SOUNDTRACK: JESSICA LEA MAYFIELD-Tiny Desk Concert #388 (September 6, 2014).
I had an idea about who Jessica Lea Mayfield was. I thought she was sort of a folkie/country singer who I had heard of but had no real exposure to. So I was quite surprised to see this performer with pink hair, short shorts, no eyebrows and a ton of pink glitter under her eyes.
Turns out that her earlier records are kind of folkie but that for her 2014 album she was inspired by her grunge roots to make a noisy album. This Tiny Desk concert has her playing three guitars–one for each song. Each guitar is covered with glitter and one has stickers all over it. For “Standing in the Dark” she plays her pink glitter 12 string guitar with lots of reverb. It’s a fairly upbeat song. The melody is simple and she sounds happy while singing it (this is notable). The middle section has a solo which sounds really alien by itself (that 12 string with vibrato), but which works really well for the song.
She says she brought all of her guitars because she wanted to show them off. Her speaking voice is cute and adorable. And she seems almost childlike asking if “you have any cats” are you allowed to bring them to work. Bob says that bands have brought their dogs and she says she wishes she’d brought hers.
“Party Drugs” is a slow song with more echo on the guitar. It’s a slower , darker song “party drugs just make my head sing… I won’t die in this hotel room, I’ll be here when you return.” It ends with a dark chord and mildly distorted whammy bar and is rather creepy.
The final guitar is a hollow bodies white guitar. The stickers on the knobs are ponies. She says the direction of the ponies tells her how the knobs should go. There’s a pony, an alien cat and a unicorn “system I got going on.”
“Seein* Starz” is slow chords (with more echo). Her twangy accent peeks its way in a few times in this song. I like the way the picking notes are vibrated enough to sound unpredictable.
There’s something really captivating and almost vulnerable (but not really) about her performance. She says she could stay here and do this all day and show you how loud it usually is. Bob mentions something about six hours implying that she traveled six hours just to play for them (like Trampled by Turtles did the previous show).
[READ: July 22, 2016] The Lost Colony 1
I read this book last year. But since I wanted to read the other two books in the series, I wanted to re-read this before moving on to Books 2 and 3.
My recollection is that I didn’t really like the first book all that much, so I wasn’t prepared to enjoy it this time around either.
But, as it turns out, I really did enjoy it (and I’m not reading wheat I wrote the first time, just to see how this reading compares). I think perhaps I didn’t really know what I was getting into the first time. And now with hindsight, and understanding how and when some of the things are supernatural, it made more sense. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 