SOUNDTRACK: PHISH-Undermind (2004).
As I understand it, Phish fans didn’t like Undermind that much and yet I really liked it and still do. Indeed, “Undermind” is one of my favorite new Phish songs, it’s clever and boppy and just really catchy. The album has very Beatles vibe to it—a kind of echoey feel on all the songs. And I have recently read that people interpret the cover design to be a nod to Let It Be (there are other connections made but I’m not going to go too deeply into that).
“Scents and Subtle Sounds” opens the album. This is a brief intro–the full songs, which sounds different appears later on the disc (it’s 97 second here)). It leads into “Undermind” which has a loose, slightly funky sound—one of their more fun songs on recent albums. The album version has some big fat organ sounds on it which make it even cooler.
“The Connection” is another great poppy song—gorgeous harmonies and wonderful melody, and indeed it was their first real hit. “A Song I Heard the Ocean Sing” is another great song, great backing vocals, an excellent melody and great alternating verse vocals from Mike. It also has a great middle guitar section—it’s long and wild and reminiscent of Jimi Hendrix’ solos. “Army of One” is sung by Page. It is a big soaring song and it’s got a very upbeat sound. “Crowd Control” is a very Beatleseque song.
“Maggie’s Revenge” is a noisy instrumental, with Trey’s guitars making all kind of squealing noise. It’s weird and quite refreshing from Phish’s more recent fair. “Nothing” picks up with the open and poppy sounds of earlier records and has more great harmonies. It seems to fade out in the middle though—a song that could have been longer! “Two Versions of Me” is another mid tempo song with great harmonies and great chorus. “Access Me” is a brief poppy song that feels a bit like filler, although it has a cool and interesting coda. “Scents and Subtle Sounds” resumes
“Tomorrow’s Song” has a very African feel to it. It is a simple repetitive rhythm that lasts for about 3 minutes before it fades out just like it faded in. “Secret Smile” is a very pretty piano ballad. It’s a little heavy handed with the strings, and at nearly 7 minutes it’s too long (especially the long coda), but the melody is certainly nice. The album ends with “Grind,” a barbershop quartet track which shows just what kind of great harmonies they cool do.
Although it’s a mature sound, there’s enough weird stuff to let them show their funky side too. The CD comes with a DVD called “Specimens of Beauty.”
[READ: October 8, 2013] C
I received a prepub version of this book back in 2010. The cover and title were weird and I thought I’d like to read it. And it sat on my shelf for two years.
And then Borders closed (bummer, their chai tea was the best!) and I saw a hardcover copy of the book for $1 so I bought it (I’m enough of a geek to want to see how prepubs and final copies are different. In this case, the books appear identical except that in the last two dozen or so pages, there’s a section with ellipses. In the prepub, they are single spaced but in the final book they are double spaced which throws off the line spacing. So by the end of the book, the lines are about three lines different. Fascinating huh?).
Anyhow, what on earth is a book called C about?
Well, it is a Bildungsroman or coming-of-age story. By definition these stories focus on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood. Our protagonist is Serge Carrefax, even though he is not the first person we meet. That would be a doctor delivering materials to Serge’s father, Mr. Simeon Carrefax. Mr Carrefax runs a school for the deaf in which he tells children to stop using sign language and to start speaking properly. And he has had considerable success with the children, each of whom acting in a play every year. (The book, by the way, is set in the late 1800s). His mother is a silkworm farmer, and much of their money comes from this job.
But the main person in Serge’s life is his sister Sophie. Sophie is a deviously clever girl who is alternately mean to Serge (as only older sisters can be) and then encouraging him to play with her. She is mad for science and is constantly experimenting with her chemistry set (leading to more than one explosion in the house). The early sections of the book show Sophie and Serge’s education. And when Sophie goes off to school, Serge is lost, especially when she returns from school but keeps telling him to leave her alone. And then one day, Serge discovers her dead in her “lab” and experiment in progress. (more…)
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Despite all of my reading, I am fairly ignorant of Shakespeare. I’ve read or seen most of the big ones, but I don’t know a lot of his works first hand. As a young reader I realized that reading Shakespeare was hard—as, really, any play with dozens of characters tends to be. It’s not easy to keep character straight when there are no descriptors about them. So I more or less gave up on reading Shakespeare and decided I would watch him when I could.
I Just Read About That... 