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Archive for the ‘Unlikable main character’ Category

Jesse Eisenberg-“You Never Really Know” (New Yorker, January 23, 2017)

Posted in Dentists, Funny (ha ha), Jesse Eisenberg, Marriage Trouble, New Yorker, Overcoats, Parenting, Religion, Sex, Short Story, Therapy, Tiny Desk Concert, Unlikable main character on June 8, 2017| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: OVERCOATS-Tiny Desk Concert #608 (March 27, 2017).

Overcoats is Hana Elion and JJ Mitchell.  They sing beautiful duets–sometimes in harmony, sometimes in unison–but always perfectly together.  And they seem to have an incredible affection for each other–notice the way they hug each other at the end of the show.

I was intrigued by the blurb that says:

Behind those rich voices lies a spare electronic backdrop that feels spacious and refreshing. Not long ago, these songs would likely be backed by a nylon-stringed guitar, but their healthy energy feels more urgent with an underpinning drone and Joao Gonzalez’s drumming.

And it’s true.  As the songs progress, you do rather expect to hear more folk sounds, but instead the songs are almost dancey, certainly soulful.  At times they are dancey, as the duo do some really fun dances too.

“23” opens with Elion’s guitar and slightly higher voice.  She and Mitchell switch off lead vocals until Mitchell pays some keyboards which broadens the sound…slightly.  As the song nears its end Mitchell puts some synths on a loop, the women sing a round of Ahhs until a great delicate moment at the and as Elion slides her hand up the neck of her guitar ringing out that chord higher and higher until the end.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen two people smile so much and be so happy about what they are doing and who they are with.

JJ introduces “Leave the Light On” by saying “Hana has a life long dream to do a Tiny Desk.  She’s actually retiring after this show.”  This song is much more dancey.  They both sing the line “leave the light on for myself when I come home” and then the Gonzalez samples it ( I assume) and loops it.  There’s not a lot to the song, but it’s quite infectious, especially as they dance wildly between verses, swinging their arms and smiling at each other.  They even put their arms around each other while they sing .

“Hold Me Close” is a pretty ballad that’s slower and more poignant.  And they do hold each other close as they sing.  When they sing the last few words to each other you can feel the love between them.  It’s really something.

I didn’t mention the fact that they are wearing identical white tunics, because no one else did. I don’t know if that’s how they dress on stage, but it really makes a visual statement.  I also can’t imagine them singing in a larger space than the Tiny Desk.  The performance is so intimate what would they do with a bigger stage?

[READ: January 25, 2017] “You Never Really Know”

This comic piece goes from funny to very funny to fairly insane in a matter of a few paragraphs.

The story begins with a strange misunderstanding.  The narrator saw a homeless man holding out a cup and begging for change. But as he got closer her realized the man was not homeless and that the cup was actually full of coffee!

Then he notes that his fiancée would probably step over a guy like that without a second thought.

He cites some other examples of how the world is full of surprises: The C.E.O. of a Fortune 500 company could turn out the be the greatest basketball player. And, his mother, a nurse, could be speaking to that man’s fiancée behind his back.

You never know what’s going on.  Until you hire a lawyer. (more…)

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Lynn Crosbie–“It Is I Who Styles Donald Trump; or, Cherie (de Melania Knauss-Trump)” (The Walrus, April 2017)

Posted in #ITMFA, #RESIST, Buffalo Clover, Canadian Content, donald tRUMP, Fashion, Hoax, Idiots, Lynn Crosbie, Margo Price, Short Story, The Walrus, The White Stripes, Tiny Desk Concert, Toilets, Unfunny, Unlikable main character, Yuck! on April 1, 2017| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: MARGO PRICE-Tiny Desk Concert #582 (November 28, 2016).

It is my fervent hope that I will wake up this morning and the world will say April Fools, and that these last few months will all have been a prank.  Or that this day marks the first day in formal steps to get the buffoon out of the White House before more people get killed.

Barring that, I can post these Trump-based pieces.

Margo Price is beloved by NPR.  I find her a wee bit too country for my tastes.  And yet, once again, a Tiny Desk Concert changed my opinion of her.

Price came to NPR on the day after the election.  I was in a fog of disbelief that day.  I can’t imagine how she managed to play and sing.  Here’s the intro:

When I greeted Margo Price in the NPR garage before her Tiny Desk performance, tears were streaming down her face. It was Wednesday morning, Nov. 9, the day after the 2016 election. For her — as for many Americans — it was a stunning and bewildering moment in time, a day when life and the everyday took on new meaning. And so when she and her band began to play “All American Made,” a song she’s sung many times before, those words about America’s changes and failures in the 21st century seemed even more powerful.

As this Tiny Desk progresses, even “Four Years Of Chances,” her song of a love gone wrong, feels less about a lousy husband and more about presidential politics. She dedicates her third and final song, “About To Find Out,” to Donald Trump; she says it was originally written about a “musician acquaintance of mine who’s a complete sociopath.” When the song ends, she rips open her red cowboy shirt to reveal a T-shirt with the words “Icky Trump”— a play on the title of The White Stripes’ song “Icky Thump,” which criticizes the U.S.’s immigration policies. She smiles, wipes a tear away: It seems cathartic, but temporary.

The music includes piano, guitar (of course), some slide guitar and harmonica.

“All American Made” plays down the twang in her voice and the lyrics are great.  It was written for her previous band Buffalo Clover.

1987, and I didn’t know I then
Reagan was selling weapons to the leaders of Iran
well it won’t be the first time and it wont be the end
They were all American made.

I was just a child
Unaware of the effects
Raised on sports and Jesus
and all the usual suspects

It’s a slow folk song with harmonica and a nice guitar solo.

“Four Years Of Chances” is actually about a failed relationship.  And we can all only hope that we don’t have to wait as long as she did in this song before ending this relationship.  It’s a faster song with good slide guitar work.  There’s a guitar solo, a piano solo and I like the way it goes up two steps after the solo.

I gave you four years of chances
But you threw em all away
I gave you one thousand, four hundred sixty-one days

“About To Find Out” seems so uncannily about Trump it is hard to believe it was written about someone else (as it says, it was originally written about a “musician acquaintance of mine who’s a complete sociopath”).

Well I’ve had about enough of your two-cent words
And the way you’re running your mouth
No you haven’t got a clue or another thing to do
Except to take another picture of yourself
You’re living high on the hog looking down at us all
You may have come so easy and happened so fast
But the harder they come, they fall

You have many people fooled about your motivation
But I don’t believe your lies
You blow so much smoke it’s bound to make you choke
I see the snakes in both of your eyes
But you wouldn’t know class if it bit you in the ass
And you’re standing much too tall
You may have come so easy and happened so fast
But the harder they come, they fall

Tell me what does your pride taste like honey
Or haven’t you tried it out?
It’s better than the taste of a boot in your face
Without any shadow of a doubt
You better learn where the line is
You missed a lot you’ve gotta learn about
How’s it gonna feel to be put in your place
Well I guess you’re about to find out

Some folks today have got nothing to say
Except to talk about their wealth
But the poor’s still poor and the war’s still war
And everybody wants more for themselves
Like a rich man’s child you never walked a mile
One day you won’t have nothing to sell
You may have come so easy and happened so fast
But the way I see it you fell

Uncanny.

So yes, this Tiny Desk Concert has totally won me over to Price.  Although I really need to never hear “Hurtin’ (On the Bottle)” again–it is just waaay to twangy for my sensitive ears.  But more importantly, I hope she hasn’t given up the fight.

[READ: March 12, 2017] “It Is I Who Styles Donald Trump…”

My only other exposure to Crosbie was in the April 2012 issue of The Walrus, in which she wrote a couple of short pieces.

Obviously, I am all for hating on Trump, for ridiculing him and making him look as pathetic as he actually is.  And this entire issue was more or less devoted to the horror that is Trump.  So having a story that mocks him is something I can appreciate.

But, as with the comedians who mock Trump’s hair or skin rather than his racism, bigotry, lack of knowledge of the world, lying and everything else, this story is strangely superficial, and overall, just kind of strange.

It begins amusingly enough: “Last night I dreamt I went to Mar-a-Lago again.  I stood shuddering at the gates–was I to be the mistress of an estate named in colloquial Spanish?”

It even seems like it might go for an interesting angle: “as he sleeps his lips purse, and his hands fly our, defensively.”

But, as the title states (so I guess I was expecting too much), this is mostly about Trump’s hair: she “quickly took over this industry.” (more…)

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Annie Proulx–”Tits-Up in a Ditch” (New Yorker, June 9 & 16, 2008)

Posted in Annie Proulx, Girl in a Coma, Humiliation, Marriage Trouble, New Yorker, Nina Diaz, Parenting, Regrets, Sexism, Short Story, Tiny Desk Concert, Unlikable main character, Violence, Virginity (Loss of), War on January 9, 2017| Leave a Comment »

6916SOUNDTRACK: GIRL IN A COMA-Tiny Desk Concert #190 (January 30, 2012).

girlcoma I was planning on writing only about recent Tiny Desk Concerts for a while, but Nina Diaz’s (Aug 2016) Concert informed me that she was the singer of the band Girl in a Coma who are presently on a hiatus while Nina tours some solo material.

So I went back and watched this Tiny Desk to see the origins of Diaz’s music.

Girl in a Coma is a three-piece with Nina Diaz on guitar and vocals, her sister Phanie Diaz on drums and Jenn Alva on bass.  The blurb suggests that the band plays punk–typically loud crunchy guitars (although I listened to the recorded version of “Smart” and it doesn’t really sound very different from this version).  So I didn’t get that.

At any rate, the trio sounds great in this setting.  The percussion is simply tambourine and a shaker.  And Alva’s bass is really melodic and lovely playing more than just the same notes as the guitar.

“Smart” is really catchy (although Diaz does some weird things with her voice late in the song).  “Knocking At Your Door” has a fast, almost metal sounding guitar (albeit acoustic here).  But it’s the bass (which is not doing anything crazy) that takes center stage with the melodies she plays.

Before the final song Nina says it feels like show and tell or something.  And while she’s saying this, the other two switch places, with the drummer coming up front and the bass sitting in the back.

“So” has a pretty traditional folk song structure.  The reason for the switch of seats comes in the second verse when Phanie plays the melodica.  It’s a pretty song and Diaz’s voice is really nice.

I really can’t imagine them being a punk band at all, frankly.

I’m also going to point out what Diaz looks like here for contrast of what she looks like in her solo show four and a half years later.  In 2012, she’s wearing dark jeans and a v neck sweater (stripes in the purple family).  Her hair has bangs and a long braid on the side.  And she has no obvious makeup on.  Keep that in mind for the next post

[READ: November 1, 2008] “Tits-Up in a Ditch”

I read this story back in November 2008 and just couldn’t get into it.  I tried several times and could not penetrate the barrier that I felt Proulx was creating.  Well, here it is 8 years later and I tried it again, and not only did I finish it, I sort of enjoyed it.  Even though it, like everything else I seem to have read from Proulx was incredibly depressing.

The story is about Dakotah.  Dakotah’s mother abandoned her when she was a baby and left her own parents to take care of her.  They resented their daughter and Dakotah from the start.  They were harsh and uncaring towards her (although it could be prairie love, I suppose).  The grandparents are named Verl and Bonita Lister (Proulx has fun with names in her stories).

Verl and Bonita are hardscrabble, religious folks who don’t have a lot of joy.  Well, Verl had moments of happiness but probably no joy–he rode hard and then injured himself.  But he was stuck because during the 1980s in Wyoming oil companies came in and took away all the workers.

Verl gives us the title of the story when he says “Had me some luck today.  Goddam cow got herself tits-up in the ditch couple days ago.  Dead, time I found her.”  See, charming people. (more…)

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Ken Kalfus–Three Stories (2010) [Madras Press: Series Two, Book Three]

Posted in Books about writers, Boredom, College, Death, Fears, Funny (strange), Madras Press, Murder, Racism, Regrets, Short Story, Small Books, Supernatural, Surreal, Tiny Desk Concert, Unlikable main character, Xenia Rubinos on January 7, 2017| Leave a Comment »

kalfusSOUNDTRACK: XENIA RUBINOS-Tiny Desk Concert #552 (July 25, 2016).

xeniaI am fascinated by the music of Xenia Rubinos.  Every song in this Tiny Desk Concert has something interesting going on.  But for two of the songs, I can’t stand her voice.  Rubinos seems to sing in a free form jazzy / R&B/ improvised manner.  And it bugs me.  No matter how fun she is to watch (and she is), I just don’t like the way she sings (except on the second song).

But the music!  I love the way “Lonely Lover” opens with some interesting drumming and occasional weirdo samples. But the main melody is created by two bassists! (no guitars or anything else).  It’s such a great melody, slinky and smart, with each bassist playing a different aspect of the melody.  It’s super catchy (and when she sings actual words it works well).  It’s just the moaning and groaning that I can’t stand.

Between the first and second song she takes a dance break.  Then “Mexican Chef” open with a cool staggered bass line that is echoed by the guitar (the guitar (not the riff) sounds kind of 80’s punk) and some funky drums.  The lyrics of this song are right on, too.  It’s  a ruthless critique of the way brown people are treate.  It’s sung in a kind of rap style, with no room for soaring vocals.  It’s a really great song:

French bistro, Dominican chef/Italian restaurant, Boricua chef/Chinese takeout, Mexican chef …. Brown walks your baby/Brown walks your dog/Brown raised America /Brown cleans the house/Brown takes the trash/Brown even wipes your granddaddy’s ass …  Brown breaks his back // Brown takes the flack / Brown gets cut coz his papers are wack. … Brown has not / Brown get shot brown gets what he deserves coz he fought.

Right on.

For the final song, “Laugh Clown,” Rubinos plays solo bass and sings.  The bass is just occasional notes as Rubinos scat/sings.  It’s less interesting than the other two songs, but it makes for a  nice change of pace.

Once I got past her vocal delivery, I found I really liked these songs a lot.

[READ: November 18, 2016] Three Stories

Back in 2014, I ordered all 16 books from Madras Press. Unfortunately, after publishing the 16 books they seem to have gone out of business (actually they are switching to non-fiction, it seems). They still have a web presence where you can buy remaining copies of books.  But what a great business idea this is/was

Madras Press publishes limited-edition short stories and novella-length booklets and distributes the proceeds to a growing list of non-profit organizations chosen by our authors.  The format of our books provides readers with the opportunity to experience stories on their own, with no advertisements or miscellaneous stuff surrounding them.

The format is a 5″ x 5″ square books that easily fit into a pocket.

Proceeds from Kalfus’ book go to the Free Library of Philadelphia.

As the title suggests, there are three stories in this book. (more…)

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Andy Hirsch–Varmints (2016)

Posted in #10yearsof01, Adventure, Andy Hirsch, Canadian Music, Children's Books, Constellation Records, Fantasy, First Second :01, Graphic Novel, HangedUp, Herbie The Love Bug, The Velvet Underground, Tony Conrad, Trains, Unfinished series, Unlikable main character, Western on November 24, 2016| Leave a Comment »

varmintsSOUNDTRACK: HANGEDUP & TONY CONRAD-Transit of Venus [091] (2016).

conradHangedUp & Tony Conrad have the third of three discs released as part of Constellation’s Musique Fragile 02 set. From the Constellation site: Transit Of Venus documents this fertile collaboration and includes some enormous slabs of drone rock alongside more decomposed pieces and gorgeously gritty string duos.  [[The performers] recently plunged back into the archives and started shaping an album from the various 2-track and live-mixed [improvisations and] multi-track source material.

“Flying Fast n Furious” has clattering percussion and squeaky violins.  There’s some fast drumming and violin playing in the middle with a great wobbly low bass around.   About 4 minutes in the sounds are almost otherworldly/underwatery.  “Transit Of Venus” has the return of that low wobbly bass—big round fat bass notes that just seem to linger as the drums clatter away.  The sawing violin is a little less interesting than I’d like, however.  “Principles” features a buzzy violin that scratches over the interesting drum pattern.  After a minute or so some strange sounds percolate under the drone.  The sounds are mechanical, organic, (balloons?) digital—unclear.  It’s 8 minutes long and there’s a few moments when the big bass notes come in that are very cool.  In the last minute or so a new violin solo comes out of the din but it doesn’t alter the tone of the song all that much

“Bright Arc Of Light” is 4 minutes of slow bowed and plucked violins.  It’s quite minimal.  “Gentil The Unlucky Astronomer ” is 11 minutes long and it starts with multi layered violins.  It sounds a bit like The Velvet Underground’s “Heroin” and after 2 minute the slow drums come in.  Once the drums enter, the song stays mostly the same—sawing violins and a steady drums with some other occasional percussion.  It’s very droney.  Around 6 minutes things change slightly and the song becomes more insistent.  It continues like this for most of the rest of the song and then ends with some solo violins.  The final track is “Panorama From Maxwell Montes” which opens with some dissonant scratchy violins.  The drums come in and start playing an intersection complex rhythm making this a good album closer.

fragileMusique Fragile Volume 02 is the second in our series of limited-edition, artwork-intensive box sets featuring three full-length albums by three different artists, available on heavyweight vinyl and as a digital bundle. The vinyl set will be limited to 500 hand-numbered copies, lovingly designed and hand-assembled.

[READ: November 1, 2016] Varmints

I really enjoyed the drawing style in this book.  The main characters were cute and cartoony and yet the backgrounds were reasonably realistic looking.  It really conveyed the setting (the old west, I guess) effectively.

However, I had a huge problem with the story.  The book felt like it was part 2, but to the best of my knowledge it isn’t.  There just seemed to be huge gaps in the story that were never filled in.  Not to mention, this is supposed to be a children’s story, but we find out (very late in the story) that the childrens’ mother was killed in cold blood–more or less on a whim.  It’s a shocking piece of violence which I suppose little kids can handle but, woah, what the hell, dude?

The story begins with Opie and Ned in a saloon.  They are young kids, Opie is Ned’s older sister–a joke is made about Opie being a weird name for a girl, but sadly, nothing more comes of that.  Opie is holding her own in a game of cards but Ned is bored and keeps interrupting the game as annoying little brother will do.

Ned says he wants a hat, and since no one will give him one, he climbs a mountain of a man (he’s so tall we can’t see his face and he is wearing a full-sized bear as a cloak of some sort) and takes the hat off of him.  Chaos ensues, the hat flies off (and gets two holes in it) and the kids wind up stealing the giant man’s horse and taking off. (more…)

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Jesse Eisenberg–Bream Gives Me Hiccups and Other Stories (2015)

Posted in Basketball, Boredom, College, Food, Funny (ha ha), Jealousy, Jesse Eisenberg, Marriage (Happy), Marriage Trouble, McSweeney's, New Yorker, Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All, Parenting, Religion, Set at School, Sex, Short Story, The Internet, Tiny Desk Concert, Unlikable main character on November 9, 2016| Leave a Comment »

bream SOUNDTRACK: THE INTERNET-Tiny Desk Concert #474 (September 29, 2015).

internetThe Internet are an offshoot of Odd Future.  This is an R&B group fronted by Syd the Kid, and the music is really delicate–almost easy-listening-sounding keys and a ropey bass line.

Syd’s voice is beautiful and soulful and she raps and sing delicately.  Which is why it’s surprising that the first words of the first song are “now she wanna fuck with me / live a life of luxury.”  But after the surprise of these lyrics the chill music is kind of soothing: “roll up an L and light it.” And I love her falsetto for the chorus”

“She blowin up my phone.  All I hear is wha wha, wha wha (Band: wha wha).”

“Under Control” is a song dedicated to her band:  she promises she’ll be there for all of them “when I’m a legend baby and we’re all rich”

Her confidence and casualness is totally infectious. And I love the the wah-wahs effects on the keys as the song nears the end.

The last song is called “Dontcha” which gets a “yes!” from the crowd when she says she’s going to play it.  (That makes her very happy).  She says she’s never done an acoustic version before.  I gather it’s a single, although I enjoyed the other two songs a bit more.

The veering into R&B territory is not my thing, but it’s cool to hear her branch into different genres in one song.

[READ: May 15, 2016] Bream Gives Me Hiccups and Other Stories.

I’ve really enjoyed the comic pieces that I’ve read by Eisenberg–he writes a lot for the New Yorker.  In fact, I had recently decided that I would read and post about all of Eisenberg’s New Yorker pieces at some point in the future.  Well, it turns out that nearly every one of those New Yorker pieces has turned up in this book (there’s three that didn’t).  So that saved some time.

What that means is that most of these pieces are quite short.  And that very few of them are stories in the conventional sense.  They tend to be a few pages long, or sometimes longer pieces done as diary entries.

What is most interesting about Eisenberg’s writing is that most of these stories are funny–some are very funny–but there is also a lot of pathos and sadness in them.  Many of the characters come from broken homes and many of the situations are rather bleak.  And yet he manages to make them funny. (more…)

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Jeanne Birdsall–The Penderwicks in Spring (2015) [audiobook 2015–Susan Denaker]

Posted in Audiobooks, Cats, Child Development, Children's Books, Death, Dogs, Fears, Friendship, Funny (ha ha), Jeanne Birdsall, Marriage (Happy), Parenting, Pets, Regrets, Romance, Susan Denaker, Unlikable main character, War on September 22, 2016| Leave a Comment »

[LISTENED TO: August 2016] The Penderwicks in Spring

pend-springWe have loved the Penderwick books.  But I remember that when this came out, Sarah read it and was disappointed. Not in the quality of the book, but because the story has moved on.  This book is set about five years after the action of the previous book.

I totally get Birdsall’s desire to write about Batty rather than her older sisters–to move on from what she has written about for three books.  In the previous book Rosalind was more or less absent, so Birdsall is not afraid to progress with her characters.  But those characters are so great, that to have them largely absent from the story was so frustrating!  I missed them all (So I guess she could take that as a compliment).

Of course, the “new” characters are fun, too.  The book is mostly about Batty, but her younger half-brother Ben is older and quite a character (and he gets to show us things from his point of view–the only boy in a family of strong Penderwick girls).  And Batty’s father and stepmother have had a new baby, Lydia, who is just climbing out of her crib and is quite a handful. (more…)

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Nan Marino–Neil Armstrong Is My Uncle & Other Lies Muscle Man McGinty Told Me (2009) [audiobook 2009–Emily Bauer]

Posted in Angst, Astronauts, Audiobooks, Buzz Aldrin, Death, Emily Bauer, Friendship, Humiliation, Kickball, Letters, Lies, Marriage Trouble, Nan Marino, Neil Armstrong, Nostalgia, Outer Space, Unlikable main character, Vietnam War on September 21, 2016| Leave a Comment »

[LISTENED TO: August 2016] Neil Armstrong Is My Uncle & Other Lies Muscle Man McGinty Told Me

neilThe title of this book sounded weird and fun. So I grabbed it from the audio book collection at the library and we listened to it on the way home from vacation.

Set in Long Island (narrator Emily Bauer does some great Long Island accents for the adults (and a few kids) in the story), this is the story of a young girl, Tamara Ann Simpson (Tammy) growing up on Ramble Street in 1969 just a few weeks from the Moon Landing!

But that’s miles away.  Because it is summertime and all she can think about is kickball.  Well kickball and her friend Kebsie who took off all of a sudden one day without even saying goodbye.

Kebsie was Tammy’s best friend.  She lived in a foster home on Ramble Street.  They did everything together and even had a secret “arooo” signal.  They were BFs and even bought necklaces to prove it.  Kebsie was a straight shooter and took no crap from anyone.  And then one day, she was gone.  As we understand it, her mother returned and took Kebsie away to secret place because there was some kind of abuse in he family and they needed to be removed from everyone they knew. (more…)

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Danica Novgorodoff–The Undertaking of Lily Chen (2014)

Posted in #10yearsof01, Barry Douglas, Death, First Second :01, Funny (strange), Ghosts, Graphic Novel, Marriage Trouble, Planxty, Sexism, Threats, Tiny Desk Concert, Unlikable main character, Violence, YA Books, Yuck! on June 30, 2016| Leave a Comment »

lilychen SOUNDTRACK: BARRY DOUGLAS-Tiny Desk Concert #537 (June 3, 2016).

barryBarry Douglas is a “classical” pianist from Ireland.  I’ve put classical in quotes because although what he plays is classical in sound, the music actually comes from Celtic tradition rather than the classical canon.

“The Coolin” (An Chúileann) translates to “The Fair-Haired Girl” and dates to around 1641.  His arrangement has a very baroque feel (he is actually a classical pianist, too), which gives the traditional song a more regal air.

He follows that lovely delicate song with “Planxty Dylan.”  Planxty is an Irish dance.  He says that harpists would travel around Ireland and people would look after them.  The harpist would then thank the homeowner by writing a song named after the home where they stayed.  This romp of a dance (at only about 1 minute long) was dedicated to the house of Dylan.

From playing a planxty to the band Planxty.  Douglas has arranged the Planxty song “Raggle Taggle Gypsy” for solo piano.  It has been around since the 18th century.  Planxty made it more famous as a vocal song (which I know) but Douglas’ piano version has a lot of fun with the melody as well.  The melody is also known as “Black Jack Davy.”

“My Lagan Love” is about the River Lagan in Donegal (there are actually four Lagan Rivers in Ireland).  The melody and poem were written by unknown persons.  Douglas arranged this without words in an attempt to make it more timeless.  I know the original and this is a really lovely in this instrumental version.

I can say that I was pleasantly surprised to hear this was the kind of solo music that Douglas was going to play.

[READ: April 2, 2016] The Undertaking of Lily Chen

The whole premise behind this story is disturbing and apparently true.

Novgorodoff includes a section of an article from 2007 which says that parts of rural China have seen the rise of “ghost marriages.” In this situation, when an unmarried an dies, his parents procure the body of a woman, hold a wedding and then bury them together.  This has led to a black market in corpse brides.  EW!

This story explores that revolting concept. (more…)

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Danica Novgorodoff–Slow Storm (2008)

Posted in #10yearsof01, Andy Shauf, Canadian Music, Death, Fire, First Second :01, Graphic Novel, Horses, Racism, Sexism, Soak, Threats, Tiny Desk Concert, Unlikable main character, Violence on June 25, 2016| Leave a Comment »

slowstormSOUNDTRACK: ANDY SHAUF-Tiny Desk Concert #533 (May 20, 2016).

shaufI was unfamiliar with Andy Shauf although once he started playing, I thought his songs sounded familiar.  One of the more interesting thing about him is his singing enunciation (which reminds me a bit of SOAK for a recent comparison–although she is from Northern Ireland and he is from Saskatchewan).

It’s interesting to me that Shauf plays only rhythm guitar–all of the melody lines and solos come from his keyboardist.  It’s also interesting how motionless Shauf is.  He stands quite still and doesn’t even really move as he sings (his voice is mellow but not exactly quiet).

“The Magician” has as some great riffs from the keyboard and some interesting chord changes as the song draws to and end.  And of course, Shauf’s calming, delightful voice (complete with do do do dos) make the song quite lovely.

“To You” sounds similar to the first–same basic tempo and tone, with nice little fills that elevate the song from a simple chord structure.

His final song, “You’re Out Wasting” is “an older song” from his last album.  There’s another great melody running through this song and it’s a bit more uptempo.

I’m not sure if it’s his hair or his posture but he looks uncomfortably hunched-over while playing.  But that doesn’t stop his voice from sounding great and his songwriting from being really enjoyable.

[READ: February 2, 2016] Slow Storm

I really like the way Novgorodoff works with watercolors to create cool backgrounds. However, I don’t really like the way she uses her pen–I don’t care for the look of her characters.  And I don’t love the hand lettering all that much either.

This story is one that I wouldn’t read if it weren’t a First Second book.  And while I’m glad I read it and I found the convergence s of characters to be really interesting, it was a rough road getting thee.

The story begins with no words, just a series of images that juxtapose a tornado/storm and the Kentucky Derby.  The storm is hitting a barn where horses are kept, so these horses are also running, but hey are frightened of course (I especially didn’t like the style of the frightened horses).

Then we see a man get hurled by the tornado into a barn. (more…)

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