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Archive for the ‘Religion’ Category

David Foster Wallace–[Week 10] Infinite Jest (1996)

Posted in Adventure, Big Books, Boston, MA, Canadian Content, Consumerism, Corporate skewering, David Foster Wallace, Death, Demons, Dreams, Drinking, Drugs, Eschaton, Esquire, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Gangsters, Goonies, Infinite Summer, Marriage Trouble, Meta, Oddities, Political Humor, Postmoderism, Religion, Set at School, Smarty Pants, Suicide, Technology, Tennis, The Future, Toilets, Violence, Yuck! on August 29, 2009| 8 Comments »

dfw-title-pageSOUNDTRACK: GARBAGE-Garbage (1995).

garbageI was thinking about how IJ reminds me so specifically of a place and time (I instantly think of the apartment I was in when I started reading it).  And there are also some discs that I was crazy about at the time too.

I very distinctly remember when the first Garbage single “Vow” came out.  I remember seeing it in Newbury Comics [the absolute best record store chain, ever] on Newbury Street and it was plastered with stickers about how it was the new band from Butch Vig and he had produced every popular alt record in the 90s and blah blah blah.  But so I basically got Vigged out and didn’t bother listening to it.

Strangely, I don’t remember what changed my mind about them.  I assume I heard the first proper single “Queer” and instantly fell in love with the band.

It makes me laugh that the band was initially marketed as Butch Vig and two other high-profile producers got together and made this great music and they found this unknown Scottish woman to from the band.  And then, shortly there after the band was Shirley Manson and three unknown guys.  Heh, prettiness wins out.

Garbage was at a record store in downtown Boston that year.  I went down, but went to the wrong location (Doh!) and by the time I got to the right one, the line was too long and I was told I wouldn’t get in.  Alas. (Hey, I’ve still got my autographed poster from The Verve before they released “Bittersweet Symphony.”)

This album was in very heavy rotation at my house at the time.  I must’ve listened to it 1000 times.  But this is the first time I’ve listened to it in awhile.  It’s hard for me to be critical of it since I know every nook and cranny.  But listening to it today I think it is still pretty damned awesome.  The vocals are tight and creepy/sexy.  The songs are all solid rocking/catchy.  And the production is superb (obviously).

Not a bum track on the whole release, even 14 years later.

[READ: Week of August 24] Infinite Jest (to page 729)

There has been much discussion here on the forums and here between me and Infinite Tasks about the IJ timeline.  There is the pretty glaring observation that M.P. tried to kill herself  on November 7th, was in the hospital for five days and then appears in Ennet House on November 8th.

In last week’s reading, the WYYY engineer is musing about M.P.  He was told that she was hospitalized, and I considered that maybe that five day gap came BEFORE she tried to kill herself (for otherwise, how to explain that Mario missed her radio show sometime in late October?).  And yet that doesn’t seem to jibe with the fact that she’s apparently in there for an overdose.

A new timeline issue may be cropping up in this week’s reading.  A green Nunhagen-sponsored car appeared during the Escahton match.  We learn this week that Steeply is driving a Nunhagen-sponsored car.  But she arrives during the Hal/Stice tennis match, three days after Eschaton.  Has she been trying to get into E.T.A. for three days?  But, also, note that she left AZ, and Orin met the Swiss hand model (and Orin is having his second go -round with her during the match), early on the 11th (I think).  So I don’t think Helen could have been at ETA during the Escahton match.  Is there a second gunman green car?

This timeline stuff bugs me mostly because I feel like IJ is really fantastic.  And I assume that DFW spent a lot of time on it. (Certainly more time that I am spending reading it!). I imagine him with charts and graphs and circles and arrows explaining where everyone is at any given time.  Now, there are a number of conceivable explanations for the mistaken timeline:

  • Most of the stories about Madame Psychosis are second-hand, so they could be wrong.
  • There is ample evidence that people in this book are crazy and therefore not to be trusted.
  • And of course, there’s always the possibility that DFW just screwed up.

If this final option is the reality, I won’t be devastated.  I don’t think the book hinges on a few minor timeliness issues.  But I will be a bit surprised.  DFW seems like such a meticulous guy (I mean, geez, look at the detail he puts into his scenes) so it would be really surprising if he got timeline issues messed up.

There is always the possibility that these issues will be cleared up, after all, he ties up so many loose threads, but I suspect they won’t.  And that’s okay.  I won’t turn into Steeply’s father poring over every page and keeping a journal in little notebooks (that’s what the blog is for!)

ijdot1It is incredible serendipity that I did the JOI filmography during this week as this week’s readings actually count on knowing a bit about it.  And since I had just reevaluated it, I was aware of a thing or two during Hal’s viewing scene.

ijdot1Week 10 starts off seeming like a lot of nothing is happening.  There’s a few post-Event scenarios.  Until we get to November 14th, and a whole lot goes on.  A whole lot! (more…)

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Clash of the Gods (The History Channel, 2009)

Posted in Adventure, Bible, Clash of the Gods, Death, Demons, End of the World, Fables, Gods, History, Homer, Marillion, Natural Disasters, NPR/PRI/PBS, Religion, Sex, Supernatural, Universities, Violence, War, Wikipedia on August 12, 2009| 21 Comments »

[WATCHED: August-October 2009] Clash of the Gods

clash

[UPDATE: October 26, 2009]

I have now finished the entire series.  I was pleasantly surprised by how much I learned from it.  (Not that I considered myself an expert, but you never know what you’ll get from TV series). The biggest surprise was how much this series filled in the gaps of things I half knew, or things that I didn’t know were missing from my knowledge.  Can’t ask for more than that!

I’m still a little confused by the inclusion of Tolkien, but that’s okay, it was a good episode nonetheless.

General negatives: I never did get used to the egregiously repetitive imagery (if I never see Zeus pulling off his hood again, I’ll be thrilled).  I also got rather tired of that crazy howling wind/scream noise that they used as some kind of dramatic effect.  But hey, that’s okay.

The actors and the CGI and all that was fine.  They had to include some kind of footage or else it would just be people talking to us, right?  I wonder where they got the actors?  The women were all quite beautiful. The men were less handsome than I would have expected (but then the male gods were all old, right?).  How did they cast these episodes, I wonder?  Okay Zeus: can you sit in that throne?  Good.  Can you remove your hood? Good. Athena: Can you stare smoldering at the camera?  Good.  I wonder how people tried out for the part of “soul writhing in hell” or whatever it was.

I’m not sure if the “that was the myth, but how does it relate to reality” part was supposed to be the real draw of the show.  Some of it was interesting, some of it was weird, and some of it was just stretching plausibility.  There’s been a lot if discussions below in the comments about the emphasis on Christianity throughout the series.  From a historical point of view I thought it was interesting.  Although there were time when I wasn’t entirely convinced.

It was the professors who really impressed me.  They were consistently informative, and clearly enjoyed what they were talking about.  There were one or two who I would NEVER have wanted in class (their voices were rather sharp) but there were also a few that I would have signed up for multiple times, no question. So thanks to them for doing the show (I know, it was a real drag for them to get out of the classroom and do TV, right).

I’m still trying to find more information about the people involved, but it is cleverly hidden (as is everything else about the show).  What is it with The History Channel’s website?  This is the only professor who I’ve found with a blog: Wormtalk and Slugspeak.  And he tells some interesting details about doing the show.  As for the rest, well, you’ll have to watch the episode and write down their names, apparently.

I’ll give a special shout out to the professor at Rutgers, since she’s just down the street, but i don’t remember her name.

[UPDATE: October 26, 2009]

See bottom for comments on final two episodes that i watched: Thor and Medusa (which I missed the first time around).

[UPDATE: October 15, 2009]

See bottom for comments about Beowulf and Tolkien.  (I haven’t watched Thor yet).

[UPDATE: September 28, 2009]

See bottom for comments about the Odyssey episodes.

[UPDATE: September 21, 2009]

I’ve been getting a number of hits here with people looking for the Clash of the Gods narrator.  So, his name is Stan Bernard.  He was also the narrator for Zero Hour and MonsterQuest as well as a few other things.  I’ve not seen anything else he’s done.

[UPDATE: September 2, 2009]

See bottom for reviews of 2 more episodes]

[WATCHED: August-October 2009]

I don’t normally review TV shows.  There’s just too much to keep up with.  But I’m making an exception in this case.

I had heard about this show on a public radio program.  The host was talking to some of the guys who were involved in making it, and it sounded fantastic. (I regret that I don’t know which host or even which radio station, I was driving a rental car and just happened upon the program, I think his name was John, which, frankly doesn’t help at all).

I love Greek mythology, and so did the host of the radio show.  When he said that the series was designed not only for people who are new to the mythology but that it would also give deeper information for those who were familiar with the stories, I has to check it out.

Two episodes have aired so far, Zeus and Hercules.  And the radio announcer was right.  The episodes are good.  They give the general story of the myth and then throw in some uncommon details.  But, perhaps most interestingly, they also include ways in which recent archaeological digs have uncovered information that shows the reality behind the stories.  And, even more interestingly, they discuss how some of the myths not only correspond very well to actual historical events, but also correspond to events from the Bible and other cultures’ mythologies.  So, Noah’s flood, is recounted in Greek mythology as a Zeus destroying the world.  And both are based on what is believed to be a real event in which a volcano erupted and flooded most of the Middle East.  The parallels are uncanny.

The stories (narrated by a frankly uninspired narrator) are interspersed with my favorite part: faculty from various universities (and Scientific American magazine) give their historical insight into the myths.  And they’re all pretty excited about what they’re talking about (and each has his or her own quirky mannerism which is fun to look for–and they were all apparently told to wear black, otherwise it is an amazing sartorial coincidence).

The absolute worst part of the series (and I fear it will continue through all  of the shows since it was in Zeus and Hercules) is the absolutely horrid “reenactment” footage.  It’s bad enough that the footage is kind of lame (even if the blue contacts do “pop” on screen as they said they would in the radio interview).  But they reuse the same footage over and over again in the same episode–heck in the same segments of the same episode.  It is maddening.  Are they really telling us that they couldn’t have had Zeus do something other than sit down heavily on his rocky throne?  (I think they showed that particular scene 6, maybe 7 times).  I realize that if the actor isn’t actually going to speak, there’s not a lot he can do, but come on, show us something else! (more…)

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Kurt Vonegut–A Man Without a Country (2005)

Posted in Books about writers, Corporate skewering, Death, Essays, Free Speech, Funny (ha ha), In These Times, Kurt Vonnegut, Old Age, Poetry, Political Humor, Prison, Religion, Short Books, Smarty Pants, Sonic Youth, Technology, The Future, Threats, War on July 27, 2009| 1 Comment »

kvmanSOUNDTRACK: SONIC YOUTH-EVOL (1986).

evolAh, EVOL.  Here’s where Sonic Youth became Sonic Youth.  Who knows how much Steve Shelley had to do with it, but he shows up and the band becomes amazing.  The cover art is pretty darn scary and yet the music inside is amazingly beautiful.  While by no means a commercial album, the album is chock full of melody.

And yes, I believe it is mandatory to type the title in all capitals.

“Tom Violence” opens it up with a fantastic chord progression and words that are sung almost delicately.  And “Shadow of a Doubt” is amazing!  Guitar harmonics drift around while Kim whispers about a dream.  An astonishing leap from their past records!  “Star Power” seems like their attempt to right a catchy hit.  It would certainly never be one, but it’s pretty close.

“In the Kingdom #19” is a lengthy spoken piece by Lee Renaldo.  My friends Lar, Aurora and myself saw Lee play a show with Mike Watt in the city on Bloomsday.  We have a  special affinity for Lee’s songs.  I’m going to try to remember to point out all of his vocal turns on SY discs, but on those first few, it’s nigh on impossible.

“Green Light” seems like it could have been a Velvet Underground song.  “Death to Our Friends” is a pretty instrumental, while “Secret Girls” morphs from a noisy abstract soundscape to a delicate piano backed poem read by Kim.

I tend to think that SY’s early stuff was all noise and bombast, and yet only three albums in and they produce a masterpiece like this.

Known as “Expressway to Yr Skull,” the originally titled “Madonna Sean and Me” shows just how much SY knew about catchy tunes.  And maybe that’s the key to longevity, having a catchy tune somewhere underneath whatever layers of nonsense you throw on top (and SY throws the best nonsense I know).  Admittedly, “Expressway” kind of devolves into a few minutes too many of fading notes. The disc ends with “Bubblegum” a surprisingly rock and roll song.  I especially like Kim’s “hit it girls” comment.

EVOL marks the beginning of a staggeringly fantastic collection of discs.

[READ: July 16 2009] A Man Without a Country

I hadn’t been planning to read any of Vonnegut’s book out of sequence (except for the collected stories which I figured I’d read in their own sequence).  But when I went to join my local library’s Adult Summer Reading Program (in mid-July, how punctual!), I received a coupon for a free book from their free book shelf. Largely they were books that I didn’t want.  And just as I was about to give up, I saw this small Vonnegut book poking its spine out from the rest.

I grabbed it and brought it home. (more…)

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William H. Gass–“Kinds of Killing: The Flourishing Evil of the Third Reich” [a review of The Third Reich at War] (Harper’s, August 2009)

Posted in Book Reviews, Death, Essays, Harper's, History, Military, Nazis, Racism, Religion, Richard J. Evans, Suicide, Threats, Violence, War, William H. Gass on July 24, 2009| Leave a Comment »

harpersaugSOUNDTRACK: Songs That Got Us Through WW2 (1993).

ww2My dad was in World War II. He was a Navy man, and he worked on airplanes.  He was stationed in the South Pacific.  When I was growing up, he listened to a lot of big band music (while most of my friends’ parents were listening to folk music).

This collection of songs is a favorite of mine whenever I’m feeling nostalgic for my parents.  Although not every song on this disc was one I knew, the majority are greatly familiar.  My dad even had a lot of these records on 78 vinyl (and I have begun a small 78 RPM collection of my own).

When I think of a lot of these songs and what they meant to the people back home they go from being upbeat fun dance songs to being songs that people held onto during such a tough time.  There hasn’t been a lot of documentation about what families hold onto during our current wars (emails I gather are pretty important), and I suspect that with popular culture being fragmented so much, there aren’t really any unifying songs like in WWII. I’m not sure if that’s a shame, but it does mean less that nostalgia like this isn’t as likely 60 years from now.

[READ: July 19, 2009] “Kinds of Killing”

Normally I don’t write about book reviews.  However, since I enjoyed William Gass’ The Tunnel, and I am fond of his writing in general.  In fact, Gass is such a powerful writer, and he spends such a great deal of time honing his words, that anything he writes is worthy of a read.  And since this book review was something like 8 pages long, it seemed worthy of a few words. (more…)

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Jean-Paul Sartre–“A Fine Display of Capuchins” (Harper’s, August 2009)

Posted in Death, Essays, Harper's, Jean-Paul Sartre, Morality, Record Labels, Religion, Smarty Pants, Sonic Youth, Swans, Wikipedia on July 22, 2009| Leave a Comment »

harpersaugSOUNDTRACK: SONIC YOUTH-Sonic Death: Early Sonic 1981-1983 (1984).

sonicdThis document shows just how scary a Sonic Youth show could have been back in their early days.  Well, not scary so much as noisy!   They mention that they’ve been touring with the Swans, so you can imagine how intense these shows must have been.

This record is kind of a mess.  There’s no track listing (only 1 track on my copy of the disc). In fact, it’s mostly just snippets of songs and lots of distortion.  The Wikipedia Page shows the approximate breakdown of where the snippets are (and it gives you something of a track listing).  If you’re a fan of Sonic Youth circa Daydream Nation, and you haven’t heard their earlier stuff, don’t even bother with this.  If you like Confusion is Sex and you want to hear what they sounded like live back then, pick this up.

Under all of the noise, it shows the band being silly, with snippets of conversations and tape manipulation…exactly the kind of homemade tape that you might expect from Thurston Moore’s own record label (and one of the first releases on the label).  It seems like the kind of thing that nowadays would be included as bonus footage on a DVD, but heck, they didn’t do that back then.  So this feel more a home recording.

So, before you go hunting down this out of print title, be aware of just what you’re going to get!

[READ: July 18, 2009] “A Fine Display of Capuchins”

When I was a philosophy major I read only a small amount of Sartre.  I always wanted to read more, but never had call for it.  I especially wanted to read his fiction, which seemed like it would be interesting, or at the very least, some of his not too demanding essay work.

And lo, here is a piece that had been untranslated until now.

This is a fascinating piece.  Sartre goes into a crypt underneath a church in Rome.  In the crypt he finds that it contains the bones of thousand of friars which were exhumed and transferred there in 1631.  (more…)

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Periodical: Miller-McCune

Posted in Consumerism, Essays, Francisco DeVries, Funky Web Sites, Harper's, Library Journal, Miller-McCune, Prison, Racism, Religion, Research, Technology, Threats, Utne Reader on July 19, 2009| Leave a Comment »

millerWho has ever heard of this magazine?  I hadn’t.  And then Miller-McCune showed up in my mailbox at home with a “Subscribe for Free!” sticker on the front.  They just needed to know that I worked at a non-profit company (which I do).

It’s an unwieldy name, and I couldn’t really tell who published it or if they had a bias or an agenda or anything.  I was very suspicious of it.

And then I started reading it.  And it was very good.  I was all set to send in my subscription card.  And then I lost it.  Oh well.  Like I needed another magazine.

And then, the next month, another copy and another free subscription offer!  Whoo hoo.  So, I sent it in.  We’ll see if when the subscription starts I get the magazines as consistently!

I enjoyed this second issue even more than the first. The general tenor of the magazine is research, or as they say “turning research into solutions.”    Despite the “intellectual” tone of the subtitle, the writing is very readable.  (And it’s glossy with lots of pictures).  However, their ads are for things like: Johns Hopkins Press and Earthjustice.  So, they’re not exactly lightweight either. (more…)

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David Foster Wallace–[Week 3] Infinite Jest (1996)

Posted in Allstonians, Big Books, Books about writers, Boredom, Boston, MA, Canadian Content, Consumerism, Corporate skewering, David Foster Wallace, Drinking, Drugs, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Infinite Summer, James Joyce, Morrissey, Pearl Jam, Postmoderism, Prison, R.E.M., Racism, Religion, Russell Brand, Set at School, Smarty Pants, Suicide, The Smiths, WYYY 109 FM: The Largest Whole Prime on the FM Band on July 10, 2009| 2 Comments »

jesySOUNDTRACK: MORRISSEY-Years of Refusal (2009).

years ofI’ve been a fan of The Smiths for years.  And I think that Morrissey’s debut, Viva Hate, is on par with much of the Smiths’ catalogue.  Over the years his output has been mixed, but with Years of Refusal he comes fighting back with a really solid disc.  The disc is so good that if one had no idea of who he was, one could easily get into it with no preconceived notions of Morrissey, The Smiths or any of that glorious past.

From the start, the disc rocks out. That’s right, Morrissey totally rocks, with a real attitude.  “Something is Squeezing My Skull,” in addition to being quite funny, has one of Moz’s most loudly sung choruses in like, forever.  The martial beat of “Mama Lay Softly on the Riverbed” showcases Moz’s “political” songwriting without ever losing its catchiness.  “I’m Throwing My Arms Around Paris” is a pretty classic Morrissey song, complete with a simple picking guitar riff.

“All You Need Is Me” has some great squeaky guitars and recalls Morrissey’s own “I Don’t Mind If You Forget Me”), while “When Last I Spoke to Carol” has a Mexican feel, which is different for him.  And “That’s How People Grow Up,” the single, has one of those classic Morrissey lines in which he subverts expectations with a left-field word choice: “So yes there are things worse in life than never being someone’s sweetie.”

The end of the album is full of longer songs which tends to skew the rollicking feel of the disc. (In the first 8 songs only 3 are over 3 minutes while the last 4 songs are each over 4 minutes).  Nevertheless, “It’s Not Your Birthday Anymore” is a wonderfully caustic song and the album closer, “I’m OK By Myself” is just fantastic, and I find myself singing “I don’t need you, or your morality” because they way he sings it gets stuck in my head for days.

There’s also a bonus disc which includes an interview with Russel Brand which is very funny indeed.

Welcome back Morrissey.  Well done, sir.

[READ: Week of July 6, 2009]  Infinite Jest (to page 227).

While looking for this cover of Infinite Jest (the one that I most associate with the book even though I never owned a copy with this cover), I noticed that Powell’s Books is selling a first edition hardcover copy of IJ for $450. The copy that I am currently reading is also a first edition hardcover.  If anyone wants to send me like $400 for it, just let me know!

On my Week Two post, I had a comment that criticized me for giving out spoilers.  While I disagree, I will preface this and future posts by saying that I will certainly be discussing what has happened in the week’s read (including footnotes endnotes and future footnotes endnotes if they are referred to in current footnotes endnotes), I will not intentionally reveal any spoilers.

On to Week 3 of Infinite Summer.  And at this point I not only feel good about the book, I feel somewhat refreshed. This whole week’s worth of reading has been fairly easy and often very funny.  We’re past the initial shock that you’re running a marathon, and are into that 3rd or 4th mile where you just start to feel good and enjoy the scenery.  I also hate to admit this, but I really want to peek ahead into the next week’s reading.  But no, I am going to pace myself!

I also have a question for faithful readers who are actually trying to map the location of the book.  I lived in Brighton, MA, very close to Boston College as well as in a location nearer to Allston, MA.  I have a vague sense of exactly where Enfield is supposed to be located, but if anyone has used the details in the book to map out where Enfield would be, do pass it along (someone has probably created a Google Map for it, but I haven’t actually checked).

This week’s reading had a lot of lengthy sections that focused on one person/issue for multiple pages which is either great or terrible depending on how you like this book broken up.  And TA DA!  The Chronology is spelled out very clearly! (more…)

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Periodical: Mother Jones

Posted in Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Book Reviews, Consumerism, Corporate skewering, Drugs, Essays, Military, Mother Jones, Political Humor, Racism, Religion, Smarty Pants, The Progressive, Threats, Violence, War, William T. Vollmann, WMDs on June 30, 2009| 1 Comment »

mojoBack oh, fifteen years ago, I subscribed to Mother Jones.  I also subscribed to an unvaried assortment of political mags: The Nation, The Progressive, and In These Times.  But as I grew less politically motivated, I slacked off on the subscriptions.  I just didn’t have time to read all of that.

Recently, I added Mother Jones to my Google Home page.  I started seeing some good headlines, so I thought I’d look into resubscribing.  And for $10, I got a year.

At first I was a bit disappointed in it.  The first issue I received had the cover story: Who Ran Away With Your 401K?  And frankly, it’s gone, I don’t really need to see the trail of footprints leading to a culprit that will never be punished.  And that is the general focus of MoJo: Follow stories that no one is covering; muckrake, if you will.  And they’re very good at it.  And yet, most of the time I feel like nothing really comes of it.  Knowing that someone is at fault doesn’t make them pay for it (most of the time).

The other problem I had was with what we can call liberal guilt.  I’ve got better things to worry about, frankly.  So, when I get an article like this in the current issue: What’s Your Water Footprint? And the subtitle is If you thought calculating your carbon impact made you feel guilty, just wait….  Well, I’m not going to read that.

So the magazine starts like most magazines: the Out Front section is full of short articles that are usually depressing.

I do enjoy Conspiracy Watch, a small box that delves into a current conspiracy (by any side of the political spectrum) and sees if there’s any merit to it (with a rating in tinfoil hats).

There’s usually a look at someone in the administration and then some heavy-hitting articles.  This particular issue is all about the Drug War.  So there’s an article about drug violence in Mexico.  But then a more light-hearted, I suppose, article about drugs in the U.S., including a timeline for drug issues, was more interesting.  This particular one was a first-person account of the war on drugs.

The muckraking article was about the car dealers who steal from military families. (more…)

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Lee Henderson–“The Nerve” (The Walrus, July/August 2009) [Summer Fiction Issue, Genre: Romance]

Posted in Canadian Content, Canadian Music, Lee Henderson, Moxy Fruvous, Political Humor, Religion, Romance, Short Story, The Beatles on June 28, 2009| Leave a Comment »

walrusjuly SOUNDTRACK: MOXY FRÜVOUS-Wood (1995).

wood

Moxy Früvous is a band that can totally be judged by their covers.  Their first album had a cartoon animal dog thingy, and the disc was whimsical and fun.  Wood, their second disc shows the quartet in an autumnal scene covered in sweaters.  And the content is autumnal and snug.  There’s very little whimsy on the disc. It’s as if they fully matured in two short years.

I would say that this is my least favorite of the MF discs.  However, it also contains my all-time favorite MF song: “Fly” so I can’t dismiss it entirely.

In fact, the first 5 or so songs are all really enjoyable.  I find myself singing “horseshoes have got to be tossed” (from “Horsehoes”) all the time for some reason.  And then we get “Fly.”  It starts out simply enough with an acoustic guitar, but as it builds and the harmonies come in, “we’ll take a last flight you and I….Hold on tight” it’s amazing every time.

“Present Tense Tureen” is similar to the Bargainville style of wit, although it is banjo infused folk rather than pop.  And “Poor Mary Lane” has a Beatlesque stomp going on.

From there the album sort of drifts into pretty, fairly undistinguished folk songs. “Nuits in Rêve” is a 6 minute folk ballad in French.  It’s very pretty, although I don’t know what it’s about.  Finally, the last song “Sad Today” wakes the disc up somewhat, as it feels likes something of a drunken shanty.  There’s also a bonus track called “Organ Grinder” (I suppose) that is the funnest, craziest thing on the disc and feels like pure insanity compared to the rest.  It’s a big shit-stompin’ song.

So as I say, the disc is quite different from the first.  It even feels a little claustrophobic in the production which is something I don’t really notice.  I’m not sure why the band left out their fun songs, maybe so they wouldn’t be pegged a novelty act, but they are sorely missed.

(It’s also likely why they release b shortly afterward).

[READ: June 24, 2009] “The Nerve”

This is the second short story in The Walrus‘  Short Story issue.  This one is labeled as Romance genre, and yet it also transcends the genre and is more  about a man falling in love than any of the other romance tropes. (more…)

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Periodical: Rolling Stone

Posted in Books about music, Canadian Music, Comedians, Concept Albums, Consumerism, Essays, Film & TV, Music, Political Humor, Religion, Rolling Stone, Technology, War, WMDs on June 23, 2009| Leave a Comment »

rsI began my Rolling Stone subscription a few years ago when I bought something at Best Buy. The subscription was a bonus gift of some sort. The choices were pretty lousy and I didn’t even want Rolling Stone, but I figured what the heck.
I was really surprised by how much I enjoyed the magazine.

I suppose no one has to be told what Rolling Stone is like. Or so I thought, because here was me, being surprised by this most mainstream of magazines.  I mean, I’ve seen the covers for years, and I knew they liked sex, drugs and rock and roll, but there’s more under the covers.

I have quickly learned my favorite sections and the ones I don’t even bother looking at.

Skim the letters. Maybe there’s a worthwhile addition.

The first main section is the “news” of the last two weeks…usually a concert or a new album or some such. This one happens to focus on American Idol, so, I skipped right past that nonsense.

The Hot List is 5 things that impress them since last issue. I usually like 1 of the 5.

I never read the Smoking Section, but Breaking is usually about an indie band that I heard about a few months earlier.  RS finally catches up and I can read a bit more about them. The In the Studio section is worth browsing to see who’s due for a new disc.

The Random Notes I feel is meant to be a big deal, with “insider” photos and blah blah. I skim it but little more than that.

And then the issue proper starts. (more…)

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