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Archive for the ‘Swedish Music’ Category

George Pelecanos–“Twisted” (New Yorker, June 10 & 17, 2013)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Anna von Hausswolff, Dead Can Dance, George Pelecanos, Memoirs, Neko Case, New Yorker, Shoplifting, Swedish Music, Threats, True Crime, Unlikable main character on June 24, 2013| Leave a Comment »

CV1_TNY_06_10_13Schossow.inddSOUNDTRACK: ANNA VON HAUSSWOLFF-“Funeral for My Future Child” (2013).

anna-von-hausswolffThis was selected as one of NPR’s favorite songs of the year (so far).

It’s probably hard to like a song with a title like that, but there’s something strangely compelling about the whole proceeding–the great intricate percussion and drums that start the song, the ponderous pipe organ that lays down the melody, and then Anna’s voice which has a country-ish feel (kind of like Neko Case), but also has a kind of Dead Can Dance vocal style.   Or perhaps that’s just because she is Swedish.

By the time the chorus comes around, the ache of the song is apparent.  And the end has more of that amazing percussion.  I rather like the beginning and the end of the song more than the middle, which I guess doesn’t say a lot for it, but it is intriguing.

Evidently this album is primarily full of pipe organ, an interesting choice for a rock album.  I’d be curious to hear more.

[READ: June 17, 2013] “Twisted”

As if anticipating that I would not be able to write posts this week, the New Yorker has supplied me with a series of very short “True Crimes” pieces.  In fact, the whole issue is a fiction issue, which means a half a dozen or so stories as well.   But it’s these “True Crimes” that will keep me posting this week.

The first is from George Pelecanos, and it’s a story of his own crimes.  He explains that when he was younger, he did all manner of illegal things but had never been caught (aside from a few minor infractions).  He broke into houses and stole records from someone he didn’t like.  He rode in a stolen car, stole wallets from strangers at stores (at this point I really don’t like this guy).  But he doesn’t try to make excuses for himself.  He was a boy and he was having fun.

But the crimes continues long past adolescence.  In 1985 he was 28 and got involved in a high-speed chase.  He was drinking and smoking pot at a wedding.  He and his fiancée stopped at a convenience store where he backed  into someone’s car.  A gang of people came out and the threat of violence was imminent.  But he hopped in his car, drove on the sidewalk and sped off with the police in pursuit. (more…)

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Paul Theroux–“The Furies” (New Yorker, February 25, 2013)

Posted in Dead Can Dance, Dentists, Humiliation, Marriage Trouble, New Yorker, Nine Inch Nails, Paul Theroux, Reunion, Sexism, Short Story, Swedish Music, The Art of Noise, The Knife on May 2, 2013| Leave a Comment »

CV1_TNY_02_25_13Ulriksen.inddSOUNDTRACK: THE KNIFE-Shaking the Habitual (2013).

theknife2Since I reviewed the 19 minute song from this album yesterday I thought I’d check out the rest of the disc (still a handful).  I kept bearing in mind that The Knife are pretty much a dance duo.  So this departure is not only radical, it pretty much undercuts the kind of music they make.  The progress is probably exciting but I imagine fans would turn away in droves.  I wonder how this record will play out for them in the long run.  Incidentally, I wasn’t a fan before, so I don’t really have a horse in this race.

“A Tooth for an Eye” opens the record with an interesting percussion sound an a pulsing keyboard melody.  The keening vocals come in sounding weird and distant and more than a little eerie.  “Full of Fire” is a 9-minute song with a weird skittery “melody” that seems to float above the battered mechanical “drum.”  The whispered vocals are strained and also a little creepy.  The middle section has the skittery music jump around while the vocals get even more processed—making it simultaneously more friendly and less so.  It’s probably the coolest weird song on the disc, with parts that are catchy and interesting and parts that are just peculiar.  This is the single, by the way.

“A Cherry on Top” is 8 minutes of reasonable quietude, with the second half introducing an autoharp.  It’s certainly the most mellow thing on the disc.  Although it’s not exactly relaxing.  “Without You My Life Would Be Boring” seems like it should be the single—it is propulsive and while the vocals are certainly odd, they are the most conventional thing on the album.  “Wrap Your Arms Around Me” has big electronic pulsing drums and whispered vocals.  It’s a fairly normal sounding song (at least for this album), and could easily play in a goth club.

“Crake” is 55 second of squalling feedback.  The album also has “Oryx” which is 37 second of wailing noise.  In between is the 10 minute “Raging Lung” which is not available on Spotify.  “Networking” a skittering beat with a second beat that may just be a sample of a person making noise in his or her throat.  The “voices” get stranger throughout the song, keening, twisting and spinning, reminiscent of The Art of Noise.

“Stay Out Here” is a ten minute song.  It starts with a fairly standard electronic drumbeat.  Whispered vocals come in giving it a kind of Nine Inch Nails vibe, until the female vocals come in (and are quickly manipulated to sound kind of male).  The switch from male and female vocals is interesting, giving it an almost modern sounding Dead Can Dance feel.

“Fracking Fluid Injection” has sounds like scraping, rusted gates as the beat with sampled voices overlaid.  Again, this is nearly 10 minute long.  The problem with things like this, aside from their relative tediousness, is that they aren’t all that original.  Now originality is nothing to hold a band to, we all know, but if you’re going to do non-form sounds that are echoed with little else to it, it would be more interesting if there was something original to pin to it.  “Ready to Lose” ends the album with a steady beat and a pretty standard vocal line (even if the voices are processed).

So this album us a pretty radical departure for the band and it’s a pretty radical departure for dance music as a whole.  I’m curious to see if this will lead to a anything or if this will be their one weird album.

[READ: April 15, 2013] “The Furies”

The story opens with a rather creepy man stating at his wedding reception that he is in an exclusive club: “There are not too many men who can say that they’re older than their father-in-law.” Ew.  He was fifty-eight, his new wife 31.  His father-in-law is 56.  The father-in-law seems okay with this, but really how could he be?

Ray is a dentist and his new wife, Shelly, had been his hygienist for years.  When Shelly told him she was thinking of getting a new job, he professed his love for her, and informed his wife, Angie that he was in love with Shelly.  Angie took it badly, but he was surprised when she seemed mad that he didn’t do this years earlier while she still had a chance to meet someone (rather than being distraught that he was leaving her).  As a parting shot she says that she wishes him ill.  And she hope he suffers with the woman who took him from her.

But they had no children, just assets, and things were divided evenly and cleanly.  And he thanked his lucky starts to be with a new woman, someone who was fun and so different from his first wife. (more…)

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David Sedaris–“Long Way Home” (New Yorker, April 1, 2013)

Posted in David Sedaris, Funny (ha ha), New Yorker, Poo, Sasha Frere-Jones, Swedish Music, The Knife, Travel on May 1, 2013| Leave a Comment »

CV1_TNY_04_01_13Gutierez.inddSOUNDTRACK: THE KNIFE-“Old Dreams Waiting to be Realized” (2013).

theknife With the release of The Knife’s new album, the New Yorker review that I mentioned yesterday pointed out just how radically different this new disc is from the synth pop of yore.  Sasha Frere-Jones talked about the weird instrumentation that they use (and made themselves) and the processed vocals that often defy gender.  But he mostly focused on this, a 19 minute song.

What’s so radically different for The Knife is that the song isn’t really a song so much as a series of slow washes of keyboards which rise and fall.  There’s no melody at all and no singing either.  It’s basically an uneasy ambient song–quite a departure from the three-minute pop of “Heartbeats.”  There’s also a bunch of percussion, also seemingly random.  It sounds like a bleak landscape–the moon perhaps.

At around 10 minutes, the washes of sound (which have been pretty constant and low volume) are eclipsed by a processed steel drum sound which play a little melody and just as quickly goes away.  Helicopter-ish sounds come to the fore around 13 minutes.  And that louder noise stays with us for a couple of minutes until it is replaced by a very mechanical-sounding moaning.

After 19 minutes of this, it simply vanishes leaving a minute or so of silence at the end of the track.  You’re not going to get too many fans playing music like that.

 [READ: April 28, 2013] “Long Way Home”

In this piece, Sedaris revisits a moment that has got to be a major fear for a lot of people—the theft of a passport.  Sedaris has a British passport with an Indefinite Leave to Remain sticker on it.  This basically allows him (and partner Hugh) freedom to come and go as they please in the UK—a handy thing for a traveling author.  When the passport is stolen, it means that rather than waltzing back home, he has to go through the same old scrutiny (a writer, eh?) and very real threats that they could simply not allow him back in.

Evidently receiving this sticker is a laborious process not for the faint of heart (and not for those whose grasp of English is not perfect).  Which is why David let Hugh do all the prep work for it (although David did ace the test).  There’s a very funny sequence in which he wonders how non Westerners might deal with the question, “How might you stop young people playing tricks on you at Halloween?”  Needless to say, not having that sticker was a major hassle, but reapplying for it meant surrendering the new passport for several months while bureaucracy got its sticker together.  Which is what he eventually had to do. (more…)

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Kelly Davio–Burn This House (2013)

Posted in José González, Kelly Davio, New Yorker, Poetry, Poets, Sasha Frere-Jones, Short Books, Swedish Music, The Knife on April 30, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Burn-This-House-175x250SOUNDTRACK: THE KNIFE-“Heartbeats” (2002).

knifeheart

I learned of this song from the José González cover that was featured in the (very cool) Sony video with the bouncing balls.  The song turned me on to González, but not necessarily the song itself.  I knew The Knife did the original  and I remember when I first heard it, I didn’t like it nearly as much as the González version.

It’s been a few years and there’s a new The Knife album out and in the New Yorker review of it Sasha Frere-Jones mentioned this song again.  So I wanted to listen to it without the cover so prominent.  And indeed, the González cover is quite straightforward (acoustic guitar rather than mega synth, but otherwise pretty spot on). The Knife’s version is very retro synth-sounding .  It reminds me of a wacky 80s song.  Or perhaps a 2000’s Europop song.

The vocals are high-pitched and a wee bit over the top, but all in all it’s very catchy.  Frere-Jones said that The Knife version was very popular but evidently I didn’t travel in those circles because I don’t recognize it as being huge.

And I still like José’s version better.

I know it’s not really cool to show the video of the cover version when I’m talking about the original, and it’s really not that cool to use a commercial as a video, but it is still very fun to watch.

[READ: April 30, 2013] Burn This House

For the last day of April, the last day of poetry month, I read a new book of poetry that came across my desk today.  This is Kelly Davio’s first collection.  She is an MFA and quite an accomplished poet (managing editor and Pushcart nominee).  I also thought that I would see if she was a “modern, weird” poet or a more traditional one (I secretly hoped for more traditional as I’d burnt out on wacky ones).  For the most part she is more traditional and I liked most of her poems quite a lot.

The book was divided into five sections.  And I have to admit that the final few sections contained poems which seems a little forced to me (more on that later).  For it was in the early pages that I thought the poetry was most magnificent.

Although when I first started reading I was afraid that the poetry was going to be ponderous without enough concrete detail.  Like in “auguries” which showed a series of potential omens (Davio seems to have a thing with birds crashing into windows) which were effective, but I didn’t like the ending: “To what /significance such eroded things?” It seemed too vague to be powerful.

But the poems that came right after were just wonderful with detail like in “The First Lines” which had this description of a scarecrow: (more…)

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Lara Vapnyar–“Fischer vs. Spassky” (New Yorker, October 8, 2012)

Posted in Bobby Fischer, Boris Spassky, Chess, First Aid Kit, History, Indigo Girls, KEXP 90.3 FM--Seattle, WA, Lara Vapnyar, New Yorker, Russia, Short Story, Swedish Music on October 18, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: FIRST AID KIT-Live on KEXP, April 1 2012 (2012).

I’d never heard of First Aid Kit before listening to this set.  They are primarily comprised of two Swedish sisters Klara and Johanna Söderberg– although there are other musicians on the album and live here.  And they’re quite a formidable band. They play a kind of folkie alt-country, but when the two sisters harmonize (one with a slightly disconcerting low voice) is sends chills up my spine   The chorus of  “The Lion’s Roar”: “I’m a god damned coward but then again so are you” makes the hairs on my next stand up.  “Emmylou” really highlights their songwriting skills.  They talk about this song in the chat with the DJ, and she admits that she wasn’t sure if the metaphor worked, but the DJ and I agree it does.

The harmonies on “Blue” are just spectacular and the subtle application strings and glockenspiel really flesh out the sound.   I’m thinking of them as a maybe a more dynamic/indie sounding Indigo Girls.

They DJ also mentions their cover of Fleet Foxes’ “Tiger Mountain Peasant Song,” which has garnered the attention of Fleet Foxes (and millions of views).  You can add to that number :

You can also hear their set.

[READ: October 16, 2012] “Fischer vs. Spassky”

This story opens with the unusual note that Marina cried for a long time after her husband died–she would bite her arm in grief, leaving marks that looked like “irregular postage stamps.”  Her husband died 30 years ago and she can still feel the marks tingle.

I say that note was unusual because the story is a flashback that is brought on by the death of Bobby Fischer.  Marina remembers back to  the monumental chess match between American Bobby Fischer and Russian Boris Spassky.  Although most of Soviet Russia supported Spassky, many Russian Jews supported Fischer because of the freedom he represented.

Indeed, Marina and her husband followed the match very closely and her husband even made a pact that if Fisher won, they would flee Russian for America.  Marina didn’t believe that he was serious, so she went about her daily life as any practical person would. (more…)

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John Ralston Saul–“The Archduke’s Assassin” (Harper’s, April 2012 & Brick, Winter 2012)

Posted in Abba, Brick, Communists, Harper's, History, John Ralston Saul, Julee Cruise, Sally Shaprio, Short Story, Swedish Music, Violence, War on March 24, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: SALLY SHAPIRO-“I’ll Be By Your Side” (Extended Mix) & “He Keeps me Alive (Skatebård Mix)” from Viva Piñata! (2008).

These two tracks also came from the Viva Piñata compilation.  “I’ll Be By Your Side” has a very Euro dance-sound to me (updated ABBA, perhaps?).  It sounds so incredibly 80s to me.  Unlike most of the other tracks, this is an extended mix, not a remix, so I assume this is what the real song sounds like, too.  It’s a fine little pop song (catchy chorus) although I don’t need an 8 minute version of it.

“He Keeps Me Alive” feels like  Julie Cruise song–straight out of Twin Peaks–until the bouncy synths come in (I can’t imagine what the remix did as it sounds so much like the other song).  The one possible remix element is the vocals, which get very synthesized near the end.

Both of these songs have that Europop feels that I like much more than American pop.   I had been puzzled by the name of the singer, because her name clearly wasn’t coming from where I though the music came from.  Well, Wikipedia tells me “Sally Shapiro is the pseudonym of a Swedish vocalist and the name of the synthpop duo composed of Shapiro and musician Johan Agebjörn.”  At least I got the Abba connection right!

[READ: March 22, 2012] “The Archduke’s Assassin”

This is an excerpt from Saul’s upcoming novel Dark Diversions (it was also published in Brick, although I read it in Harper’s).  What’s fun about this excerpt is that I have literally no idea what direction the rest of the novel could go.  This appears to be a self-contained incident and while it seems pretty clear who the protagonist is, it’s hard to speculate how much more of the book would be about him or his friends or even the excerpt’s titular assassin.

It begins with a discussion of Yugolslav politics circa 1987–how the official inflation rate of 50% is indeed official, which means mythological.  The setting is the Writers’ Union, a nineteenth century stone palace which housed the best restaurant in Yugoslavia.  The food was great, as was the gossip.

The narrator’s friends were all mixed race (in other words typical Yugoslavs).  But for the moment they were all Serbs.  The discussion moves to the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and how the narrator should meet the man responsible.  When he replies that Gavrilo Princip died in prison in 1918,  his friend Dana corrects him and says she is talking about Vaso Čubrilović.  Čubrilović was one of several people who conspired to assassinate the archduke.  As of 1987 he was the only one still alive.  [He is a real person.  He got 13 years in prison, eventually became a history professor and died for real in 1990].

The narrator goes to meet the man at the University.  After a brief theoretical discussion of history, Čubrilović says that he believes that technology will save the future, that software will lead the way.  The narrator ponders this later over a meal and wonders if a new mythology is needed to distract people in a time of political emptiness.

There isn’t a lot to the excerpt–it’s not profound or anything, but it does what an excerpt should–it whets your appetite for more.  The writing is excellent and the topic is intriguing.

I enjoyed that the story mentions some Serbian dishes like kesten-pire sa šlagom (chestnut pureé with cream and chocolate) and  žito sa šlagom (crushed wheat, walnuts and dried raisins with cream).

For ease of searching, I include: Skatebard, Johan Agebjorn, kesten-pire sa slagom, zito sa slagom, Vaso Cubrilovic, pinata

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Michael Chabon–“Citizen Conn” (New Yorker, Febraury 13 & 20, 2012)

Posted in Bob Mould, Caesars, Cancer as plot device, Death, Graphic Novel, Hüsker Dü, Michael Chabon, New Yorker, Short Story, Swedish Music on March 14, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: CAESARS-Strawberry Weed (2008).

This Caesars disc is the final of the donated library discs that I received.  And the guy who donated these has some great taste. I feel like I need to track him down and see what else he likes.  I was initially skeptical of this disc because it is so crazy poppy, but it has a few cool elements to it that make it more interesting than typical pop music.  I’ll claim that it’s because they’re from Sweden, where they skew things a little differently.

The melodies are wonderfully catchy, and yet “Fools Parade” starts with some crazy noises and wild drumming before switching over to pure pop sensibilities.   “Waking Up” features that sure-fire sign of a pop hit, the word “alriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight” sung with many changes in pitch.  It’s not always easy to pull off but they do it perfectly.

“Boo Boo Goo Goo” is as crazily catchy as its title suggests it would be.   The lyrics aren’t as inane as the title suggests with the catchy ender: “you’re not gonna get that far climbing those monkey bars”.  “Crystal” has some great old-time Farfisa organs on it which make it sound simultaneously retro and (because of the guitars and such) very contemporary.

It’s actually hard to write about this disc effectively because there are so many great catchy pop songs on it–it would just be “this is poppy and fun” over and over again.

I think the poppiness of Caesars can be summed up by “Stuck with You” in which there’s a wonderful “ooh ooh ooh ooh” section, but it’s a little fuzzy and distorted, just slightly off from pristine.  Similarly, “No Tomorrow” has great fuzzy guitars and more oh oh ohs, this time ending in a super catchy “oh yeah!”  Or how about the “oooh wee oooh” that opens “In Orbit” which sounds spacey and otherworldly.

“Up All Night” introduces a minor key song to this intrinsically poppy album, and even the minor key song is upbeat.

This is a great album if you’re looking for something catchy and easy to sing to, but which isn’t completely made of bubblegum.

[READ: March 11, 2012] “Citizen Conn”

Michael Chabon does not shy away from comics.  I almost fear he’s endangering himself as being the guy who writes about comics (fortunately he has written very well about other topics too).  But for this short story he’s back in that familiar realm.

This story is about two men, Morton Feather and Artie Conn.  They were comic book artists back in the day, writing failing books for a failing company.  But they’re in the right place at the right time when an accidental mailing reveals that men in tights are making a comeback.

So Feather and Conn work together to creator some of the most powerful and long-lasting comic book superheroes.  They ride so high that they are offered to sell their creations to a very high bidder.  Feather refuses but Conn accepts.  And so begins the rift between them.  Later, since Feather lost the fire of his convictions after the sell-out, he is fired and Conn becomes solely responsible for these creations. (more…)

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Michael Moynihan and Didrik Søderlind–Lords of Chaos: The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Undergound [New Edition] (2003)

Posted in Anarchy, Anton LaVey, Bathory, Big Books, Black Sabbath, Books about music, Death, Deicide, Depression, Didrik Søderlind, End of the World, Kerrang, King Diamond, Kiss, Led Zeppelin, Mayhem, Mercyful Fate, Michael Moynihan, Nazis, Ozzy Osbourne, Possessed, Racism, Religion, Suicide, Supernatural, Swedish Music, The Electric Hellfire Club, The Exorcist, Therion, Threats, Venom, Violence, Wikipedia, Yuck! on December 26, 2010| 3 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: THERION-Theli (1997).

I bought this disc when I was living in Boston and I immediately fell for it.  I seem to recall I was doing a lot of driving at the time, and this mix of extreme metal, orchestral accompaniment and twinned vocals was very captivating.  It was also really fun to play very loud on a dark highway.

I’d read a very good review of this disc that claimed it was a big step forward in styles of thrash/black metal (and if you Google reviews for this album they are pretty universally great).  The disc is exemplified by the track “To Mega Therion” which is almost entirely a full choir singing what I guess is the chorus.  The verses are populated by a guy screaming in a guttural voice who is answered by an almost mechanically twinned voice which sounds great but is even harder to understand.  Follow this with a beautiful piano (!) solo not unlike something Randy Rhoads put together for Blizzard of Oz, and add a pounding double bass drum all the way through (truth be told the album could be a little heavier in the bass) and you get a crazy mix of styles which is catchy and creepy at the same time.

It’s hard to match a song like that.  And, admittedly, the band doesn’t quite manage to do so, but the rest of the album keeps up this orchestral death metal throughout.

Reading about Therion has taught me that this album is something of  touchstone for a new genre of metal, called variously symphonic or operatic metal (I suppose we have this to blame for the Trans Siberian Orchestra?).

In addition to the choirs and guitars there are a lot of keyboards. They are disconcerting when you’re thinking death metal and yet really they add an even fuller sound, even if at times they are not as grand or powerful as anything else.  At times the album seems cheesey, but that may have more to do with thirteen years distance than the music itself.

Anyone who has seen The Exorcist knows that choirs can be spooky.  And when you mix it with the heavy guitars and guttural vocals, you get a really cool sinister yet catchy (and possibly uplifting) album.  There are certainly a lot heavier albums, but this one is pretty stellar.

[READ: Summer of 2010, finished December 12, 2010] Lords of Chaos

My brother-in-law gave me this book for my birthday this year.  I was familiar with it as it is fairly well-known in heavy metal circles as a fascinating read.  And so it was.

This book is basically a history of black metal in Norway and how some bands’ antics went beyond music into burning churches and even murder.  The authors present a pretty neutral account of the story.  They let the main participants (criminals) have their say and the interviews don’t comment on their answers, they just let them tell their side of the story.  The authors also know a lot about the music scene.  Of course, in the end, the authors (thankfully) disapprove of the violence.  It makes for an interesting and somewhat conflicting read. (more…)

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Rick Moody–Garden State (1992)

Posted in Books about music, Boredom, Cigarettes, Depression, Drinking, Drugs, Peter, Bjorn & John, Rick Moody, Set in New Jersey!, Sex, Short Books, Suicide, Swedish Music, Unlikable main character, Violence, Wikipedia on October 27, 2010| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: PETER, BJORN & JOHN-Living Thing (2009).

After the raging (relative) success of Writer’s Block, with their crazily catchy whistling song, “Young Folks”, PB&J could have gone in any direction.

And I was quite surprised when the opening song of this follow up (actually, there’s an instrumental disc in between) opened with single note and drum sounds and virtually a capella vocals.  But unlike a typical a capella song, the thudding notes were kind of dissonant and unpleasant.  And there wasn’t much more to the song than that.

Even the second song starts out starkly.  A single piano note plays a simple riff.  The verse kicks in with some simple electronic drums (and again minimal accompaniment).  And this sparseness is the main musical theme on the disc.

And I have to say it took almost a half a dozen listen before I really enjoyed what they were doing.  They are eschewing the pop structure that won them popularity and they’re shifting their melodies to the vocal lines rather than the instruments (I guess).  It’s a risky proposition, but it pays off.

Take “Nothing to Worry About.”   It opens with what sounds like a distorted children’s choir singing the chorus at full volume.  But then it settles down into, again, a simple drum and vocals song with just a hint of instrumentation.  (Did they get all their music out on the instrumental?  I don’t know I’ve not heard it).  Even the title track is sparse guitar noises and clicked drums.  But, man, is it catchy (it reminds me in a weird way of Paul Simon).

And then, continuing my contention that the best and catchiest songs always have curses in them, “Lay It Down” with the chorus, “Hey, shut the fuck up boy, you’re starting to piss me off” will stick in your head for days.

The end of the disc (the last three songs) are considerably mellower.  They’re less catchy, but they use the starkness very well.

Initially I really didn’t like this album.  It had none of the immediacy of the previous disc.  But I found myself really enjoying it.  I wouldn’t want all of their albums to sound like this, but it was an enjoyable twist on a good formula.

[READ: October 7, 2010] Garden State

I mentioned the other day that I just found out about this book when looking up information about Rick Moody.  I was so excited to read a book set in Haledon (two towns from where I grew up) that I checked it out and begin it immediately (it’s only 200 pages, so that helped too).  But I have to say I was really disappointed with the book (even if it did win the Editor’s Book Award).

My first gripe is about the supposed setting in New Jersey.  I have no problem with fictionalizing an area.  Writers do it all the time.  But Moody fictionalizes the area in two ways to suit his thesis, and as a lover of New Jersey and a former resident of the region, I found the lack of reality to be very upsetting.

The first minor, and I have to say really weird thing is that despite the real towns included (Haledon, Paterson, Paramus) he makes up towns nearby–Fleece, Tyre– and he makes up a river–The Dern River.  He also plays around with the names of the highways that run through the state, constantly referring to the non-existent Garden State Thruway.  Now, again, there’s no problem with making things up, but nobody in the story ever goes to Fleece or Tyre, the Dern River doesn’t come into play aside from being a river that people refer to (it’s not a renamed Passaic river, because that’s included in the story, too).  So, why make up random town names?  Why say that you drive from Haledon to the edge of Paterson near Boonton, when that is not geographically correct (or relevant to the story)?  It just seems like he didn’t have access to a map. (more…)

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90,000

Posted in Alex Stone, Craig Ferguson, David Foster Wallace, David Goldberg, Dropkick Murphys, Edmonton Folk Festival, Evan Goldberg, Flight of the Conchords, Futurama, Gordon Korman, Gordon Lightfoot, Jeff Kinney, Jens Lekman, Kurt Vonnegut, Late Late Show, McSweeney's, Paul F. Tompkins, Pearl Jam, Pierdomenico Baccalario, Pseudonymous Bosch, Seth Rogen, Sonic Youth, Swedish Music, The Airborne Toxic Event, The Decemberists, The Flaming Lips on July 27, 2010| Leave a Comment »

On July 25, I reached 90,000 hits.
It took me seven months to get from 60,000 (Dec 25, 2009) to 90,000.
It took me nine months to get my first 30,000 hits.

There are some obvious contributing factors to this improvement (not the least of which is links from referrers that make absolutely no sense whatsoever (and which are pretty clearly spam, but hey, numbers are numbers, right?)  But the most obvious is the huge outcry at the failure of Scholastic to continue publishing the Ulysses Moore series.

If you Google “Ulysses Moore” I am the first post (after the official Scholastic site, Amazon, and fantasticfiction).  I have received so many comments from people who are frustrated that the can’t finish the series. It is amazing that so many voices are ignored.  As you can see, this series has garnered me 4020 views.

At 60,000 views I posted some theories as to why I thought these posts were so successful.  Since very little has changed (mostly just a little shuffle of the top ten), I won’t bother repeating that.  But, there is one post (see the bottom, hee hee) which has absolutely skyrocketed in just a few short months.

1. 4020 views posted April 25, 2009 [was #1 at 60,000: 1663 views]
Pierdomenico Baccalario–Ulysses Moore series Books 1-4
SOUNDTRACK: PEARL JAM-Vitalogy (more…)

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