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Archive for the ‘Short Story’ Category

Tessa Hadley–“Dido’s Lament” (New Yorker, August 8 & 15, 2016)

Posted in Field Recordings, Marriage (Happy), Marriage Trouble, New Yorker, Nostalgia, NPR/PRI/PBS, Short Story, Slowdive, Tessa Hadley on August 8, 2018| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: SLOWDIVE-“Sugar for the Pill” (Field Recordings, June 13, 2017).

It has been nearly a year since NPR Music broadcast its last Field Recording.  From 2012-2017, these were fun, interesting opportunities to put a band in an unlikely setting and have them play a song live,

There are 80 some of these recordings (see the whole shebang here), and I’ve decided to focus on “Slowdive Fills A Shuffleboard Parlor With Shimmering Sound.”

Before a month-and-change ago, Slowdive hadn’t released an album in 22 years. So you’d be forgiven for watching the band perform “Sugar For The Pill” and struggling to pin down what era you’re in — especially since NPR Music plopped the group in a playfully retro Brooklyn shuffleboard parlor for the occasion.

This live recording might be stripped down (I’m not sure), but it sounds great. Neil Halstead plays a pretty, shimmering guitar and sings with his distinctive whispered vocals.  Rachel Goswell is there to provide her delicate harmonies as well.  With them are Nick Chaplin (I assume) on bass.  The bass sounds terrific.  The low end is really good and moves the song along perfectly.  Simon Scott is there to add electronic drums.

A patient mid-tempo gem that’s as hooky as it is hypnotic, “Sugar For The Pill” is a particular highlight, so it’s a joy to watch the reconstituted band trot it out for this Field Recording, filmed at Royal Palms Shuffleboard in Brooklyn.

I don;t understand how this song sounds so good in a shuffleboard facility, but it does.  It sounds great.

[READ: January 4, 2017] “Dido’s Lament”

I really love Hadley’s stories.  I love that she is able to write compellingly about small moments–moments that aren’t going to end a person’s life, but will certainly impact it.

This story starts with Lynette.  She is shopping in a John Lewis–and is quite embarrassed about it.  She is described as “tall, anxious, original, in her late thirties…her hair was shaved above her ears and the rest of it, dyed bronze and pink, was piled up in a striking bird’s nest mess.” It’s the way she throws in that word “original” that I love.

A man pushes though the crowd and knocks her over.  She stumbles and hurts her ankle while trying not to trip over a stroller.

There is no way she is going to let this guy do that and not apologize or acknowledge what he did.  So she runs after him.  She is determined not to hobble or let anyone see her in pain, so she deals with the pain and goes in pursuit of the coat that she knows he is wearing.

She finally catches him on a subway platform.  She taps him on the shoulder ready to yell at him  But when he turns around, she realizes that not only does she know him, she used to be married to him.  She and Toby had separated nine years earlier.  He seems bigger now, but more confident in his ways.  Rather than yell at him, she was struck mute until he turned and was so excited to see her! (more…)

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Steven Millhauser–“A Change in Fashion” (Harper’s, May 2006)

Posted in Fashion, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Harper's, Nirvana, Palehound, Sex, Sexism, Short Story, Steven Millhauser, Supernatural, The Cardigans, Twin Peaks on August 5, 2018| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: PALEHOUND-A Place I’ll Always Go (2017).

Ellen Kempner’s voice is a bit louder in the mix so you can really hear the words despite the fact that she is still singing mostly in a whisper.

It’s a logical step from her previous album and every thing sounds a bit bigger and a bit better.

“Hunter’s Gun” is slow and a little creepy with the echo on her vocals and her whispered lyrics.  There’s also some great weird effects floating around in the background–especially by the end as the echo more or less takes over.

“Carnations” starts simply enough with a quiet chugging riff.  But the chorus is a wonderful–louder guitar with the guitar and vocals doing the same catchy melody.  It also has some great lyrics

They’re still in love with their ex
And I’m not feeling my best
This is a bad combination

‘Cause I’ve been dreaming I might
Just up and bail on this plight
And maybe go on vacation

Pack up my shit in the dark
And if the car doesn’t start
It spares us both conversations

“Room” is slower more acoustic-feeling.  It’s a sweetly romantic song with the lovely chorus line “She keeps me…  at night.”

“If You Met Her” starts out kind of sinister musically, but it has a really catchy chorus as well  It’s a wonderful song about breakup and new love perfectly summed up with this ending line

I’m with someone new
And I know that you would love her if you met her

The set up of rocker followed by slower song continues with  “Silver Toaster,” a loose, acoustic song that reminds of a snarky/simple Nirvana song (with a banjo solo!)

“Turning 21” has a big shoegaze guitar sound and a wonderfully catchy melody in the bridge.

“Flowing Over” mixes some good guitar lines and a rocking mid bridge section but its the oh oh oh oh section and the way it changes throughout the song that is the major hook.

“Backseat” opens with pulsing keys.  It’s a dark mediation that segues into the beautiful guitar of “Feeling Fruit, ” a pedestrian-seeming lyric that is much deeper and quite moving.

“At Night I’m Alright With You.” is a quiet moody song with a real Twin Peaks vibe.

These two releases are great but to really get to see how amazing Ellen is, check her out live.

[READ: January 23, 2018] “A Change in Fashion”

When I read this recently it sounded really familiar.  Clearly I had read it back in 2006 and it was so striking that I remembered it 12 years later.

And indeed, it is a memorable story, even if it’s not especially profound or funny–it’s mildly amusing and thoughtful.

Basically, this is an account of the way fashions changed after the Age of Revelation.  Girls and women were happily showing off their thongs but it was as if, after a half a century of reckless exposure, a weariness had overcome women…a disenchantment to invite a bold male gaze.

At first girls were opposed to it–it reminded them of old photographs in boring albums.  But soon it became stylish to wear dresses that brushed the floor–wearing lambskin gloves and rising collars. (more…)

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Mary Gaitskill–“The Little Boy” (Harper’s, June 2006)

Posted in Harper's, Mary Gaitskill, Old Age, Palehound, Parenting, Short Story on August 4, 2018| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: PALEHOUND-Dry Food (2015).

I have seen Palehound twice, once as a headliner and once as an opening band (in that order).  I love Ellie Kempner’s guitar style and her slackerish vocals.  Her lyrics are usually incisive and the way she pulls all of that together is really terrific.

Her recorded output is pretty stellar.  She has a few EPs and/or singles and then this, her first album, which comes it at less than 30 minutes.  It features some of Kempner’s great guitar, prescient lyrics and really catchy songwriting–a potent combination.

“Molly” opens with a great rumbling bass line, a cool guitar riff and a wonderful overdubbed distorted guitars.  It’s immediately catchy.  The whole verse is crazy catchy and then after two lines, she adds a new riff before returning to the first one.  There’s so much going on and its all terrific.  Next up is a cool bridge followed by a third part with yet another great guitar soloing type of riff and loud chorus of “ooooohs.”  There is so much going on in this song, I was shocked to see that it’s under 3 minutes long

“Healthier Folk” starts out as a kind of bedroom-sounding acoustic guitar song, but after a verse there’s a trippy chorus with soaring guitars

Mouth ajar, watching cuties hit the half pipe
I only feel half-right
Around healthier folk
But oh, why don’t hold me?
They just
Cradle me like a homesick child

Mid way through, the guitars get louder with a heavy riff before returning to that trippy middle section.

Even though Kempner rocks out, she also has some slower songs.  “Easy” is a slow song with this great line: “I’m pushing back your tongue / With my clenched teeth home security system.”  I love how the chorus (and more) is just a blast of noise without speeding up the tempo of the song.  Two thirds of the way through, the song picks up briefly (“All I need’s a little sleep”).  And the last thirty seconds are a wild, chaotic-sounding series of riffs (with a noisy feedbacking guitar solo).

“Cinnamon” has yet another terrific riff.  Live, this song absolutely scorches–vocally and guitar wise.  This version is a little tamer, but you can really hear what a great guitarist she is.

“Dry Food” starts slowly, with a pretty guitar line and a cool vocal delivery.  I love the way the verses are slow and the chorus builds into a strangely catchy melody without really picking the tempo up.

“Dixie” is a quiet confessional with some great lyrics and a catchy chorus.

And people that I’ll never meet
Have been showing up naked in my dreams
And I try to close my eyes but I really want to see
Their breasts like eyes are staring back at me
…
The hair that’s in my shower drain
Has been clogging up my home
And I try to scoop it up but I retch until I’m stuck
To stare and gag into a Dixie cup (with a cough on the repeat of this line)

“Cushioned Caging” is a more aggressive rocker, but her vocals don’t really match the guitar loudness, making you lean in to hear her.  The disc ends with “Seekonk,” the longest song on the disc (nearly 5 minutes).  It’s slow with a couple of different parts to flesh it out.

Kempner really showcases the various aspects of her songwriting.  It’s a really solid album and could easily be much longer.

[READ: January 15, 2018] “The Little Boy”

This short story was interesting in that it seemed far more about an old woman than a little boy.

Mrs. Bea Davis is walking through an airport after visiting her daughter Megan in upstate New York.

We learn a lot about her and her daughters Megan and Susan as well as her ex-husband.  We learn some about her because she is talking to her self.  A woman with a small boy passed and the boy turned to look at her.

The trip had been okay, as best as could be expected. Bea felt that Megan and her husband enjoyed making fun of ugly people (“That guy is like an anteater in leisurewear. That girl, she can’t wear that dress, look at her stomach.”)  the way Bea’s own sisters Tomasina and Livia would go to Woolworth’s and comment on the ugly poor people.    (more…)

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Heinz Insu Fenkl–“Five Arrows” (New Yorker, August 3, 2015)

Posted in Darlingside, Heinz Insu Fenkl, Huh?, Korea, Neil Young, New Yorker, Newport Folk Festival, NPR/PRI/PBS, Short Story on August 3, 2018| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: DARLINGSIDE-Live at Newport Folk Festival (July 27, 2018).

Darlingside never disappoints and this stream from Newport Folk Festival is an excellent opportunity to hear them live.

The sound quality is excellent and their voices are more clear than on the record!

I had no idea this was only their first time at Newport Folk est and Harris is suitably excited (even though it’s only 11AM).

It’s also an opportunity to hear their one of a kind banter.

The harmonies on “Go Back” are just heavenly.  And they are positively angelic on “Singularity.”

The introductory cello solo at the beginning of “Harrison Ford” was a delightful change.  And the guitar really rocks loud on “Eschaton” (almost like a real rock band!)

There’s also the hilarious band member introduction (different at every show).

Auyon says that they were able to play for a boys and girls camp, Camp Grovernor.  But something was lost in communication and the camp director thought the band name was “Don Mitchell,” (their banjo player).  And the director was asking, “Is it Don Mitchell and the…”  Auyon explained that the Don Mitchell is silent and it’s just Darlingide.  This got him to wonder what the band would be if each member was the main character.

Dave Senft plays kick drum, bass and guitar.  Dave had a child recently so it would be Dave Senft and The Weird Uncles.
Harris Paseltiner plays cello and guitar. Harris lights his beer light in body and light in color and as far as I can tell utterly devoid of flavor…  so Harris Paseltiner and The Lightest Beers.
Don Mitchell plays banjo and guitar.  Don is from CT and is steeped in New England traditions, like nativism and xenophobia which he demonstrates every time he uses Midwestern as an insult…. which is particularly irksome to those of us in the band who are from the Midwest.  In the spirit of brotherhood, Don Mitchell and The Midwesterners.
Auyon Mukharji plays mandolin and violin and with me we would be Auyon Mukharji and the Best of Friends.

Harris: it’s the first time he’s ever been earnest.  It must be something in the water.
Don: that was the height of Midwesternness.
Auyon: and it felt really good.

This the first time I’ve heard them play the Neil Young song “Red Sun” which sounds great of course.  It’s done a capella, too.

  • “The God of Loss”
  • “Go Back”
  • “White Horses”
  • “Extralife”
  • “Harrison Ford”
  • “Singularity”
  • “Eschaton”
  • “Red Sun (Neil Young)”
  • “Blow The House Down”

[READ: February 4, 2016] “Five Arrows”

This is strange little story about a man who moves to an island because his gangrenous foot smells so bad that he has ejected himself from polite society.

But it is told from the point of view of a young boy, Insu.  Insu is from the village of Bupyeong in Korea.  But he has lived in The United States and Germany for the last two years.

Insu is shocked at what has happened to their village–the river which five years ago was so clear you could see the bottom was now dammed up and cloudy.  The locals were trying to grow carp.

It turns out that Insu and his friend are rowing across the river to find Big Uncle and Little Uncle.  They are skipping school and know that the uncles can keep a secret. (more…)

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Joshua Ferris–“The Abandonment” (New Yorker, August 1, 2016)

Posted in 20 Under 40, Drinking, Funny (ha ha), Joshua Ferris, Neurotics, New Yorker, Phish, Self, Short Story, The Simpsons on August 1, 2018| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: PHISH-Live Bait Vol. 8 (2012).

Live Bait Vol 8 included 6 songs in 90 minutes with a date range of 1993-2011.

It opens with a rollicking, shambling, fun version of “Run LIke an Antelope” from 1994.  The song opens with a Simpsons title riff and a big D’oh! from everyone.  The song sort of starts going but it is interrupted by a verse or two from “Big Black Furry Creature from Mars” (Just the “When I get home from work, what do I do? I try to kill you” part).  By ten minutes the music has gotten so far afield from the original.  There’s as creaming guitar solo from 14-17 minutes and at 18 minutes there’s a little bass solo until the try to rein it back in.  You almost forget what song they are playing and when it’s time for the words, Trey gets the line wrong, saying “Set the gear shift…” but quickly corrects himself and reverts to instead of “Rye Rye Rocco.”  In total this 21 minute song has about 2 minutes of actual “antelope.”  It’s pretty fun.

It jumps to a 2000 version of “Bathtub Gin.”  Page is in good form as this one opens with lots of wild piano in the introduction.  It’s a fun, groovy version that lasts about 15 minutes.

Back to 1996 for a bouncy funky version of Simple.  The middle shows of Page once again as he plays with all kinds of sounds from his keyboard rig.  The middle is some great funky organ.  The end of the song (after some 14 minutes, mellows out with some lovely piano from Page and what I suspect are bells played by Fish.

The fourth track is a 1998 version of the instrumental “Buried Alive.”  That riff is so good and they jam it for quite a while.  Trey really scorched throughout the song and he returns to the original riff after some 12 minutes of jamming.

The oldest track is a “Halley’s Comet” that segues into “Slave to the Traffic Light” from 1993.  The opening of “Comet” has everyone singing in harmony.  While the harmony is going on, Mike has got some good funky bass going too.  But six and a half minutes there’s more piano work from Page.  The segue into “Slave” comes at 9:45.  This version of the song is solid and sounds great.

Finally the freebie disc wraps us with a 15 minute “Tweezer” from 2011.  The opening lines all have little instrumental jams in them so it takes four-minute to get to the Ebenezer line.  The jam is very bright and cheerful with pretty solos from Trey and nice accents from Page.

While certainly shorter than some oft he other Bait, it’s a solid collection of 6 lengthy jams.

[READ: January 3, 2017] “The Abandonment”

This story was (I believe) deliberately confusing as it started.

It opens with a man searching around a neighborhood.  He is hoping to find a woman who isn’t there. Then it flashes back to he and his wife getting married in Cuba and, in the same paragraph, he acknowledges that they will now get divorced.

So far the only characters are the he and her (no names yet).  So in the next section when he winds up at a place and hopes to find her there, we have to assume it is his wife.

He buzzes the intercom and gives his name, (Nick) so that he is able to go in.  But when he gets to the elevator, a woman exits and says “Oh my God…I thought that was you…You are just…awesome….  I mean it, I love you…  Oh, I’m so embarrassed.” (more…)

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Kristin Valdez Quade–“Christina the Astonishing (1150-1224)” (New Yorker, July 31, 2017)

Posted in Brendan Connell, Humiliation, Kelli Scarr, Kristin Valdez Quade, Moby, New Yorker, NPR/PRI/PBS, Phil Toledano, Pregnancy, Project Song, Religion, Sex, Short Story, Supernatural, Surreal on July 31, 2018| Leave a Comment »

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SOUNDTRACK: MOBY-One Song, Two Days, Three Versions (Project Song: May 4, 2010).

Project Song was a nifty little show that NPR Music created.  The premise was that NPR would give a musician some prompts and a recording studio.  They then had two days to write and record a song.  I don’t know how much of the process was to be filmed, but presumably most of it. Then it would be edited down to a fifteen minute show.  The results are pretty cool and it’s a shame they only made five of them.

The fifth and (presumably) final one they did was about six months after the previous one.  This Project was offered to Moby.

Moby generally works alone in his New York apartment, but for Project Song, we asked him to bring along a collaborator. He picked Kelli Scarr, a Brooklyn-based singer and songwriter with a breathtaking voice. They arrived at NPR, a bit nervous and eager.

It takes weeks, even years, to write a song. NPR Music’s Project Song challenges musicians to do it in just two days. And every Project Song participant has worked right up to the last-minute — that is, until Moby.

He and collaborator Kelli Scarr finished their song in a little more than a single day. In fact, they had so much time left over, they recorded a second version of the song. And after that, they gave a small concert for the staff at NPR.

I kicked off the songwriting process by showing them a series of photographs and words. The surreal images came from New York artist Phil Toledano; you can see more of his work at NPR’s Picture Show blog. Moby and Scarr are both drawn to an image of a man in the woods wearing a trenchcoat. [Moby: “A disconcerting loneliness that I really like”].  There’s a brown briefcase on the earthen floor beside him, and his head looks like a glowing storm cloud.

Next, I gave them a series of words to choose from. Moby picked the word “flight.” Scarr chose “Sunday,” which Moby calls “the most depressing day of the week.”

Not too long after, Moby puts the card with the word “Sunday” printed on it, along with the photograph, on a nearby chair. He picks up a bass guitar and immediately starts playing a riff in the key of E. Turns out, this hastily played bass line would become the bedrock for their new song.

Just six hours later, the first of three versions of “Gone to Sleep” was recorded.

When he arrives he says he thought about cheating with chords ahead of time, but he likes the idea of jumping headlong into a project.  And as the blurb says, within minutes he’s got a bass line, some synths and drums.  Then a guitar line and more keyboard sounds.

Then they work on lyrics.  Moby says, “My favorite type of unsettling art is art that isn’t immediately unsettling.”  he cites the classic example of “Mack the Knife.”  You first hear it and it’s happy and then you listen to the lyrics and its terrifying.

The end of the video clip plays the whole song, guitar and piano and atmospheric.  Then over the closing credits they play a somewhat less atmospheric, gentler version of the song.  And then there’s the Tiny Desk which is altogether different.

It’s like Moby broke Project Song by making it seem too easy.

[READ: July 27, 2017] “Christina the Astonishing (1150-1224)”

I’ve read a few things by Vladez Quade, but this one is quite different from anything else.  It’s actually quite different form anything else I’ve read, period.  The closest author this reminded me of would be Brendan Connell, who likes to thoroughly investigate a historical character (real or imagined).

But this story is based on an actual; person:

St. Christina the Astonishing has been recognized as a saint since the 12th century. She was placed in the calendar of the saints by at least two bishops of the Catholic Church in two different centuries (17th & 19th) that also recognized her life in a religious order and preservation of her relics.

The story tells of her life from the point of view of her older sister and is written in a rather formal, almost canonical, style with section headings in an old style: “How She was Led Forth from the Body and How She Lived Again.”

The narrator, Mara, tells us that Christina lay dead in her coffin, a grave awaiting her.  Mara is sad, she loved Christina, “I see this now.  She was difficult, unknowable but I loved her.”

But at the same time she says that perhaps if they had hastened, outrun the melody.  If we’d only got those last words out, “He might have spared us our miracle.”

For indeed, the dead Christina not only rose bodily from her coffin, she levitated to the rafters. The narrator and her sister Gertrude clutched each other in fear. (more…)

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T. Coraghessan Boyle–“I Walk Between the Raindrops” (New Yorker, July 30, 2018)

Posted in Burning Airlines, Chris Walla, Death, Death Cab For Cutie, Drinking, Fire, J. Robbins, J.G. Ballard, Jawbox, Natural Disasters, New Yorker, Project Song, Short Story, Suicide, T.C. Boyle, Valentine's Day on July 30, 2018| 1 Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: CHRIS WALLA AND J. ROBBINS-Create ‘Mercury’ (Project Song: October 12, 2009).

Project Song was a nifty little show that NPR Music created.  The premise was that NPR would give a musician some prompts and a recording studio.  They then had two days to write and record a song.  I don’t know how much of the process was to be filmed, but presumably most of it. Then it would be edited down to a fifteen minute show.  The results are pretty cool and it’s a shame they only made five of them.

The fourth one they did was over a year and a half after the previous one.  This Project was offered to Chris Walla (of Death Cab for Cutie) and a performer he’d admired, J. Robbins (of Jawbox and Burning Airlines).

What made this project especially difficult was that the two had never even met before they stepped into NPR’s performance studio.

I supplied some inspiration for their song: photo collages created by artist Tom Chambers [The picture are really, really cool]. They chose a photograph of a house in a canyon filled with water, tilted and flooded. Not far from the house is a dog on a boat, floating either toward or away from the house. I also supplied a series of words. They selected the word “cerebral” and promised when they wrote the song not to be too cerebral about it.

Unlike the pairing from Georgie James, this pair is instantly excited at the possibilities–changes and ideas.

Robbins says he will not write any lyrics, it takes him a month and a half to hone them,

But it didn’t take long for Robbins to pick up his bass guitar, for Walla to pick up a guitar, and for the two to begin their musical friendship.

They were inspired by JG Ballard and his drowned world series. In these books there are people who know the world is dying but they embrace it as a forward movement into the unknown

J. get a great bass line right away (its sounds very Death Cab, interestingly).  Bob asks about the music and J. says the music sounds like a dog on a boat heading towards a half-submerged house.  And Walla is singing the word “mercury.”

Walla and Robbins were joined by Robbins’ friend, drummer Darren Zentek.

He adds a wonderful beat and the song sounds great.  They get excited filling out the possibilities–end on the bridge!

Walla goes off by himself to write lyrics.  And Robbins works on a piano part.  And then things really come together when Walla picks up the 12 string.

The song they created, “Mercury,” takes its subject matter from that photograph, which is a bit of a cataclysmic scenario turned into a song about the climate crisis.

The result has a definite Death Cab feel, but with Robbins and Walla alternating lead vocals it is a different, wonderful thing.

[READ: July 23, 2018] “I Walk Between the Raindrops”

This story centers around Valentine’s Day.  But it’s a T.C. Boyle story so there’s always something else to look forward to.

I love the way this story opens with Brandon the narrator telling us.

This past Valentine’s Day, I was in Kingman, Arizona, with my wife, Nola, staying in the Motel 6 there, just off the I-40. You might not think of Kingman as a prime location for a romantic getaway (who would?), but Nola and I have been married for fifteen years now, and romance is just part of the continuum….  Were we slumming?  Yes, sure.  We could have stayed anywhere we liked…and if it’s not ideal, at least it’s different.

They were there because Nola’s father lives nearby and they decided to pay a visit and to let Nola search for antiques.  They went to Denny’s (the only place her father will eat), and after eating, Nola went antiquing and Brandon went to a bar to wait for her.

It’s not unfriendly (despite some graffiti like “fuck you, liberal pussies” (which he chooses to take as ironic), but he doesn’t order a Pinot Noir or anything.  (more…)

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David Means–“The Gulch” (Harper’s, April 2006)

Posted in Crucifixion, D.H. Lawrence, David Means, Death, Harper's, Hotels, Parenting, Project Song, Short Story, Violence, Yuck! on July 29, 2018| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: NELLIE McKAY-Reveals ‘Cavendish’ (Project Song: April 2, 2008).

Project Song was a nifty little show that NPR Music created.  The premise was that NPR would give a musician some prompts and a recording studio.  They then had two days to write and record a song.  I don’t know how much of the process was to be filmed, but presumably most of it. Then it would be edited down to a fifteen minute show.  The results are pretty cool and it’s a shame they only made five of them.

The third one they did was five months after the previous one.  As with the Stephin Merritt project, McKay was solo, but she had a lot of problems and recriminations.

When I invited Nellie McKay to participate in Project Song, I figured she’d write some witty words and hammer something out on the piano. I don’t mean to make it sound so simple, but listen to the music of Nellie McKay, and she’s the one who makes it seem so easy.

McKay came into our studio looking as if she’d just walked off a movie set. In fact, at times in conversation, a young Judy Garland came to mind. She took great care with her curly blonde hair and her beautiful pinstriped suit.

I laid some photographs [all from the Library of Congress] and some words on our makeshift bar for her to consider as jumping-off points for the song she would write over the next few days.

It didn’t take long for McKay to settle on a black-and-white photograph of some men dancing the Charleston out in front of a movie theater. To go with the picture, she chose the word “Bravado.” Those two things would inspire and inform her song.

And then, despite a bit of hemming and hawing, McKay proceeded to sit behind the grand piano and begin drawing musical staff lines on some note paper. She began composing her song.

Although perhaps the consternation and questioning was more of her conscious mind, because it sounds like she was much more confident than she appeared.  “Why couldn’t I have written a song in secret and brought it in and pretended to be confused?”

Here’s what I now know that I didn’t know at the time: In just a few hours of playing at the piano, Nellie McKay wrote her song. I know that now, because I can look at the zoom lens of our video camera and see all the scribbles in her notebook. The words are mostly there, and so is the music.

She pokes out notes on the piano and scribbles in her book.  Then she plays the ukulele (with wah wah).  She hems and haws quite a bit, playing with Bob’s computer to make three distinct drum parts.  She talks with Bob.

“Its hard enough to do a bad pastiche which is what I’m aiming at now.  This is the worst thing, I wrote a complicated bad song.”

She finally asks Bob, the constant cheerleader, “where’s your cynicism, you work for NPR?”

From my perspective in the control room of our studio, what I heard for the better part of our first day was some tinkering, some scribbling, and more tinkering. She’d pick up the ukulele and play more piano, but I couldn’t hear a song emerging.

Then she plays some cello on top.  Then it’s on to some haunting backing vocals.

Bob’s mind is boggled: “to put down the uke part first after what I’ve heard, why not play the piano first?  Her answer: “I’m sick of the piano!”

She says she’s big on secrecy and doesn’t understand how other people did it.  Before revealing that she decides to put down “the thunderclap, perhaps the loon, a little bit of backing vocals, and then I’ll freak out a bit more and then I’ll try to do the main vocals.”

The lyrics, however — and even the title — were a closely kept secret until the final hours of the final day.

Then she reveals the dramatic, multi-faceted, three-part song.  It is stunning that she came up with this.  There’s sound effects, spoken word, Latin rhythms and then a torch song part with horns and falsetto.

And this is it, a song about a London hotel called the Cavendish. A song about some of its guests, like D.H. Lawrence and The Beatles, and of better, simpler times. A wonderful theatrical journey from Nellie McKay — someone who seems connected with the past and unsure of her present.

The Cavendish was a real hotel.  They went through a lot of change.  The hotel has been through two wold wars.  The Latin part is exotic–lovely and yet unsettling.

[READ: January 24, 2018] “The Gulch”

The centerpiece of this story is vile and horrible even to think about.  The story begins with it, it focuses on it but then it also kind of dismisses it at the end.

The story is basically about three juvenile delinquents who have crucified a boy in their class (he did not survive).  It begins with a description of the cross they created with pressure-treated wood and rope from a neighborhood laundry line.

It is written in a kind of casual style from Detective Collard’s point of view.  There’s lots of parenthetical asides “The one who dreamed up the scheme (for lack of a better word).”

One of the boys admitted to digging the hole but then said he wasn’t there in sport or heart. (more…)

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Kate Hendry–“All That Glass” (Harper’s, March 2006)

Posted in David Byrne, Georgie James, Harper's, Huh?, Humiliation, John Cougar Mellencamp, Kate Hendry, Laura Burhenn, Marriage Trouble, NPR/PRI/PBS, Phil Toledano, Project Song, Q and Not U, Rod Stewart, Short Story, Talking Heads on July 28, 2018| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK:  GEORGIE JAMES-Builds ‘Monument’ In Two Days (Project Song: December 17, 2007).

Project Song was a nifty little show that NPR Music created.  The premise was that NPR would give a musician some prompts and a recording studio.  They then had two days to write and record a song.  I don’t know how much of the process was to be filmed, but presumably most of it. Then it would be edited down to a fifteen minute show.  The results are pretty cool and it’s a shame they only made five of them.

The second one they did was with Georgie James

Georgie James is a band on the rise [Note: they broke up on August 4, 2008]. The duo makes smart, infectious pop with tight harmonies and jangling guitars — an upbeat and innocent sound that’s made its debut album (Places, 2007) a sleeper success.  Georgie James got its start when drummer John Davis’ former band, Q and Not U, disbanded in 2005.  Davis turned to his singer-songwriter friend, Burhenn, to forge something new.

At first, the two seemed like an unlikely pair. Davis had spent the past seven years releasing records with his bandmates on the legendary D.C. punk label Dischord and touring the world. Burhenn, on the other hand, had been releasing solo projects on her own label, Laboratory Records, and playing smaller venues on the east and west coast.

They eventually settled on a stark but serene image by New York photographer Phil Toledano, depicting a bare room with a large pile of books stacked in the middle. For the phrase, the band chose “Something Joyful.”

Their process seems tense to me.  But maybe that’s just how they bounce ideas off of each other.

He chose the words “something joyful.”  She chose David Bowie and 45.
She likes the pile of books in empty room–she sees it youthful and he sees it as disuse, disrepair, neglect.  They decide to use that picture and the phrase “something joyful.”

She plays piano melody banging out ideas for the tune on the first day. There’s lots of discussion and back and forth–very different from Merritt’s solitary style.

“It’s really difficult when you have two people who are trying to meet in the middle,” Burhenn says. “We each had a different vision of where this was going to go, and to try to very quickly throw that together is a difficult thing.”

They change styles.  She suggests maybe a Talking Heads’ vibe.  She sings it in a David Byrne-ish drawl but he doesn’t like it.  She says this is turning into a nightmare and fears the song sounds like John Cougar Mellencamp or Rod Stewart.

But in the final hour they pulled it out.

Davis added drums, bass and guitar. The two layered the sound with multiple harmonies and hand-claps.

Two days later, they had a song they called “Monument.” It’s a three-and-a-half-minute pop gem that marries the contrasting loneliness of the photograph with the spirit of “something joyful.”

As they walk out she says, “I think it’s awesome.”  And it’s very catchy.

[READ: February 2, 2018] “All That Glass”

This is a peculiar story that starts out seemingly reasonable and then just goes off the rails.

A man says his wife no longer wants to sleep in the bedroom anymore.  He took it as an attack against him and wondered what he did.  But she ignores that and says she wants to move into the conservatory.  He agrees but says that “All that glass, it gets cold in there at night.”

She moves some basics into the conservatory.  He thought it was odd, but it gave the conservatory a good spring cleaning.

It was cold in there at night  She wore extra clothes though, and that was that. (more…)

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Tessa Hadley–“Silk Brocade” (New Yorker, July 27, 2015)

Posted in Drinking, Magnetic Fields, Marriage Trouble, New Yorker, NPR/PRI/PBS, Phil Toledano, Project Song, Seamstresses, Short Story, Stephin Merritt, Tessa Hadley on July 27, 2018| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: STEPHIN MERRITT: Two Days, ‘A Million Faces’ (Project Song: November 4, 2007).

Project Song was a nifty little show that NPR Music created.  The premise was that NPR would give a musician some prompts and a recording studio.  They then had two days to write and record a song.  I don’t know how much of the process was to be filmed, but presumably most of it. Then it would be edited down to a fifteen minute show.  The results are pretty cool and it’s a shame they only made five of them.

The first one they did was with Magnetic Field’s singer/songwriter/wizard Stephin Meritt.

Merritt is quite prolific so this seemed like it would be no big challenge.  They showed him six images and six words.  He had to choose one picture and one word.  He chose a picture and the word 1974.

Merritt does most of his writing sitting in a bar, with throbbing music in the background.

“Some recording artists write in the studio,” he tells All Songs Considered host Bob Boilen. “I think they’re crazy.”

So for the first installment of a new multimedia experiment called Project Song, All Songs Consideredset up a bar for Merritt in NPR’s Studio 4A, an expansive wood-floored room with plenty of space for a creative artist to spread out and experiment. We supplied him with a grand piano, an assortment of other keyboards (including a ’70s MOOG synthesizer), drums and guitars — even a sampler, from which Merritt extracted the sound of a vintage Mellotron.

The photograph he chose, by artist Phil Toledano, is an incredible image of a man covered head to toe in what looks like a bodysuit made of baby dolls.

In Merritt’s imagination the man shape shifts as a criminal.

For the music, he chose a “Shepherd tone” which is the illusion of ever ascending pitches.

And then we watch Merritt recording instruments and vocals and talking to the recording engineer.

It is very cool to see how this song evolves with bass, guitar, synth and more added in.

The final two minutes wrap up his take on.  He says he would normally work a lot longer.  There is only one section to the song. (It’s verse no chorus?) Yes.   The song is based on a loop because he finished the song sooner than he might have.  “But I write lots of fairly simple songs, and I like this one.”

[READ: Feb 3, 2016] “Silk Brocade”

Once again Tessa Hadley easily transports me to another time and place.

In this story, we meet Ann Gallagher, a talented seamstress who has started a small business with her gregarious friend Kit.  They are going to make couture dresses and more.

Unfortunately, old friends of theirs have come a-calling.  And today, Nola Higgins straight from Fishponds, has come asking a favor.

Turns out that Nola is getting married to nobility and she hopes that Ann can make a dress from some gorgeous old silk brocade that was in his house.  Ann is fully intending to turn her away–saying that Nola will never be able to afford their work–until she learns about the money. (more…)

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