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Yūsei Matsui–Assassination Classroom Volume 2 (2012) [translated 2012]

Posted in Adventure, Assassination, Bryant Turnage, Canadian Music, Constellation Records, Foreign Books, Graphic Novel, Guns, Japan, Knives, Manga, Mark E. Smith, Ought, Revenge, Series, Set at School, Tetsuichiro Miyaki, Violence, Viz, YA Books, Yūsei Matsui on October 11, 2016| Leave a Comment »

assclass2 ought-once-moreSOUNDTRACK: OUGHT-Once More With Feeling… [CST108] (2014).

This EP came hot on the heels of their debut record.  It reworks a couple of older songs and has a largely improvised jam as well. It sounds pretty different from the previous record.

From the Constellation website: Discussion of a tour-only release that would grab a couple of the band’s self-recorded early tunes and commit them to vinyl shifted by the end of spring towards a realization that Ought might update this material to reflect how the songs have evolved on stage and in concert. … This yielded new recordings of two early pieces, “Pill” and “New Calm Pt. 2” (the self-recorded 2012 versions of which remain available on Ought’s Bandcamp) along with the brand new, more experimental and largely instrumental “New Calm Pt. 3.”. The non-album track “Waiting” from the More Than Any Other Day sessions (and the first tune to be given out via Constellation when we announced the Ought signing) rounds out this 24-minute EP….  In light of this new/freshly recorded material, it seemed unfair to restrict the Once More With Feeling… EP to tour-only status.

“Pill” sounds unlike anything else they’ve done.  It is mellow with Beeler Darcy’s (note the name change) singing as opposed to chanting/speaking voice.  I like that it is a fairly conventional sounding song and the way it builds slowly.  There’s a great bass line that enters after a bout 2 minutes.  The song feels meandering but it never wanders much from its mellow path (with some louder chords in between verses).  By around 4 minutes the song begins to build with a noisy solo and smashing drums that bring out the punkiness of the band. (That solo!).  But they never lose the basic momentum of the song—and the bass keeps things constant with that riff at the end of each segment.  This song also appears on their New Calm EP from 2012 which you can hear here).

“New Calm Pt 2” is a super catchy rocking song.   It starts with him saying “Oh I love this one.”  This is basically a song that encourages the audience to participate.  He tells us, “Hear  me now I am dead inside.  That’s the refrain.”  It’s a fun catchy bouncy riff repeated through pretty much the whole song.  The lyrics are pretty strange and seem arbitrary but are a lot of fun.  “Who invited Paul Simon?  I didn’t invite him.”  “I think everybody’s here now.  Everybody put your arms in the air.  That’s the generally accepted sign for not having a care.”  The song “ends” for about two minutes of him encouraging everyone to sing along to the “Da da da dah da da” section.  “It’s the part where we all sing together.”  “I have the microphone but you can sing it as well….”  And about ten times he says, “last time” then sings it again.

Interestingly, the original version of this song (on their bandcamp site) is much slower but has all of the same words

“New Calm Pt 3,” is the exact opposite of Pt2.  The lyrics are spoken slowly (“That is some good clear water an ocean of air rushes over your head”) while he guitar is a wall of noise and chaos.  The drums are loud in the mix with a lot of crashing cymbals and high hats.  The last three minutes are just some noisy guitar sounds.  And the notes say: “New Calm Pt. 3” ‘was recorded during this EP session, taken from an 20 or so minute long (maybe longer, can’t remember lol) improvised piece.’  And it seems like it.

“Waiting” is a faster, more propulsive song—with a cool bass line and alt 90s guitars.  The song grows in intensity with a wild screeching solo.  This EP is not as compelling overall as the album, but it has some fantastic moments, especially “Part 2.”

PERSONNEL
Matt May: Keys
Ben Stidworthy: Bass
Tim Keen: Drums
Tim Beeler Darcy: Vocals, Guitar

[READ: September 22, 2016] Assassination Classroom 2

Book 2 opens with a handy “the story thus far” which nicely sums up some important details from Book 1:

A mysterious creature showed up in our junior high classroom claiming that he had attacked the moon and promising to destroy the earth next March.  And then…he took over as our teacher.  The leaders of the world had no choice but to rely on the students of Class 3-E to do the job.  For a reward of ten million dollars.  Will the students of the so called End class, filled with loser sand rejects be able to kill their target by graduation?

Tabby was interested in this series–the cover of the big smiling Koro Sensei is pretty appealing.  But it is rated for teens and is all about killing your teacher.  I didn’t think I should let her.  Well, book 2 gets a bit more intense. In part, this is because there is a new professional assassin hired.  Irina Jelavich is a sexy lady with intense cleavage (which the junior high boys are well aware of).  She has killed many many people.  And Koro Sensei–despite not being human–seems to be not immune to her charms.  Shiota notes that his 5th weakness is boobs.

Despite her aggressive flirting (or maybe because of it) the kids don’t much like her.  Also because they want to win the $10 million themselves–not for her.  And she’s not very nice.  She tells them not to call her Miss Irina–she’s not a teacher after all (even though she is pretending to be one to blend).  So they call her Ms Hella-bitch (wonder how that worked in Japanese?) which gets her super angry.  But Ms Jelavich has it all figured out.  She plans to lure Koro Sensei to the shed where pleasure and pain awaits him. Of course he’s not so easily fooled. And she is made to appear ridiculous (I won’t speculate on what actually happened to her).

But her failure emboldens the students who are no longer impressed by her.  And soon she is made to actually agree to be a languages teacher–being an assassin she has learned how to say key phrases in multiple languages.

A new wrinkle appears in the book, though.  Koro Sensei has been working very hard helping each student succeed in his or her own way–he has even cloned himself (the students are concerned since he seems exhausted).  And when the school gathers for an assembly–rather than 3-E being put in its place and mocked, the students seem to be feeling pretty good about themselves.

And that’s when the principal steps in.  He lets Koro Sensei know in no uncertain terms that 3-E must fail their tests–that’s how the other students succeed–through fear of being like 3-E.  Koro Sensei has other ideas though.  He tells the class that if the 3-E students don’t score to a certain percentage he will flatten the school.  But he doesn’t know how serious the principal is about the status quo.  As Koro is preparing his students, the principal is trying to modify things.  This is upsetting Koro (and don’t forget that the students are still trying to kill him as well).

The last two chapters of the book see the students of a field trip to Kyoto.  And things change mightily when the students are away from school. For one thing, they aren’t under the protection of the school–against strangers or, worse yet, aggressive fellow students who want them in their place.

And as the book ends a new character is introduced, a psychic, Saiki, and he is here for a sweet bun–the very one that Koro Sensei wants to buy as well. The book end with the two of them having a very strange bonding moment.  I don’t know how this story can be stretched out into a number of volumes but clearly he has a lot of twists and turns planned ahead for us.

This book is rated T for teen.  Despite the cute grinning covers, it’s not for kids..

This manga is written in the traditional style of right to left, which is fun.  It is translated by Tetsuichiro Miyaki with an English adaptation (whatever that means) by Bryant Turnage.

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Yūsei Matsui–Assassination Classroom Volume 1 (2012) [translated 2012]

Posted in Adventure, Assassination, Bryant Turnage, Canadian Music, Constellation Records, Foreign Books, Graphic Novel, Guns, Japan, Joy Division, Knives, Manga, Mark E. Smith, Ought, Revenge, Series, Set at School, Talking Heads, Tetsuichiro Miyaki, The Dead Milkmen, The Fall, The Velvet Underground, Violence, Viz, YA Books, Yūsei Matsui on October 10, 2016| Leave a Comment »

assclassSOUNDTRACK: OUGHT-More Than Any Other Day [CST103] (2014).

oughtmoreOught might just be the most straightforward band every released by Constellation Records. They are a rock/punk band with some spoken word singing that sound at times like Mark E. Smith.  However, the music is a bit catchier than The Fall’s with fast moments and really slow almost ambient stretches.

“Pleasant Heart” opens with a raw echoing guitar riff and chords that sound like nothing else on the album.   The song lurches through some great sounds and Beeler’s unusual chanting style of singing.  There’s also a cool bass line rumbling throughout the song built with lots of drum fills and chaos.

About half way through this six-minute song the bass and drums drop out leaving just a squeaky violin and harmonic guitar (this squeaky violin is possibly the only thing that makes this record sound like a Constellation release).  The bass comes back in slowly.  But it’s not until almost two minutes of this instrumental that the song resumes with a crunch and the lurching melody and verses continue until the end.

“Today More Than Any Other Day” was the first Ought song that really grabbed me.  It starts out slowly with some spare drums and meandering bass.  It doesn’t really feel like its going to resolve into anything.  By a minute and a half it’s finally starting to sound like something–a slow meandering song perhaps.  Around 2 minutes Beeler starts whispering “we’re sinking deeper, and sinking deeper.”  And then the song starts building and turning into something else .  We’re now half way through this 5 minutes song when the guitar starts chiming and he states “The name of this song is ‘Today more than any other day Parts 4-43.  So open up your textbooks … or any kind of reading material.”  And as the guitar plays the verses he recites various things that have happened today more than any other day (making a “decision between 2% and whole milk.”  A cool bass line starts playing as else drops away and he starts chanting a rather laconic “dah dah dah dah dah” following the bass.  It reminds me, strangely enough of the Dead Milkmen as its kind of not exactly out of tune but almost as if  not really caring.  But when the song resumes, it’s all right on again.  It’s a weird and wonderful, strangely catchy song.

“Habit” opens with a nice slow bass riff and chiming guitars.  It brings the intensity of the previous song down some.  And the vocals sound a little different, especially in the chorus, where the whole song take on a kind of Talking Heads vibe (the falsetto singing in particular).  It slows down toward the end with some scraping violins. The song is quite pretty in an alt-sorta way.

I love “The Weather Song” from the opening harmonics and intriguing bass line to the way the song suddenly ramps up for the chorus.  In addition to the catchy spoken opening there’s a great chorus of “I …. just wanna revel in your lies.”

“Forgiveness” is a relatively short 4 and a half minutes and opens with almost an organ sound.  A scraping violin sound joins the drones. After 2 minutes he sings in a very slow drawl “forgiveness is a drug that you take with a shrug.”  It has echoes of the Velvet Underground’s “Heroin” although it never changes tempo or intensity.

“Around Again” has a very 1980s guitar riff and whispered vocals until the whole band kicks in and it grows in intensity.  And then the whispered “go slow” returns the song to the beginning.  After 3 minutes, the song builds and then drops out with a spoken: “It’s coming. Why is it you can’t stand under the sun but you can stick your head into a bucket of water and breathe in deep” and then a whole new sound of dissonant guitar and thudded bass and drums “we have reached the intermission.”  But it’s not an intermission it goes through to the end of the song like this.

“Clarity!” opens with what sound to me like “Love Will Tear Us Apart” but with guitar chunks played over the top.  Slow harmonics and whispered vocals move the song forward.  After 2 minutes it rocks out, with a returning ringing high note and interesting sound effects.  And by the end the song comes to a plunging conclusion

“Gemini” opens with some low rumbling notes and then a sprinkling of keyboards.  There’s some scratchy guitars and a rumbling bass.  After 2 and a half minutes, the song’s punky parts take over with jagged guitars and screamed vocals.  The end of the song is mostly just two-note thumping while he screams “you wanted … wanted … wanted … wanted.”

I really like this album a lot.

I noticed that the lead singer changes his name on each release.  So, to help keep it straight:

PERSONNEL
Matt May: Keys
Ben Stidworthy: Bass
Tim Keen: Drums, Violin
Tim Beeler: Vocals, Guitar

[READ: September 20, 2016] Assassination Classroom 1

Assassination Classroom has a very strange and unsettling premise–the students of this classroom are being taught to assassinate their teacher.  Given the current climate of guns in the US, that’s probably not a comfortable position to take.  However, Matsui alters the premise to make it more palatable, and frankly more fun. The students’ teacher is actually an alien (or maybe not, but it is certainly not human).  He (I guess) is a multi-tentacled creature who can move at Mach 20, is exceptionally perceptive and can’t be harmed by most conventional weapons.  But wait, there’s more.  The students are sent to assassinate this particular creature because he blew a huge chunk out of the moon (it’s now a permanent crescent) and is planning to do the same to the earth in a year’s time.  But wait, there’s more.  One of his conditions for not blowing up the Earth sooner is that he be allowed to teach this particular classroom.  Although no one is sure why yet.

The class is 3-E, the lowest of the low, the worst students in the very prestigious Kunugigaoka Junior High.  The 3-E class are misfits–they were smart enough to get into the school, but they have done something wrong and they are treated very poorly because of it.  In fact, 3-E is used as a kind of cautionary tale for the other students–act up and you could wind up like them.  (Why they don’t just leave the school is not addressed).

The kids call the creature Koro Sensi (which is a pun on the Japanese “Koro senai” which means “can’t kill”), and it turns out he is actually a pretty great teacher.  He really seems to care about the kids.  So why would they want to kill him?  Well, aside from the destruction of the planet, there is also a ten billion yen reward (the amount seems to change some in the book, but it’s roughly 100 million dollars).  Of course, as the name implies, this guy is really hard to kill.  And when they try to kill him in a way he finds beneath them (they are training to be great assassins after all), his own revenge will be swift.  At the same time, he heartily encourages them to try their best to kill him–and he applauds their most creative efforts. (more…)

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Lat–Town Boy (1980) [translated 2007]

Posted in #10yearsof01, Art, Beavis and Butthead, College, Comic Strips, Dublin Guitar Quartet, First Second :01, Lat, Parenting, Philip Glass, Religion, Set at School, Tiny Desk Concert, Translation, YA Books on September 13, 2016| Leave a Comment »

town-boy SOUNDTRACK: DUBLIN GUITAR QUARTET-Tiny Desk Concert #409 (May 15, 2015).

dgqWhen I first listened to this brief concert for some reason I didn’t realize that the quartet were playing Philip Glass.  Of course, once he stated that that’s who they were playing, it became quite obvious–but having Glass played on acoustic guitars instead of synths or violins, is quite an unusual experience.

The music is still rigidly repetitive, but there is a great deal of warmth added with the guitars (and the human element as well).

The Dublin Guitar Quarter has been around since 2002 and they play pretty much only contemporary and new pieces (despite being dressed in suits and playing on “classical” guitars).

They play two pieces, with two and three movements of each piece respectively.  They were originally recorded for strings, so these guitar transcriptions change things quite a lot (especially in Mishima).

The first piece is called “Company.”  They play Movements 2 and 3. What’s most impressive about the first piece is that you can hear all of the musical lines.  Glass often interweaves line up line of music ad you can see each guitarist playing these lines on high guitar notes and low notes while the other play accompaniment–transcribing these must have been a real challenge.

The loud chords are practically heavy metal chords on the guitar as opposed to what the strings might sound like.  And for all of the repetition, these two movements of clock in at less than four-minutes total.

It’s interesting to listen to the original after this and hear how it’s clearly the same piece but it sounds so very different.  From tone to drama, everything is changed.

The final pieces are three movements from Mishima.  In Mvt 3 there is some fast picking while the other three play chords.  It’s also fun to watch them all doing similar but distinct things through the middle of the movement.  This doesn’t have the fast lines that Glass is known for but it has a lot of loud repetitive notes.

What’s so interesting is that original is full of drums–and parts of only drums.  Obviously these aren’t present here, but the music resonates in a similar (but again, distinct) way.

Mt 2 is a slow meditative piece, and is far shorter than the original (which is also full of drums).

The final piece opens with some chords and then grows very beautiful as the Glass riff takes on an almost prog rock feel because of the guitar and the way the bass notes contrast so wonderfully with it.  It is short in this and the original and is great excerpt to listen to.

  • Glass: String Quartet No. 2, “Company,” Mvts. II & III
  • Glass: String Quartet No. 3, “Mishima,” Mvt. III, “1934: Grandmother & Kimitake”
  • Glass: String Quartet No. 3, “Mishima,” Mvt. II, “November 25: Ichigaya”
  • Glass: String Quartet No. 3, “Mishima,” Mvt. XI, “1962: Body Building”

[READ: March 24, 2015] Town Boy

This book was written (and drawn) in 1980.  First Second books had it translated and published in 2007.

I found Lat’s first book, Kampung Boy to be quite charming.  It was about a boy growing up in a small village in Malaysia in the 1950s.  This is the sequel and it is about moving from the village into the town and being a teenager.

This book is a little less episodic than the first.  Most of the story is laid out as text on one page and a drawing on the next.  But the drawings also have speech bubbles, so there’s a lot of different things going on. (more…)

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Charles M. Schulz–The Complete Peanuts: 1971-1972: The Definitive Collection of Charles M. Schulz’s comic strip masterpiece: Dailies & Sundays (2009)

Posted in Angst, Baseball, Basketball, Birds, Bobby Orr, Charles Schulz, Comic Strips, Davíd Garza, Easter, Fantagraphics, Football, Funny (ha ha), Gaby Moreno, Halloween, Kristin Chenoweth, Letters, Math, Peanuts, Peggy Fleming, Set at School, Singles, Skateboarding, Technology, The Future, Tiny Desk Concert, You're a Good Man Charlie Brown on September 9, 2016| Leave a Comment »

1971 SOUNDTRACK: DAVÍD GARZA-Tiny Desk Concert #405 (November 15, 2014).

garzaI first heard of Garza back in 1998 with his minor hit “Discoball World.”  I really liked it.  And then I assumed he just went away.  But apparently he didn’t.

The first song, “Texas is My Hometown” is a slow jazzy song about how much he loves Texas.  He sounds like an old-timey crooner, except that he references all kinds of contemporary musicians.

And then he plays “Discoball World.”  It sounds quite different because it’s all acoustic guitar (although his strumming is pretty intense).  I prefer the original, but he’s really intense while singing this version.

He says he was walking around DC and he ran into his favorite singer in the whole world.  Then he invites Gaby Moreno to sing the final song, an old Spanish song their grandparents used to sing.  And indeed, with wonderful flair, he plays a beautiful Spanish guitar.  Gaby sings lead (in Spanish) on the whole song and her voice is really amazing.  She can hold a note for a really long time and then really powers through a loud note.  He does backing ooohss when needed, but Gaby is the star of this song.  Until, that is, he plays some great guitar at the end, very percussive, very powerful.

It’s a good set.

[READ: June 1, 2016] The Complete Peanuts 1971-1972

I took some time off from my Peanuts reading–I needed a break after fifteen years.  And it was fun to come back to the strip really looking forward to the 1970s.

There seem to be three big consistent ideas in these two years.  Woodstock becomes very prominent, Sally gets to complain about school a lot and Peppermint Patty comes into her own, with strips about her and Chuck, her and Franklin and her and Marcie (who is finally named!).

1971 starts off auspiciously with Charlie saying that this is going to be his year of decision–he’s going to start making changes.  But Lucy interrupts saying that she is going to spend the whole year regretting the past-“Forget the future!” (more…)

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Steven T. Seagle & Teddy Kristiansen–Genius (2013)

Posted in #10yearsof01, Albert Einstein, First Second :01, Graphic Novel, Iron and Wine, Jesca Hoop, Parenting, Sam Beam, Scientists, Set at School, Steven T. Seagle, Teddy Kristiansen, Tiny Desk Concert on July 1, 2016| Leave a Comment »

genius SOUNDTRACK: SAM BEAM AND JESCA HOOP-Tiny Desk Concert #538 (June 6, 2016).

beamhoopI sampled the Sam Beam and Jesca Hoop CD online and really liked it, so I bought it for Sarah for her birthday.  The whole album is really beautiful and I was delighted to see that they performed a Tiny Desk Concert.

Sam Beam is the man behind Iron and Wine.  He has an incredibly long beard.  Jesca Hoop is a solo performer with a few albums out (although I hadn’t heard of her before).  She looks adorable in this concert in her Oxford shirt and suspenders–they’re an interesting contrast.  And yet their voices work so nicely together.

They sing three songs from the album with Beam on guitar and both of them singing.

“Sailor to Siren” begins with Beam on lead vocals, but Hoop soon joins him to duet on most of the lyrics.  Their harmonies are so pretty, perhaps in particular because Beam’s voice is also in a high delicate register.

Sam Beam is one of the most personable performers to show up on the Tiny Desk–he seems so kind and gentle with a good sense of humor.  And Hoop complements him well.  He comments about having to sing into the microphone without looking and she jokes, “it’s like when you’re driving with someone and you’re feeding them food but you have to look at the road to make sire they don’t hit anything so you put food in their beard.”  It’s a great visual reference with his large beard and it actually gets him laugh and stop playing for a minute.

“Know the Wild That Wants You” features Hoop on first lead vocals and Beam on backing vocals and then they duet on the next verse.  The harmonies in the chorus are again beautiful.

For the final song, the incredibly catchy “Every Songbird Says,” Beam describes a video that was made for the song.  He says it’s the best video he’s ever had made for him; Jesca jumps in and says it was made for her, which makes him laugh.  He describes it as having babies with raccoon and dog heads wrestling and licking each other.

On this song Jesca’s vocals are breathier and quite different–they work wonderfully and are a fine contrast to the high notes she (and he) hit in the chorus.

This is a great representation of the album which is similarly sparse (although it does have some extra flourishes here and there).  Their voices sound just as great as on the record.

[READ: March 1, 2016] Genius

The cover of this book shows a man facing the giant but fuzzy image of Albert Einstein.  And it proves an apt image.

The story is about a man who says he was always pretty smart.  He skipped ahead two grades in school.  Although puberty was a bitch for him, it didn’t do him any real harm.  He married and had two kids.  And he now has a job at Pasadena Technical Institute.  He was brought in as a young ringer with great ideas.  But as he has been there for a while, the ideas have just stopped coming and he sees the new young people starting to overtake him–which might mean the loss of his position.

The story flips back and forth between his worklife–unsatisfying–and his home life–confusing.  His son is old enough (14) to be interested in sex.  But he has a heart to heart with him and says they can talk about anything–it seems to work. (more…)

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S.T.O.P. [Students Tackling Ordinary Problems] (Somerville High School, Somerville, NJ, May 23, 2016)

Posted in Acting, Angst, Apologies, Babies, Death, Drinking, Drugs, Fears, Feminism, Food, Gender, Humiliation, LGBTQ, Pregnancy, Regrets, Revenge, Set at School, Sex, Sexism, Sexting, Somerville High School, Somerville, NJ, Theater, Transgender, Violence, Virginity (Loss of) on May 24, 2016| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: May 23, 2016] S.T.O.P.

stopIf you have a teen or pre-teen and you are concerned about how they will deal with bullying, sex, body issues or, heaven forbid, heroin, this performance is a must-see both for your child and you.  The performers are all high school students.  They wrote the pieces and they are intended for high school students (and middle school).  If you can’t see them yourself, contact your school or community group to arrange for them to do their show.  It is intense and really effective.

When the fifth grade completed the D.A.R.E. program at school, the ceremony included a piece by this group.  The piece was called “Jack & Jill” and it told the story of how an underage party led to the death of two teens.  There were a couple of moments of humor, but the message was intense and the acting was really good (they “rewound” the story and the actors did a great job of going backwards–including one boy who “fell up” the couch (he fell off it earlier).

After they were done, they said that the troupe would be doing their full hour-long show in May and that was open to anyone in 5th grade and older.  I was amazed that Clark wanted to go as it’s not really his thing.  And so we went.  He was bummed that only a couple of kids he knew showed up.  I was bummed at how few people showed up at all.   And so I wanted to post about the show to get the group some recognition because what they did was really powerful and I think should be seen by just about everyone.

When we arrived, the teacher in charge of the group Miranda DeStefano-Meene told us that the show would be uncensored and pretty intense.  The program says that the words on stage “may embarrass, hurt, offend, scare and anger you.  That is intentional.”  The second paragraph spoke of the heroin epidemic in our society which is bigger than any other drug epidemic in recorded history, which I did not know.

And so we sat back and watched this show.  Now, I happen to think that Clark may not have been exposed to a lot of what was going on in this play (which I’m grateful for).  So this show may have been really intense for him (I know I spent the whole show wondering what he thought).  After the show the only thing he said was that it made hm sad.  And we did talk a little about the messages, but he’s a tight-lipped kid, so I can only hope he’ll come back to me with more questions if they arise.

And what questions he must have.  For this show tackled so many problems facing teens.  (more…)

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The Wizard of Oz (Montgomery High School, May 14, 2016)

Posted in Funny (ha ha), Grease, Montgomery High School Theatre, Montgomery, NJ, Set at School, Set in New Jersey!, T., The Little Mermaid, The Wizard of Oz on May 20, 2016| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: February 27, 2016] The Wizard of Oz

wozBack in February, Tabitha and I went to the Montgomery High School’s production of The Little Mermaid.  I was pretty sure they did two performances a year, so I was surprised to see them advertising The Wizard of Oz already.

This turned out to be not the high school actors but a group of semi- and non-professional adults.  Best of all, the entire cast was made up of teachers and faculty from the Montgomery School System.

All four of us were going to go, but Clark had a sleepover the night before, which meant no sleeping, so he crashed while we went to the play.

This production was for something called Music from the Heart.  As the blurb noted:

The Montgomery Township Education Association and Montgomery High School Band Parents Association present the musical The Wizard of Oz for the fifteenth production of Music from the Heart! The fully volunteer cast and crew are assembled from an eager group of district teachers, support staff, administrators, and students. Proceeds from the production fund the graduating senior class scholarships awarded by both the MTEA and MHS Band Parents Association.

I’m all for helping out band and education associations, and since their Theater is amazing, I figured it would be a good show.

And boy was it. (more…)

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John Metcalf–“Where the Yazoo Cross the Yellow Dog” (The Walrus, March 2016)

Posted in Canadian Content, Constellation Records, Excerpt, Godspeed You Black Emperor, Jelly Roll Morton, John Metcalf, Set at School, Short Story, Steve Albini, The Walrus on May 16, 2016| Leave a Comment »

walrus marchSOUNDTRACK: GODSPEED YOU! BLACK EMPEROR!-Yanqui U.X.O. [CST024] (2002).

GybeyanquiuxoYanqui UXO is a single CD/double vinyl release coming in at about 80 minutes.  The lineup stayed the same, but there were a few changes.  First the band’s exclamation point moved from the end to after the “You.”  And second, this album was produced by Steve Albini.  Albini seems like an odd choice given his stripped down style and often brutal recording sound.  The album still sounds a lot like GYBE, but they have stripped out all of the field recordings and interstitial parts making a much smoother album.

The recording was described by the band as “just raw, angry, dissonant, epic instrumental rock.”  It’s hard to argue with that.

There are four or five songs on the record depending on if you have the LP or CD.  The first two songs “09-15-00, Part 1” and “09-15-00, Part 2” are merged into one on the LP.  “Rockets Fall on Rocket Falls.”  And then “Motherfucker=Redeemer, Part 1” and “Motherfucker=Redeemer, Part 2” (the LP removes the “parts” from the title, and just has the song “continued” on side 4—it’s also 5 minutes longer on the LP, primarily from ambient sounds that begin the song.  The LP also contains a hidden track called  “George Bush Cut Up While Talking.”

“09-15-00, Part 1” is 16 minutes long.  It opens slowly with what sounds like a harpsichord playing a rhythm while an echoed guitar plays a slow melody.  More instruments are slowly added as the song grows more intense.  At around 4 and half minutes a new melody enters from the bass.  It is complex but doesn’t alter the general tone of the song.  The song goes almost entirely silent at 6 and a half minutes, but a new melody starts—soft one note strings start as guitars creep into the sound.  Then a violin begins a melody that the guitar soon echoes.  The full band plays along with this melody at around 9 minutes and it gets more intense as the drums pick up speed.  This all drops away once more except for a martial beat and a bass line.  A guitar plays a melody over this simple section and then it builds and builds until the last few violin notes squeak out.

“09-15-00, Part 2” is six minutes long and is probably the simplest and most beautiful piece they have recorded.  There’s no build up, no drama, it’s just a pretty song full of strings and guitars.

“Rockets Fall on Rocket Falls” opens with a simple three note guitar melody and violins playing over the top.  The strings get bigger and more prominent and the rest of the band starts filling in.  Around three and half minutes in, the song gets really raucous…until it settles down again.  The song builds again, with the violins taking prominence.  At about seven-minutes, the song changes drastically with a lengthy descending series of notes (on horns) leading to a spare drum beat which lasts over a minute before the horns come back in.  After a minute or so of solitary horn notes, some guitars start playing in the background.  By around 13 minutes ominous chords have developed, overshadowing nearly everything else—and that steady drumbeat certainly causes some tension.  By 16:30 the tension has been released and the chords are welcoming and bright.  The song seems like it ends around nineteen minutes in, but there’s a gentle string section coda tacked on at the end.

“Motherfucker=Redeemer, Part 1” opens with gentle ringing sounds like a child’s toy.  After about 2 minutes, guitars start coming in—one playing staccato notes another playing chords and a bass playing as simple pattern.  At 3 and a half minutes the main riff comes it.  It is played on the violin and has vaguely Jewish feel to it.  There aren’t a ton of changes in this song, which more or less just builds around the same riff.  By 7 minutes there’s a soaring violin solo which screams over the top of the song.  There are moments when the song gets louder and quieter but it definitely feels like all one song until about 10 minutes when it more or less slows to a halt.  There’s some slow violin sounds an a simple guitar.  This second part of the song is similar to the first in that it is a regular guitar riff playing as the rest of the band fills in around it.  At around 13 minutes, a bigger fuzzier guitar takes over the riff.  The song continues in various forms until the end, when it is just a bass line.

“Part 2” is only ten minutes long (15 on vinyl).  It opens with the strings providing washes of music.  A new, fairly complex bassline opens the song.  The band builds the track with fast drumming and louder and louder strings.  It shifts tone at around 4 minutes.  And for the next 3 minutes it gets more intense until it seems to fade out, introducing a new guitar riff that works almost like a coda to the whole thing.  The drums are insane for this ending part and the band seems like they are just going nuts as the song comes crashing to an end.  The extra five minutes on vinyl come at the beginning of the song.  It starts with voices singing some basic “ahhhs” and then a guitar playing a ringing note.  It does add to the tension that builds up before the music begins properly and really should be checked out if you’ve only heard the CD version.

“George Bush Cut Up While Talking” is 3 minutes of a George Bush address cut up (it sounds like it is a skipping CD) interspersed with clapping that sounds like static and a voice saying “it is the predominant question, why am I here and what can I do to make it better how can I do what is right.”  (There’s a disconcerting video of this here.)

I think this album is really fantastic.  And while I enjoy their found sounds, I prefer that they’re just playing music.

After making this album the band would go on hiatus for…ten years.  Here’s the line up for Yanqui.

  • Thierry Amar – bass guitar
  • David Bryant – electric guitar
  • Bruce Cawdron – drums
  • Aidan Girt – drums
  • Norsola Johnson – cello
  • Efrim Menuck – guitar
  • Mauro Pezzente – bass guitar
  • Roger Tellier-Craig – guitar [replaced Mike Moya]
  • Sophie Trudeau – violin

[READ: April 11, 2016] “”Where the Yazoo Cross the Yellow Dog””

This is an except from a story about Jimbo and Rob.  The opening details Jimbo’s (James) parents, which I rather enjoyed.  Particularly the details about his father–his daily “three and three-quarter minute boiled egg served in a brightly coloured egg cup” and this statement:

‘I view hot toast,’ he said in one of his rare communications, pointing to the solitary Hovie slice lodged cold in the silver toast rack, ‘as offensively American.’

I also loved the dogmatic qualities of his father

‘What?’ said the Major.  ‘What?”
Which was his usual response top any reply short of complete agreement or grovelling.

And

“Don’t say ‘haven’t got,'” said the Major.  “It is both redundant and ill-bred.  ‘Haven’t’ will suffice.”

But the story is really about Jimbo and his friend Rob Forde (that cannot be a coincidence).  Jimbo was a teenager affecting sophistication (he wanted a smoking jacket) and he and Rob looked through junk shops for cigarette cases and art books. (more…)

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Terry Wiley & Dave McKinnon–Sleaze Castle: The Director’s Cut Part #0 (1992, updated 2012)

Posted in Aida Shahghasemi, Blindness, Church of the SubGenius, Dave McKinnon, Funny (ha ha), Graphic Novel, Huh?, Jeremy Dennis, Jimi Hendrix, Lee Brimmicombe-Wood, Lee Kennedy, Marketa Irglova, MWOWN, Neil Gaiman, Once, Religion, Sci-fi, Set at School, Sinéad O'Connor, Siouxsie Sioux, Supernatural, Terry Wiley, Time Travel, Tiny Desk Concert on May 2, 2016| Leave a Comment »

sleazeSOUNDTRACK: MARKETA IRGLOVA-Tiny Desk Concert #174 (November 10, 2011).

marketaMarketa Irglova came to the world’s attention in the film Once, where she duetted with Glen Hansard.  They formed The Swell Season and made some beautiful music together.  But he has another band and she has done some solo work, like in this Tiny Desk.  Incidentally, watch the video, but listen to the audio.  For some reason the sound in the video is all wonky and weird, but the audio is fine.

This concert is a little surprising because Irglova plays a synth, rather than a piano, and she is accompanied by Iranian singer-percussionist Aida Shahghasemi whom she met in New York.  And Shahghasemi and her drum (called a daf) are actually a bit more interesting than Irglova.

Irglova has a nice voice, and I have really enjoyed a lot of her music, but I found these songs to be a little long and a little undramatic.  However, once you accept that she’s not going for drama, these songs are mellow and lovely.

The opening song, “We Are Good,” has an interesting main riff on the keyboard and her voice blends nicely with the music.  The end section has a very nice melody as it builds and builds.  But as I mentioned, it the daf that is so fascinating.  The drum itself looks like an Irish bodhran (or any other hand-held drum, I suppose), except it has a much bigger diameter and is very thin.  It also has a series of dangling items on the inside, which bring about a lot more percussive qualities.

“Dokhtar Goochani” is a traditional Iranian song sung in Farsi.  Shahghasemi sings the song while Irglova plays.  With the keyboard, the song doesn’t really sound very Middle Eastern until Irglova joins in on harmony vocals in the chorus, when it takes on a very cool quality.  And the drum and percussive sounds in the middle are really enticing.

After this song, Shahghasemi talks a bit about her drum and says that it can be much louder than she’s playing it here.  It’s a traditional Kurdish drum with “jangles” which she explains is usually made of goatskin, but this one is synthetic because the humidity doesn’t affect it as much.

The final song, “Let Me Fall In Love” is about the idea of being in love, with lyrics that are a bit didactic, but whatever.  I really like the middle section where the two women harmonize quite beautifully.  But again the song is a little long.

[READ: October 25, 2015] Sleaze Castle

The cover of this book is crazy.  The full title appears to be:

Markosia/Gratuitous Bunny Comix
Sleaze Castle : The Director’s Cut
Part Zero: “Tales from Sleaze Castle”
Reprinting “Takes from Sleaze Castle” #1-#4
Screenplay by Terry Wiley & Dave McKinnon  Art Direction by Terry Wiley

And then a drawing of a woman with what looks like a magic wand and another woman standing by watching her.

And then there’s a whole list of “Starring” (these names are actually characters in the stories)
and then Film Sound Track Album by MWOWM available on Gratuitous Bunny Audio #GBA3

That’s a lot to take in and it made me wonder if the comic would be that busy.  And it is.  This book is a wonder to behold.  Self published in 1992, this book is just chock full of story, with an astonishing amount of detail included in the drawings–nods to other comics, musical appreciation and all kinds of fun things to look at.  It took me a pretty long time to read this because there was just so much to see and read.  It was a lot of fun.  Even if the plot was a little confusing.

This book collects the original books and adds material (which is not at the end of the story necessarily (so art quality varies).

The book opens on a planet far away.  A blonde woman is talking about the trip she will take which will last for ten minutes their time.

Then we jump to the Prologue set in Jo’s house.  Her sister Petra is giving her a hard time.  Jo wants to take her watchman to school (she is a film studies graduate student) but it was Petra’s new present.  So they are fighting of course.  The amazing detail starts here with books on Jo’s shelves and all manner of other things to look at. (more…)

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Patrick Ness–The Rest of Us Just Live Here (2015)

Posted in Adventure, Ben Williams and Sound Effect, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Cats, Drinking, Marriage Trouble, Patrick Ness, Set at School, Sex, Stevie Wonder, Supernatural, Tiny Desk Concert, Vampires, Violence, YA Books on April 28, 2016| Leave a Comment »

nessSOUNDTRACK: BEN WILLIAMS & SOUND EFFECT-Tiny Desk Concert #170 (October 24, 2011).

ben williasmBen Williams is a jazz upright bass player (I didn’t realize bass players made band leaders, but clearly they do).  In 2009, he won the Thelonious Monk Jazz Competition.  And is an up and coming star.

He plays two original songs from his album State of Art.

It’s not often that the blurb describes a song, but it does a better job than I could have so for the first song, “Home”

the guitar (Gilad Hekselman) and drums (John Davis) lay down an aggressive, snappy foundation. The bass and electric keyboard (Christian Sands) fill out the polyrhythms. That groove, with its snappy hip-hop flavor, feels at home cruising down Georgia Avenue, then turning right on U Street NW, the historic African-American commercial district of Washington [D.C. where Williams is from]. Then the saxophone (Marcus Strickland) enters, and it’s game on.

That saxophone really runs the show on this song.  There’s an interesting keyboard solo (I like the sound he chose, very Stevie Wonder-ish, but it’s a little quiet).

The sax switches to a smaller sax for the second song, “Dawn of a New Day.”  The song is much slower and is more than twice as long as “Home.”

There’s a pretty lengthy bass solo (which sounds very old-school to me).  It’s followed by an electric guitar solo that has an interesting effect on it which made me think at first that it was a horn.  The horn comes next with a lengthy sax solo.  The final solo comes from the keyboard (which now sounds like a piano).  And then the song returns to that interesting main riff.

[READ: April 20, 2016] The Rest of Us Just Live Here

Sarah brought this book home and told me the premise–imagine what the stories of the other kids in the Buffy Universe would be like–wondering about all of those weird kids fighting vampires or whatnot.

At first I thought she meant that the other kids didn’t know what was going on, which would have been funny.  But in this story, the kids know that there are vampires and other mystical things, they just aren’t any part of the action–they are not the Chosen Ones.

It’s a very funny premise for a book, and I looked forward to how Ness would create a story around people who aren’t “doing” anything.

But that’s not the only thing that the story is about.  Ness makes the lives of the other kids so compelling and so, human (even if one of them is a quarter god). (more…)

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