists, and they displayed impressive group chemistry in several different instrumentations throughout their performance. The trio has always sounded stellar in a traditional bluegrass format — like fiddle, guitar and upright bass — but they added new dimensions to their set when they chose to break out of that format and explore other sounds.

They opened with a traditional country-sounding song, “Hometown”

Lula Wiles’ opener, the poignant “Hometown,” found Burke playing an electric guitar with plenty of added fuzz, which propelled the song forward on top of Cohen’s steady backbeat. Buckland sang three verses from the perspective of an adult returning to her beloved hometown to find her friends and family struggling to make ends meet; the song’s lens gradually moved from personal to historical. “Flip a coin and call it pride or shame / Red and white and the working blues / Welfare, warfare, laying the blame / No matter who wins, someone’s gonna lose,” she proclaimed in her third verse.

“Nashville Man” is even more country, but a more stompin’ country with lots of fiddle from Burke and old-fashioned harmonies.

The album, What Will We Do, which follows their self-titled 2016 debut, fits within the stylistic paradigms for American roots music, but the songwriters also bring personal specificity and a modern edge — they pose questions about identity, history, and the principles of justice. In a statement on Lula Wiles’ website, Obomsawin explains, “We wanted to make an album that reflected, in a current way, what we are all staying up late thinking about and talking about over drinks at the dinner table […] What is everyone worried about, confiding in their friends about, losing sleep about?”

The first two songs seemed kind of fun (musically at least), but things get more serious when Burke introduced “Shaking as It Turns,”

She explained that she had written the song following the violent neo-Nazi rallies that took place in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017.

She says it’s about how she felt that summer and how I feel about what it’s like to be a person in America today.  Do you all have feeling about that.  We only have a 20-minute set or we’d expound on that longer–you’ll have to pay attention to the lyrics.

“Is this land yours? Is this land mine?” Burke solemnly wondered between plucks on her banjo. “Baby, do you know just who your enemies are?”

Musically, this was the most interesting with its percussion heavy banjo and loping beat.

Up next is the most powerful and affecting song of the night, “Good Old American Values.”

It is a country waltz on which Obomsawin sang and played a touching upright bass solo. Obomsawin, who is Native American and belongs to the Abenaki Nation, wrote the song “about growing up in a country that was built on the genocide of your people,” she explained.  She was inspired to write the song when protests against the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline occurred on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota in 2016.

She doesn’t hold back on the lyrics, and the slow melody allows the words to stand clearly.

“Indians and cowboys and saloons / It’s all history by now, and we hold the pen anyhow / drawing good old American cartoons.” Then, after a verse about “American tycoons kicking their feet up in Cancún,” the chord changes took a dark turn, leading into a steely fiddle solo by Burke. “On those good old American values / There’s a fortune to be made,” Obomsawin concluded at the end of the song.

Obomsawin also told the crowd that she has been working on an essay for the Smithsonian Center’s Folklife Magazine about her experiences growing up as a Native person in Maine — I spoke with her for a few minutes after the show about her writing. Obomsawin explained that Native people are the “most invisible” of any ethnic group in the United States, and that she wanted to write about the many ways in which she sees Native peoples’ history and culture being made invisible in the twenty-first century.

When she was growing up, she and her family were the only Native people in their community, which was predominantly white. Although she did not remember experiencing explicit discrimination, she remembered times when she felt alienated by other people in some ways that were “fetishizing” and other ways that were “just ignorant.” As she became involved in the folk music community as a young person, she realized that the culture of American folk music bears a legacy of using Native tropes in songs and performances — especially Native clothing and images of Native people. These forms of cultural appropriation by white musicians are sometimes so ubiquitous, she noted, that many people don’t even notice they are happening. Obomsawin concluded by saying that when Smithsonian Folklife publishes her piece later this year, she hopes people will “read it with an open mind,” because sometimes Native peoples’ critiques of American culture are “so fundamental,” and they lead so deep down to the core of our country’s history, that they challenge our deepest notions of American identity.

The final song of the night is “Love Gone Wrong” the first track on the new record.  It’s a more rocking song with a nice guitar sound a great harmonies that reminds me of I’m With Her.  This song is a

vulnerable reconciliation about an imperfect romance. “What you got left when the flicker dies out? / Tell me what we’re gonna do now?” Burke and Buckland asked together. After the second chorus, the song suddenly turned slow and brooding as Cohen’s drums began to thunder. “There’s never gonna be a right time,” all three singers cried out together, their close three-part harmonies at their boldest and brightest.

That shift in tempo makes the song so much more dramatic.  It is a great set-ender.

[READ: May 22, 2019] “Enough”

This is a short story of a woman’s life.

The story begins with her as a young girl, the youngest of six, whose job it was to clean the plates after Sunday meals.  Each Sunday was a feast topped off by dessert. Every fourth Sunday was ice cream, the day she loved best.

She would bring in two dishes at a time (it was the good china) and proceed to lick the bowls clean from rim to rim.  She also delighted in the ice cream in her own bowl, but was always told not to be so unladlylike in her enjoyment.

When she got older, she developed “the problem with the couch.”  The problem was that she kept getting caught with a boy on it.  First when she was fourteen, both children blushing brightly. (more…)

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Nick Hornby–“Pain in My Heart” (New Yorker, August 26 & September 2, 1996)

Posted in Al Green, Ali Awan, Essays, Funny (ha ha), James Brown, Music, New Yorker, Nick Hornby, NonComm, O.V. Wright, Otis Redding, Sam Cooke, WXPN 88.5 FM--Philadelphia, PA on May 28, 2019| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: ALI AWAN-NonCOMM (May 15, 2019).

Ali Awan is a Philly native and WXPN loves him.

Ali Awan‘s whole set was drenched in sound, and yet the crowd always seemed eager for even more.  The Philly artist and his six-person band opened his NONCOMM set with the bombastic “Be a Light.” The track, which Awan just released a surreal video for, highlights the band’s ability to make a lot of noise.

Like the rest of the set it features rocking guitars and a retro feel including backing “doo doos.”

Three guitars, one played by Awan himself, didn’t feel like enough for “Pick Me Up”, a bright cut off Awan’s new EP.

“Pick Me Up” is he ridiculously catchy track that WXPN has been playing so much.  The bouncy chorus is unforgettable.

The combined power of the rest of the ensemble added even more of the energy that the crowd craved. Everything Awan and co. did sounded like a lot, but purposefully so, making every ounce of noise feel valuable.

“Citadel Blues” has a bouncy repeated “beat beat beat beat” followed by a cool downward guitar riff.  His songs sound familiar–old school jangly distorted guitars with an updated retro soubnd.

The 26-year-old’s unique psych rock stylings enraptured everyone in attendance. There seemed to be as much jumping and dancing on stage as there was off stage, especially during the gripping “Citadel Blues” and “Beyond The Valley”.

Awan closed out the set with “Rubble and the Memories” which was so full of energy the “bah da das” could barely be contained in the song.

No doubt Ali Awan would be a fun performer to see live.

[READ: May 1, 2019] “Pain in My Heart”

While looking through back issues of the New Yorker, I discovered that Nick Hornby had written a number of essays for them.  Not as many as I imagined he would have, but at least a handful.

In this, his first piece for the New Yorker (as far as I can tell), Hornby combines his love of music with his humor at being disappointed by his heroes.

He starts by citing an old R&B lyric that he’d always liked:

I’d rather be blind, crippled, and crazy / Somewhere pushing up a daisy / Than to let you break my hear all over again.

But then an “over-analytical” friend asked why he had to be blind, crippled and dead.  Surely just being dead would get the job done. (more…)

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Ben Lerner–“Ross Perot And China” (New Yorker, May 27, 2019)

Posted in Ben Lerner, Boats, Cherry Glazerr, New Yorker, NonComm, Ross Perot, Sex, Short Story, World Cafe Live, WXPN 88.5 FM--Philadelphia, PA on May 27, 2019| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: CHERRY GLAZERR-NonCOMM (May 15, 2019).

A couple of years ago I had a pass to NonComm, but ultimately I decided not to go.  I had never been to World Cafe Live and, while it sounded like a fun time, it was just so many mid-week nights and lots of leaving early, that it sounded more exhausting than fun.

I have now been to World Cafe Live and I can imagine that the (less divaish) bands are hanging around talking to people (and radio personalities) which is probably pretty cool.

I loved the idea of these sorta personal concerts, too.  But I have since come to see that they are 20-45 minutes tops.  Hardly worth driving 90 minutes for.

But now that the sets are available to stream after the show, there’s no need to go.

The year I was going to go there were a bunch of artists I was excited to see.  This year there weren’t as many.

Although Cherry Glazerr is a band I’d like to check out.

Cherry Glazerr is a Los Angeles trio who formed in high school.  The blurb notes:

They’ve been known to keep a social and political message at the forefront of their songs, confronting the misogyny that’s too prevalent in their scene — and in our culture.   At one point, frontwoman Clementine Creevy turned her back to the microphone, leaned back limbo-style, jumped up and down — and didn’t miss a beat. That’s what frustrated feminist punk looks like in 2019 according to Cherry Glazerr.

They totally rock as well, cramming six songs into 20 minutes.

They open with feedback and drums that settles into “Ohio” –a distorted lumbering catchy song with Creevy’s vocals riding along the top.  I love the unusual riff that accompanies the song after the verses.  The solo is simple but very cool.

“Self-Explained” is slower with a cool vocal line in the verses.  It has a tempo that demands a big build up.  And the guitar solo fills that in really well.   “Wasted Nun” has some more great buzzing guitars and thumping drums over a simple but satisfying punk riff.

“Daddi” changes the dynamic of things with whispered creepy-sounding lyrics and a quiet guitar melody for the verses.  The big pounding chorus changes things up dramatically.

Those three songs come from their new album, while the final two come from their previous album, Apocalipstick.  “Apocalipstick” has a big powerful riff and turns out to be a rocking instrumental–it’s as good as the title of the song.

They end with “Told You I’d Be With The Boys,” a song with a cool riff and some nifty guitar licks as well.  I also like the vocal tricks that Creevy uses on this track.  And the way it ends is a total blast.

It’s a great set and makes me want to see them next time they’re playing more than 20 minutes!

[READ: May 27, 2019] “Ross Perot and China”

The title of this story was just so evocative.  I couldn’t imagine where Lerner would go with this.

And so as I started reading it, I had to wonder, is the main character Ross Perot?  Is that a young Ross Perot on a boat, drinking Southern Comfort in a man-made lake?  It sure could be.  Or maybe the young lady he’s with is Ross Perot’s daughter?

So that when the young lady slips off the boat unnoticed and he can’t find her, I wondered–where is this going?

Well, soon enough it is revealed that Ross Perot is not a character in the story, he is more of an abstract idea. (more…)

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Tom Drury–“Chemistry” (New Yorker, April 24 & May 1, 2000)

Posted in Carrie Brownstein, Ex Hex, Helium, Mary Timony, New Yorker, NonComm, Old Age, Romance, Short Story, Tom Drury, Wild Flag, World Cafe Live on May 26, 2019| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: EX HEX-NonCOMM (May 15, 2019).

I really liked Mary Timony’s band Helium.  I’ve followed her over the years and now she has this relatively new band called Ex Hex.

Punk rock veteran Timony is known for her work in 90’s bands Helium and Autoclave, plus supergroup Wild Flag, while her co-frontperson in Ex Hex, Betsy Wright, also plays in Bat Fangs. The trio is rounded out by drummer Laura Harris, also of The Aquarium, and although they played tonight as a four-piece, they retained their effortless sense of cool.

Ex Hex is the most commercial sounding music she’s made and I found their first album a little boring.  They were kind of straight ahead punk pop songs that might have been revolutionary in the 90s but are kind of staid now.

The newer songs, however, are more a little more complex and more interesting as a result.

“Don’t Wanna Lose” comes from their first album. It’s got reverbed guitars and a simple melody.  It sounds a bit like Sleater-Kinney, which isn’t too surprising since Timony was in Wild Flag with Carrie Brownstein before forming Ex Hex.

“Tough Enough” is slower and a bit more classic rock sounding.  In fact, all of the songs here feel more big riff classic rock than the simple punk of the first album.  “Rainbow Shiner” has a big metal riff.  It’s complicated and cool and makes you want to raise your fist in the air.

I don’t know if Timony is the only person doing guitar solos (it looks like Betsy Wright is also playing guitar). But “Good Times” opens with a lengthy guitar solo, which I assume is all Timony.

“Radiate” is a bouncy song with twin guitars and a quiet middle part.  They end the set with my favorite track, “Cosmic Cave.”  This one specializes in lots of reverb an echo with spacey flanging sounds at the end.

This set make me want to bust out rips again and see if I was missing something.  But also to get It’s Real where most of these songs come from, because I liked what I hear.

[READ: May 20, 2019] “Chemistry”

A policeman told a crowd he was Looking for a retired chemist.  His daughter had dropped the man off at the cinema but when the movie was over he was no where to be found.

The crowd was in the Road House which stood next to the cinema.

I enjoyed the way the characters were set up.  The cook, Keith Lyon, felt mystified at his life.  He was in his forties and spent all day filling plates and having empty plates return.

It was as if a joke had been played on his life, thought he could see the humor of it and it hadn’t made him bitter.

A customer in the restaurant suggested the man got bored and left the movie early, “I might do that.”

“What you might do is beside the point,” said the policeman. “As you’re not missing.”

No one was a suspect in the Road House, the policeman was looking for volunteers to comb the nearby forest where they think the man went. (more…)

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Anne Enright–“Taking Pictures” (New Yorker, March 27, 2000)

Posted in Abortion, Adia Victoria, Anne Enright, Billie Eilish, Drinking, Huh?, New Yorker, NonComm, Romance, Short Story, Weddings, World Cafe Live on May 25, 2019| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: ADIA VICTORIA-NonCOMM 2019 Free at Noon (May 15, 2019).

I saw Adia Victoria do a Tiny Desk Concert back in 2016.  I liked her and thought it would be interesting to hear her when she wasn’t holding back for a Tiny Desk.  And here she is rocking out.

Her music is a little hard to pin down, she describes it as blues, but there’s a lot more going on:

her songs were structured like mainstream R&B hits, but in her most memorable moments Victoria turned away from the traditional styles of blues and soul, and turned instead toward something more macabre–like the moody trip-pop of Billie Eilish.

This sound is the direction she went in on her new album.

The set began with “The Needle’s Eye” as a pulsing synth morphed into a danceable rhythm (electric and acoustic drums).  Victoria sang in a breathy voice.  After the chorus, two saxophones provided a noisy distorted solo.  She sang “I’ve been a fool, I’ve been afraid, I’ve been asleep, but now I’m awake.”

She introduced herself “My name is Adia Victoria. This is my band. We done come all the way up from Nashville to play my blues for you.” Then, after a beat, “Lucky you.”

Her introduction for “Different Kind of Love” was brief and mirthless. “It’s about getting dumped,” she shrugged, without even a moment of heartache over the one who dumped her.

This song continues in that dark vein with rumbling drums providing most of the “melody” along with more sax.

Up next was “Bring Her Back,” which she called “a song for my ancestors.” This song used an organ to change the tone.

Victoria played “Heathen” at the Tiny Desk on an acoustic guitar.  I thought it would be better louder.  And it was.  Especially knowing its origins:

As she introduced her final song, “Heathen,” Victoria mentioned some of the frustration she experienced as a young woman with dreams of becoming a professional performer. “My little voice would break and my knees would shake, but I had this song and I made no mistakes,” she rhymed. Victoria explained that she wrote the song “after I realized that there were two sets of rules — one for men, and one for women. When it came time to gettin’ your freak on, I was very naïve. So I wrote this song. It’s a nice little ‘screw you’ to the patriarchy. We play it tonight for every single woman in Alabama right now who’s got these men trying to make moves on their body. We say, ‘That’s bullshit.’” Victoria had aimed her criticism at Alabama’s state legislature, which recently passed a highly restrictive anti-abortion bill…. “This song is called ‘Heathen’ and it’s about giving no fucks,” she declared before counting it off.

The song was much darker and more raw than the Tiny Desk version. It also felt a lot more bluesy than her newer songs (with a lot of sax blowing around the simple chord pattern).

She finished with a gritty chorus of improvised scatting; each syllable landed somewhere between a laugh and a snarl. Afterward, she addressed the Philadelphia crowd resolutely once more and gave a single deep bow. “Thank you, goodnight.”

Adia Victoria is an intriguing performer for sure and I’m curious how her sound will expand in the future.

[READ: May 20, 2019] “Taking Pictures”

Two days ago I posted a story about someone stealing pictures.  Now here’s the title “Taking Pictures.”  They are not related in any other way.

This story is about a woman who has just gotten engaged.  And her relationship with Sarah at work–the bitch.

Sarah is

a washed-out sort of strawberry blonde with fine bones and small features.  She is fading to white.  She is constantly insulted by men.

Sarah at work also has a personality problem

Which is to say her problem is that she does not like other people’s personalities.

The narrator is surprised that Sarah is seeing someone.  Sarah says he won’t “do Saturdays.”  Maybe he’s a bisexual. (more…)

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John Updike–“Personal Archeology” (New Yorker, May 29, 2000)

Posted in History, John Updike, Kelsey Lu, New Yorker, NonComm, Old Age, Short Story on May 24, 2019| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: KLESEY LU-NonCOMM 2019 (May 15, 2019).

I had just listened to a few songs from Lu’s album Blood and now here she is at NonComm.

It’s hard to guess what the crowd was expecting when they saw Kelsey Lu‘s six-piece band waiting for her on stage. Or when they saw her, with flowing black, red, and orange hair, and ring laden gloves. Despite what they assumed she would sound like, she dazed everyone with her ethereal four song set this evening on the NPR stage.

According to the blurb, she started with a song that’s not on the player.

Lu started, just her and her keyboardist, with the title track of her debut album Blood, which was released in April via Columbia records. The song is a touching tribute to the love that permeates all. She delivered it with such conviction, as did her band, who gradually all joined in.

From “Blood” she swerved straight into the glitter of “Due West” and got the crowd moving along with her.  “Due West” starts quietly with strings but the song adds a  super catchy melody as it bridges into the chorus which brings an even catchier hook.  The recorded version is very poppy, but live, the pop elements have been stripped out somewhat.

Lu is most known for her work as a cellist.  Tonight however, Lu did not touch a cello once. The focus was on her mind bending and majestic voice. She mostly sang with her eyes closed, showing that regardless of the fact that she performs them every night, these songs still affect her as much as they do her audiences. The cello was not entirely absent, as one of her band members impressively played an electric one. Another demonstrated expertise of the violin, especially during the dramatic and sultry “Foreign Car.”

“Foreign Car” opens with wavering synth stabs and creepy strings.  It has a catchy fluttery chorus which I rather like.  I also really like the interesting electronic sounds that are added.

The last song of the set, the shimmering “Poor Fake,” Lu introduced as her ode to disco and dance.

She said “I don’t know if any of you grew up around the disco era.”  The crowd mutters.  She is the most animated of the night when she says, C’mon I know some of you did.  I didn’t, but I’m a big fan.  This was an opportunity to have an ode to disco.”

The somber strings that start the track then caught the crowd off guard. Once the beat kicked in, all doubts and confusion were whisked away.

The bass and drums are pure disco and her voice seems to reach back to Donna Summer.

As Lu’s voice did acrobatics, her hair put on a show of its own. She tossed it back and forth, making her floor-length orange braid whip ferociously, matching the melodrama of the song.

Who would he ever guessed she could hit such impressive high notes based on the quiet of the other songs.

Lu’s record is interesting, but it sounds like her live show is where it’s at.

[READ: May 20, 2019] “Personal Archeology”

It’s coincidental that the story I read for yesterday was about old photos and a person’s history.  This story is also about history, but it is the history of a place.

I really enjoyed this personal archaeology because I have had a similar experience finding old things on our property.

Fritz Martin was older now–his golfing buddies had died or were not playing as much.  So he had a lot of free time. He spent it looking for the traces that the previous owners of his house had left behind.

He imagined there were four eras of the house’s history. (more…)

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Muriel Spark–“A Hundred and Eleven Years Without a Chauffeur” (New Yorker, June 5, 2000)

Posted in Autobiographies, Biography, Devon Gilfillian, Funny (ha ha), History, Liars, Muriel Spark, New Yorker, NonComm, Photography, Short Story on May 23, 2019| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: DEVON GILFILLIAN-NonCOMM 2019 Free at Noon (May 15, 2019).

Devon Gilfillian has a fun name to say.  Beyond that I assumed he was an Irish singer-songwriter.  But in fact, he is Philadelphia-bred, and Nashville-based and he plays soul and hard rock.

WXPN has been mentioning him a lot and I see that he is just about to release his debut album.  He has a powerful voice and commands attention

Gilfillian never wasted a moment on stage, and he never shied away from showmanship either; by the time he reached the second chorus in the opener, “Unchained,” he was already belting in his strongest range. The singer’s voice shook the room, rich, full-bodied, and gorgeous.

I love the way this song seemed pretty big during the verse but took off during the chorus and took off even more in the second chorus.

“Get Out and Get It” sounds like it could have come from a 70s movie with the riffing guitars and keys.  I don’t know if the crowd clapped along to the “La Da Da di” (it’s hard to hear them) but I don’t know how they couldn’t.

The “Good Life” is all about learning to love people better.

During the R&B-inflected “The Good Life,” Gilfillian charmed the audience with sweet falsetto and plenty of smiles as he dreamed about life in a loving city. “Remember when the bank got sold, and everybody took their gold, and everybody helped each other?” he asked in the second verse.

The super fuzzed out guitar solo is pretty spectacular.

They followed it up with the ballad “Stranger,” which Gilfillian introduced with a story from the band’s time on the road: He and his beloved bandmates got into a terrible car accident in 2018 that involved a drunk driver speeding through the hills in Georgia. When the band survived and lived to travel on, Gilfillian wondered at how quickly a stranger could accidentally change the course of another person’s life. But the “stranger” the singer calls out to in the song’s chorus turns out not to be the stranger who caused the accident, but the stranger who let him live through it — his savior.

They end the show with two rocking songs.

“Come Here and Come Down” is rocking and soulful, with a great wah wah sound on the guitar.   There’s a roaring guitar solo, but it’s not quiet as roaring as the final track “Troublemaker,” their heaviest track of the afternoon.  With a simple but powerful riff that really screams for a slide guitar solo, although Gilfillian’s solo is pretty fantastic too.

[READ: May 20, 2019] “A Hundred and Eleven Years Without a Chauffeur”

This story had such a peculiar title that I couldn’t quite imagine where it would go.

It starts off discussing how our ancestors did not drool over us.  They thought of the future in only the most general terms.  Their memoirs were not the whole story.  Worse yet is if we only have a few photos.

The narrator of this story is looking for photos for a biography.  She finds her old supply of photos but she knows some are missing.  But who would steal old photos?  People might take books from a guest room but who would steal Victorian and Edwardian pictures with no artistic merit?

She remembered one of her cousin bending over a sewing machine.  Her dream was to one day own a Rolls Royce with a chauffeur.  It never happened. (more…)

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TC Boyle–“Peep Hall” (Esquire, September 2000)

Posted in Drinking, Esquire, Free at Noon, NonComm, Nudism, Pornography, Sexism, Short Story, T. Coraghessan Boyle, T.C. Boyle, Toilets, World Cafe Live, WXPN 88.5 FM--Philadelphia, PA on May 22, 2019| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: JEALOUS OF THE BIRDS-NonCOMM 2019 Free at Noon (May 15, 2019).

I heard the band name Jealous of the Birds and I instantly formed an opinion of what they sounded like.

And this recording couldn’t be much further from what I imagined.

I assumed they would be bird-like and they are not at all.  This set rocks, it switches genres, it covers a lot of grown, but nothing at all bird-like.

Many artists live by the philosophy of creating the music that they want to exist in the world, but few do it in such a striking way as Jealous of the Birds. Northern Irish songwriter Naomi Hamilton has been making music under the moniker for a few years now, but each song we hear from Jealous of the Birds feels like a fresh new discovery — and anyone who was hearing the band for the first time today undoubtedly felt like they were experiencing something special.

Folks who attended last year’s NonCOMM music meeting may remember hearing a glimpse of the arresting single “Plastic Skeletons.” The song, which is not quite like anything else and not immediately accessible, is congruous with Hamilton breaking out of her local music scene in Northern Ireland and carving out an indescribable genre of her own. Since then, Jealous of the Birds has gone on to release two new EPs, The Moths of What I Want Will Eat Me in My Sleep and Wisdom Teeth, which show the depth and range of Hamilton’s songwriting ability.

Driven by her love of language, Hamilton’s lyrics are intricate and poetic; musically, you can detect influences from Irish folk to psychedelic rock.

With her slicked back hair and laid-back demeanor, Hamilton makes it look easy, but her songs aren’t necessarily easy to listen to — hearing them once will only make you want to listen again and again to try to understand what the artist is getting at.

The first four songs are from their 2016 album Parma Violets.

Powder Junkie is a stomping, stop and start kind of song.  It’s bluesy but stops abruptly after just 2 and a half minutes.  It’s a great introduction to the band.  As is “Trouble in Bohemia,” a slower song with a folk feel. It showcases the softer side of the band, and is also quite short.

“Russian Doll” introduces a much more poppy sound to the band.  The chords are simple, but the highlight the clever lyrics

I took your compliments
I just struggled to believe
That I was worth loving
And you weren’t lying through your teeth
In truth, I’m a Russian doll
My egos shut inside
I painted them by hand
And I’ll never let them die

“Parma Violets” is slower and more acoustic-sounding.  It’s a ballad and a sad one a that:

Oh please
Don’t you swallow
Pills like parma violets
Again

I had to look up to discover that Parma Violets are a British violet-flavoured tablet confectionery manufactured by the Derbyshire company Swizzels Matlow.

The next two songs come from 2019’s Wisdom Teeth EP.  I like them both.  “Marrow” is a folk song, but “Blue Eyes” is a wonderfully weird rocking song.  It feels off-kilter with some unexpected lead guitar riffs at the end of each verse and some funky bass parts.

The final song, “Plastic Skeletons” comes from 2018’s The Moths of What I Want Will Eat Me in My Sleep.  It’s got a cool bass with some nifty guitar line to start the track.  The chorus is kind of staccato and lurching and quite a lot of fun.

These last two songs were my favorite of the set, and I’m glad to see they are the most recent songs. I like the direction they’re going.

[READ: May 15, 2019] “Peep Hall” 

I have read many many stories by Boyle and I like him quite a lot.  I like that he writes about so many different topics from so many different perspectives.  He is even unafraid to be sympathetic to people who don’t seem to deserve it.

It was somewhat unfortunate that I read this story and the previous one by him (written about 19 years apart) on the same day because they were both rather creepy and voyeuristic and sympathetic to people who necessarily don’t deserve it.

The narrator of this story, Hart Simpson, likes his privacy.  His phone is unlisted and the gate on his driveway locks behinds him.  When he sits on his porch, the neighbors can’t see him.  He works as a bartender at the local pub and is quite a visible person, but when it’s time off, he wants to be alone.  I mean, sure he hooks up once in a while, but otherwise he’s alone.

One afternoon, a woman came up his driveway.  She had been talking to his next-door neighbor (not his favorite person) in some kind of heated argument.  Then she came over to his porch. (more…)

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T.C Boyle–“What’s Love Got to Do With It?” (Esquire, March 2019)

Posted in Death, Esquire, Free at Noon, Guns, Júníus Meyvant, Murder, NonComm, Short Story, T. Coraghessan Boyle, T.C. Boyle, Trains, World Cafe Live, WXPN 88.5 FM--Philadelphia, PA on May 21, 2019| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: JÚNÍUS MEYVANT-NonCOMM 2019 Free at Noon (May 15, 2019).

Júníus Meyvant is the stage name of Icelandic singer Unnar Gísli Sigurmundsson.  His band is a soulful Iceland six-piece with outstanding musicianship.

The set started off strong with “High Alert.”  A cool bassline and organ propel the song forward with accents from trumpet and Sigurmundsson’s soulful voice.

The second song, “Holidays” is much slower as it starts with a wavering keyboard and groovy bassline.  It’s just as soulful though–possibly more so, with nice horn accompaniments.

“Across the Borders” showcased a psychedelic-jam side of Júníus Meyvant, as well as the pianist’s skills.  After some powerful trumpet, the song settles down into a slow groove.  Midway through, the drummer plays a cool little fill and the band launches into a fast keyboard-filled jamming romp.

“Love Child” is a sweet, smooth love song with gentle horns guiding the melody.

“Ain’t Gonna Let You Drown” had a rich, gospel sound to it, it’s his new single. He slowed down the tempo for their last song “Thoughts of My Religion,” a personal ballad with a catchy chorus.

It’s a lovely set which you can listen to here (for some reasons Night Two’s shows are much much quieter on the player).

[READ: May 15, 2019] “What’s Love Got to Do With It?” 

I have read many many stories by Boyle and I like him quite a lot.  I like that he writes about so many different topics from so many different perspectives.  He is even unafraid to be sympathetic to people who don’t seem to deserve it.

It was somewhat unfortunate that I read this story and the next one by him (written about 19 years apart) by him on the same day because they were both rather creepy and voyeuristic and sympathetic to people who really don’t deserve it.

This story is about a woman who chooses to take a three day train ride rather than a three hour plane ride to Dallas.   It wasn’t long after the school shootings.  The shootings had happened at her daughter’s school although the daughter was unharmed.  This had nothing to do with her choice of taking the train, exactly, but she felt it would afford her some down time.

At morning breakfast she was seated across from a young man–Eric–about her daughter’s age.  They had a pleasant light conversation–first about state capitals and “sexy” cities  and the dangers of Splenda “its made from nuclear waste.”  He soon revealed that he went to the same school as her daughter  And just to complicate things.  He knew the shooter. (more…)

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