SOUNDTRACK: MUCCA PAZZA-Tiny Desk Concert #419 (February 10, 2015).
Ev
en though I said that the Dan Deacon Tiny Desk was the most fun to watch, it is a close tie with this one from Mucca Pazza. Mucca Pazza are a 23 piece band comprised of a huge horn section, violins, guitars, percussion, an accordion and even cheerleaders. The group dress like a marching band (but everyone with a different colored (often ill-fitting) outfit). The cheerleaders use caution tape as pompoms and do prompts between songs. They tip their hats when songs are done.
They have been around for ten years (and have four albums out). For this cramped Tiny Desk, they play four instrumental tracks (23 people and no vocalist!): “Subtle Frenzy” “J’accuse” “Dirty Chompers” and “Holiday on Ice.”
The songs are fast and fun and while there is an obvious marching band feel, they aren’t really marching band songs. The electric guitar and strings tends to undermine the machine band tendencies (even if the xylophone adds it back). Indeed, the electric guitars add a cool and sometimes disconcerting sound, like the guitar solo on “J’accuse” which is done on a teeny tiny guitar with a slide.
I love the melody of “Dirty Chompers”–such a fun song. And “Holiday on Ice” is chock of full of the mayhem you might expect from the description of this band. The middle section slows down somewhat and sounds a little demented (in a good way) It also really highlights the different components of the group–with different horns playing different scales and the trombones keeping the main somewhat menacing riff consistent.
So there’s a kind of Balkan Brass band element underpinning all of this–but there’s also discord and rock and psychedelia.
I don’t know if I’ve ever seen so many people having so much fun before. Their full stage show must be a riot.
You can watch the Tiny Desk here and listen to a full show (with a video of one song) here.
[READ: April 10, 2015] Ongoingness.
This book was excepted in Harper’s in December. I read the excerpt just a few weeks ago. And then when I saw someone request it at work I found our copy and, since the book was short, decided to read it at lunch before sending it off to the requester (such power I wield!).
In my post about the excerpt, I said that I couldn’t imagine how there could be much more than the excerpt and that I wouldn’t want to read a lot more of the book. Well, it turns out that the book itself is a brief 96 pages and the bulk of those pages are only a few lines. So a rough count would suggest about 36 pages altogether–an easy to read at lunch request. And that’s good, because if this book were 400 pages it would be either obnoxious or really tedious.
But at this length, it’s an interesting and enjoyable look at memory and life and how much we should be concerned about remembering. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 